Light in the Darkness

by CJ Brightley

  “Can we at least go home before they tear down the Winterhulls’ house?” I asked.

  “Em!” Ma held out I-have-nothing-to-give-you hands. “How am I supposed get you anywhere, without a car? Hmm? We’ll wait for your father to be in touch. If he can use Mr. Tiptoe’s truck, I’m sure he’ll come and get you.”

  “If he can’t, then we’ll walk!” I said.

  “Am I hearing your oldest’s attitude in this one?” Aunt Brenda asked Ma, waving an arm at me, Exhibit A. “What did I tell you: bad influence.” To me she said, “You behave yourself. You think your mother needs anything more to worry about? You go along up to bed with your sister.”

  I was writing this in bed, by the nightlight, thinking Tammy was already asleep, but then her voice came floating over.

  “Em?”

  “Yeah?

  “You think Dad will come and get us?”

  I wanted to say, No matter. We really will walk home, if he can’t. But then I thought about Aunt Brenda giving Ma a hard time about me, and Ma being so tired from working at that farm, and I just wasn’t sure anymore. And what if we walked and walked and were too late? So all I said was, “Yeah, I think he will,” even though I ain’t one bit sure. There’s only one truck for everybody in Mermaid’s Hands. Maybe they have other things they need to use it for.

  Instead of a truck, I wish it was a sailing scow, like Sabelle Morning had, with an armed crew on board, that could run aground right by the Winterhulls’ house and protect it. Then I wouldn’t even mind if they couldn’t come and get us.

  September 17 (Em to Small Bill)

  Dear Small Bill,

  Thanks for your letter. I don’t have Sabelle Morning’s cup. It’s lost with everything else. Not that it did much good really. I don’t have Sabelle Morning’s cup. Anyway Aunt Brenda would never let me do nothing like set out a cup to catch the dawn light because she thinks that stuff is devilish.

  I want to come home but I just heard yesterday that Mermaid’s Hands can’t rebuild. What does your ma say? What’s Mr. Tiptoe say? Do you listen for your dad beneath the waves? What does he say? You must miss him something fierce.

  Maybe we should just take to the water like Sabelle Morning.

  I’m thinking of you. I hope you’re doing all right, and your ma and Lindie and Jenya. Wish I was sitting near you in the Winterhulls’ house.

  Your friend,

  Em

  September 18 (Em’s diary)

  Ma’s side of the conversation, on the phone just now:

  “Hello? Oh. Trace. It’s good you called. The girls were—Yes, Em told me, which is why—What? Come again?”

  When she said Dad’s name, I stopped labeling countries on the empty map of Europe we got for homework in social studies and Tammy stopped putting her spelling words in the blanks in the raccoon story on her worksheet. In the kitchen, the sound of dishes sliding into place, one on top of the next in the cupboards, stopped, which means Aunt Brenda was listening in, too.

  It figures that just when we all start listening, it goes quiet on Ma’s side. Dad must have lots to say. I wish my hearing was good enough to pull his voice out of the phone and into my ears. Then Ma spoke again:

  “Well don’t that beat everything. That’s … that’s hard to believe, is what it is. But good! Good. We’ll watch on Friday. Yeah, I’ll tell them that, too.” Then she laughed. It’s been so long since I heard Ma laugh! “Yeah, I suppose,” she said, her voice still full of sunshine. I couldn’t hear what she said next, and when I was able to catch her words again, all the brightness had already drained away. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “It’s not that simple. Look, we’ll talk more when you come. All right. Uh huh, you too. Bye now.”

  When we heard the click of the phone going back into its cradle, me and Tammy raced downstairs. Aunt Brenda came in from the kitchen, and we all pounced on Ma.

  “What did Dad say? What’s hard to believe? What’s happening Friday?” I asked.

  “Is Daddy coming here?” Tammy asked. “Is he gonna take us home?”

  Aunt Brenda just looked at Ma with raised eyebrows: a question face.

  “He says they got permission to rebuild Mermaid’s Hands after all. Said a group of people from some culture organization or some such came by, and then after that a news crew, all before Brett even got word from the authorities. The folks from the culture organization intend on staying a while and asking questions about life in Mermaid’s Hands. Following folks around with movie cameras. Can you imagine that?”

  She’d started out talking to Aunt Brenda, but she turned to us at the end, a smile creeping back onto her face.

  “Can you imagine?” she repeated, hiding her smile with her hand, “Someone following you around all day, filming you?”

  Mandy and Uncle Lew got back just then.

  “What’s that? Who’s following who around?” Uncle Lew asked, frowning.

  “Are you talking about reality TV?” Mandy asked.

  So Ma explained again, and Uncle Lew just snorted and went into the kitchen. I heard the fridge door open.

  “You’re gonna let him take the girls back with him during the rebuilding?” Aunt Brenda asked. “Where y’all going to sleep? In that one half-broken-down house? Don’t you think it would be better to wait a little longer? What’ll the girls do for school? Is the one in Sandy Neck back up and running? And what about your job?”

  “I’m barely making anything at Taunton’s. Anyway, the decision’s not just up to me,” Ma said, meeting nobody’s eye, not Aunt Brenda’s, not mine or Tammy’s.

  “Sure it is. You’re the grown-up. You’re the responsible grown-up. You really want to go back to all that now?”

  “Leave it be, Bren,” Uncle Lew called from the kitchen. “Some people don’t learn from mistakes.”

  I felt my fists clenching for Ma’s sake—and for Dad’s—but took a breath and let my hands fall open.

  “Is Daddy coming here?” Tammy asked again, standing between Ma and Aunt Brenda and taking Ma by the hands. “Is he coming Friday?”

  “No, he’s not sure just yet when he’ll come, but Friday there’s going to be a special segment on the news about Mermaid’s Hands. Maybe we can watch it.” Ma looked sidelong at Aunt Brenda.

  “I want to see,” said Mandy. “I always wondered about where y’all lived, houseboats and such. We should visit!” That last suggestion was made to Aunt Brenda, who pursed her lips.

  “Some of us need to work at proper jobs to pay for the roof over our heads and clothes and doctors and whatnot,” she said, “and can’t be taking trips and vacations whenever we please.”

  “Yeah, but we do take vacations sometimes, and Aunt Josie and Em and Tammy are family. We visit Uncle Mike and Aunt Bonny and Cal and Megan. How come we never—”

  “Enough, Mandy.”

  Then Mandy invited me and Tammy to watch her practice ballet, and now Mandy’s brushing Tammy’s hair.

  And I’m writing this and thinking, we’re gonna get to go home. Mermaid’s Hands won’t just disappear. Is it somehow the Seafather’s doing?

  September 20 (Em’s diary)

  It was weird to see everybody on TV. I guess they’re all back there, except for Granny Ikaho, who had to go to the hospital, and Silent Soriya and Skinnylegs’ little sister Anna, who stayed on with a Jordan’s Waters family because of Anna getting her leg broken in the storm.

  The Winterhulls’ half-of-a-house is one big bedroom for everyone, but there are no mattresses or quilts in there. Instead it’s filled up with sleeping bags, pressed together like fish spawn so everyone fits. Where’d the sleeping bags come from? The Jordan’s Waters people or some other group must of donated them.

  They showed a bunch of the parents outside, rebuilding the part of the support raft that broke off, and the reporter asked them how they knew how to build the houses, and you could see that it must of felt strange to have the cameras there, and the reporter, because Mr. Winterhull wrinkled his brow li
ke he was thinking hard, and Mrs. Ovey had an overcast face, and Auntie Chicoree and Uncle Near wouldn’t even look at the camera—they kept their eyes on what they were nailing.

  “We just know,” said Mr. Tiptoe with a shrug. “Storms come most every year. Houses take damage most every year. You learn a bit at a time, one year to the next.”

  “And the building materials? Does it cost a lot to rebuild?” You couldn’t see who asked the question. It must of been somebody behind a camera.

  Snowy spoke up to answer that one.

  “We always used to salvage the broken-up bits the storm left. Don’t quite see why the state had to clear away the wreckage this time. We would’ve used that stuff. It would’ve been cleaned up, just slowly. Folks on dry land sure are impatient.

  “So what are you doing now? Buying supplies?”

  Snowy pursed his lips. “Some buying,” he said. “And some salvaging, farther out and around.” Mr. Tiptoe shot Snowy a warning look, but Snowy didn’t say more than that.

  “And the donations? Are they a help?”

  Snowy gave a single nod. “They surely are a help,” he said, keeping dignity in his voice and looking slantaway from the camera.

  Then the cameras moved over to kids, first Fairchance Fearing and Pearlheart Dunne, who showed some nets, dip nets and throwing nets. The reporter got all excited about the shell weights on the throwing nets, because, he said, Indians long ago used shells for weights in just the same way. He didn’t say anything about the pattern, though: two oyster shells, then a wedge clam, then two more oyster shells, then another clam: white, white, brown, white, white, brown—like that. Fairchance and the other older kids always do that pattern. Me and Small Bill and our crowd like doing two-two better: oyster, oyster, clam, clam: white, white, brown, brown. I wished I could jump into the TV and tell the reporter that—I felt so wriggly, stuck here just watching.

  Then, “Hey, it’s Clara,” Tammy said, scooting closer to the TV. Clara was wading thigh deep, pulling along the Tiptoes’ dinghy, which had Brightly and the twins in it. Skinnylegs was there too, in the Winterhulls’ dinghy, over by where the garden floats used to be. Skinnylegs was squinting, even with one hand shading his eyes, and the camera came in close, so you could see the hairs on his arm, paler than his skin, as he pointed to a floating, broken chunk of raft still bristling with green, and to a new raft, under construction.

  “They were my stepmother’s idea,” he said.

  That must be why they got Skinnylegs to tell about them. I can just about remember before Silent Soriya came, when we almost never had dry-land vegetables, just things that grow swaying beneath the waves, like rainbow frill, or that watch over the tides, like pickleweed. But Silent Soriya showed us how they grew things on rafts in the floating village she came from, halfway round the world, and everyone liked the idea.

  “There they go,” said Tammy, as the twins and Brightly tumbled out of the dinghy and into the water, starting up a game of stingray-lie-down. Clara slipped under too and came up in the upper right-hand corner of the TV screen. “You can stay under a long time!” exclaimed the bodiless voice behind the camera. Clara pushed her hair out of her eyes and grinned, and Tammy and I exchanged looks, because even Tammy can stay under longer than Clara, and Tammy’s famous for her weak lungs.

  Then the camera was back at the Winterhulls’ house, and they’d gotten a whole crowd outside, and it was later in the day—or maybe they filmed it on a different day—because the tide was in, and Mr. Winterhull and some others were sitting in fishing skiffs and wearing sun capes, and the littler kids were splashing and hollering in the background, and the reporter was saying stuff about way of life and so on, and I caught sight of Small Bill, over on the left, leaning against Mrs. Ovey and looking straight at the camera—at me. I missed him so bad at that moment. I hope Dad comes for us soon.

  September 24 (Em to Kaya)

  Dear Kaya,

  You saved Mermaid’s Hands! I knew it had to be some kind of miracle, but I thought it was the Seafather—but really it was you!

  I didn’t find out for sure until after we got home. It was like this: Dad came for us on Monday, late, after Ma got back from Taunton’s. Uncle Lew and Aunt Brenda could barely manage a hello between them, but Ma smiled and let him hug her and even put her arms around his neck. I couldn’t believe it—it’s been forever since they got all kissyface in public. But when Dad said, “Ready to go?” Ma’s smile faded. “Walk with me a little,” she said, pulling him back over the threshold and into the cloud of moths and mosquitoes by the porch light.

  “Get your stuff together, girls,” we heard Dad say, even though Uncle Lew shut the door on his words, muttering about not paying to cool the whole neighborhood. Tammy and I crept upstairs to grab our clothes. Mandy was sitting on her bed.

  “So I guess you’re going,” she said. I nodded. Tammy jumped onto the bed and wrapped Mandy in a hug from behind.

  “We’ll miss you, though,” she said.

  “Mom wanted me to make sure y’all know you can stay if you want,” Mandy said, craning her neck round so she was nose to nose with Tammy. Tammy dropped her eyes.

  “But I know you want to get home,” Mandy added quickly. “Anyway, we’ll hang out when you come to visit Aunt Josie.”

  Tammy shot me an anxious look. “Ma’s not coming back with us?”

  “First I heard about it,” I said. One part of me was thinking, I should’ve guessed, but another part was thinking, How can she want to stay with Aunt Brenda and that crummy job?

  “Aunt Josie hasn’t told you? That’s messed up. I thought- Mom said- You know, maybe I got it wrong … I’m sorry. Just forget what I said.” Mandy went on like that a little, trying to bury what she first said in a whole pile of apologies.

  “It’s okay,” Tammy said, twirling a strand of Mandy’s hair around her index finger. She let it go, but it fell back straight as ever. Tammy climbed off Mandy’s bed and slipped herself into my lap.

  “You think Ma’s really not coming home?” she asked me.

  Downstairs the front door opened again, and I could hear Ma and Dad’s voices.

  “Let’s ask her,” I said.

  It sure was frosty downstairs. Ma and Dad were standing near but apart from each other, like there was a pillow of air between them that they couldn’t push through. Aunt Brenda was standing next to Uncle Lew, arms crossed, and Uncle Lew had his hands on his hips. Both were shooting death-ray looks at Dad.

  “That’s right, I’m staying here for now,” Ma said, when Tammy asked. Out of everybody, it was me Ma fixed her eyes on.

  “Em, you wanted Jiminy to have a number he could call, right? To help him? But to get a cell phone takes money, and money takes a job. I’m not earning if I’m back at Mermaid’s Hands.”

  “That’s not why you’re staying away,” Dad said, his voice light and calm, but you could feel the anger singeing the edges of it.

  “If that’s the excuse she has to use to be free of you—” began Aunt Brenda.

  “It’s not an excuse!” flared Ma. “You’re as bad as Trace. I know my mind. Don’t go looking for different reasons!”

  “I told you, I can arrange with Brett—” Dad began, but Ma shook her head.

  “No. I ain’t asking nothing from any of them for Jiminy. Or from you either, Bren. I have an interview in town the day after tomorrow. Once I get a better job and start earning a little better money, I can move out and find a place of my own.”

  “Ain’t you coming home ever?” Tammy asked, in a thin voice.

  “Tammy should stay here with you; better for her health,” murmured Aunt Brenda, but neither Tammy nor Ma seemed to hear her. Tammy was waiting on Ma’s answer.

  Nobody can get to Ma like Tammy. Tammy’s her baby, the delicate one. I guess it must of been hard for Ma to summon up an answer, because she was quiet a moment, pressing her lips together so hard all the color disappeared from them. Then she breathed in deep, lifted her eyebrows, and said,
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  “You don’t need to worry about that. You concentrate on school and helping Dad and Gran and the others, and we’ll see each other before you even miss me.” She smiled a tight Aunt-Brenda’s-house smile. Tammy didn’t smile back, but she didn’t press Ma further, and she didn’t cry. She just gave Ma a silent hug, then walked over to Dad.

  Me, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so complicated. I still feel complicated about it. I want to be angry at Ma for not coming home, but how can I be, when she’s working to help Jiminy? And I don’t want to be angry at Dad, because it’s not like Ma staying with Aunt Brenda is his fault, or like Jiminy being in prison is his fault, but … Dad can pull all sizes of fish out of the water and into the skiff when he goes out with Uncle Near, so why can’t he pull Ma and Jiminy back home?

  “How’d that boy end up to be so much trouble?” Dad said, to himself really, as we bounced along in the Mermaid’s Hands truck, heading back to Sandy Neck. Ma asked almost the exact same thing, but the way Dad said it was more blameful.

  “He was a loyal friend,” I said, hoping maybe to get Dad to see at least a smidge of good in Jiminy.

  Dad glanced my way, and the truck swerved a little.

  “Where was that loyalty earlier?—What about his family and his line? What about Vaillant’s pledge to the sea?”

  What could I say?

  “He’s as sour on Mermaid’s Hands as your mother,” Dad said. All the fire was gone from his voice. He sounded worn out and sad.

  I remembered Jiminy saying that being from Mermaid’s Hands just made people think he was dumb. Or was it that he thought he was dumb, being from Mermaid’s Hands? I can’t tell. Both thoughts made me gloomy—Dad’s sadness was soaking into me.

  “I love Mermaid’s Hands,” I announced.

  “Me too,” said Tammy. She’d been leaning on my shoulder, and I thought she’d fallen asleep, but she sat up to say that.