by L. E. Waters
“The armada ships have come to harbor here, fleeing the storms. They’re restocking supplies and looking for volunteers.” Her voice lifts up optimistically at the end.
He clears his throat. “Are you telling me I should sign on?”
She gets nervous and begins picking lint from her muslin skirt. “I was only thinking you might want to ask what the pay would be?”
“I am broken, but if you want me to suffer, I will do anything for you.”
I hear my mother walk over to him, and I gather they’re embracing, and my lip involuntarily pulls up in one corner.
“No, I’ll speak to the lady of the house tomorrow and plead to have her bring us.”
∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞
That night, I go to bed only to wake up hearing the noises I’ve grown so used to coming from the bed my stepfather and mother share. I know all too well what is occurring right behind me. I try to go back to bed as fast as I can, but I can’t fall back asleep until his unashamed grunting ends.
As soon as the sun comes up, I run out of the house. I skip breakfast, even though my stomach is aching from hunger, just to avoid having Hector catch me. Once I’m out on the streets, I feel safe. I waste the day by making my usual rounds to all of my favorite places. I go to the house in the market where an old man always gives me an apple if I roll his cart from his shed and push it to his spot down the street.
Then I sit on the docks and eat every bit I can chew off the apple, only spitting out the seeds. I watch the ships come in and unload their goods and ship back out of port. I stay there for hours. The water is clear and a deep blue, especially against the rocky coast. The bay is large and sheltered, with our small, walled city on the peninsula out in the center. Today I see the ships my mother spoke about. It looks as if the whole horizon is filled with ships. I’ve never seen so many in my life.
There are many children running wild in the streets. I never have the courage to go up and talk to them, but I sit and watch them play from afar. When my stomach starts gnawing again, I have to distract myself by running up to the graveyard. The cemetery is right beside the stone cathedral up a small, gradual hill from the water. There’s a worn pathway up the center with the most beautiful statuaries on top of the wealthy people’s graves. One of my favorites is a beautiful angel with her wings spread over a child’s grave—Don Tomas, 1580-1587—and I always wish I had his parents. My other favorite is one with the Virgin Mary carved from stone. She has her head down and her hand covering her face, weeping.
I wish Papa’s stone was fancy like that. His is at the very top in the pauper’s graves, which are unmarked except for a small stone embedded in the ground with a number on it. Number seventy-seven. At least he had lucky numbers. I spend the time wiping away the dirt and moss that would creep over his stone, and gather any sort of free beauty I can find in the woods and fields near it. If there are no wild flowers to gather, I find shiny sticks or smooth rocks. I remember when he took me down to the water to skip stones I found for him. Every time I tried, my father laughed as mine sank after hitting the water, and I watched in awe as he threw his, and the stone seemed to skip off into the horizon like it had wings.
I bring him a nice flat and smooth stone, place it on his grave, and imagine him saying, “This is perfect; let’s watch it fly.”
He died before he could ever teach me how to skip.
When I see the sun starting to go down, I race off to the market again to bring the old man’s cart back in for another apple I start salivating for before I even reach for it from his spotted hand. Then I get nervous that it’s time to go back home and pray my mother doesn’t have to stay late for her Lady. I creep up to the window and try to see if my mother is cooking dinner, when I’m grabbed by my collar.
“What do we have here?” His breath makes my eyes water. “You ran away again without doing your chores,” he says with his voice going up and down in a singsong way.
This means my mother still isn’t home.
“You know what your punishment will be, and I don’t understand why you make me do this to you.”
He drags me back into the house into our bedroom. He closes the door and walks to his trunk to get the too familiar crop. I make a dash for the door, but I’m stopped by a kick to the side of my thigh, sending me crashing into the door. He’s on top of me quickly and hits every unexposed area, any area that can be concealed from my mother. After he’s finished, and I stop screaming and give in to crying, he sits back on his bed. I don’t attempt to get up but try to rub away the sting from my thighs and back, curled up on the floor.
He’s still holding his whip in his hand, scratching the two moles on the side of his jaw where hair won’t grow.
He stares at me with his black eyes. “It’s your fault your mother won’t have a job. They don’t want any misbehaving bastards at their country villa.”
I wonder if this is true and keep sniffling.
“You know you’d be doing us all a favor if you went out tomorrow and never came back.” He keeps laughing. “Your mother has practically said that to me, that she wished she didn’t have to worry about you or care for you anymore.”
I wish it wasn’t true.
“I’m going to keep beating you and beating you until you get tired of it and leave. Or I might get lucky one of these days and hit you hard enough that you never get back up.”
“I’m going to tell her this time.” I start getting up, and he stands over me.
“This time!” His voice rises up to a squeal. “You’ve done it before, and how’d that work out? She always believes me. You see she loves me more than you.”
I hate that he’s right.
“Just go, go right now. Don’t come back; we’ll all be better off.” He opens the door wide.
I want to get away from him and away from his words. I wish I could believe my mother would pick me over him, but I’m not sure. She’s taken his side in everything, and even when I showed her my bruises, he would make up some story of something terrible I did, and then she sends me to bed without dinner, with him laughing silently behind her back. I can’t trust her, and part of me feels he’s right, she does wish I’d leave. Leave her to start a new life with Hector.
I run, and when I turn around to close the front door, I see triumph in his cold eyes, and the last words I hear are, “Don’t come back.”
I don’t know where to go. These streets are dangerous at night, and my mother always makes me come in when the sun goes down. I keep running along the stone road cupping the harbor, but I’m running without any destination in mind. I keep searching my memory for any place I might go, and the only one I think I can go to.
Chapter 2
I knock on the door. It takes a long time, and by how slow he’s shuffling, I realize that is why it’s taking so long. He smiles when he sees me, but then concern creeps over his face.
“What brings you here so late, boy?”
“I have no place to go tonight. Can I stay with you?”
His eyes widen and then he runs his hand over his wiry beard. “You have no home?”
“No, sir.”
He glances back into his apartment as an old woman calls for him.
“It’s nothing. I’ll be right back!” he yells to her, rubbing a large mole by his eye worriedly.
He whispers now, “You can’t stay with me, but you can sleep in the shed. For one night!”
He points to the shed where his fruit cart is. “Go out to the shed, and I’ll come out to unlock it when I get a chance.”
I go to the shed, but it’s almost an hour before I see his hunched form shuffle out and darkness has already fallen.
“Boy?” he calls out into the darkness.
“Here, sir.”
His hand shakes as he pulls his long key from his coat pocket. It’s excruciating watching him fumble over and over again trying to get the key into the lock hole.
“Tricky little thing.” He finally gets it in,
and it pops open. A little white terrier runs out happily around his master’s legs. I’m surprised he keeps his dog in the shed.
The old man pats the dog on the head. “Bella, good girl.” Then looks at me and says, “She keeps the rats away from my apples.” He puts his hand on my shoulder. “Now, boy, I have my whole cart filled with fruit. I’m trusting you to take only one apple for your supper and leave the rest, since it’s all I have to make my living.” He pulls a piece of bread out of his pocket and puts it in my hand. “This is all I can give you.” He points in the shed. “There’s a cart cover in there made of burlap you can sleep on.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Just one night.”
I bow my head to him and walk into the shed as he closes it behind me. I hear him fumble once again with the lock, and I realize I should have relieved myself before I went in. I’m locked in for the night. If he dies in his sleep, no one will know I’m here. As soon as I make a bed out of the scratchy burlap, I take the bread and stuff it into my mouth, barely chewing it before I hurry it down to my impatient stomach. Bella watches me eagerly with her golden eyes, and I feel so bad, I give her a small piece, even though my stomach moans in protest. I take the fattest apple I can find, and it disappears too fast. I lie back and look up at the mountain of red shining apples and can’t sleep with the terrible temptation of devouring the pile. Bella, happy to have someone in her shed, curls up in the crook between my shoulder and head and lays her head in the dip of my neck. We’re glad to have each other.
In the morning, the keys jingle, and I’m relieved he didn’t die overnight. Bella gets up and wags her tail at his approach. His wife opens up the back door and croaks out, “Bella,” but the dog stays right by my feet.
The old man laughs. “I think she likes you. She never passes up sausage in the morning.”
I help him move his cart to market, and Bella runs beside me the whole way. He reaches for the usual apple but puts his finger up for me to wait, and my mouth waters as he withdraws a greasy parcel from his pocket and hands it to me. I can smell what it is—sausages! I take them quickly, and I’m so happy I hug him and nearly knock him over. He smiles and coughs as he regains his balance. I run off as Bella follows.
“Don’t forget to help me at sunset!” he calls out between cupped hands. “And take care of Bella!”
I’m so happy to have a friend that I share my sausages with her. She is the whitest white and has a look to her eyes that makes her different from any dog I’ve known: a spark of human understanding. She follows me to the docks and even snatches a fish from a basket left by some fishermen. The look on their faces as she pulls a herring out of the basket that is half the size of her and runs back to me is priceless. As soon as I see what she did, I start running, trying to find a good place for us to escape to.
When she drops the fish for me, I say, “You can eat it like that, but I can’t.”
I try to think about how I can find a fire to cook it on. I pick up the fish and walk along the dirt road until I catch the smell of an open fire. I follow it around some houses and see a small lean-to made out of sailcloth and a small fire with an empty spit over it. I approach slowly, but Bella runs right into the tent.
“Bella!” I whisper, but nothing seems to happen, and I peer in and see Bella sitting down on someone’s tattered quilt.
With no one in sight, I risk using the fire for a few minutes and take my shirt off to take the skewer off and pierce the already gutted fish. My mouth waters as the smell emerges from the fish, but it seems to draw the attention of someone else.
“Get out of my house!”
I hear a voice behind me and turn to see a boy who is either slightly older than me or simply taller. He is dirty, unkempt, and carries a large stick in his hands that he holds over me threateningly. Bella barks and grabs on to his pant leg and begins thrashing.
“Get him off!”
“Bella!” I shout, and she runs back over to me.
“Look, I was just using your fire for a minute. If you let me finish cooking this fish, I’ll give you some.”
He thinks about it for a moment and gives a stiff nod. He sits across from me with his thumbnail between the small space in his teeth and watches the fish turn in the fire.
“I think it’s done,” he says only a minute after waiting.
“You must be starving.”
He holds his stomach. “I couldn’t find anything all day.”
I take the fish off the spit as he pulls out a knife. I straighten away from him, but he reaches for the fish and fillets it, giving me the bigger half. He gives the skin to Bella.
It’s the best fish I’ve ever had, and after it’s gone, I get up to leave and say, “Thanks for the fire.”
“Where are you going?”
“Don’t you want me to leave?’
“Well,” he says as he dribbles his stick, making an eight on its side over and over again in the dirt, “there’s nothing else to do.”
I sit again, and Bella crawls into my lap and lies down.
“My name’s Pepe. What’s yours?”
“Luis.”
“Do you live in a house?”
“No.”
“Do you have parents?”
“Not anymore.”
He looks happy about this.
“I live here and can move whenever I want to. If I feel like being by the water, I move. If I feel like being in the woods, I go.”
“That sounds really good.”
I envy his little lean-to, studying it to see if I can find material to do the same.
“All I need, I have right here.” He pats his pocket proudly and slowly pulls out each item. “This here’s my knife. Used to be my father’s before he died fighting the Dutch. Here’s Auradona; she’s my flint rock. If I lost her, I’d be done for. Last, I have my sewing kit.”
He unwraps a piece of cloth with a needle made of bone and one spool of black thread.
“It was my mother’s. I use it to fix all of the holes in my clothes and the quilt I found.” He carefully wraps everything back up. “She gave it to me before she dumped me at Saint Mary’s.” He points back up the hill.
“St. Mary’s?”
“The orphanage.” He begins making his eights again incessantly. “You don’t ever want to end up there.” His eyes light up. “That place was so full of kids, the nuns would try to control them, but they were so wild, one of the nuns went crazy. She started running up and down the hall with her hands up by her head saying ‘Baah-dah-da-da-da-da-da-da-da!’”
I start laughing, and he gets up to show me.
“Baah-dah-da-da-da-da-da-da-da!” he screams and runs around the fire.
I keep laughing until Bella begins barking, and as I look up, I see dark clouds moving in.
“Pepe, I have to go. A storm is coming.”
“Where do you sleep?”
“I have to go!” I start running. “Come, Bella!”
“I might have room for you if you need a place to stay!” he screams out over the distance, but I only wave him off, trying to get to the market before the sky opens up.
The old man’s already put the burlap cover on and is trying to move the cart but is having trouble. I run right up and start helping him push. He releases the cart and pats his head with his handkerchief as he sighs. “Thank the Lord.”
I push as fast as I can without toppling the apples, but the rain begins pouring down as we round the corner to his house.
We’re getting soaked as he stands with the lock and once he opens it, he gives me an apple. He asks as I turn to go, “Where are you going?”
“I thought you didn’t want me to stay another night?”
“It’s pouring. God would strike me dead if I sent you out in this rain after helping me. Now get in quick.”
He smiles and leaves but comes back ten minutes later with a few things under his arms. He hands them to me. “Bella will be happy to have you again. She hates storms.”
After pulling the door closed, he locks the shed. There’s no light in the shed, but I can feel he gave me a whole loaf of bread with a pat of butter and what feels like an old nightshirt. It smells a little of him, but I’m soaked to the bone and start to get a chill. It feels wonderful to put on the soft, old shirt, and I make my bed of burlap and share my dinner. When the cracking thunder rattles the shed, Bella won’t stop shaking. I try to fold her ears over so she can’t hear it, but she doesn’t relax until it’s passed. I think of Pepe and wonder how it must be sleeping on the ground tonight.
Chapter 3
The morning routine is the same, and Bella and I run off with our sausages. I decide to save one, even though my stomach wants it, and run off to find Pepe. His camp is empty. I wander back in the brushy area above the large rocks by the water and hear a strange call.
“Chick-a-bow!”
I look up and see Pepe standing on a huge rock, calling to me. I run up quickly and see he was smart in making his lean-to under a boulder that sticks out like a ledge.
“Were you dry last night?”
“As a biscuit,” he says proudly. “What about you? Where’d you go?”
“I know a good place.” Not wanting to admit someone has to help me.
“I smell something good.” He puts his nose up to the air, and his light green eyes sparkle as I bring out the sausage I saved for him.
“You owe me,” I say as he throws the sausage into his mouth and smiles after. Why does that space in his teeth always draw my eyes so?
“I’m still starving.” He rubs his bony ribs. “Let’s go and see what we can find at the docks.”
“Bella got that fish yesterday.” I laugh.
“Maybe she’ll do it again.”
We hide behind some crates by a pier as the fishermen are bringing in their baskets. Once Bella sees them put one on the dock, she runs for it, but this time, the fishermen shout at her as she nears. She tries to bite their ankles, and once they shake her loose, she runs in circles as they try to kick her. One of the fishermen knocks into the basket, spilling the fish in the whole chaotic scene. Bella quickly grabs a large fish and takes off with two fishermen after her. Pepe looks at me, and we both know she’s heading right for us. We run off back into the street, and Pepe just misses getting hit by a carriage. He’s much faster than me, but I see a small woodshed by a house and whistle. Pepe comes running back, and we hide, along with Bella and her huge fish.