by CJ Brightley
As they were climbing into the helicopter to leave, the bully said, “I’m not sure we can spare a helicopter next week, so bear that in mind when you get this week’s delivery,” and the other one said, “I hope you’ll consider your options carefully.”
My options. I never intended to launch a rebellion. I don’t want to be responsible for people dying! But does that mean I must tell people to acquiesce to injustice?
I remember, in your last letter, you said you thought our festival must have made the Lady of the Ruby Lake happy. I am much less sure. You said the Lady’s love could not be gentle. I find myself wishing for more evidence of that love, even ungentle. I feel only her absence.
Well, I must close now. My head and chest and back ache; I need to rest. I would like to dream of your mudflats and your seagifts. Such abundance!
Your friend,
Kaya
P.S. My dear Em, a very strange thing happened just now. I lay down to rest, as I said I would, and I had a dream, about you! A young girl was walking out of the ocean toward me, and in the dream I was certain it was you. Now I wish I could see a photo of you. In my dream, you had thick, dark hair that curled around your face, and wide, dark eyes. You had something in your hands. I asked what, and you smiled and showed me—night crawlers. “Are we going fishing?” I asked, and you said, “Do you know what these are?” I cupped my hands, and you emptied yours, but it wasn’t worms that I caught, it was butterflies. They flew away from me up into the trees, and suddenly the trees were full of blossoms. I laughed, and looked over at you, and when I did, I noticed steam rising from where you had walked through the water. And I realized that somehow you were the Lady of the Ruby Lake. I didn’t know what to say. “Did you-did you like the festival?” I finally managed to stammer, but you just grinned and said, “Thank you for being my friend.”
This dream frightens and excites me. Maybe the Lady really can be a friend to me, and through me, to all the mountain people. Distant, like you’re distant, but real, like you’re real.
I gotta write her back right away. And then, when this storm’s past, I’ll send it.
7
Helga
September 4 (Em to Kaya)
Dear Kaya,
I’m scared for you! If a helicopter can’t come to you, how will you get food? They have to send a helicopter, don’t they? They can’t let you starve, can they? The prison Jiminy is in is pretty rough but at least all the inmates get food.
I wish I could get to the library. They have computers there that they let anyone use, if you sign up on a sheet at the checkout desk, and they have three different paper newspapers, too. If I could go to the library, maybe I could find out news about you. But I can’t go right now, because Hurricane Helga’s coming. Most of the dry-landers who live on the coast are evacuating—the governor ordered it. Ma wants us to, too—she wants us to go stay with Aunt Brenda inland, but no seachild ever runs away from the sea. Fish don’t move inland, Dad always says, they nestle close to each other on the bottom. Ma just gives him a look when he says that. Once she said that a seachild will drown just as surely as a dry-lander if you put him down beneath the waves. That was maybe their worst fight ever.
“Seachildren don’t drown. They go home,” Dad told her.
“Home? To the mud and the dark, to lie down with eels and toadfish? Not me. If that’s a seachild’s home, then I ain’t no seachild,” Ma said.
Ma might as well of thrown a knife at Dad, from the look on his face. Then he narrowed his eyes and said, “But they are,” pointing to me and Tammy. Threw that knife right back at Ma.
It was the only time Ma ever said she wasn’t a seachild, but none of us have ever forgotten it.
I can’t believe you dreamed of me as the Lady of the Ruby Lake. Me! If I was as wild as a volcano, people would have to watch out. I like that idea. Nobody bosses around a volcano. Someone should remind those government people in your country that you can’t tell a volcano what to do.
Thinking about the Lady of the Ruby Lake makes me feel braver about Hurricane Helga. A hurricane is a pretty wild thing, but if anything can stand up to a hurricane, it’s a volcano.
When you get this letter, please write back right away so that I know you’re okay. I’ll write you, too, after the hurricane, so you won’t have to worry about me.
Thinking of you,
Em
(September 5 AP Newswire)
Hurricane Helga’s Impact Less Than Feared
Hurricane Helga made landfall east of New Orleans in the predawn hours today as a Category 2 storm, substantially weakened from the potentially catastrophic Category 4 storm it had been a mere 12 hours earlier. Some 500,000 homes on the northern Gulf Coast lost power in the wake of the storm, and storm surge damage is significant in some Mississippi and Alabama coastal communities, but initial assessments indicate that overall destruction is less than was initially predicted. Seven fatalities have been reported so far, though that number may rise, as there have been several reports of persons unaccounted for.
“We’re all glad this wasn’t a Katrina,” said Jared Rodney, a FEMA spokesperson. “We’ve improved a lot from those days. Coastal evacuations for all four affected states went smoothly. You always get some people who stay behind, and that’s where you tend to get loss of life. But most people are sensible.”
Residents in most areas are expected to be able to return home tomorrow.
September 6 (Em to Kaya)
Dear Kaya,
I’m writing to you from the basement of Jordan’s Waters Fellowship Church. Everyone from Mermaid’s Hands is camped out here, and there are people from Sandy Neck here, too—the ones who didn’t evacuate. Hurricane Helga sent us here. The news is saying that it wasn’t such a big-deal hurricane after all, but to people in Mermaid’s Hands and Sandy Neck it was.
The hurricane came in the night, which made it extra scary, because we couldn’t see anything. And it was so loud. The storm was howling, like it was in terrible pain and had to get rid of all that pain by pouring it out on us. Gran kept her arms wrapped around Tammy and me in the bedroom, and we locked arms around her. Ma was with Dad in the kitchen, helping him with the signal lantern. All the Mermaid’s Hands families always signal each other during any storm. Each house has its own signal, and the grown-ups flash them so everyone know everyone’s okay. I once asked Dad if they ever signal other stuff, and he said, “Sure, we tell jokes: ‘I ain’t afraid of you,’ the boy said to the hurricane. ‘Oh yeah? Look me in the eye and tell me that.’”
He says things like that to make me laugh. “Laughing makes you braver,” he says.
There wasn’t no need for signaling this time, though, because Helga was making high mountains and deep valleys in the water, and all our houses were slipping into the valleys and knocking up against each other. If the bedroom window shutter hadn’t been locked shut, and if Gran and Tammy and me hadn’t been tight in each other’s arms, we could’ve just reached out the window and touched the Tiptoes’ house.
We keep tires all around our houses’ support rafts for bumpers, but even with the tires, you could hear the wood cracking as the Fisherkins crashed into the Oveys, and the Tiptoes crashed into us. The Tiptoes’ house broke right through into our bedroom and poured wind and rain and Clara and Brightly and the twins right in on top of me and Tammy, and then our house listed toward theirs, and the rain was pummeling us, and I thought we’d be beaten to death by it if we didn’t drown.
The twins were sobbing, and Clara and Brightly and Tammy too, but I was too terrified to cry. We were all slipping down toward the big hole in the bedroom wall. It’s a good thing all the broken beams and walls and thatch from the Tiptoes’ house were still in a big heap in the hole, because they kept us from being pulled right out. I could see a quilt caught in the smash-up. The wind wanted to tear it free, but it was stuck and rippling and snapping like a ship’s flag.
Sometime later the wind went from howling to just blowing and the rai
n went from beating to just pattering down, and I could hear Ma and Dad and Mr. and Mrs. Tiptoe calling out to each other, and then Ma climbed in from the kitchen and told us to come along because Dad and Mr. Tiptoe were bringing dinghies around. Gran had a twin on each knee and was telling them, don’t be scared. Don’t be scared. Brightly had his arms tight around Clara’s waist and wouldn’t let go—they walked together like one person, climbing over the mess and out to the open air.
And here we are now, because all the houses are smashed or broken somehow, and no one yet knows what the mudflats look like now because no one’s been back. And all the parents have worried faces because in other hurricanes maybe one house would be smashed, and everyone would help rebuild it with the salvage and sea flotsam the storm left behind, but all the houses, from nothing? That’s a harder thing. And I heard one of the dads saying that maybe we won’t even be allowed to move back, because even though we’ve lived there forever, we’re still just squatters and maybe now the state will decide they don’t want us out on the mudflats anymore.
Can they decide that? That sounds like something your government would do—not let people live where they’ve always lived.
And another bad thing, a real bad thing. People died: two of the Fearings, Granny Fearing and Indigo. And Mr. Ovey.
When the Fisherkins’ house crashed into the Oveys, Auntie Chicoree and baby Dawn-day and Wade all went into the water. Mrs. Ovey grabbed Wade, and Uncle Near helped Auntie Chicoree, but then Dawn-day slipped out of Auntie Chicoree’s arms. Mr. Ovey dove in and got her and reached her up to Auntie Chicoree, but then he was pulled away and under, himself. Wade saw him bob back up once, just like a cormorant, but then the mountain waves hid him from sight.
Jenya and Lindie have been crying, but not Mrs. Ovey or Small Bill. Cody’s like a mother tern with chicks: he’s got Jenya under one wing and Lindie under the other. Mrs. Ovey’s sitting with Small Bill in front of her. She’s wrapped both arms around him, and he’s letting her hold him like that.
The church people gave us kids chocolate milk in little plastic bottles, and packages of cheese crackers. I gave my package to Small Bill.
“My dad grew gills,” Small Bill said. “He can’t come back now. Once you have gills, you can’t live up above the water.”
I nodded. I could feel tears rising up in my eyes, but I blinked them back.
“I won’t ever worry about being called underwater now,” Small Bill said. “Because Dad’ll be there.”
Ma doesn’t usually talk much to Mrs. Ovey, but she joined everyone gathered round. She told Mrs. Ovey that Mr. Ovey was a real hero. “You married a fine man.” That made Mrs. Ovey smile.
“I did, I surely did,” she said, in a tired, faraway voice.
I’m putting my Aunt Brenda’s address at the bottom of this letter. We have to go live with her for a little while, until the grown-ups figure out what’s happening next. I wanted to stay with Dad and the others, but Ma said we can’t live on the charity of Jordan’s Waters Fellowship Church when we have family that’ll take us, and Dad actually agreed with her.
I asked Ma if I could go to the library at Aunt Brenda’s. I told her I needed to get on the computer and find out whether there was a rebellion in your country and whether you’re okay. Ma got cross with me and told me to save my worry for people closer to home. And then, I don’t know why, but I started bawling, even though I didn’t cry all through the hurricane or after. I said but maybe you don’t have any food or even water, and I didn’t even know if you were alive.
Gran gave me a hug and said, “Didn’t you say your friend has a volcano to look after her?” But it didn’t make me feel much better, because volcanoes are even less gentle than the sea, and if the Ruby Lake goes wild, growing gills won’t help you.
Please write and tell me you are okay.
Love,
Em
September 7 (from the Mobile Press-Register)
Should Sandy Neck’s offshore neighbor rebuild?
By Justin Landau
If you were to take a scenic drive through all the seaside and bayou towns along the Gulf Coast, you couldn’t be faulted if you overlooked the small community of Sandy Neck, let alone Mermaid’s Hands, which is the fanciful name given to a collection of ramshackle houses that locals say have stood out on the mudflats for as long as anyone can remember. But attention turned to Sandy Neck earlier this week when Hurricane Helga swept through, uprooting trees, washing out roads, and destroying property. Three of the storm’s seven fatalities were residents of Sandy Neck—or more precisely, of Mermaid’s Hands.
This unnecessary tragedy has prompted both local and state authorities to ask whether Mermaid’s Hands should rebuild. Some are asking if the settlement was ever legal in the first place.
“We’re having town counsel look into the legal issues,” said Sandy Neck’s Mayor Dick Hemingway. “Nobody’s got title to that land—water it is, really, when the tide’s in—which means it’s under state jurisdiction, I believe. The state permits certain activity in coastal waters, but I’m pretty sure maintaining a small village isn’t one.”
“The people in Mermaid’s Hands go shrimping in restricted areas,” complained Trent Moore, a Sandy Neck fisherman. “I don’t care if they’re not trawling. It’s still illegal. They seem to think they can fish just anywhere.”
Brett Tiptoe, a resident of Mermaid’s Hands, insisted that the community doesn’t engage in commercial fishing. “We just fish for ourselves. Maybe sometimes, if we catch extra, we sell it, but that’s all. We get the permits we need to get. We’ve been here since before Sandy Neck incorporated,” he added. “We just want to rebuild, like everyone else.”
September 8 (Em’s diary)
When Dad dropped us at Aunt Brenda and Uncle Lew’s house, Aunt Brenda barely had two words for him. I think what she said was, “You won’t be coming in, I assume,” but maybe she didn’t mean it as unfriendly as it came out.
Dad went back because him and some of the other grown-ups have to protect whatever’s left of Mermaid’s Hands while we try to figure out a way to rebuild. If we’re allowed to. The people in Sandy Neck, or the state, or the Army Corps of Engineers—whoever gets to decide stuff—they better tell us we can. They just better.
I told Dad again that I wanted to go with him, but he said no.
“Not now, Minnow Em. Soon.”
That’s what he said. Then he kissed me and Tammy on the top of the head and Ma on the cheek, nodded at Aunt Brenda, and left.
Once he was gone, Aunt Brenda had lots of hugs for the rest of us. She was full of it-must-have-been-terrible and you-poor-things and wait-till-Lew-sees-ya’ll. (Uncle Lew is on the road right now). To Ma she said how we’ll probably have flashbacks and nightmares and how it’s a good thing we’re someplace safe and stable. Then she asked Mandy to take me and Tammy upstairs, and she wrapped an arm around Ma’s shoulder and led her into the kitchen, saying I-don’t-know-how-you’ve-managed and you’re-a-saint-you-know-that.
Me and Tammy are sleeping in Jenny and Mandy’s room with Mandy. Tammy gets Jenny’s bed and I have an air mattress on the floor. (Tammy can have Jenny’s bed because Jenny’s all grown up now and lives in Memphis.) Ma’s in Connor’s room. (He’s pretty much a grown-up too: he joined the army and is away at basic training.)
Mandy showed us where we could put our things and then showed us the phone Uncle Lew and Aunt Brenda gave her last month, when she got her license. It’s way fancier than Mr. Tiptoe’s phone, and it has a little ballet-slipper charm dangling from it because Mandy likes ballet. She started to show us the different ringtones she has for her different friends, but then Aunt Brenda called upstairs that it was almost time for rehearsal and maybe me and Tammy would like to go along.
“Our church youth group is acting out Jesus’s parables, only set in modern day,” Mandy explained. I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but I nodded anyway.
“Mandy and her friends are doing the story of the
Prodigal Son, only in their version, it’s the Prodigal Daughter,” Aunt Brenda said. “Girl leaves home to go live in a godless way, but she returns in the end.” Here Aunt Brenda gave Ma a significant look. Ma rolled her eyes.
“Honestly, Bren,” she said.
That’s how much Mermaid’s Hands gets under Aunt Brenda’s skin: it don’t matter that Ma says prayers each night and won’t ever mention the Seafather. If you ask Aunt Brenda, just living in Mermaid’s Hands means living in a godless way.
“You’ll like the youth group,” Aunt Brenda assured us. “They’re all great kids, and Pastor John is a wonderful man. He’s heard so much about you! I’m so glad you’ll be here for a while. Drive safe, Mandy!”
In Mandy’s skit, after the Prodigal Daughter leaves home, she spends every night partying with her friends. She smokes and drinks and takes drugs and buys lots of clothes and makeup and jewelry, until all her money runs out. Then her friends all disappear, and she has no place to stay, and she starts feeling sorry about the way she’s been living, but she thinks her parents will never forgive her. But they do forgive her—they forgive her enough to throw a big party for her to welcome her home.
I know the skit made Aunt Brenda think about Ma, but I was thinking about Jiminy. I was thinking how great it would be if he could come back like that, and if Ma and Dad were like the parents in the story, so happy to have him home that they’d have a party for him.
Too bad you can’t come home from prison once you’re sorry for what you’ve done.
These days, thinking of prison makes me think of Kaya, too. I looked in Aunt Brenda and Uncle Lew’s newspaper, but there weren’t any stories there about the country of W—. Their newspaper mainly has nearby news, with a few paragraphs on the third page about stuff going on in the other parts of the country and the rest of the world.