smiled, waiting with expectation for my reply. "No," I said.
"Did you get him to smoke the joint?" "He didn't see it and tell your uncle, did he?"
Lorraine asked quickly.
"If my uncle even thought I had something like
that--"
"He'd turn you over to the police," she
suggested.
"He'd turn his own mother over to the police,"
Betty added. "Do you still have it or did you smoke it
yourself last night?" Betty asked.
"No, I didn't smoke it." I didn't want to tell
them I had simply thrown it out.
"You can smoke it at the beach party," Janet
said. "Let's go, girls," Betty said.
"Be at Janet's house at eight. You won't be
sorry. Adam Jackson will be at the beach party,"
Lorraine sang back at me as they all walked off. I watched them go down the hallway and then I
hurried out to meet Cary and walk home. I wanted to
tell him about the party and ask his opinion, but I was
afraid even to mention it. I knew how much he didn't
like these girls, but I wanted to go. I had never been to
a beach party and I had to admit, Adam Jackson's eyes
had been in my dreams last night.
I decided to wait until after dinner when I was
helping Aunt Sara with the dishes. She had done all
the windows herself, even the upstairs ones. "I would
have helped you," I told her.
"I know, dear, but don't fret about it. Work gets
me through the day. Jacob always says idle hands
make for mischief."
I shook my head. What sort of mischief could
she ever commit? And why did she permit her
husband to treat her as if she were another one of his
children and not his wife, his equal in this house? She
did everything he asked her to do and as far as I could
see, she never uttered a single complaint. He should
worship the ground she trod upon and he should have
been the one to have done the hard manual labor. My daddy would have done it for my mother, I thought. The more I learned about this family, the more it was
a mystery to me.
"Aunt Sara; I was invited to a party Saturday
night."
"Oh? A party? Already? What sort of party?
Birthday? School party?"
"No. Some of the girls in my class are having a
hot dog roast on the beach," I said. "It starts about
eight o'clock."
"What girls?"
I gave her the names. She thought a moment.
"Those are girls from good families, but you'll have to
ask your uncle," she said.
"Why can't you give me permission?" "You'll have to ask your uncle for something
like that," she replied. I could see that the very idea of
her solely giving me permission terrified her. She
busied herself with the dishware. If I wanted to go to
the beach party, I would have to talk to Uncle Jacob
about it. There was no avoiding it.
He was in the living room reading his paper
after dinner as usual. I approached him with my
request. "Excuse me, Uncle Jacob," I said from the
doorway.
He slowly lowered the paper, his eyebrows
tilting and the skin folding along his forehead. I
couldn't recall speaking to Daddy without seeing a
smile in his eyes or on his lips.
"Yes?"
"Some of the girls in my class at school are
having a party on the beach tomorrow night and they
have invited me. Aunt Sara said I should ask your
permission. I would like to go. It's the fastest way to
get to know people," I offered as a practical reason. He nodded.
"It don't surprise me you'd like to go to a party
where they'll be no adults supervising."
"What do you mean?"
He leaned forward with a wry smile. "Don't you
think I know what goes on at those beach parties: how
they drink and smoke dope and debauch themselves?" "De. . . what?"
"Perversions," he declared, that irritating
forefinger raised like a flag of righteousness again.
"Young girls parade around with their revealing
clothing and then roll around on blankets with young
men to lose their innocence. It's pagan. While you are
under my roof, you will live decent, look decent, and
act decent, even if it flies in the face of your instincts." He snapped his paper like a whip. "Now, I
don't want to hear another word on it."
"What instincts?" I asked. He ignored me. "I am
decent. I've never done anything to shame my
parents."
He peered over the paper at me.
"It would take something to shame them, I
suppose, but I know what's in the blood, what's
raging. If you give it free rein, it will take you straight
to hell and damnation."
"I don't understand. What's raging in my
blood?"
"No more talk!" he screamed. I flinched and
stepped back as if slapped. My heart began to pound.
A white line had etched itself about his tightened lips
as the rest of him flamed with bright red fury. I had
never seen rage inflamed by so small a spark. All I
had asked was to go to a party.
I turned away and marched up the stairs. The
girls were right, I fumed. I should have just lied and
said I was going to Janet's to study. Lying to such a
man wasn't wrong. He didn't deserve honesty. Cary was at the foot of the attic stairway,
waiting for me to reach the landing.
"What was all the yelling about?"
I told him and he snorted.
"You should have asked me. I would have
spared you his reaction to such a request."
"Why is he so mean?"
"I told you. He's not mean, he's just . . afraid." "I don't understand. Why should he be so
afraid?"
Cary stared at me a moment and then blurted,
"Because he believes it was his fault and that he was
being punished." He turned away to go up his ladder. "What was his fault?" I drew closer as he
moved up the rungs. "Laura's death? I don't
understand. How could that have been his fault? Was
it because he gave her permission to go sailing that
day?"
"No," Cary said, not turning, still climbing. "Then I don't understand. Explain it!" I
demanded. My tone of voice turned him around. He
gazed down at me with a mixture of anger and pain in
his face.
"My father doesn't believe in accidents. He
believes we are punished on earth for the evil we do
on earth, and we are rewarded here for the good we do
as well. It's what he was brought up to believe and it's
what he has taught us."
"Do you believe that, too?"
"Yes," he said, but not convincingly.
"My daddy was a good man, a kind man. Why
was he killed in an accident?"
"You don't know what his sins were," he said
and turned away to continue up the stairs.
"He had no sins, nothing so great that he should
have died for it! Did you hear me, Cary Logan?" I
rushed to the ladder and seized it, shaking it. "Cary!" He paused at the top and gazed down at me
before pulling up
his ladder.
"None of us knows the darkness that lingers in
another's heart." He sounded just like his father. "That's stupid. That's another stupid, religious
idea," I retorted, but he ignored me and continued to
lift the ladder. I seized the bottom rung and held it
down. He looked down, surprised at my surge of
strength.
"Let go."
"I'll let go, but don't think I don't know what
you're doing up there every night," I said. His face
turned so red I could see the crimson in his cheeks
even in the dim hallway light. "You're running away
from tragedy, only you can't run away from
something that's part of you."
He tugged with all his strength, nearly lifting
me from the floor with the ladder. I had to let go and
the ladder went up. He slammed the trapdoor shut. "Good riddance!" I screamed.
May, locked in her world of silence, emerged
from her room with a smile on her face. In my mind,
she was the luckiest one in this damnable home. She signed to me, asking if I would let her
come into my room. I told her yes. She followed me
in and watched me angrily poke the needle and thread
into the picture her sister Laura had drawn just before
she died. As I worked I glared up at the ceiling and
then down at the floor, below which my coldhearted
uncle sat reading his paper. After a while the
mechanical work was calming and meditating. I began
to understand why Laura might have been entranced
with doing so much of it. Everyone in this house was
searching for a doorway.
May remained with me until her bedtime,
practicing communicative skills, asking me questions
about myself, my family, and our lives back in West
Virginia. She was full of curiosity and sweetness,
somehow unscathed by the turmoil that raged in every
family member's heart.
Perhaps her world wasn't so silent after all. Perhaps she heard different music, different sounds, all of it from her free and innocent imagination. When her eyelids began drifting downward, I told her she should go to bed. I was tired myself. I felt as if I had been spun around in an emotional washing machine,
then left in a dryer until my last tear evaporated. Cary lingered in his attic hideaway almost all
night. I was woken just before morning to the sound
of his footsteps on the ladder. He paused at my
doorway for a moment before going to his own room. He was up with the sunlight a little over an hour
later and had gone out with Uncle Jacob by the time I
went down for breakfast. Aunt Sara said they were
going to be out lobstering all day. I walked to town
with May and we spent most of the afternoon looking
at the quaint shops on Commercial Street, then we
watched the fishermen down at the wharf. It wasn't
quite tourist season yet, but the warm spring weather
still brought a crowd up from Boston and the outlying
areas. There was a lot of traffic.
Aunt Sara had given us some spending money
so we could buy hamburgers for lunch. She didn't
mind my taking May along with me. She saw how
much May wanted to be with me, and I was growing
more confident with sign language.
Aunt Sara remarked at how quickly and how
well I had been learning it. "Laura was the best at it,"
she told me. "Even better than Cary."
"What about Uncle Jacob?" I asked her.
"Doesn't he know it?"
"A little. He's always too busy to practice," she
said, but I thought it was a weak excuse. If my daddy
had to learn sign language to communicate with me,
nothing would be more important, I thought. About midday, I counted the change I had left
and went to a pay phone. It wasn't enough for a call to
Sewell, but I took a chance and made it collect to
Alice. Luckily, she was home and accepted the
charges.
"I'm sorry," I told her. "I don't have enough
money."
"That's okay. Where are you?"
"I'm in Provincetown, on Cape Cod, living with
my uncle and my aunt."
"Living with them? Why?"
"Mommy's gone to New York to get an
opportunity as a model or an actress," I said. "If she
doesn't get a job there, she's going on to Chicago or
Los Angeles, so I had to stay here and enroll in the
school."
"You did? What's it like?"
I told her about the school and about my life at
my uncle's house, Laura's disappearance and death,
and May's handicap.
"It sounds sad."
"It's hard to live with them, especially with my
cousin Cary. He's so bitter about everything, but I
keep telling myself I won't be here long."
"What are the girls like at school?"
"They're different," I told her. "They seem to
know more about things and do more things." "Like what?"
I told her how they had given me a joint of
marijuana in the school cafeteria.
"What did you do? You haven't smoked it, have
you?"
"No. I was scared. Actually, I was terrified
when a teacher came to our table. Afterward, when
the girls weren't looking, I threw it in the garbage." "That's what I would have done," Alice said.
"Maybe you should stay away from them." "They invited me to their beach party tonight,
but my uncle won't let me go."
"A beach party!" She hesitated and with some
envy said, "Sounds like fun. Maybe you're going to
like living there after all."
"I don't think so," I said. "I wish I were back
home."
thought about you so I went in and said a little prayer
at your father's grave for you."
"Did you? Thank you, Alice. I miss you." "Maybe, if you're still there, I can come up to
visit you this summer."
"That would be great, but I expect to be gone
from here by then. Mommy's coming to get me as
soon as she gets settled. Which reminds me, have you
seen Mama Arlene? Mommy was supposed to contact
her to send me my things."
"I saw her, but George is real sickly." "I know."
"I think he may be in the hospital."
"Oh no! Would you please tell Mama Arlene I
called?" "I'll go right over to see her," Alice promised. I gave her my uncle's name and telephone
number and she promised to call me the next
weekend.
"I really have no friends since you left," she
admitted at our conversation's end. It brought tears to
my eyes. After I hung up, May wanted to know why I was crying. I tried to explain, but I really didn't know enough sign language to reveal all the pain in my
heart. It was easier just to go home.
When we arrived, Aunt Sara explained that
dinner was going to be different this night. Uncle
Jacob had invited another lobster man and his wife,
the Dimarcos. May, Cary, and I were to eat first and
be gone by the time the adults sat at the table. I
thought that was a blessing and was grateful for a
meal without Uncle Jacob glaring at me as if I were
one of th
e Jezebels he saw on every corner.
However, late in the afternoon, Cary and Uncle
Jacob returned home in a very happy mood.
Apparently, they had one of their best days at sea, a
catch of fifteen lobsters as well a dozen good-size
striped bass.
To celebrate, Cary declared that he, May, and I
were going to enjoy a real New England feast: clam
chowder, steamed muscles, grilled striped bass,
potatoes, and vegetables. Cary said he would prepare
the fish himself outside on the barbecue grill.
"Mother's busy with her own dinner. We can have our
own picnic,' he said.
"Fine," I told him.
"It won't be as exciting as the beach party, I'm
afraid."
"I said, fine."
He nodded and told May, who was very pleased
with the idea.
"You two can set the picnic table, if you like." I nodded without smiling, even though I was
happy with the idea.
Cary went about preparing the meal
meticulously. He was much better at it than I had
expected. None of the boys I had known in West
Virginia knew the first thing about preparing fish and
vegetables. He thanked me when May and I finished
setting the table. I decided to make civil conversation. "I still don't understand how you fish for
lobster," I said standing nearby and watching him grill
the fish. "You don't need a pole?"
He laughed.
"We don't fish for them exactly. We set traps at
the bottom of the ocean floor and attach buoys that
float above."
"How do the other fishermen know which trap
is theirs and which is yours?"
"Each lobster fisherman has his own colors on
his buoys. We're using the same colors my great
grandfather used. They sort of belong to our family,
like a coat of arms or something. Understand?" I nodded.
"After we bring up a trap, if there is a lobster in
it, we measure it with a gauge from its eye socket to
the end of its back. An average lobster runs anywhere
from two to five pounds. My father once brought up a
trap with a lobster in it that weighed over thirty." "Thirty!"
"Yeah, but someone else trapped one closer to
forty last year. Lobsters with eggs on their tails have
to be thrown back in immediately. We have to do all
we can to keep up the supply. It takes about seven and
a half years for a lobster to grow to decent size." "Seven and a half years?"
"Uh huh," he said smiling. "Now you know
why we grow and harvest cranberries, too."