The Place

by Gary Collins

  I knew very well what a culler’s job was. He was the man hired annually by the powerful fish merchants and chandlers to cull the fishermen’s catch of codfish. They determined the grade of each dried fish individually and therefore the price that would be paid for them. The fishermen never trusted the cullers, oftentimes cursing on them for not awarding fair prices. All the fishermen cursed the cullers. Then, all of a sudden, I knew who the man on the path was! There was one culler they hated above all the rest. I looked at his red hair and beard and, without thinking, blurted out, “You’re the culler they call Redjack!”

  The rest of the Culler’s face turned as red as the hair all around it. I could see his temper flare. He was on me like a cat on a meadow vole. His hands gripped my two arms just below my shoulders, and I couldn’t move them. His strong fingers bit into my flesh. He pulled me closer to him, so close I could smell the sickly tobacco dottle in his jaws, and though his eyes looked like slits, I could see the glint of green in them. He shook me once, hard, jolting my entire body. Now I was afraid.

  “’Ere! ’Ow come they calls me Redjack, eh?” He shook me again. I was silent as I stared into the evil green of his eyes, hypnotized. I had never seen a person so angry.

  “’Cause of me flamin’ red hair, ent it?”

  He shook me again. I could have told him there was another reason they called him Redjack. It was because of his careless culling of the fish. The fishermen claimed their names were ever in the red on the chandler’s books when he culled. But I dared not tell him that. I was too afraid to say anything—I just wanted to run away from him. Remembering how I had twisted from Toby, I tried to wrestle out of his grip. But this wasn’t a strong teenaged boy who held me fast. I was in the clutches of a powerful, full-grown man. My attempt at escape infuriated him more, and he shook me so hard I could feel my teeth click in my mouth.

  “Jealous of me long red locks, they are, the men! The women loves it, too. Especially the young ones. Like you!”

  He thrust his body full against me then, and without releasing his grip on my arms, he backed me up against No Denial Rock. I was shocked and terrified. Over his shoulder I noticed the moonrise stealing over the hill above. But around me and my assailant the shadows only deepened.

  “I seen ya today. Sitting on the bank above the wharf with yer dress riding up. Showin’ me yer legs, you was. Eying me, you was, too.”

  “Show my . . . I never did! And I only looked at you wonderin’ why you wa’n’t helpin’ with the cargo. Even passengers help with the cargo. Lazy, I figured you was.”

  “Lazy, eh? I’ll show you the energy I got!”

  The Culler pushed me back against the rock till I could feel the bite of it across my back. My knees buckled at the strain of it, and before I knew what was happening I was half sitting, half lying in the recess of the rock. Redjack was upon me. His legs were between mine, forcing them apart as far as my dress would allow. And his cruel mouth was brutally pressed against mine. I was mortally afraid. Terrified out of my wits, so shocked by what was happening, I didn’t know how to defend myself. The moment his mouth left mine, I tried to scream. The sound was cut off before it left my lips. His hand slammed against my mouth so roughly I was breathless, and pinching my mouth shut, he lowered his face to mine. I could smell the stench of his unwashed body and see the flecks of dirt on his tangled beard as his eyes burned into mine. His breath smelled like an outhouse at low tide. The entire length of his body was slabbed against mine. One of his hands was around my back, holding both hands behind me. The hand and arm at my mouth forced my head back into the rock. To my horror I realized I couldn’t move. I was at his mercy, and I knew he had none.

  “Not a peep out of you, m’lady, if you know wot’s good fer you. Not a peep, now nor after. You understand?” He kept his hand over my mouth, not allowing me to answer. I rolled my eyes and sucked air in through my flared nostrils. “One tattle from you, m’lady, and I’ll tell ’em ’ow you was eyin’ me all day and givin’ signals fer me to come up the path with ye after dark.”

  I shook my head in protest. His forearm pressed even harder upon my forehead, till even that motion was denied me.

  “You with yer tight dress, without even a shawl, showing yer tits chafin’ at the buttons to be free.” He released his hand from my mouth then, and to my mortification, he ripped the bodice of my dress. I heard the buttons pop. It was the first time my naked flesh had ever been exposed to anyone. The first time my breasts had seen the night air. He leered at them. His mouth fair drooled. He dropped his head and smothered my breasts with lewd, slobbering kisses. I was too shocked to utter a sound.

  “Haw! No stays fer you, eh m’lady? No halyards needed to keep them beauties aloft, eh?” He lifted his face from my flesh and covered my mouth with his again. His arm dropped from my chest. I felt the hem of my dress being pulled up. I felt more than heard the rip as it gave way. My legs were forced open by his knees. I stared at the moon, which was then peeking over our island’s top, the only witness to my torn innocence and everlasting shame.

  4

  I was still awake, sobbing on my pillow, when I heard the muffled sounds of the schooner preparing to leave our harbour. It was very late, well past midnight, yet the new day had not yet come. The house was so still, the silence rang in my head and I felt it must explode. In my torment I left my bed, stepped to the window, and pulled the curtain aside. The Rams’ horn moon was high and on its back now, holding our secret in its lap. I was shivering, and though the night was cold, it wasn’t the chill that caused me to shake. My body was sore. I was bruised. In places, I burned like fire. I felt like I had been beaten with a stick, though not one mark was visible, or would ever be, to any eye but my own.

  The tide was ebbing. The schooner below my window was being sucked outharbour without sail. Our house was so close to the water, the schooner’s spars were drawn across my bedroom window. The stars became tangled in her rigging as she passed. The men on the schooner’s deck were shadowy forms in the wan light of the moon. They were all busy, rushing to carry out orders shouted from the skipper as they made sail.

  I saw him then, knowing it was he, the only one aboard not busy. Knew without seeing his devil hair who it was. Seated at the taffrail, the glow from his pipe rising and falling like miniature flankers from a dying campfire. His silhouette etched pure arrogance, and though I couldn’t see his evil eyes, I knew he was staring at my window. I fled from the window and flung my tender body on the bed, weeping uncontrollably.

  Sometime during that interminable night I mended my torn dress. It used be the best one of the two I owned. Now it was the worst. My skin crawled with the feel of it upon my skin. Using the porcelain jug and basin in my room, I cleaned up. I was shocked to find blood. My eyes were red and swollen. I dared not let my father, and especially my mother, see me like this. The water, as well as the clothes I used to clean myself, must be disposed of. In a daze I finished cleaning myself.

  The sound of my father, clanging the stove lid to get the fire started just at the grey of dawning, numbed me with the knowledge that I must soon face my parents. I hadn’t slept at all, and the mirror showed a face I hardly knew. Surely my parents would know my shame just by looking at me.

  I thanked God no one had seen me staggering down the path to home the night before, sobbing and clutching my torn dress. Once I thought I heard someone coming up the path, and I quickly hid among the tuckamore for a moment. But there was no one, and I staggered home without being seen. I opened our porch door without a sound and cracked open the kitchen door just as silently. My father was still snoring on the daybed. My mother was slouched over her knitting and fast asleep. I couldn’t believe what had just happened to me. I had barely heard the word “rape” before. Even then it was only whispered. There had never been a rape on our Island that I knew of. I remember thinking how secure I had felt walking up the path to the lookout. There was nothing to fea
r in the Place. No animals to worry about. Now I knew that animals, especially two-legged ones, could appear at any time. It was a cruel awakening in this place of innocence.

  In a daze, I had looked around the kitchen in disbelief. How could it be? It had all happened so fast! My father was still napping. The scene was so peaceful. My mother had fallen asleep over her knitting. Even the lamp on the shelf hadn’t been trimmed for the night. The stove pinged with warmth and the kettle gently rattled its boil. Nothing had changed in my home. But oh God in heaven how I had been changed!

  I had skipped up the path a young girl bursting with the exuberance of youth but had crippled back disillusioned, torn mentally, and physically forced into womanhood. My soul was mired with a weight as solid as a killick stone. I was marred for life. I could never tell anyone what had happened. Redjack was right about that. No one would believe me. I was a woman. Everyone believed that women encouraged men. Just being an attractive woman was shame enough. I could imagine my mother screaming her demands:

  What were you doin’ on the path at night alone? How come you stopped at No Denial Rock? Why weren’t ya wearin’ a shawl? And most damning of all, What were ya doin’ all day sitting on the bank staring at the men aboard o’ the Plungin’ Star? And following that, Did you have yer legs closed? I would be doomed, unable to give one answer that she would accept. Oh, the shame of it all! I could never tell anyone for the shame of it. Not even my staid, steeped-in-religion mother, though she never darkened the church door, would believe my innocence.

  I staggered down the thirteen stairs to the floor below and stopped before I open the kitchen door. The curtain to the storage room below the stairs was left open, and for an instant I drew back from the image I saw within. I had gasped aloud before realizing the figure staring back at me in scorn was not my mother but her stiff, floor-length, fully-buttoned black mourning dress hanging inside. My mother wore the black dress fastened to her throat in public every Sunday, though she never went to church. Still mourning the death of her second son, born after me. The first one, also born after me, died with the birth blood upon him. The second one lived for ten years, a sure heir to Father’s punt and the promise of my mother’s eye. He died in the cruel mystery of a long black night a year ago in a small bed next to my own, burning with fever and spasms of shivering. His death changed my mother. She channelled all of her grief into her own lean frame and ignored the tears that carved indelible lines down the length of my father’s aging, gentle face. He had been robbed of any hope of a male heir.

  Never once did she draw me into sheltering arms of love and pity. Nor spoke one word to soothe the girl who whimpered aloud at night, frozen stiff next to the unkempt bed from where my brother’s despairing eyes still stared. At times I was sure she looked at me, wishing I was one of her dead children. Oh yes, my mother had changed since the death of her boy. And now with the death of my innocence, I too had changed.

  From some hidden wellspring I drew strength, opened the door, and walked as straight as I could into the kitchen. My mother was leaning over the hot stove, slacking the cover of the half-full pot of salt cod she was cooking for breakfast, hoping it wouldn’t boil over. If not watched carefully, boiling codfish always boiled over. The scalding fish water would sizzle on contact with the hot steel and leave a stain on Mother’s spotless stovetop, as well as a stink in her kitchen, infuriating her. My father was shoving more split wood into the end of the stove’s narrow firebox. Neither of them looked up at me. I walked to the cupboard and fetched plates for our breakfast.

  “The Star musta left last night,” Father said to no one. I could have told him exactly when the schooner had left the place. Bile rose in my throat when I thought of Redjack leaning on her taffrail, boasting to the others of how No Denial Rock had lived up to its name last night. God forgive me, I wished the Plunging Star would disappear over the edge of the sea. Then no one but me would ever know my secret shame.

  I kept my head down during breakfast. My parents didn’t notice my appearance. There was little talk between them, none of which involved me. My mother complained about the tea from the Plunging Star being damp, and besides that, every speck of dust of the old tea must be drunk before we started on the new.

  “Be that time the damp tea will have dried out,” my father said with a smile, reaching for a second slice of bread. My mother ignored his attempt at levity.

  “Washday,” she said to me without looking up from her plate. “Gully to be filled, twice, and mind ya keeps the cover on the wellhouse closed between turns. Them filthy gulls flying all over the place.” My father rose from the table, scraped the sticky fish skins from his plate into the stove, walked to the porch door, and left without a word. “Dishes,” my mother said, walking to the hall door. I heard her feet clomping up the stairs. Using a cloth for protection, I lifted the heavy kettle from the stove, poured the hot water, brown as tea, into the dishpan on the table, and began my day.

  My God, I thought, nothing has changed. Everything was the same as the day before. How could it be when my life was ruined? The stove still pinged out its heat. The bay through the window was as blue as before. I could still hear the dog out on the point. The dirty dishes left on the table demanded my attention, and the dirty clothes piled in the washtub by the porch door waited. It was just another ordinary day here in my mother’s kitchen. But my entire world, my life, my attitude toward life itself, had changed. I wished I were dead. I was carrying so much fear, anger, hatred, and shame and was too naive to even think that my burden could possibly get heavier.

  The day before the time of my monthly bleeding came, and I didn’t get that cramping feeling in my abdomen that always preceded it. And then I knew, for me, the gates of hell had opened and I was being pulled in. The first time I’d had that cramping sensation was barely two years before, when I was twelve. When I complained to my mother about the sickly hurt in my belly, she, looking hard at me as if suddenly realizing I was not a child anymore, said, “It could be the time for your monthly cleansing. In a day or two you will know for sure.”

  “A cleansing?” I had no idea what she meant.

  “Aye. A cleansing, all right. ’Tis a woman’s lot to bear. The monthly cleansing of women for the sins of men upon them.” She said it so venomously, I asked no more.

  It took a moment for me to understand. I hadn’t heard it called monthly cleansing before. It sounded like a religious event when my mother said it, as if it had come from a scripture reading, though I hadn’t heard it from the pulpit. As if I had done some wrong that must be purged from my body. But I knew all about a woman’s monthly bleeding. Talked about it in fits of giggles with three of my friends who had already received their monthly visitor. None of them had ever heard it called cleansing. One of them confided that her “time of the month” was hard, accompanied with severe back pain along with the cramping. Another said she knew that her mother suffered so bad she cried from the misery of it. Then the girl who said she suffered from it, too, confided that her mother cried when her time didn’t come, knowing another mouth at her breasts, which were still tender from the last one, was on the way, and already three small children were sharing the one narrow bed in a drafty bedroom. My mother was right. The ache in my abdomen issued blood from my loins. Red-faced with embarrassment, I had told my mother of my dilemma.

  From a piece of grey flannel cloth she tore several small strips and gave them to me. “Bind yerself with it until the bleedin’s done,” she said. “Wash the rags in a separate pan and dry ’em in yer room, the same as yer undergarments, never on the line. Ye must keep yer shame to yerself. Keep yerself clean, mind. Else the dogs will get the smell of blood off ya. Aye, and men, too, I could name ya, in this Place.”

  I hated the sticky feeling of warm blood soaking the rag between my legs. But I didn’t suffer much else from my periods. The blood was a gentle weep I tolerated each month as regular as the clock on the wall. I kept m
yself clean, and I hung the flannel cloths in my room, where they dried stiff as sailcloth. I rubbed them between my hands until they softened and hid them under my bed. Now, for the first time since I had become a woman, I wouldn’t need them, and my mother’s scolding voice came roiling back. A monthly cleansing of women for the sins of men upon them.

  Oh my God! Was my mother right after all? Was I being punished for the sin Redjack had committed upon me? My eyes filled with tears, and I smeared the hem of my apron across them. I knew then that I was pregnant. Knew it as sure as if my belly were already swollen. The seed of Redjack and his bastard git planted within my womb. What was I to do?

  5

  The dishes done, I stepped outside to fetch the scrubbing board hung on the outside porch wall. Toby was sauntering down the harbour path, which wound by our door. As he neared, I saw the same leering face that had taken my first kiss. I hated him almost as much as he who had taken my virginity. I hated all men.

  And then from some dour place I never knew existed within me, I saw a possible way out of my predicament. While I had been unresponsive to Toby’s advances toward me, a statement he had made to me near that accursed rock now hung in the air like Damocles’s sword: I’ll have you yet, Becky. From somewhere deep within my aching soul I saw a way out, and I reached for it like a drowning woman would reach for a thrown rope, no matter how short it was. That same evening I set out to seduce Toby.

  It was easy enough to set my plan in motion. I was on the path that led up the hill when I saw them coming—Toby and three of my friends, two boys and a girl. His raucous voice boomed loudest as they approached. The sun was down, the wind was up, and my long dark hair, brushed willowy soft and smelling good, was blowing in the breeze. I was wearing a shawl over the only social dress I owned. It had been well-mended by my own hand. My knees trembled as they drew near, and I wasn’t sure if I could speak. I was sure they knew my secret.