Hurricane Child

by Kheryn Callender

  Miss Joe stops the truck on the side of the road, right under a sign that says NO PARKING. A girl even smaller than me runs toward us before she bursts into moths that fly into my hair and make me near jump right out of my skin. Miss Joe takes no notice. She walks me down a side street where no car can fit. The path is paved with cement, and there are wild roses on either side, so long that the thorns threaten to scratch my arms. At the end of the path is a one-story house made of rotting wood, even though most houses in the Virgin Islands are made of concrete so they won’t be blown away by the hurricanes.

  Here is what I know about Miss Joe: She doesn’t have a husband, and she doesn’t have any children of her own. Just from listening to what the other children at school say, I know that not many mothers like Miss Joe. They say she’s a woman that isn’t really a woman at all, but is a snake in disguise. When her red pickup truck breaks down, she doesn’t have a man to call, so she fixes it herself. When she’s thirsty or hungry, she cooks for herself and only herself, not for a husband asking for this and that. She’s like the slaves back in the day who weren’t really slaves at all because they’d taken their freedom, and lived in their own houses, and owned their own clothes, and ate their own food. People didn’t like seeing slaves like that, and people don’t like seeing a woman like that now either. It makes those people even madder when Miss Joe stands so tall and reads big books and talks like she has not a care in the world. I decide in that moment that I want to be precisely like Miss Joe, and I stand a little straighter.

  Miss Joe takes me to her living room, which is just like her office: overflowing with books and journals and newspapers and magazines. I’ve got to move a heavy pile of books from the stained sofa before I can sit down. Miss Joe fixes me a plate of beef stew and plantain and lets me eat in the living room and asks me about my favorite class (history) and my least favorite subject (math), and when she asks me if I have a favorite novel (Behind the Mountains by Edwidge Danticat), she gets up right then and there to hand me books by Jamaica Kincaid and Tiphanie Yanique and stateside women too, like Zora Neale Hurston and Octavia Butler, and she tells me that these books saved her life, and I don’t really know what she means by that, but I believe her when she says it.

  Then she sits down across from me as one adult might sit down across from another, her legs crossed, her back straight, her hands folded in her lap. “So, Miss Murphy,” she says, “what would you like to know about your mother?”

  I know I can’t ask her the first questions that jump to the tip of my tongue: Where is she? Why did she leave me behind? Does she still love me?

  Instead, I ask, “How do you know my ma?”

  Miss Joe lets out a laugh I’m not expecting, one so loud that it makes me jump in my seat. For a second, I think she’s laughing at me, but then I realize that she’s laughing because she can’t contain the joy that spreads through her. Watching that joy is like watching a piece of paper catch fire. It’s like she might as well be sitting with my mother again, and they’re laughing together over a joke, the funniest thing either of them had heard all year, though I get the feeling they heard something that funny every single day. Miss Joe stares at the ceiling brightly, filled to the brim with memories. “We were the closest friends. Miss Doreen Hendricks, yes, and me, Miss Loretta Joseph. We would pretend we were twins, even though we looked nothing alike, and we had our own secret language that no one was allowed to know but us, and we read books together, side by side, and as we read, we would decide that we were Janie and Pheoby, Anne and Diana, Elizabeth and Charlotte. I always let her be the star, while I was the star’s best friend.”

  I don’t know any of these people, but Miss Joe seems not to notice, because she keeps talking.

  “You couldn’t find one of us without the other. We even said we would marry each other,” she says. “This house you sit in now was my mother’s house at the time, and we decided that your mother would come here to live with me once we were finished with school. Then your mother met your father, and time got in between us, and we were not as close as friends as we once were, though we would still speak on the phone on each other’s birthdays and on Christmas each year—for hours and hours, and it’d be like not a day had passed.”

  I have a surge of anger toward my dad. I bite my lip to keep my anger to myself, but I don’t have to say anything—Miss Joe seems to see what I’m feeling. “No, this wasn’t your father’s fault,” she says. “You’ll see. Sometimes, friendships don’t last, and it’s not anyone’s fault in particular. That’s just the way it is.”

  Miss Joe holds her hands together. “I know that you would like to see your mother again, Miss Murphy,” Miss Joe says, “and I know that it must be difficult to be without her—but I also know that she wouldn’t have left without a reason.”

  I want to ask Miss Joe what reason my mother could possibly have—and ask how Miss Joe could possibly know—but instead, I frown at the dirty plate sitting in my lap, my head bowed, saying nothing at all. The most burning question I have is why Miss Joe would want to tell me something like that.

  “I’m worried about you,” she says, “and I want you to learn how to keep on going without her. Every little girl needs her mother, but sometimes that is how life is—life can’t afford us everything that we want or need, so while you might not have a mother, you have a father who loves you very much, and a home and food and clothes and—” She stops herself, and she’s leaning in while she’s looking at me, with an expression on her face that suggests she needs nothing more than for me to understand. “Miss Murphy, you need to learn to live without her. Do you think you can do that?”

  I tell her yes—of course I tell her yes, because I’m not an idiot. My dad must’ve spoken to Miss Joe, and together, they decided to sit me down—lie to me, get me to stop asking questions. Maybe my dad even figured out what I’ve been doing, that I’ve been planning on taking his boat, and they want me to give up on looking for my mother. There’s just no way that’s going to happen, because even if my dad and Miss Joe are fine with letting go of people they love, I’m not. And I never will be.

  Miss Joe keeps talking to me, but my side of the conversation has long since been over, and I suppose she realizes this on her own, because it’s not very much time after she takes me back to waterfront in her red pickup truck with the stack of books she’s given me, and hands me ten US dollars to get back on the ferry and arrive home, where my father sits in the living room, waiting for me.

  I know that I will somehow have to find my mother on my own. I can’t ask anything else about her. I have to pretend that I’m moving on and learning to live without her, because if I don’t, I know exactly what will happen: My father will be ready to lie, ready to beat back my questions. He won’t have his guard down ever again. I decide then that I will never mention my mother to him—but all the while I’ll continue my search in secret, and when the moment is right, I’ll yank the truth right out of him.

  In the morning, after he’s gone to work but before I’ve gone to school, I open his yellowing and splintering bedroom door. There’s nothing at all special about the door itself, except that it has been the same door to this bedroom for all the time this house has existed, which has existed since the slaves, which makes me realize that I’m touching a very old door. The room this door leads to was once my mom’s bedroom too. The last time I stepped over the threshold was over a year ago. I never had any reason to come into this room unless it was to follow my mother inside and sit on the edge of her bed to watch her comb her hair, and put on her jewelry, and curl up beside her as she read to me. Stepping inside now sends a spike of pain through my heart, and I freeze for a moment, my hand sweating on the doorknob.

  Nothing has changed. My mom’s dish of tangled jewelry is still on her dresser, and her glass perfume bottles are still lined up. I can see her dresses are still hanging in the closet, like little ghosts of her missing her body, and her shoes are still lined up beneath them. Seeing her clothes an
d shoes sends a jolt through me. Why wouldn’t she have taken them with her on her trip around the world? Only a dead woman would not need her clothes or shoes, and suddenly my mind begins to wrap around other possibilities: my dad and Miss Joe buying postcards, faking my mother’s handwriting, mailing them just so I can open them and believe she really is still alive.

  Heart pounding, I walk farther into the bedroom. If she’s still alive, there must be proof somewhere—and if she isn’t dead, then she has to be living somewhere too, somewhere I can find her. She would never turn me away. She would wrap her arms around me and apologize for leaving, and whatever reason she had—it wouldn’t matter, because I’d be with her again.

  I open the closest drawer, then open the next and the next, and throw open boxes piled up in the closet, and tear through jeans and folded shirts, looking for paper that has my mother’s name on something, anything—when the front door slams open and shut. I hear heavy footsteps.

  “Caroline,” my father calls out, “are you still here? I forgot to leave money for the ferry.”

  I’m too afraid to move, so when he stops in his doorway, my dad looks down at me the way a cat might look at a mouse that has begun to eat from the kitty dish. When this was my mother’s room as well, I was allowed inside at any time—but when it became only my father’s room, I knew that I wasn’t welcome. “Caroline,” he says quietly, “what’re you doing?”

  I swallow and stand from where I’d been kneeling on the hard floor.

  “Caroline,” he says again, “what are you doing?” Except he says a rude word here too, and while my dad makes me so angry I can cry, that’s one thing he’s never done. He’s never cursed at me.

  I take a breath. I can’t tell him the truth, because he can’t know I’m still looking for my mother. A lie tumbles out of my mouth instead. “I was looking for money,” I tell him, “to take Mister Lochana’s speedboat.”

  Understanding crosses my dad’s eyes, but a moment later, suspicion strays across it too. If he doesn’t believe me, though, he doesn’t say anything about it. “Well, then,” he says, “I have the money here. Come on, come on.”

  I follow him out the door, and he snaps it shut firmly behind me.

  Miss Joe invites me to eat lunch with her inside her office, but I will never sit with a woman who wants me to be content with staying a half orphan, and besides that, I also hate the idea of Kalinda or Anise or Marie Antoinette seeing me eating in her office, because truth be told, I can’t think of a single thing more pathetic than someone so lonely that they must be invited to eat with their principal, and while I really am the loneliest girl at the school, I also have my pride.

  Kalinda Francis sits with Anise and Marie Antoinette every day for one week, and for one week every day I sit in the corner and watch as everyone gathers around the table, peasants begging for scraps from the queens. Except now, it’s not clear who the queen is anymore. Is it Anise, sitting tall like always, yelling at anyone who gets too close? No, I think it’s obvious to everyone that it’s now Kalinda, who never laughs loud like the others around her but always has a special smile for everyone—a smile made and catered for each different person, the way fingerprints are different for all of us. For Anise, it’s a smile that barely turns up the corners of her lips so it’s more like a blank stare. For Marie Antoinette, it’s a big smile that shows all her white teeth. For me, she gives a closemouthed secretive smile, like she means for me to find her one day after school and ask her what it is she wants to tell me. Maybe she does. She looks up at me and smiles, then looks away again—but something catches her eye.

  I turn my head to see what she’s looking at—and there, in the corner of the cafeteria, stands a white woman in her nightgown, looking at Kalinda. She’s gone before my gaze can even settle on her, and I would think it was just my mind playing tricks—but when I turn to look at Kalinda, she’s watching me again—squinting her eyes, confused, but still smiling.

  I start to make eye contact with her everywhere—in the halls, in class whenever she turns around and feels my eyes on her, even through the crowds of curly heads in the cafeteria. She never seems upset to catch me staring. She only ever has the same secretive smile. And now there’s a question there, a question she has for me. It’s probably the same thing I want to know from her.

  Can you see the things that no one else can see too?

  I could ask her. I could walk right up to her and ask if she really did—if she saw the spirit of that woman. But I’d have to ask this in front of Anise and Marie Antoinette, and if I’m wrong, and Kalinda only screws up her face at me in confusion, I know I’ll never hear the end of it. Anise would never let anyone forget how Caroline Murphy is as crazy as she is evil, and there’s not much else worse in the world than a crazy, evil girl. Any chance I’d have of speaking to Kalinda ever again would be wiped clean from existence.

  But I have to know. All my life, I’ve seen the things no one else can see. And if someone else can see them too … then maybe I’m not so alone after all. The idea of not being alone—of having someone who sees me, same way I see the things that no one else can see, makes me feel like I’m real. Like I deserve to exist on this planet alongside everyone else. That I get to be here because there’s someone else who wants me here too. It’s the difference of being invited directly to a birthday party instead of someone being forced to hand me an invitation, same way Anise Fowler was once forced to give me an invitation to her party but whispered that if I actually came, no one would really want me there.

  If Kalinda Francis can see the things no one else can see, then I need to know.

  I decide to take a risk.

  The bell for lunch rings, and Missus Wilhelmina slowly finishes her sentence, to remind us that we aren’t allowed to leave until she dismisses us from class herself. Finally she does, and we all leap from our desks, and I see Kalinda moving with Anise and Marie Antoinette toward the door.

  I jump in their path. There’s a crowd lined up behind them, twisting and turning their heads and sucking their teeth, waiting to leave. I realize I shouldn’t have stepped in front of them—should’ve waited until we were out in the courtyard until I could try to get Kalinda alone and away from her new friends—but I know I might never find the courage to speak to her again.

  “What do you want?” Anise snaps. “Move out the way!”

  I don’t. I still look at Kalinda, who seems surprised—but she still gives me my smile.

  “Miss Francis,” I say, and immediately feel silly for using her last name. I almost do it—almost force the question out. Can you see the things too? But the words freeze in my throat. I swallow them and ask instead, “Would you like to join me for lunch today?”

  The way Anise’s eyes bug from her face would be funny if it weren’t for the silence that follows. Anise recovers quickly, though, as do the people waiting behind her. There are the gasps and whispers, and Anise finally lets out a screeching laugh.

  “Who does she think she is?” she demands. She begins to push past me, but stops when Kalinda says yes.

  I must look like I didn’t really hear her, because she says it again. “Yes. I would love to, Miss Murphy.”

  Stunned. We’re all stunned, and Anise looks like Kalinda turned and slapped her across the face. I let out a small laugh of disbelief.

  Kalinda then takes my arm and acts like we’re the oldest of friends, sweeping me away from the room, and she wastes no time at all. I had no idea anyone could have so much to say, and so quickly.

  “I’ve only been here a week. Not just at this school, but on Saint Thomas too. I’m from Barbados, you know, and my father brought me here to live with his sister because he was having a hard time finding a job in his profession, which is carpentry. Not just fixing cabinets and that kind of thing, you know, but carving whole chairs and tables and chests and anything else imaginable from wood. He’s really good at it too, but there are already so many good carpenters in Barbados that no one ever really needed
him. But that’s all to say that even though I’ve only been here for a week, I already feel at home. I almost feel like I’ve never lived anywhere else at all.”

  On and on she goes, and though this would normally be so frustrating, to listen to someone talk as much as the frogs make noise at night, I realize I don’t actually mind. That I love it, in fact. She isn’t making noise for the sake of making noise. She’s letting me inside her head, and for the first time in my life, I feel I can almost imagine it—what it’d be like to exist as a completely different person, to have their thoughts and feelings instead of my own. It’s a complete relief, like walking into my home and kicking off my loafers and sinking into the soft sofa after a very long and hot and tiring day.

  We sit at the spot in the cafeteria where I normally sit alone, and I realize that though everyone usually looks at Anise’s table with admiration, today all the heads have turned to us instead. They don’t look at us in admiration, though. They look at us in complete shock. Some even seem angry. Like I’ve personally done something to offend them.

  The angry stares I’m used to. I feel like I’ve never received any other sort of stare my entire life, except when my mother or my father looked my way. But I’m worried about Kalinda. She can’t be used to such negative attention—can she?