by S. M. Parker
As Sam documents, I remember my mother gathering up the fragments of stoneware that washed up on our shore. Those broken bits of pots from the Water People were so precious to her. She collected them. Are they still in the house somewhere? Has Gram kept them?
“This is a great find, Rilla. I’ll send it to the university for analysis, but there might be more if we’re lucky.” He nods to the dirt, and I shape out another clump of earth, add it to my sifter. But my mind is elsewhere.
The Water People. I shake the dirt in my sifter until there are only small, jittery rocks popping across the screen. I sit back on my heels, my breath so shallow, my heart racing. My mother looked for them when we’d walked the shore. But now I wonder if it was the Water People at all, or if it was one person. A Water Girl.
“I’m not gonna lie. Things like eugenics make me ashamed of the field of science. But that’s why it’s important to tell this story. It’s been buried too long.”
The girl. My mother. The Water People. Have our stories always been connected?
“This find could tell us something about the economic practices of the islanders, depending on where it was made. How the residents traded, bartered. We know the islanders were fishermen, but they were craftsmen, too. There was one particularly talented carpenter who worked on the mainland; another was a master mason. One islander was a pastor, or a deacon—we’re not sure which—and he would provide sermons off-island.”
Did my mother hear that same song? Come here, come here.
Is that what drew her to the deep on her last night at Fairtide?
“The people here never asked for handouts from the state.” Sam presses a long, plain wooden marker into the ground where I discovered the pottery. “The islanders were a self-sustaining fishing community and weren’t dependent on taxpayer support, so while they weren’t wealthy, they did have a system of economy.”
My dear, my dear. What are the words my mother called to the Water People while Gram held her? Did she talk to the Water People, or sing to them?
Did she repeat their song over the waves?
“Rilla?”
“Yeah? I’m here.”
“The only form of welfare they ever received was that school, and no one out here asked for it.”
I press my mind into the now. “Isn’t education a basic obligation of the state?” I sink my trowel into the earth, feel the way it slivers its path through dense clay and small pebbles. I pull back another scoop, add it to my strainer. Sam watches the excavated bit of earth as it sifts, excited to see what will spill free.
“Yes, well. The governor twisted the gift, called it charity and used it as a tool to show mainland taxpayers that their hard-earned money was supporting the ‘shiftless’ ”—he uses air quotes—“life of the islanders. The Malaga Island people had lived on this island for nearly a hundred years. The shell heaps out here tell us that they dug for mussels and ate what they caught in the sea. We have writing samples of the children, showing they were literate.” He scoffs. “Most of them had better penmanship than me.” He watches my strainer come up empty and he can’t hide his disappointment. “They were totally self-reliant. They’d survived almost everything. Slavery in the south, impossibly bitter winters.”
“Disease. Childbirth.”
“Exactly. Their community was strong enough, vibrant enough, to attract immigrants from Europe. People who wanted to live life with freedom in their bones, no matter how much hard work that entailed. They endured hardships that would be unimaginable to us.” His gaze drops to the marker in the ground before me. “But they couldn’t survive greed. That’s what it came down to in the end.”
A gull calls from the shore, her throaty screech rising over the waves. The sounds Sam and I hear are no different from what islanders would have heard, the timeless call of the sea.
“Would you mind if I dug here too?” Sam asks.
I shift a few inches, make room for him at my side. “Have at it. You’re the only one who knows what they’re doing here.”
He elbows me, a soft push. “I’d say you’re doing just fine.”
“Rill?” The voice comes from behind us, and I turn.
“Reed?” It’s hard to make sense of him in this place. “You’re here?”
“Good to see you, too.” Reed’s eyes dart from mine to Sam’s.
Sam stands, gives Reed a short wave and a “Hey, man.”
“Can I talk to you, Rill?” Reed looks at Sam. “Alone.”
“Of course. Sure.” I brush dirt from my knees and follow him to the beach.
When we reach the shore, Reed faces me, the rush of the lapping ocean biting near his heels. There’s a heat coming off Reed that reminds me too much of his grandfather. “So yeah, I’m here. Mind telling me what the hell you’re doing out here?”
I take a step back, search his face. “What’s with all the aggression?”
Reed runs his fingers through his sunlit hair, and I watch it shimmer back into place. Such a contrast to the tightness of his face, the hard lines that make his mouth sour. “How should I feel about crashing whatever this is?” He throws an annoyed gesture toward the dig site. “How much time are you spending with this guy, Rill?”
“Sam. His name is Sam and he’s my sternman and we’re spending an appropriate amount of time together.”
“Appropriate? You two looked pretty tight.”
I cross my arms over my chest. Everything about Reed’s attitude feels too harsh, too angry. “Do you want to save us both time and get to whatever it is you’re actually accusing me of doing?”
He turns to the sea, the rainbow tips of lobster buoys speaking such an easy language, one we can’t conjure between us now. “I’m jealous, Rill. Is that what you want to hear?”
“No, of course not. You have exactly zero reason to be jealous. I just needed . . .”
“Someone else.”
“No. You know it’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
I see the sadness in his eyes now, the need. I see my Reed, the person I used to trust with all of my private things. I take a deep breath and then let most of the truth escape. “I feel like home and routine and expectations are crushing me. My dad is everywhere, but he’s not here anymore and there isn’t anything I can do about it and that crushes me too.”
He reaches for my hand. “I know.”
“Coming here is just different. Sam doesn’t know about my dad, so . . . I don’t know . . . I guess I get to step out of my grief for a little bit. I know it’s selfish, but I also know I need a little selfish right now.”
“I get it. It’s just . . . It’s messing with my head, Rill.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s the pot.” I try a smile.
“No. Actually, it’s you being here with another dude. A dude I don’t even know.”
“Then get to know him. He’s nice. I need Sam’s help since my dad—”
“Fuck. I know. I’m a shit.” Reed rakes his hand through his hair again, lets out a shaky breath.
“You’re not a shit. You’re just jealous when there’s no need to be. Coming here is an escape, that’s all. It’s temporary.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“You still love me?” Reed’s eyes plead.
“I still love you.”
“You’re my moon, Rill. I want to be the one to help you.”
“You can. You are. I just need a little space. Things are . . . complicated. You know.”
“With fishing?”
Fishing. School. Grams. The girl who wants me to find her, the one who may have reached out to my mother and plays with my sanity now. The girl who might have the deepest connection to Malaga. “Fishing’s part of it.”
“Then let me help you.”
“You know you can’t.” Our pact. No talking politics or fishing between us. I move my finger back and forth between our chests. “What we have wouldn’t survive if we mixed in business. We both know that.”
I realize for the first time that I haven’t told Reed that I’m considering deferring college, maybe not leaving Gram at all. Why haven’t I told him? There is so much I haven’t told him. “I miss you too.”
“Can I come by tonight?”
I almost say yes, but I don’t want anyone visiting but the girl. I won’t be afraid this time. I’ll listen to her. Maybe ask her if she knew my mother, if she knows the Water People. If she is a Water Person. “Tomorrow would be better.”
“Not for me.”
I tickle him at his ribs. “This isn’t all about you.”
Reed separates us, but holds my waist at arm’s length, a sly smile at his lips. “Why not? Why can’t it all be about me?”
I smile.
“You’re sure this”—he thumbs toward Sam’s site—“isn’t anything to worry about?”
“I promise there’s nothing to worry about.” I tell Reed this full truth. I don’t want to hold Sam the way I’m holding Reed. Still, I’m hungry for the way Sam makes the world new for me, the way he’s my only connection to the girl right now. And maybe, to my mother.
Reed sets another kiss to my forehead. “Your moon?”
“Always.”
When I return to the dig site, Sam’s working the area of soil that held the small piece of redware. “Everything okay with the boyfriend?”
“More than okay.” But is this really true? Why have I been holding so much back from Reed?
“Is it me?” Sam’s rolling the earth on his screen so that the loose pebbles circle the edges.
“No. And yes.”
“Complicated?”
“What isn’t?”
“Too right.” Sam gives a short chuckle. He stands, comes to my side. He smells of the sun and the sea and the salted earth, so much that’s familiar. “But us spending time together complicates things more for you? Because I kind of get the vibe that there’s a lot that’s complicated for you, and I don’t want to be the person who adds to that.”
“You’re not.” Reed is. I am. This island, it’s history.
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“That’s good to hear, because I would totally lose in a fight with that dude.”
A soft smile spreads across my face. “It won’t come to that.”
“My ego thanks you.”
“Sam? I do need to get home. There’s this . . . well, I need to talk to my gram.” There’s only six weeks until the start of school.
“About Malaga?”
“No. A private thing.”
He takes a step back, nods me toward Fairtide. “Then what are you still doing here?”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
When I return home, I shower and get a text from Hattie: Did any Coast Guard hotties board your boat today?
Me: sadly, no
Hattie: What a waste
Me: why do I even bother going out to sea?
Hattie: IKR? Unless you can lick the face of one of those GORGE boys, what’s the point????
Me:
It feels good to joke with Hattie. Do the normal things like everything is normal.
I brew St. John’s Wort for mental clarity.
I ask Gram to the small front parlor so she’s away from her kitchen, the chores that keep her busy in that space. I need her full concentration.
Our parlor was created when formal visits were customary. I know the walls have heard their share of difficult conversations. Births, deaths, hardships, and celebrations. Maybe even discussions on the fate of Malaga Island residents. Did my ancestors support profit or humanity? I want to think the latter, but I know it’s naive. Every early Maine settler fought hard against the harshness of the climate. I’ve always believed that the struggle against the elements was enough to unite us along the coast, even today. But Malaga’s history tells the opposite truth.
Gram joins me, takes a seat in the wingback chair. I grew up knowing the story of each one of our well-used antiques, but that chair was different. I was young when it arrived from Portland, brought by an elderly man who drove it to our doorstep saying Gram’s grandfather had saved his family from starvation when that old man was a small boy. I remember the story not making sense: How could the thin, wrinkled man with his missing tooth and heavy limp have ever been a young boy?
That man told me and Dad and Gram about the winter my great-grandfather stocked his family’s shed with salted cod and crammed their cellar with potatoes. I want to believe my family helped the islanders in a similarly charitable way. Or maybe the islanders helped my family.
The old man said he could never repay the debt, but wanted to give us a chair he’d crafted with his own hands nearly sixty years ago. And his chair was beautiful. My small fingers traced the carvings on the dark wood arms, followed the lines of intricate fish forever swimming upstream within that wood. It was a year later when I found my great-grandfather’s name carved into the inside of one of the legs. NATHANIEL IKABERTH MURPHY: SAVER OF MEN. I’d been under the chair looking for a rogue Lego but I’d found a piece of my family history. I never told Gram or Dad about his name being carved there. I liked thinking I had a secret tucked away in my very own house.
Now I think my family has always had secrets.
I pass Gram her mug, and she settles against the rise of the handcrafted chair. “Let’s get to your business, Rilla. I’m not growing younger.”
“I need you to tell me about our finances.” Counting other people’s money—making assumptions about what they can and can’t afford—is something Dad raised me never to do. But now I’m asking after his money, what he left. “Can we even afford to send me to school?”
“You earned your scholarship. No one is going to take that away.”
“But the other stuff ? Paying the bills. Keeping the boat and the house.”
She puts up her hand. “We’ve got enough to keep the boat and the house in good repair. We’re not the richest folks, but we’ll be all right.”
“What does ‘all right’ mean?”
“It means ya need to remember that your scholarship is merit based, Rilla. The University of Rhode Island is offering to pay your tuition because they want you. Have ya ever known anyone in our family to steer off course once they set their mind to its particular coordinates?”
My mother. She steered way off course. “No, I haven’t.”
“Ya got a mind that’s smarter than any I’ve come across yet. It seems to me ya already know the right thing to do.” Her future is so tied to the choice I make. She’ll have to survive more loss if I go.
“But how can it be that simple?”
“Nothing simple about it, Rilla. Ya leaving for Rhode Island will change everything.” She stares at me with determination. “But we can handle change. Nothing we haven’t done before.”
“You’ll be okay, like, we can afford the house? Hattie’s mom can’t keep the lights on most months.”
Gram nods. “Well, Hattie’s circumstances are . . . well, they are what they are. Our concerns are different.”
“You can keep the lights on if I’m not fishing?”
She tsks. “I can read by candlelight if it means the first person in our family going to college.”
“Gram.”
She waves me away. “Ya know what I’m saying, Rilla. I won’t be around forever, and I’m not leaving this earth until I see ya with your next diploma. Ya hear me?” She shifts in her seat, leans forward. “My grandfather built this house before mortgages ever existed. I’ve got enough to pay my share of taxes to the government and keep the water flowing. I find I don’t need much more than that. Your scholarship will cover your books and you’ll have to earn your spending money same as always.”
“I’ll haul in the summers when I come home. Work during school breaks, even in the winter.”
Gram sets down her
mug, crossing her hands over her middle. “Seems like you’ve got it all worked out.”
I don’t have anything worked out. “Far from it.”
“What is all this doubt ya have? Why are ya bringing this up now?”
“I miss him, Gram. I miss Dad. I know you do too, and I hate thinking of you here all alone.”
“Being alone doesn’t make a person lonely. You’ll still be with me. No amount of distance can change that.”
Gram’s words make me think of my mother, gone for more than a decade. And me being too selfish to let Gram keep my mother with us by telling stories of when things were good. “Do you miss her? My mother?”
Gram gives me a startled look. “Every single day.”
“Do you . . . talk to her?”
“She writes every now and then. I think it’s hard for her, knowing that she’s stayed away.” Gram searches my eyes. “Can I ask why you’re asking?”
So many reasons I never expected. “I was out on the island today, with Sam. I found a piece of pottery, the kind that washes up on our shore all the time.” I pull in a deep breath, let it out. “It reminded me of her. The way she’d talk about the Water People. That’s what she called them, right? The voices she heard.”
Gram nods. “Yes.”
“Did she ever tell you what the voices said?”
“No.” Gram lowers her head. “I just know they were enough to drive her away.”
“Did you ever hear the voices?”
Gram looks to me. “No, Rilla. That was a particular struggle only your mother had to deal with.”
“Does she still hear them?”
“I think things are better for her now.”
“Better now that she’s not here?”
“Yes. Hard as that is, yes.”
It’s a hard thing to hear.
“Was it . . . ?” I search for the words. “Did she always talk of them? The Water People?”
Gram leans back, her whole body shifting into memory. “No. She was a happy child, Rilla. I never had an ounce of worry beyond normal child-rearing concerns.”
“So then . . . when did she start to hear voices?”