by Marele Day
‘Aunt Pearlie,’ Chicken called again when she arrived at the door. No reply. Chicken crossed the threshold, entering the cool shadiness of the shack. Pink petals were strewn all over the f loor. How sweet of Pearlie, how thoughtful. Chicken picked one up. It didn’t feel like a petal. There were sesame seeds stuck to it. It was one of the paper patty pans from the bean-paste cakes. They were all over the place.
What was the story here? Surely Pearlie couldn’t have eaten all the cakes so quickly. Did she have visitors? Maybe tourists had stumbled across the shack, come in and helped themselves. It was a mad idea. Who would ever find the place?
‘Aunt Pearlie, it’s Chicken.’ This time Chicken added her whistling breath. No reply. Perhaps Pearlie had grown sick of being by herself, pretended she had guests, devoured all the cakes on their behalf.
The cloth in which Chicken had so carefully wrapped the cakes was crumpled up in a corner. On the bench were several small cups, and an almost empty bottle of rice wine. Where had that come from? Chicken smelled the cups, caught the whiff of wine. They hadn’t been washed up. There were ants in a couple of them.
Chicken had done her best to ignore it but the explanation stared her in the face. A real party, with real guests. Pearlie had not only been here to receive them but had probably invited them.
There was only a small space left on the end of the grandmothers’ bench but Chicken squeezed herself onto it. ‘Hello,’ she greeted them brightly. The grandmothers didn’t know what to do with themselves. Chicken could almost see them f lapping. They were waiting for her to go away, at least stand up. They were accustomed to people stopping for a chat, exchanging pleasantries or gossip, but no-one apart from other grandmothers was brazen enough to actually sit on the bench.
Chicken took the cloth off the basket, let them have a good look. They couldn’t ignore the aroma of smoked eel, a grandmother favourite. ‘Hmm, time for breakfast,’ announced Chicken. ‘Could I interest you in some of this tasty smoked eel?’ No-one said anything. Chicken broke a piece off and popped it into her mouth. It was rich and oily, she almost gagged on it. ‘Mmm, delicious.’
‘I’ll have a piece,’ Cobia said, capitulating.
‘Me too,’ said Pomfret.
‘And me,’ added Bonito.
Chicken handed the containers of eel and aubergine along the bench. Silvertail, the most senior of the grandmothers after Pearlie, held out the longest, but eventually she caved in too. When they’d finished the eel, they wiped their oily fingers on the back of their hands and started on the aubergine.
Perhaps it was a mistake letting them have the lot at once. Chicken was on her own now, no more bait. ‘Did you have a nice time at Grandmother Pearlie’s? Enjoy the cakes?’ Chicken queried.
‘Lovely, thank you,’ said Pomfret. ‘It was my birthday.’
Silvertail cleared her throat in a growly kind of disapproval and Pomfret shut up.
Had she meant ‘thank you for asking’ or ‘thank you for the cakes’? Either way, Chicken’s suspicions were confirmed. She pretended to herself that it was ‘thank you for the cakes’, that Pearlie had at least told the grandmothers they were a gift from Chicken. ‘Such a good girl’, she might have said, and all of them agreed, nodding their heads while shovelling cakes into their mouths, leaving the papers wherever they landed.
‘What do you make of this?’ said Cobia. ‘It washed up a few days ago.’ She held out a silver beer can with bold red letters—Habana. ‘That’s somewhere on the other side of the world, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ said Chicken. She didn’t mention the fact that this brand of beer was on sale in the Boat Harbour supermarket.
Cobia patted Chicken’s hand. ‘You don’t have to go anywhere, dear. If you wait long enough the world comes to you. Look what the tide’s brought now.’
The twin grandfathers putted by on their scooter. They couldn’t help staring—a young person on the old ladies’ bench— but of course they were too shy to say anything. When they had passed, they waved grandly, pushing the air down with their hands.
‘Think how quiet it would be married to one of them. Either one.’
‘Or both.’
The grandmothers chuckled.
‘It would be like having the house to yourself.’
They seemed to have forgotten there was an intruder in their midst.
‘They weren’t so quiet when they were boys,’ Silvertail reminded her companions.
‘You never know how things will turn out,’ Pomfret said.
‘You just never know,’ Cobia echoed.
The grandmothers nodded sagely.
Seagulls landed on the low wall opposite, tucked their wings in and took up a position of expectancy.
‘Remember their tricks, the one pretending to be the other?’
The grandmothers were back in that time, when the twins were more outgoing, when they played tricks. What had happened to make them shy? Was it one thing, or had they entered shyness gradually, found it soothing and not wanted to leave?
‘That New Year party,’ said Bonito, ‘I still don’t know which twin it was.’
‘Me neither,’ said Pomfret.
The company was hypnotic. The grandmothers had forgotten about Chicken but instead of feeling ignored as she did at home, it was a privilege.
The ferry was coming. She still had to take the basket back to the house and collect her clothes for work. She stood up, breaking the drift of the grandmothers’ reminiscences.
‘Ah, Chicken,’ said Silvertail, as if she’d only just arrived.
She’d waited as long as she could but had heard nothing about Pearlie. What sort of hermit holds a party for her friends? How come she’s there for you but never for me? Chicken wanted to know but felt too humiliated to ask. Pearlie was her grandmother, Chicken shouldn’t have to ask her friends where she was and what she was doing.
As far as Chicken was concerned it was over. If Pearlie wanted to be a hermit, let her. No more offerings in the cat-face letterbox. If Pearlie got hungry she could come back to the house. Violet was right. As usual.
21
Implanted
Lilli remembered the feeling of being held aloft, damp air on her face, the wavy rhythm as the sea princess carried her through the night. She had her coat on over her pyjamas, but her feet were cold. The princess had forgotten Lilli’s shoes.
All the way down the hill, past the houses and the school, the sea princess whispered into her ear. Lilli felt the soft warm tickling feathers of her breath. She was whispering because it was a secret. If anyone else knew where they were going they would want to join them. ‘The turtle will only come if it’s just us two.’
The sea palace was so big and grand that you couldn’t see the end of it. Large trees grew inside and stars twinkled on the ceiling. There were moving stairways going up to them. You didn’t have to walk, you just stepped on and the stairway took you.
‘There are so many rooms I’ve lost count of them, and in each are my jewels. In one room is a white lion with pearls on his paws, and a blue bird with pearl eyes. In another room, a pearl dragonf ly. If you wind a little key on his back his golden wings move to and fro.’
Lilli felt the soothing comfort of the sea princess’s hand making tiny circles on her back.
‘The largest room in the palace is where the pearls are made. Beautiful maidens implant the seed and the mother oysters grow them. When the pearls are ready, my turtles travel the oceans, hiding them in secret places all over the world.’
They came to an inlet. Lilli could see the dark gleam of night on the water, the black shapes of rocks. The princess put Lilli down. The sand felt coarse and cold under her toes. Why had the princess forgotten the shoes? The princess crouched, her eyes shining, and touched Lilli on the tip of her nose. ‘OK, now we are going to fill our pockets with sand.’
Lilli wasn’t sure whether this should be allowed. ‘Won’t it make our coats dirty?’
‘It’s sand, silly, not d
irt.’
Lilli started picking up sand but most of it stuck to her fingers.
‘Not a little dribble like that, Lilli. Use both hands.’ The princess showed her how. ‘That’s better.’
Lilli filled her pockets, all the way to the top.
The princess picked Lilli up again. ‘Ooh,’ she said. ‘You’re heavy.’ Nevertheless she carried Lilli over the rocks, treading carefully so as not to lose her footing in the dark.
Lilli’s legs dangled against the bulges of wet sand in the princess’s coat pockets. She rested her head on the princess’s shoulder, felt the soft velvet of the collar. Despite the excitement of the adventure, Lilli felt drowsy. She nestled into the princess’s warmth. It didn’t matter if Lilli went to sleep; the princess would wake her when the turtle came.
They reached the edge. Lilli could hear the sea slapping against the rocks. Her nose quivered in the salty air. They stood there looking into the darkness.
‘Is he coming?’
‘Very soon.’
Lilli could feel the princess’s chest going up and down, the pounding of her heart.
The princess took a final breath of air, pushed it out through her mouth, and jumped with Lilli into the starry night.
From her hotel window Lilli watched a party of schoolchildren file innocently across the pedestrian bridge and disappear into the pearl museum. They were about the same age Lilli had been when her class had gone there on an excursion.
The pearl museum guide told them that inserting the nucleus into the oyster was a tricky, finicky job. Almost half of the mother oysters died after implantation. The tiny nucleus was a piece of mantle from a freshwater mussel found in the Mississippi River. In that long and mighty word, Lilli saw the long and mighty shape of the river. Green water pooled around reeds and bulrushes. Near the banks men in shabby straw hats worked on rafts.
The whole class watched while a young woman inserted a nucleus into the oyster. She wore a simple black dress, long sleeves with a thin white trim at the wrists. Her face was as soft as a peach. It looked like her skin had never been touched by the sun, that she had grown delicately indoors, out of the sunlight, in a constant controlled environment.
Her work surface was extremely neat and hygienic. There were glass bowls full of white nuclei that resembled mint drops, a couple of blocks of wood, a round blue sponge, and a blue tray of young mother-to-be oysters covered in water.
The instruments were set out in front of her. Very thin ones with a tiny cup at either end for holding the nucleus, the middle section thicker for easy handling. There were pliers of different shapes and sizes, and elongated metal pegs. In the centre of the work bench was something that looked a little like a microscope, whose length could be adjusted by a wing nut. On top of it was clamped the oyster. The woman worked with three instruments at the one time. With her left hand she used a spatula and pliers to keep the oyster f lesh open for the long thin instrument she held in her right hand to correctly position the nucleus.
The guide explained that a small incision was made with the scalpel then very gently a path was created through the incision into the area suitable for implantation. Then a ‘piece’ was implanted, which must adhere to the nucleus. These pieces—tiny squares of mantle—were lined up in rows. Great care needed to be taken throughout the operation to keep trauma and injury to the oyster to a minimum. The nucleus had to be placed just right—if it were not far enough into the f lesh the oyster could push it out, and if it were in too far it would kill the oyster.
Lilli watched the implanter’s clean white hands balance and manoeuvre the instruments. The fingernails were cut short with just a thin rim of white at the top. The nails had a pearly sheen to them, the hands themselves luminous, perhaps an effect of the lights which shone clarity onto her work.
Lilli looked up. The lights did not hang down like the ones in her house but were embedded in the ceiling, like stars in the sky. Lilli kept staring at them till the teacher nudged her. The class was moving on.
They took the escalator to the next level, passing photos of pearl jewellery. Lilli saw the white lion with pearls on his paws, and the bird with pearl eyes.
Memories of that night had fractured and dissolved. Pieces drifted back like pungent puffs of smoke. The sea palace only reassembled itself years later, when the pearl museum excursion revealed Mitsi’s source of inspiration. Lilli never found the pearl dragonf ly with wind-up wings; that had been solely Mitsi’s invention.
What never left Lilli were the memories implanted in her body—the sharpness of the stars, the liquid velvet of the sea. The feeling of the princess’s arms around her, of her letting go. Then the torchlight, the clamouring voices and the gasping wrench of being pulled from water back to air.
Sometime Lilli wondered whether it had happened at all, if what was implanted in her body was the memory of birth.
Lilli was being minded by Groper and other grandmothers who were pickling cucumbers—scraping out the seeds with the end of a spoon and cutting them into long strips before immersing them in brine. Lilli sat on the f loor making a hat for Groper’s cat from an old pair of goggles. A conversation was taking place somewhere over Lilli’s head but the usual jokes and banter, the rolls of hearty laughter, were missing. This was more like a phrase here or there surrounded by thick silence. No-one seemed to be taking any notice of Lilli yet she couldn’t help feeling that she was the centre of attention.
She was just trying to think of a way to make herself invisible when Groper said, ‘Lilli, would you like to put the cucumber peelings on the compost heap? There’s a good little helper.’
Groper gave the scraps to Lilli then rinsed her hands under the tap and patted them dry on her apron. Lilli dawdled just outside the doorway. The cat wound its tail around her legs and meowed, hoping for some morsels. Normally, its soft furry tail tickled, but today it was irritating. Lilli could feel the hard bone beneath the soft fur, its insistence.
The wind f lapped the clothes on the line—pillowcases, men’s work trousers, thick knitted diving gloves. Down the hill were other lines in other backyards, all with similar clothes.
‘The time to get rid of it would have been at birth, or even before. Not when they’re up and walking.’ Were they talking about a kitten? ‘In the old days they used to moisten a piece of paper and put it over the nose and mouth. Stopped the breath in no time.’
One of the cucumber peelings fell to the ground. Lilli bent to pick it up and lost two more. Her hands just weren’t big enough to carry them all.
‘Maybe that’s what should have been done to Miss Fancy Pants.’
‘Well, she did the right thing in the end.’
‘She shouldn’t have tried to take the child with her, though. Who knows how she’ll turn out after that?’
Lilli ran to the compost pile feeling hot and prickly, even to the tips of her ears. She did not want to go back into the house with such mean grandmothers. If she could find that rock again and wait, maybe the princess would send another turtle. Lilli was halfway down the hill before she felt Groper lift her up and carry her back to the house.
Night had fallen and Lilli had still not left the hotel. She sat in the dark on the Louis XIV chair worrying about her blood. As Lilli grew older the enchantment Mitsi created had gradually begun to lose its strength. If they had the sea princess living in the house, why didn’t everyone bring gifts and pay their respects? How come Cedar and Pearlie, even Violet sometimes, grew cross when Mitsi didn’t put the bedding away or left her clothes lying about?
If she wasn’t the sea princess who was she—a cousin, an aunt, a big sister? It even occurred to Lilli that Mitsi had never existed at all, that she conjured her up herself, a figment, an imaginary friend.
‘She was your mother, of course,’ said Cedar, when Lilli finally asked. It didn’t make sense.
‘But you’re my mother.’ When Lilli said this Cedar hugged her so tightly that Lilli thought she would pass through Cedar’s skin int
o her body.
‘Mitsi is the mother who gave birth to you. I’m your grandmother,’ Cedar said, releasing her. She touched Lilli’s hair, gently ran her hands down her arms, putting her back together again.
Lilli stroked the fabric on the arm of the chair. When her hand travelled in one direction the fabric felt smooth. In the other it ruff led. She wondered if the man in the smoking jacket would visit this evening. The identity of Lilli’s father remained a mystery. Cedar doubted it was a local boy—too commonplace. More likely a museum official or a pearl dealer. ‘Someone who didn’t mind the school uniform,’ she muttered.
Lilli stood up, went to the window again. In the surrounding darkness the pearl museum resembled a lit-up luxury ocean liner. The only island blood Lilli had came from Grandfather. Cedar had none at all. It didn’t seem to bother her. ‘The sea runs in my veins,’ she proclaimed. ‘It’s the life-stream of all of us. Water is the blood of the earth.’ What Cedar lacked in blood she made up for in prowess. She became a sea samurai, developed long breath. Even as a girl, so the family stories went, Cedar was finding almost as many shellfish as a seasoned grandmother diver.
But the bloodline bothered Lilli. So much was unknown. Sometimes genes skipped a generation. It was possible that a blood imbalance that had bypassed Cedar manifested in Mitsi. Perhaps Cedar’s mother also thought she was the sea princess. Put her baby in a crib and set her adrift.
Not long after the episode with Groper, Lilli tried again to find that rock and wait for the turtle. She put her coat on over her pyjamas and went with no shoes, just like the first time. The ground was hard and cold, there were sharp things in it that hurt her feet. It was much nicer when the sea princess carried her.
‘What are you doing?’ It was Cedar, coming after her. She sounded strange, whispering and shouting at the same time. She grabbed Lilli’s hand and turned her around. Cedar was big in the night shadows; her face like a pumpkin. ‘Answer me! Where do you think you’re going?’
‘To the palace. I’d be there already if you’d let me go with the sea princess.’ Lilli tried to pull her hand away.