Barren Island

by Carol Zoref

  I learned to keep my struggle over Sofia and Joey to myself. “Why him?” I asked her the one and only time we talked it through, months after things between us returned to normal. Sofia was trimming my hair.

  “Why not?” she replied, never halting the path of her scissors. “Who is there for us? Your brother? My brother? The old men? Look how beautiful: Finito.”

  More and more Italian words, the ones from Joey’s rather limited vocabulary, crept into her speech every day. Good-bye became ciao, cookies became biscotti.

  “You’re just boy crazy,” I told her. The world itself was crazy, so why not Sofia. Or any of us, for that matter. We read about it every week in the newspapers. If I was Armenian, I would say the world went crazy in 1914, when the Turkish Ittihadists—those Young Turks!—declared a boycott of Armenian businesses. We knew what the Turks did to the Armenians—at least anyone who was paying attention, like Miss Finn was. To a Jew, the world went crazy again in January 1933, when Hitler was appointed Germany’s Reich Chancellor. It was Hitler himself who connected the dots between the Armenian genocide and the one to follow. It was Hitler who said, Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians? You know what? I do. Even today. Even if it means I digress. I still talk about the Armenians. I do. That is who. How can you not?

  “There will be other boys,” I told Sofia. “Maybe my cousin Ruthie can introduce us. In Brooklyn.”

  She combed her fingers through my long, curly hair, which she had been threatening to cut into a bob. “Well, I hope some of those boys are waiting for me.”

  “Nobody’s waiting for us. The only thing waiting out there is a breadline,” I said.

  “Oh Marta,” she sighed. She leaned her head on my shoulder and left it there while she spoke, her hands dropping down to her side. “Look around; what do you see?”

  “Beach, sand, dune grass, sea gulls...,” I inventoried. The situation was impossible; the conversation was getting nowhere. Keeping it literal meant keeping it safe.

  “What kind of life will we have on Barren Shoal? This whole place is one big breadline.”

  “At least we’re not starving.” It was a stupid thing to say, what with Joey and Katrine and the others who scavenged the trash. Even so, it was true.

  “Do you see yourself living here forever? Polishing shoes for your kids and packing lunches for a husband who butchers dead horses?” she asked.

  “What if I do,” I said. The rest of my life, the actual future, felt no closer than anyplace else, not even Zyrmuny, where my mother’s family was still trapped. Sofia stood straight again. “The minute we’re done with school, we’ll be gone. Trust me on this.”

  “In your dreams. Which I hope don’t include Joey.”

  “This isn’t about that. And, anyway, dreams have power. If you were a Greek you’d know that.”

  No one wants to hear about mistakes they cannot stop themselves from making. I said it that one time about Joey and then I never said it again.

  On a Sunday not long after that I walked to the far side of the island alone with my fishing pole. Noah was off with Yorgos and I decided to not go looking for Sofia in case Joey was there too. Being tolerant of Joey came with a price. Tolerating Joey was exhausting. The sun felt good on my arms, and there was a stop-and-start breeze from the south blowing the factory stink away from me. It was late morning, long past the best time for fishing, but I did not mind being alone. I made forensic drawings of crabs in the sand; I assembled clamshells into igloo-like hutches for the fish, so they would be on cool, wet sand but out of the sun. I wondered if maybe Sofia was right, if maybe I should get out of there. But how does one choose to stay or go? How does one decide? I know, I understand: my cousins in Zyrmuny would have given anything to have that choice. But I was not in Zyrmuny. I was on Barren Shoal.

  It took a couple of hours of fishing to bring in four small flounder. I gutted them on a rock at the jetty, rinsed them again in seawater, and headed for home. I had already passed the marsh when I heard a noise coming from the dunes. Cats, I thought, raiding another seagull nest or fighting over a rat. It was a disturbing sound and I walked faster, which meant passing closer to the sounds before getting beyond them. That is when I saw the bodies in the dunes, Sofia’s face, Joey driving himself into her. How many times in my short lifetime was I going to see Joey Pessara’s bare behind, you should pardon me for asking?

  Though I have tried—precisely how hard is a matter for debate—I have never been able to untangle sex from love. No, I am not old fashioned. In the old days young people married because their parents said that they had to, not because of love. I married Walker Lane for love and nothing more. That was the only thing he had to give me. And vice versa. But I am not so modern either. Now the young people—and the not so young people, too—seem perfectly happy to have sex with someone they do not love. It is what they do on a date after dinner, as if sex is like going to a movie. I cannot imagine why. I am a romantic, which is a very hard thing to be. There it is; that is me.

  Sofia had more passion in her than she knew what to do with. She played it out on Joey; she showered it on Marie Dowd’s seventh and eighth siblings, twin boys who by then were three years old, who she cuddled and tickled; she offered it to the feral cats, which she stroked and petted; and she even gave it to me. I soaked it up like fresh air.

  I thought about this as I walked the long way around, where I rarely went, through the scrubbier, weedier parts of Barren Shoal to get home.

  By morning I was covered in bites all over my ears and on my face in a line that ran down my jaw.

  “Don’t scratch,” my mother ordered.

  Noah reached across the table and pinched my ear. He had just returned from Brooklyn on an early barge in time for breakfast and school. His eyes were droopy, red-rimmed. He might as well have held a lit match to my skin.

  “Cut it out,” I told him.

  “Or cut it off, Marta Van Gogh!” In one of Miss Finn’s art books there was a painting of Van Gogh with a rag wrapped around his head to cover his mutilated ear. He looked like a barge scavenger, except cleaner.

  “Stop it,” said my mother, whose back was turned to us and who was sifting flour for who-knows-what she was baking. “You must have walked through a nest of mosquitoes.”

  “Mosquitoes don’t nest,” said Noah. “They swarm.”

  Where did he come up with this stuff?

  I went to school, hardly able to sit, the itching around my ear and face growing worse as the morning dragged on.

  “Stop fidgeting, Marta,” Miss Finn scolded.

  “I can’t help it,” I complained.

  “Let me see,” she said with a sigh, waving me over to her desk as if only she could authenticate my blisters. The bites were swelling and getting redder.

  “These aren’t mosquito bites,” she announced.

  I wondered if whatever it was came from touching myself in the dark.

  “It’s poison ivy and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Go on home. And whatever you do, don’t touch it. That’s how it spreads.”

  This was not welcomed news to a girl who liked touching herself in the dark.

  The blisters split open one by one by one until they oozed like smashed cranberries. My mother packed me in cold towels the way Mrs. Dowd had packed her hands when Helen died. Every woman on the island, it turned out, had a remedy from the old country. Some said pack tea leaves onto my skin; others said to bathe me in vinegar or in bleach; Mrs. Dowd said oatmeal. Mrs. Paradissis cut a frond from her aloe plant and rubbed its slimy juice on every part of me. I was in too much pain to protest or be shy.

  Sofia never came to visit in those first two weeks that I lay writhing in that crazy, itching pain. My parents and even Noah took turns bringing me ice. At the worst of it, my father slept in Helen’s bed so that he could watch me through the night. In Helen’s bed! The three or four sips of Slivovitz they gave me every few hours kept me in a slight but extended state of d
runkenness. Thank goodness.

  “I’ve been so busy with Joey that I’ve lost track of myself,” Sofia confessed when she finally stopped by with a plate of cookies from her mother. I was still covered in blisters but they were healing now. All Sofia wanted to do was talk about sex with Joey, think about sex with Joey, and have sex with Joey. As for me, all I wanted was to just leave my poor, itching body behind.

  “If I can’t count on you when I’m sick,” I asked, “when can I?”

  “What can I do?” she offered. “Tell me.”

  I was so angry with her. So angry. But who else could I talk to? Who else did I have?

  “Look at me! What if I’m scarred forever?”

  “I feel so awful for you,” she said.

  “You feel awful? I’m supposed to care how you feel?”

  A couple of days later I was woken from another Slivovitz-induced sleep by the shrieking of the accident whistle down at the plant. My mattress was drenched from a night’s worth of melted ice. The wet towels in which I was swaddled flopped to the floor. I never slept deeply for all those weeks, nor was I ever fully alert. My blisters were now in a state of suspension, getting neither better nor getting worse. I pulled on some clothes. The sores, imperfectly anesthetized by the ice, began raging again.

  I ran downstairs. “Didn’t you hear the whistle?” I asked my mother, who was chopping fresh ice for me.

  “Come on,” I said. I grabbed some ice and rolled a towel around it. Everyone on the island had to be rushing to the plant at that same moment.

  “I can’t,” she said.

  I looked around to see what would stop her.

  “I can’t,” repeated my mother.

  She did not have to start preparing dinner. She did not have to cut up onions or chop more ice. But she could not move.

  “Mom.” I said it plain, just like that, and then I left her. There were others running too, including Mrs. Paradissis in her housedress and worn-out slippers. “Where’s your mother?” she shouted, lifting her hem so she could take longer strides.

  “Home,” I called back, not slowing down to face the embarrassment of my mother being unable to leave the house, of her unwillingness to face the tragedy awaiting someone, maybe all of Barren Shoal, down at the factory.

  I saw the look on Mrs. Paradissis’ face. I saw what she was thinking. She had to be thinking my mother was inviting more tragedy by not coming out. If my mother stayed home, trouble would not wait; it would come looking for her, it would find her.

  By the time I got to the plant men were stumbling about, their faces red and black and white with blood and grime and shattered bits of animal bone lodged in their skin. Brown smoke was pluming out of the smokestack. Heat had broken the windows and the flames were being fueled by the rush of air. There was a chorus of scared and injured men hollering in pain, and another one shouting off the names of the wounded and the ones unaccounted for. Some of the injured were sitting on stacks of bricks and planks of wood. Others had thrown themselves against the fence. Joey’s oldest brother, Massimo, was among the men holding onto the fence and gasping for air. I grabbed his arm. “Have you seen my father?” He shook his head; the blood coming from his temple dripped into his eye.

  Noah and Yorgos appeared, one at each end of a wood plank bearing Mr. Paradissis. Joey and Sofia had to be around too. Mr. Paradissis’ shirt was ripped open and his chest was sagging where his ribs should have arced over his lungs like flying buttresses. His eyes were closed.

  “Let me,” said a familiar voice. Miss Finn had rushed from the schoolhouse with rolls of gauze and bottles of hydrogen peroxide. She motioned for me to hold them. “He’s alive?” she asked.

  What a strange thing to ask. The boys could hardly breath, never mind speak, having just run out of the factory with their eyes and mouths all full of smoke.

  Mr. Paradissis moaned. “Of course I’m alive.”

  Miss Finn sent Noah for a bucket of water. He and Mrs. Paradissis carefully washed Mr. Paradissis’ face and neck and chest so Miss Finn could clean his open wounds. Noah was so gentle with him. He soaked a piece of gauze and dabbed Mr. Paradissis’ eyes and lips. He did the same to Mr. Paradissis’ nose and ears. Mr. Paradissis’ lips parted as he tasted the water on his tongue. The gauze came back brown and bloody.

  “Do you hurt badly?” asked Miss Finn.

  “Can’t...deep...breath,” he whispered.

  “Can you spit?” she asked.

  The first effort produced nothing. The next try produced a glob of mucous and brown/grey dust.

  “Again,” she said. More grey gunk. “But look: no blood,” she said, reassured. “That’s a good sign. You’ve only cracked some ribs.”

  “I cracked them?” Mr. Paradissis whispered, angered by what sounded like a suggestion that he had a hand in it.

  “Some ribs were probably cracked,” said Miss Finn, correcting herself.

  “Where’s Dad?” I asked Noah.

  “Joey went for him.”

  “What? You couldn’t go with him?”

  “Joey’s the only one they’re letting past the boiler room. That’s where it blew.” I thought about that black man killed on the assembly line out at Ford’s in Dearborn. Joey was also someone that people threw away.

  “Why wasn’t Dad in the cutting room?” I asked.

  “He smelled something,” whispered Mr. Paradissis. “Boyle said it’s nothing...Sol went...the shutoff valves.”

  “Who’s gonna stop us going after him?” said Yorgos.

  “Boyle’s got men over from Barren Island already...blocking....”

  “So predictable, those sons of....” Miss Finn stopped herself. She touched a reassuring hand to Mrs. Paradissis’ shoulder. Her hand was streaked with blood and ash. She saw this too, and wiped her hand on the side of her dress. “Come,” she said, indicating that we should follow.

  The heat from the fire and from running stirred up my poison ivy, like a thousand black flies were biting me. I balanced the medical supplies in one arm and slapped at the blisters with the other. When I dropped a roll of surgical gauze into of puddle of copper-colored slime, Miss Finn grabbed my elbow.

  “Leave it,” she yelled. “Wait over at the guardhouse while I speak to Mr. Boyle.”

  Mr. Boyle, covered like everyone else was with soot and grease, was shouting orders that hardly anyone was listening to. Mr. DeWitt was standing outside the guardhouse looking baffled and holding his neck. Men were carrying other men out of the building. There was still no sign of my father. The windows of the guardhouse had been blown out and the people running back and forth and around it were trampling the shattered glass. Mr. DeWitt looked like he had been thrown pretty hard. Thick red bruises were already rising over his eyes.

  “What the hell happened?” asked Noah. He had to shout twice before Mr. DeWitt answered.

  Mr. DeWitt shouted back something about pressure build-up blowing off a loading door. “The waste stack must’ve clogged with something that should’ve sluiced through. The heat had nowhere to go.”

  “Have you seen my father?” asked Noah.

  Mr. Dewitt gave Noah an odd look. “Who’s your father, son?”

  Noah stepped closer. “It’s me, Mr. DeWitt. Noah Eisenstein.”

  “Of course, Noah, of course.” Mr. DeWitt reached for Noah. Blood came rushing down his neck when he moved his hand. A piece of glass still sticking from his neck had sliced something big. No wonder that he could barely hear.

  “Let me,” said Miss Finn. She grabbed a roll of gauze and went to clearing the wound. “Go boys. Hurry.”

  “Boyle won’t let us,” said Yorgos.

  “He will now.” This was no time to ask what Miss Finn had said to Mr. Boyle. “Just go!” she yelled.

  “I’m going with you, Noah,” I said.

  “The hell you are,” he said, and shoved me backward.

  “Don’t!” I screamed. “Don’t touch me!” I pushed the rest of the gauze and the bottle of hydrogen peroxi
de into Mr. DeWitt’s hands and followed Noah and Yorgos past a partly collapsed wall and a row of doorframes with no doors in them. Grey smoke was everywhere; steam was blowing hard and low, bouncing on the ground and rising. I had not been in the factory since Helen died. I remembered the horse heads in piles everywhere, but I did not see them now.

  Ten feet from the entrance one of Joey’s brothers was slumped against a cauldron. He was not screaming or moaning or anything even though his right leg was split open from the shin down. Yorgos kneeled in front of him. “Vince? Listen to me. I’m gonna carry you out. Noah, let’s get him up.”

  Vince howled when they lifted him. I closed my eyes, which made things worse, as if my hearing made up for what I could not see. I opened them in time to see Yorgos hoisting Vince over his shoulder.

  “Go on,” he yelled at Noah.

  Noah took my hand and we ran.

  If there is such a thing as a hell on earth—another cliché, another good one—the factory was hell that day, filled with the stench of burning flesh, the moans of men, the yowls of steam.

  “Dad!” shouted Noah. “Dad!”

  “Here,” someone cried.

  “I’m coming,” yelled Noah. He released my hand.

  It was oddly quiet the deeper we got, as if things were settling into their newly broken states. The only thing I could see through the steamy darkness was the floor. “Dad,” I called, my voice trembling. “Over here,” replied another trembling voice from the other side of the room. I wanted to kill Noah for leaving me. Where had he gone?

  I inched across the floor through animal blood and offal that had been reduced to ooze and slime. It was everywhere now, exploded and splattered onto every surface of the room, even the ones camouflaged by smoke and steam. I knew it for a fact, even if I could not see it. As I moved, the sludge moved too.