Barren Island

by Carol Zoref

  My essay won a citywide prize, which my parents knew nothing about until Mrs. Paradissis said something to my mother, having heard about it from Sofia. The school board wanted a photograph of me with Miss Finn for the newspapers, but no one on Barren Shoal owned a camera. My prize from the school board was a copy of Thoreau’s Walden Pond. I do not know who chose it or why, but it was the first book I ever owned. I grew tired of it later on—Thoreau making a big deal about the wilderness when civilization was just down the road—but I was never without it that year, always carrying it for company on my Walden Pond-inspired contemplative walks around Barren Shoal. Like Thoreau, I thought about nature, including its cruelty and violence. He observed black ants killing smaller red ants; I thought about the fascists. Noah worried about the workers; I worried about the Spaniards. And so on.

  There was a terrific nor’easter that spring and when the storm passed there was a new driftwood tree on the beach, a comfortable bench for long stretches of sitting. A nearby stand of dune grass made that lonely section of the island smell a little sweeter than other places. Sometimes I wrote in my marble school notebook; other times I drew nothing especially memorable. I was a doodler. At some point I decided that I would become a naturalist like Thoreau and asked Miss Finn if she could bring her book from Brooklyn, the one that named all the plants. She instructed me to take clippings of what I found, “so you’ll have samples to go with your descriptions.”

  I clipped beach plum fronds and dune grasses; gathered seaweeds with dappled edges and tubular seaweeds that popped and sprayed their salty perfume when I squeezed them. I collected mysterious plants not native to Barren Shoal that washed up on the shore. These would smell good at first; then they would turn and stink like a turtle swamp until they finished drying. My sketches became reasonable replicas, but they were nothing compared to Noah’s.

  “What is that smell?” Noah asked the day he found me out back shaking sand out of my notebook. He was about to hop a barge to Brooklyn for a union meeting.

  “Samples,” I said, as if he was stupid not to recognize that. “They’re drying out.”

  A black fly was buzzing around my ear. As I brushed it away, I dropped the notebook.

  Noah grabbed it. “You think this is important? Collecting weeds?”

  “You could take me to the union meeting.” I had not mentioned the business about Ray and the Spanish Civil War or even Miss Finn’s Ernesto. Why would I share my new interests when he excluded me from his? Having this new secret made me feel superior, sort of like having a nom de guerre. I had a cause de guerre.

  “In your dreams.”

  “You have a better idea?”

  “How about growing up.”

  “Like you, Noah?” I was, of course, which meant the joke was on him. Or on me. Okay, fine: on all of us.

  CHAPTER 17

  Our neighbors on Barren Island were given thirty lousy days to pack their belongings and get out. The mystery man with the grey fedora on the police boat that brought Sofia and Miss Finn to Barren Shoal appeared again a few weeks later to nail evictions notices on every cabin door. This included the house of a man named Gunyan, 74 years old, who was born on Barren Island and had only left it a dozen times or so in his whole life. And there was Mrs. Fishkill, who owned two milking cows. And at least fifteen families with infants under the age of one. At least that is what people said.

  News of the Barren Island evictions spread as fast as the stink of burning horses on a windless day. Some people ripped up their notices before word got around about how destroying official documents could get an American thrown in jail and an immigrant thrown out of the country. The teacher at P.S. 120, Miss Jane Shaw, fought with the city school board and then Robert Moses himself to keep her grade school open through the end of the term. Miss Shaw was one of the few people to ever take on Robert Moses—the City Parks Commissioner/Roads Commissioner/Housing Commissioner and signatory of the eviction notice—and win. Commissioner Moses agreed that the children could finish the school term. Who knows how she got him to consent to this? Maybe the schoolhouse did not matter in the overall scheme of things.

  Noah slipped over to Barren Island with Yorgos and Joey for purposes of “reconnaissance,” as they called it, when the wrecking crew arrived. I would call what they did looting or grave robbing, though it was not exactly that. My grandson would call it recycling, since no one was coming back for the stuff they had abandoned. These were mostly things in need of serious repair, including a small rowboat with a crazy gash in its bow. Even so.

  An all-island emergency meeting was called for Friday night in the Barren Shoal schoolhouse. Word was passed from house to house, neighbor to neighbor. Everyone would gather once Mr. DeWitt sent word that the managers were off the island for the day. That would be 6:00 or so.

  Yorgos jimmied open the lock without bothering to ask Miss Finn’s permission or even letting her know. With the exception of Sofia—who offered to stay home with Grandma Paradissis but in truth was still in no mood to see anyone, never mind be in a room with a hundred people—everyone was present. Everyone was not a lot of people but included my mother, who had attended no gathering of any kind since Helen’s funeral.

  Noah, of course, said the only recourse was an island-wide strike. What did he know, with his foolishness about his own ignorance?

  Mr. Dowd was the first to take him on. He was no taller than Noah, but his forearms were as wide as his hands. He had a broad face and a thick chest that gave him stature. “What kind of ‘we’ business?” he asked. “WE go on strike while you go to school? Some sacrifice, Noah.” Most of the men laughed, but others looked mad.

  Mr. Dowd accused Mr. DeWitt of being ignorant when he said that the city would have to expand and modernize the plant on Barren Shoal to handle the overflow. “Who put that cockamamie idea in your heads?” asked Mr. Dowd. “Boyle puts up a fancy gate and you think he’s getting modern?”

  “The Barren Shoal factory will be the only game in town once Barren Island’s closed,” answered Noah before Mr. DeWitt had a chance. “Don’t you see what that means for us?”

  “Power,” said Joey, as if he was answering a question on a radio quiz show. Massimo cuffed him on the head.

  “Only schoolboys can call this a game,” said Mr. Dowd, “so sit down and keep your mouth shut.”

  “What else are they gonna they do with all the dead horses they’ve been sending there?” said Yorgos. “Burn ’em in Union Square?”

  “If German university students can burn books in front of their opera house, why not horses in Union Square?” said Noah. Nothing sounded impossible after seeing the pictures of those book burners in the papers.

  “We’ve got them by the balls,” said Noah, “and we can twist them.” He must have remembered that our mother was in the room because he blushed and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You’ll see,” he said, struggling to regain his composure.

  No one on Barren Shoal had anyone by the balls or had anything else, including the means of reasoning their way to a happy conclusion. People who are surprised by the cruel exercise of power rarely do anything about it. Even the smart ones. That is why they are surprised again and again. My father knew this; Mr. Paradissis knew it and so did Mr. Dowd. You could read it all over their faces.

  “You’re all wasting time,” my mother interrupted. She was standing by the door next to Mrs. Paradissis, who was wearing her good scarf draped around her shoulders as if she was attending church. They were never close friends, really, but Mrs. Paradissis kept a kind eye on my mother after Helen died. Maybe it was her way of warding off the other eye, the evil eye. Maybe she had been watching out for her all along. That is one of those things we never know for sure; I mean who is watching out for who or if we are being watched out for at all.

  “All that matters now is how long before they also close Barren Shoal,” my mother continued.

  This was the cold question everyone was waiting for someone to ask, but no one e
xpected it from my mother. How can I know what other people were expecting from her? It hardly takes a big leap of imagination: after Helen’s death, people were surprised by even a “hello” from her. I could see it in their faces. Even with us she mostly spoke of factual, familial matters when she finally spoke again: who should sweep and who should dust, when dinner would be ready, whether the soup was sufficiently peppered, who my father might talk with about visas. She could also say cruel things, ugly things that changed nothing, especially the things that she should have left alone. No, I do not repeat them. It was hard enough hearing them, never mind my giving voice to them. No, I will not.

  But now she was addressing the room as if she had never disappeared. Maybe to my mother the evictions from Barren Island were no different or distressing than the daily facts of scheduling meals and searching for visas. What is more factual and personal than people being forced from their homes?

  “Every one of you, first thing tomorrow morning, you’ll open your doors to see if some noise you hear is a man nailing the notice,” she went on. “Your heart will hurt on account of this letter you’re waiting for. You won’t even feel safe without it. You’ll sleep bad tonight and tomorrow and the night after. Your things will be packed before they tell you you’re going, even if your clothing is still in drawers and your dishes are on your shelves. You’ll worry that this man is coming back even when you’re too busy to worry. Because he is. And you know it. Not a doubt.”

  The factory on Barren Island closed right away. Children attended school but the men who did not leave for the rare job elsewhere sat idle. Gossip about stupid and brutal bar fights spread quickly, there being nothing important left to fight over. Pretty soon it was an island of women desperate for their husbands to find work, even when it meant pulling children from school.

  The last of them left a couple of months later on a ferryboat sent by the Port Authority, which was also headed by Robert Moses. How could one man have so many big jobs in the middle of a depression?

  On their final day, I stood up to my knees in Jamaica Bay, casting for flounder in the brown haze of the afternoon, watching them leave. It took all day for the people and their things to be loaded. Then, without fanfare, a horn blew, the engine began grinding, and the ferry pulled away. The ship, which was packed in haste and grief, listed to the starboard, the side from which the passengers could best observe Barren Island. The captain’s voice came over a bullhorn telling people to spread to both sides of the ship or it would sink. There was some shouting about this, but most people stayed put. The captain came on the bullhorn again. The yelling from the crowd got meaner; the sounds of a fight erupted. A man was leaning over the railing hollering. Someone was frantically splashing in the water. A powerboat sped by, heading out of the bay into the ocean. A ship’s mate from the ferry threw over a lifesaver and rope and pulled the person—man? woman?—on board.

  The crowd spread out and the ferryboat gained its equilibrium with its now silent passengers.

  That would have been well and fine were it not for the fact that suddenly it was me losing balance. At first I thought the wake from the speedboat was dragging me over. I pulled back on my rod to catch my balance and caught a glimpse of something on the line. I pulled again. Up through the shallow water came a sea raven, the ugliest fish I ever laid eyes on. It had a mean, spiny head and spiny dorsal; its mouth was bright orange like preserved apricots, with skin the mottled brown of apricots dried in the sun. It thrashed in the shallows as I reeled it closer. I gave it some line and it pulled away fast. Then it swam close enough on its own for me to see again. I cut the line, a coward’s release. The raven sped off, a length of fishing line trawling after it and my only hook lancing its mouth.

  The cottages on Barren Island began coming down the following Monday, the wrecking crews working as many hours as there was daylight. Noah and the boys slipped over every few days to see if there was anything new worth taking. One night Joey’s face was streaked with dirt when they came home. He looked like he had been crying. He said that all the vegetable and flower gardens over there had been trampled. Dogs that could not move with their families were killed by small caliber bullets to the brain. Some house cats had been left in a pile, probably suffocated. Feral cats were still roaming the island, getting fat on the mice and rats that the demolition chased out of hiding.

  The boys were also shaken up a few days later when they came home from a trip to Manhattan, bloodied up pretty bad after crossing paths with some club-wielding German Bundists up on 85th Street. They called Lois and Gray, who told them to come down to their apartment in Greenwich Village, where they got cleaned up and bandaged. It was Noah’s first time on an elevator. He had expected it to open onto a hallway, like in buildings in Brooklyn. It opened, instead, into a large and elegant apartment. It was a day of one surprise after another.

  After seeing Joey so cut up and swollen—worse than from any beatings from his brothers—Sofia stopped fibbing about how much time she was spending with him. I suppose it was inevitable. We never discussed it. Being assaulted by the Bundists did not stop Yorgos from smacking around both Joey and Sofia like he had any number of times before, but no one said anything about that either.

  Noah got his school diploma the same week that the people on Barren Island were packing. He had no job prospects—there was certainly no work for him on Barren Shoal—and he had applied to City College too late to begin in the fall. There was a celebration party anyway for him and Marie Dowd, who had done everything the way Miss Finn had told her to and was heading off to Hunter. My father and Mr. Paradissis built the barbecue pit they had been talking about for years, setting mismatched, discarded bricks into mortar they bought from Mr. Boyle. He could not just give them some? That stinking so-and-so. They hoisted a piece of fire-escape metal on top of the bricks—something they got from a junkyard in Brooklyn—to use as the grill. It took both men plus Noah and Yorgos to lift it into place.

  It was a wonderful, hot night and there were all sorts of fish to eat, potatoes roasting on the coals, and a salad of early lettuces from the garden. The air was cleaner, what with the Barren Island smokestack idle now. That made things pretty terrific, even if it was heartless to say so. My mother did not interfere when Noah passed me his glass of beer, my first ever. We formed a quartet with Joey and Sofia and tried singing “You’re the Top,” everyone making up the lyrics because no one remembered more than a couple of words and it did not much matter what we threw in. Cole Porter would not have cared. We did much better with “For All We Know,” which is so much shorter. And sadder. No one messes with that. Even Miss Finn showed up. The bigger surprise was Ray Whitmore, who came along, she explained, to escort her back home that night in the dark. I did not know if he was still in New York or had gone overseas and returned. I had not seen him since that day in Brooklyn with Sofia, though he had been on my mind. Or the Spanish Civil War had been. I never thought about one without thinking about the other.

  Miss Finn was wearing a delicate white cotton dress, a straw hat, and a red silk scarf around her neck. It lifted gently from her throat when she cheered our singing. She was so elegant. Ray was wearing the same plain shirt and blue work pants that I remembered from when we met him at Miss Finn’s.

  Miss Finn introduced Ray to the boys, explaining that they had been trying to get a union serious about Barren Shoal and had been through all sorts of trials and travails and had no better luck than Ray was having with the International Brigades. She also introduced him to Marie, “the other guest of honor.”

  “Most people would give anything for a life without struggle, but not my boys,” said Miss Finn. “I wonder if it’s something in the drinking water. Ray, have you been coming to Barren Shoal without my knowing?”

  “We never seen this guy before,” said Joey. “I woulda known.”

  “I’m teasing, Joey,” said Miss Finn. “My little joke.”

  Yorgos rolled his eyes and cuffed Joey playfully on his chin. Jo
ey raised his fists.

  “Take it easy,” said Yorgos. “My little joke, too.”

  Joey looked puzzled. “What’s so funny?”

  “No one meant anything by it,” said Miss Finn, trying to soothe him. She seemed pleased that the boys would play along.

  “So why don’t you say what you want?” Joey was still baffled.

  “Oh, Joey: when will you learn?” said Marie. She patted him on the head like he was just another Dowd child.