by Kathi Appelt
Mr. Beauchamp had told her that Yemaya was the big mama. But he had also told her that Yemaya was unreliable. “If she doesn’t like her gift, she might brew up a storm, maybe a hurricane, maybe a tidal wave.” Then he paused and added, “She might grant a wish, but she always expects a gift.”
Now Keeper reached into her shoe box and pulled out one of her merlings. She held it between her thumb and fingers, so small, the roundness of it soft to her touch, then she lifted it close to her face so that she could see it more clearly in the dark.
“Ohhh. Sedna,” she said. She rubbed the carving’s boxy hands, the fur collar and round face. She felt a small twinge in her throat, then swallowed it down.
“Sedna,” she began. She swallowed again, then went on, “I’m sorry that you’re so far from home.” Sedna was the ancient sea goddess of the Arctic, one of the most famous, most revered of all of the merrow.
Keeper had discovered Sedna in a piece of spruce that had been tossed on the beach after a winter storm a few years ago. She remembered that the wet spruce felt almost silky to her touch. The little carving still felt that way. Silky.
“I’ll miss you,” she whispered.
She looked out across the darkness, so thick and deep. “Yemaya,” she called, “big mama of all the oceans, a gift for you.” Then, before she could change her mind, she threw the tiny figure of Sedna into the brackish water of the pond.
Plunk! Keeper heard it splash, and when she did, she closed her eyes. Sedna was one of her favorites, and she didn’t think that after today Mr. Beauchamp would ever carve her another.
Thinking about Mr. Beauchamp carving the merlings reminded her of the piece of juniper she had only recently found and presented to him. The juniper was still sitting on his side table, right next to his carving knife. She knew exactly which of the merrow was supposed to be made from it, and she had told Mr. Beauchamp, but so far he had not started the carving. And now he was so mad at her, she doubted that he ever would.
She looked inside the box at the five merlings still there, still nestled atop the soft purple T-shirt. She patted the one in her pocket. BD whined.
And just over her head, the familiar call of Captain.
“C’mon, c’mon.”
44
The only thing Captain ever said was, “C’mon, c’mon!”
Of course, anyone who has ever listened closely to seagulls knows that is their common language. Regardless of port or river or even inland lake, “c’mon, c’mon” is the lexicon of seagulls.
A few humans understand this. Shrimp boat sailors, for example, know that when a seagull sings, “C’mon, c’mon,” it means, Come on, throw me a shrimp. That is why there are always seagulls trailing behind shrimp boats. The shrimpers understand seagull talk.
Small children on the beach also know this language. Seagulls love this about tiny humans. They, the seagulls, love to fly just in front of them and play chase. “C’mon, c’mon,” say the seagulls, and soon enough, those little shorties start running.
Early on, while his wing was still mending, Captain taught the people in the haint blue house the meaning behind “c’mon, c’mon.” Now, every morning, he flew onto the porch from his nest in the palm orchard, and he said it loud and clear right outside the kitchen door. This was usually followed by Keeper letting him in, which was then followed by something tasty coming Captain’s way, maybe a chunk of cantaloupe or a cracker.
If he said it again, “C’mon, c’mon,” Keeper would sometimes hand over something else, a strawberry or a potato chip or even his favorite, his most beloved, his all-time highest exalted sublime most delicious stultifyingly extremely wonderful marvelous fantastic yes yes yes: watermelon!
Captain loved watermelon.
Yep. He would do just about anything for a big, juicy chunk of watermelon. Anything, anything, anything.
In fact, it was because of watermelon that he could fly at all. After he seemed healed from the accident with the kitchen window, Keeper had tucked him under her arm and carried him down the porch stairs and set him in the yard. Signe had stayed upstairs on the porch and lined the porch rail with cubes of ripe, red watermelon. It was roughly twelve feet from the ground to the porch rail. From his spot in the yard, Captain could see the brilliant crimson cubes all in a row. He could smell them, juicy and sweet, luscious.
He called out, “C’mon, c’mon,” which meant, C’mon, throw that watermelon this way. But instead of following his orders, Signe turned around and went back inside. Keeper knelt down and whispered to him, “Watermelon, Captain.” Then she stroked his back and gently pulled both of his wings out to his sides and said this one thing: “Fly!” And before he could worry about the ache in his mended wing, before he could even think about it, he lifted himself off the ground and flew.
It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t straight. But he did, in fact, fly. And he also ate a lot of watermelon.
So now, whenever someone said, “Watermelon, Captain,” he’d head right for the porch of the haint blue house. And almost always, there’d be a juicy red chunk right there, waiting for him.
But now here was his girl. Here was his dog. Right out here in the open. Not on the porch, but in the small boat on the pond. He lined them up in his sights and shifted his weight into landing mode. “C’mon, c’mon,” he cried.
And with a swoop, down he went.
45
Keeper ducked just in time to avoid being clipped by a bundle of white and black feathers. She covered her face while Captain dropped clumsily on top of BD, who gave a yelp.
BD was used to Captain using him as a landing and launching pad, but he still complained. Nevertheless, he couldn’t deny that he was happy to see the bird. In the moon’s bright light, Keeper could see BD’s happy expression.
And she could hear the sound from the waves getting louder and louder. They were getting closer! All at once, an invisible spider of worry crawled up her spine. If she did it now, she thought, she could still turn around. There was still time.
She pulled the life vest tight against her chest. Its canvas cloth was scratchy under her bare arms.
She looked at BD again, the seagull perched atop him. The worry spider skittered down her back. Was it fair to take a landlubber dog out to sea? In the middle of the night?
BD nudged her arm with his wet nose and licked the skin under her wrist. She wiped it against the rough cloth of the life vest. Then a new thought occurred to her. How could she not have had this thought before? “You need a life vest!” she told him.
As if he understood her, he shook his head so hard, his ears flapped against the sides of his mouth. She leaned back to keep the slobber from spraying her face.
Why, no, he seemed to say.
“Why, yes,” she replied, “you do.” And with that, she pulled the other life vest, Dogie’s, out from under the bench. “If I have to wear one, you do too.”
Unlike her own yellow vest, Dogie’s was bright orange and about twice as large. She lifted BD’s front paws one at a time and slipped them into the armholes of the vest, then pulled the straps as tight as she could. The pulling hurt her hands, but she pulled anyway, and in a few moments he was fully invested. “There,” she said.
BD whined unhappily. Then he tried to shake the big vest off. It was way too big on him, and it hung down between his legs when he stood up. But it wasn’t coming off. Keeper could see that.
“Sit down,” she said, and when he did, the back of it popped up behind his head.
She couldn’t help it, the sight of him made her laugh. “You look like you’re wearing a pup tent,” she said, admiring her own joke. Then she added, “If I have to be careful, so do you.” BD did not seem convinced; he plopped down in the bottom of the boat, right at her feet, and sighed. Captain hopped down on top of him and settled in.
The life vest around BD made Keeper feel even better. Her worry spider disappeared, at least for now.
46
As the boat slowly skimmed the top of t
he pond, Keeper felt the soft rocking motion of it through her feet, her legs, all the way up her body. For a moment she felt fastened to the world unto itself, the sturdy wood of the boat beneath her, the winking stars above her. All at once, she thought she heard her name again.
Keeper. Keeper.
Then she remembered an old song that her mother used to sing to her.
You are my little mergirl—there it was, Meggie Marie’s chiming voice in her ear.
And I’m your mermaid mama.
Yes, an old nursery rhyme, one of the few things she remembered from her mother:
Swim, my little water sprite
From Zealand to Bahama
You are my little mergirl
And I’m your mermaid mama.
The rhyme rang through her head. It all felt so familiar. The boat and the water and her mother’s voice, the deep, deep darkness.
Then a question blew in on the breeze: Where is Signe? Keeper scratched her arm where another mosquito had just taken a bite. Signe was asleep, of course. In the haint blue house.
47
The haint blue house. Painted that way by its current resident, Signe. “To keep the ghosts at bay,” she had joked.
Before that, it had been as gray as a stormy sky, made so by years of blowing sand, which erased all the original paint. No one even knew what the first color had been. “Blowing sand will do that to paint,” Signe had said.
Haints. Signe had never even heard that word until she moved south. Maybe they could be found in Iowa, the place she grew up, maybe not. She had never believed in ghosts anyway, so what did it matter?
The old house needed a fresh coat of paint. That was all. At least on the outside. Inside, the house was exactly the way Meggie Marie’s grandmother had left it. The cupboards held her white dishes with the blue morning glories on the rims. The walls were lined with shelves that held volumes and volumes of old books, mostly books by Victorian authors, but also an occasional travelogue, which had confused Signe since Mr. Beauchamp told her that Keeper’s great-grandmother never traveled anywhere but to Tater and back.
The old woman did not have many clothes, but what she had was still hanging in the backs of closets, pushed back to make room for Signe’s and Keeper’s things. And Meggie Marie’s. There were still some things of hers in the backs of the closets too.
Sometimes, when Signe managed to get a day off from her job at the Prince Oyster Bar and Bar, she took one of the abandoned skirts or blouses or pair of shoes to the Tater Thrift Shop, to exchange it for something for Keeper. After all, a growing girl needs clothes.
In the bathroom there were soft white cotton towels on the shelves and even softer white cotton sheets for the beds. There were seashells and starfish in the windowsills and yellow curtains in the windows themselves. And everything was tidy and clean.
When Keeper had asked, “Will the paint really keep the haints away?” Signe had shrugged and answered with her stock reply: “That is a question for the universe.”
When Keeper was born, Signe was only fifteen. Three years later, when Signe was eighteen, that’s when Meggie Marie disappeared.
And not too long after that, Signe painted the house haint blue.
48
Keeper noticed that the wind was picking up. BD and Captain were curled into a ball at her feet. They didn’t seem one bit excited about slipping into the channel.
How could they sleep at a time like this? But neither of them budged. Not an inch to the east. Not an inch to the west.
Couple of lazybones, she thought. They’ll miss the ride through the Cut at this rate! Which made her think that it was time for another offering.
She reached into her shoe box and pulled out another merling.
“Hello, ningyo” she said, in a voice so soft, only the tiny figure could hear. She knew which one it was without looking, thanks to the tooth marks on either side of its body, put there by BD last spring.
That day after school, Keeper had run into her bedroom, taken the merlings out of her backpack, and stuffed them down into her jeans pocket, then headed out, out to the Bus. There Dogie had a cold Dr Pepper waiting for her, just like he always did.
Keeper took the merlings out of her pocket and lined them up in the sand. Then, while BD and Too snoozed, and Dogie drew in his sketchbook, she built sand cottages for her carvings.
Too soon, Dogie told her it was closing time. She scooped up the merlings, put them in her pocket, and helped Dogie fold up the beach umbrellas and chairs and stow them in the Bus.
When Keeper got home, she took the merlings out of her pocket and lined them up on her dresser, just like she did every day. “One, two, three, four, five, six…” She gasped. There were only six.
She counted them over and over. One was missing. She knew which one at once.
“The ningyo!” She dug her hand deeper into her pocket. Nothing.
She started to retrace her steps back to the Bus, but it was already dark outside. “No way, missy,” said Signe, when Keeper told her she was going back out. “You’ll have to wait until you get home from school tomorrow.”
Keeper stomped her foot. “But —”
Signe cleared her throat. Foot stomping was not allowed in the haint blue house. Keeper went back to her bedroom. The six remaining merlings seemed to be staring at her. She turned them around so that she couldn’t see their accusing faces.
What could she say to them? She didn’t have any words to offer up to the remaining figurines. That night she had a hard time sleeping. The ningyo! How could she have lost him?
But then, when she woke up the next morning, there, standing by her bed, his tail wagging at a furious clip, BD dropped something on the pillow next to her face.
The ningyo! She hugged BD and then ran to tell Signe the good news. It wasn’t until she set the little merling on the top of the dresser with the others, which she turned face out again, that she noticed the tooth marks.
“Grrrr… ,” she growled at BD.
“Grrrr… ,” he growled back. And she burst into laughter.
The damage didn’t matter at all to her; she still loved the beautiful carving. In fact, the scars made him somehow more real to her, proof of his realness. She did not say this to Signe.
Now she held the ningyo in the flat of her palm. She chewed on the inside of her mouth. She had lost him once before, and now she would lose him for good.
The ningyo was almost entirely fish. He had no arms or chest or waist. Only his face was human. He had a long, single-strand mustache that hung down on either side of his mouth like the trailing whiskers of a catfish. To Keeper, he always looked solemn, as if he were grimacing at the tooth marks left in his lovely scales.
Ningyo, all the way from Japan. Mr. Beauchamp had told her that fishermen sometimes caught these mer-folk in their nets and ate them and that their flesh was supposed to be delicious. He also told her that anyone who ate a ningyo would live for a thousand years. “Older than barnacles,” he said.
Keeper rolled the tiny figure between her fingers one last time, memorizing the tooth marks. She looked at BD and smiled. Maybe BD would live for a thousand years because he had taken a bite out of the ningyo. It was a thought that made her happy.
She held the ningyo up so that they were eye to eye. “Go back to the sea,” she told him. And with that, she lowered the figure into the water beside her boat. She thought she would not miss the ningyo as much as she missed Sedna. But she was wrong.
For a brief moment she could see him floating on top of the waves, and then he was gone. “Yemaya,” she called out, “here’s another gift for you.” The water beneath The Scamper pulled her faster.
Keeper closed the lid of the shoe box. There were only five more figurines left. Only five. Four in the box. And one in her pocket.
And maybe, thought Keeper, if my perfect plan keeps working, Mr. Beauchamp will carve that juniper.
“Onward with Step G!” she announced.
49
Ashore in the haint blue house, Signe slept, unaware that Keeper was gone, slowly drifting toward the sea with BD and Captain.
When she had finally fallen into bed, exhausted from the long day, she welcomed the solace of sleep, like a flying carpet that carried her away from the terrible day, especially from Keeper’s inexplicable behavior.
Even in her dreams, however, Signe kept replaying her argument with Keeper. There she was, standing in the doorway of Keeper’s room and yelling, “What in the world were you thinking?” And then Keeper kept saying something about the crabs and how they were talking to her.
Of all things—crabs!
The crabs that Dogie had caught. The ones he had gotten up before sunrise to catch. Those crabs. The ones she was supposed to add to her gumbo.
And on top of the crabs, what about her bowl? What about Mr. Beauchamp’s flowers? What about Dogie?
“Are you telling me that all of this happened because of crabs?” Signe had demanded. She felt the hair on her arms rise with her growing anger.
Here was Keeper, right in front of her, almost as tall as she was, growing up before her very eyes, her chin jutting out in the same way that Meggie Marie’s used to jut out, especially when she was about to deliver a big, fat lie.
So many times Meggie Marie had told Signe that she was just going into town to pick up something from the store, and then she wouldn’t return for hours, leaving her and Keeper alone without even a car. And what about the times Meggie Marie had told Signe that she would pick her up from work at the Prince Oyster Bar and Bar but then “forget.” More than once, Signe had found herself walking home or calling Dogie to come get her.
Meggie Marie had told a lot of lies.
To Signe’s knowledge, Keeper had never lied to her before, but Meggie Marie certainly had. And now here was Keeper with that same jutting-out chin.