Just put your lips together and blow.

I didn’t know my grandmother.

But one afternoon I stood on the steps whistling for the dogs and the hair on my mother’s body stood up.

Whistling into the afternoon.

Whistling for the dogs.

Whistling just like my grandmother.

Whistling like a dead woman I’d never met.

“It’s just you.”

“Yeah it’s just me.”

“My mother used to whistle just like that.”

Every time I whistle for the dogs my mother’s blood runs cold.