by Brett Lott
Then one night after she finished her homework, Badra pulled out the cot and discovered Fatima was missing. She shook her head when Sharon asked her if she had taken her out to play with after school.
"Maybe she fell on the floor?"
Badra scurried under the bed but came up with tears in her eyes. She wanted to search the entire orphanage right away, but Sharon promised her they would look for Fatima in the morning when the light was better.
Badra woke Sharon early, and they turned the room upside down, looking under the mattresses, in the chest of drawers, taking out each piece of clothing at Badra's insistence. At the end of their search they had a stray sock and a pencil but no Fatima.
"Where is she? I want her." Badra hid her face in her hands and started to cry.
Sharon took a tissue out of her sweater pocket to dab Badra's tears and drew Badra to herself. For the first time, Badra did not resist her comfort; she buried her head in Sharon's chest, and Sharon put her arms around her and rubbed her back, feeling the sobs Badra inhaled like hiccups as the warm tears blotted her shirt. She knew it was pointless to offer to get Badra another doll, and she let Badra cry on without shushing her, as she murmured into Badra's curls, "I know, I know."
Badra finally stopped crying and folded her arms. "I'm not going to school."
"You have to go. But we'll pray and ask God to help us find Fatima."
"Are you sure he will answer?" Badra asked skeptically.
"Yes. We may not like the answer, but he will answer."
"Okay, then you pray, but tell him I want her back."
At breakfast, a houseparent came over with one of the ten-year-olds, and the boy held out Fatima to Badra. She carefully took the doll and cradled it in her arms for the rest of the meal, and when she came back to the infirmary after school, she brought a sticker to put on Fatima that said, GOD LOVES and in the blank she had written, Fatima, Badra's doll.
The winter held on longer than usual, and it was still chilly when the early rains came, clattering endlessly on the tin roof, bringing a heavy dampness into the air. The sun barely came out of the clouds, and it took a week for towels to dry, but finally the weather turned warm and big spots of sunlight hit the upper fields. A tight green fuzz brightened the ground. But just as the first tiny wildflowers appeared, a vicious flu swept through the orphanage, and the infirmary filled with the most serious cases. Sharon was so busy she had to ask one of the teachers to stay with Badra in the evenings, though she always went back to their room in the morning when it was time for Badra to get ready for school.
One morning, she sat on the bed with her eyes closed in exhaustion and small rolls of shivers rippling through her. Then she felt a nudge. Badra was beside her, holding out her sweater. "Oh, Badra," Sharon said, fishing a tissue out of the sweater pocket to catch her tears.
"What did you lose?" Badra asked, looking at her with curiosity.
Sharon gave a little laugh. "I'm not crying because I lost something."
"Are you sad?"
"No, sometimes we cry because we're happy."
"You re happy?"
"Yes, I am."
"Okay," said Badra, satisfied, and she went back to tying her shoelaces.
As the flu raged on, school was canceled, and Badra spent the days playing outside with the other healthy children, their chaotic screams periodically bursting out across the yard and then falling away. During one of the lulls, Sharon stopped on her way to the storeroom and looked out the window. A group of children had managed to climb onto the peaked school roof and were slowly straddling their way across to the small bell that hung above the entrance. Even from the other end of the compound, Sharon recognized Badra in front, with her big head of curls tossing from one side to another and the boyish swagger of her shoulders as she waved a stick in the air.
She was afraid to call out and startle the children from their perch. She turned, and with long gulping strides she rushed through the infirmary, so she didn't see Badra lose her balance. But when she stepped out of the infirmary door and saw the children on the roof looking down in frozen disbelief, she knew instantly what had happened, and the nightmare billowed up in front of her. She bolted into it, flying in a panic to Badra, fumbling to brace her on the stretcher, honking the van around the sheep straying along the side of the thin road, gunning madly past the old rusty trucks balking up the mountain to Boulem while Badra drifted in and out of consciousness in the back.
By the time Badra was installed in an empty semiprivate room, she had slipped into a coma. The x-rays on her back were negative; there was a hairline fracture in her leg, but there was too much swelling on the brain, and the doctor showed Sharon where bits of Badra's skull had been pushed down. She wanted to know all the options: Could Badra be brought to the capital? Airlifted to France? The doctor dismissed her suggestions. It was too dangerous to move Badra. They'd shunt off as much fluid as they could, but there wasn't much else to do except to wait and see if Badra would make it out of the coma. "When she comes out," Sharon corrected the doctor.
"When," he conceded.
She pulled a metal-frame chair with a torn vinyl seat from the nurse's station into Badra's room and spent the night beside her, nodding in and out of a thick drowsiness and rousing herself every so often to check Badra's shallow breathing. During the day she sat and watched Badra in her calm, motionless sleep and wondered who she was dreaming of: the mother who had first cared for her, her grandmother, her father, Sharon? She was such a small part of Badra's life, but for her, Badra was everything. At dusk Badra's eyes fluttered behind her lids for a moment and Sharon spoke aloud, "It's time to wake up, Badra. Come on now." She stared at Badra's face for another twitch or a shudder and then at the bumps and ridges of her legs under the sheet, but there was no other movement, and she settled back in her chair for another night.
In the morning, two teachers came to give her a break, but she would not accept their relief; this was her vigil and hers alone. The hours rolled on, and there was no change except for the sunlight brightening the room and fading out again at night, and the shrieking wails that echoed down the corridor whenever a child in the ward died. To pass the time, she sang Badra's favorite songs while the thought spun around in her mind that this was not right. Badra would have to come back to consciousness, and even on the fourth day, when Badra turned paler and her breath became lighter, Sharon would still not let go of her hope.
She began to rock back and forth in the chair, trying to give Badra the strength to rally, and then she knelt beside the bed. She had never felt so powerless, and she prayed deeply, fervently for Badra to be healed, to have a chance to grow up, that she would do anything, anything to keep Badra alive, and she clasped her hands together so tightly they hurt. "Let this cup pass from me," she whispered, but she could not speak the rest: not my will but your will be done.
When night came, she stayed awake, massaging Badra's arms and sponging her forehead with a damp cloth, stopping every so often to bend over and whisper in her ear, "I'm here, I'm here," until Badra's legs punched at the sheet and she lifted up, gasping for air like a swimmer coming up from the depths, and then she was silent, and her body fell back dead.
"Bring her back, God, bring her back," Sharon whispered. She stared at Badra's still body, expecting to see her legs stir under the draped sheet or her finger begin to wriggle. She waited the rest of the night for the miracle, never taking her eyes off Badra. Only when a cart clanged down the hall did Sharon look up. Outside the sky was lightening to another day, and she finally slumped back in her chair. She squeezed her eyes tight against the salty burn; a nurse would be coming soon, and she did not want to fall apart in front of strangers. When she stood up, she touched the thin sheet and could feel the warmth of Badra's lifeless body. In that moment it seemed to her that death was as great a wonder as life. Then she took her hand away and the wonder turned to stone.
There were no arrangements to be made. She was not the legal parent; the hospi
tal supervisor would only release the body to the father; otherwise Badra would be buried in the pauper's cemetery. Sharon tried to reason: she didn't know where the father was, she was the mother, she wanted to give her daughter a proper burial. But the supervisor remained adamant; it was forbidden.
She went back to her little room and gave the cot to one of the families who needed it for a visitor. Bill insisted she take a week off, but she refused and went back to work right away, as she had in the days after her mother's death, immersing herself in endless, heart-numbing, stubborn work. She launched into a thorough spring cleaning of the infirmary, dragging all the furniture out into the yard, airing every piece of linen, scrubbing the floor on her hands and knees, but it was not enough.
Every night alone in her room she cried as she had when Norma had put her arms around her in the hospital parking lot and she had collapsed, everything crumbling away at once, the muscles in her legs, the strength in her heart. The sobs flowed through her like a flood, carrying her down wild ravines, through vast interior expanses with nothing to stop the crushing surge as it traveled through the height and depth and breadth of her loss, every inch of it virgin territory. She had always liked the triumph of the verse, "O death, where is your sting?" but she had not known the answer. Now she knew exactly where the sting was. The thorn was plunged deep, slicing down all the way, and there was no protection against it. It would leave a mark in her.
Weeks went by, and her sorrow gave way to strange waves of bitterness at how she had been cheated. She had accepted all the hardships in her life, silenced all her complaints, and when love had been brought into her life, she had bent down before it, and now that too had been taken away. She did not know how she could go on. It was such a humbling for her, such an awful humbling to have sacrificed everything and have nothing left. She considered going back to the states; but when she thought about returning to her brothers' families, she realized it would not make a difference where she lived or what she did; she would never be the same again, and she decided she would stay.
When the bitterness finally wore out, her old pride was gone. "Please?" she would ask when she offered to help a house-parent. "Please let me?" Sometimes she would mention Badra to the children in the infirmary or make a reference to "my daughter" when she picked up a new teacher at the airport, and some thought she was boasting, but it was only how she kept her balance, like a hand groping in the dark. She kept the card and the necklace. She kept Fatima, too, though she wouldn't have been able to give a good reason why. At first, the doll lay on the shelf, and then, to keep her from getting dusty, Sharon put her in the trunk. The picture remained on the bulletin board, she and Badra sitting together sharing their awkwardness, and over time the edges curled and the colors faded, but it was never replaced. A stone was erected for Badra near the orchard, and Sharon went to it a few times, but she preferred to remember Badra when she turned the calendar and saw the anniversary of Badra's arrival at the orphanage. Six years ago today, she would think. Nine years ago today. Fourteen years ago. That was the measure of what she had been given and the measure of what she had lost, and out of the ashy shadows of her memory, the seeds of grief would bloom again, like the scarlet poppies that burst out of the barren ground for their brief season, bleeding with bright and colored grace.
A . H . WALD has lived in a variety of places and had a few jobs, some more quirky than others, "but nothing," she says, "that adds up to a stunning narrative." Currently, she writes full-time, and has had several short stories published. She lives with her husband in North Africa.
DOSIE, OF
KILLAKEET
ISLAND
HOMER HICKAM
IN THIS WHIMSICAL TALE OF AN OUTER BANKS COMMUNITY rallying to save its favorite daughter, Homer Hickam displays the essential traits of a great storyteller: an ease of language, engaging characters, and a plot that moves as surely as an incoming tide. But more important than the way in which the story unfolds is the nature of love this town has for Dosie, and its willingness to become a part of her grief in order to help stay her from what they believe she will do in the face of such sorrow. This is a portrait of a fellowship of believers, and their love for one of their own.
—BRET LOTT
A mile down the beach from the great spire of the Killakeet lighthouse, a cottage sat amongst the sand dunes and sea oats, surrounded by a picket fence entwined with roses. It had a full-front porch (or "pizer," as it was called in those parts), a cedar-shake roof, and dormer windows in the island style. A sign on the cottage's front gate read Dosie's Delight, and on the pizer, shaded by an ancient fig tree, were several inviting rocking chairs. It was a peaceful little house, and very quiet except for the cries of gulls, and the rumble of the ocean, and the whisper of sand blown by a ceaseless breeze. In 1943, which was a time of war, a young woman named Theodosia "Dosie" Crossan lived here alone, not counting her beloved mare Genie who occupied the stable behind.
In those days, the people of Killakeet Island mostly cared about two things: fishing and raising their children (although they also clammed in season). Since Dosie didn't fish and was childless, there was a great deal of difference between her and all the other island ladies. Only a few Killakeeter women had ever traveled much farther than the mainland of North Carolina, which was a ferry boat ride across Pamlico Sound, but Dosie had been raised a rich man's coddled daughter and lived in many grand places, even Baltimore and New York City, and had traveled extensively in Europe. During her childhood, her wealthy parents kept a summer home on the island and the Crossans were the richest people Killakeeters had ever seen. Then change came, as it always will, and Dosie's father went bust in the great stock crash of 1929. The Crossan cottage was shut up for the next dozen years without a single member of the family returning.
One soft blue day in the Autumn of 1941, a woman arrived on the ferry, leading to the jingle of tack and the creak of saddle leather a big, brown quarter-horse down the plank onto Killakeet sand. At first, people didn't recognize this woman in jodhpurs, riding boots, and leather jacket, and were a bit astonished when she introduced herself as Dosie Crossan. But when they looked a bit closer, there was no doubt that this was indeed little Dosie, "all growed up." Gradually, it came out that Dosie had led quite the life since she had last trod on a Killakeet beach. She had discovered what it meant to be hungry and cold, she had loved a few men too many, including musicians, and she had not been loved back enough in return. In short, Dosie Crossan had left Killakeet a pretty girl of hopes and dreams, and returned to it a world-weary, though still quite lovely, woman of experience.
Dosie moved into her family's summer cottage (which, it turned out, her father had given her as a birthday present). When asked why she'd returned, she told people it was to find herself, which seemed a bit curious since she was standing right there in front of them. But Dosie knew what she needed, which was most of all to think and also rid herself of several phantoms, one of which was a trumpet player. While she was busy thinking and exorcising musicians, she also discovered, to her surprise, that she enjoyed creating art with the shells and beach glass and shark's teeth she found on her walks up and down the spindrift beaches. Before long, her fame as an artisan spread and she had herself quite the lucrative little business, her island inspired jewelry coveted by the fine moneyed ladies along the coast even as far inland as Raleigh. As she hoped it might, the island had healed her. To her astonishment, one day Dosie realized she was content. That was when she made her sign, Dosie's Delight, and hung it from her gate.
Contentment, however, is a condition on this Earth that is not allowed to remain for long. Philosophers make much of this but the reason is simple: contentment and tedium are fellow travelers. So Dosie began to keep company with Ensign Josh Thurlow, the eldest son of the Killakeet lighthouse keeper, and a bit of a rough customer. Dosie and Josh had known each other as children but then Dosie had gone off to accomplish her years of wandering through the Depression while Josh joined the Coast G
uard and shipped off on the Bering Sea Patrol. A few months before Dosie's return, Josh coincidentally had returned to Killakeet to skipper the 83-foot patrol boat Maudie Jane. Josh was a big bull of a man, and a widower with a reputation for being unreliable with women. Dosie, though blessed with a face and figure that tended to take a man's breath away, was cautious around men, and her tongue could be tart. From the start, their romance was like a Gulf Stream waterspout, dangerous and filled with spitting wind and tumult, but ultimately glorious and wildly beautiful. Appropriately, it was after an argument that they fell in love high on the parapet of the Killakeet lighthouse.
But then the war came, and Josh was sent off to the South Pacific, and Dosie became one of those women who also serve, by waiting. Faithfully, she wrote him a letter every week. Josh wrote back, occasionally.
It was in December of 1943 that the master of the ferry that made the crossing from Morehead City to Killakeet on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays came with a telegram addressed to Keeper Jack, Josh's father. Naturally, just in case it was bad news, the master had opened the telegram and read it, then tucked it inside his brass-buttoned coat where it hung as heavy as a lead brick. That was because the telegram was bad news indeed, an announcement from the Department of the Navy (which in those days included the Coast Guard) that Josh had gone missing and was presumed dead. "Poor Josh!" the master erupted, startling the mate who was at the wheel. Then, since he knew her well, the master added, "Poor Dosie!" In fact, so upset was the master that the mate had to steer the rest of the way, even making the landing, which was less than well-done, the bow crunching hard onto the beach. The master absently cuffed the mate alongside the ear but otherwise scarcely noticed. He thumped down the plank into the sand, chanting to himself, "Poor Josh, poor Dosie, and poor Keeper Jack too!"