Portion of the Sea

by Christine Lemmon

  The same man that ruffled my feathers from before picked her up and carried her down the hall and into our room. When he laid her on the bed, her eyes opened and looked around for me and then spoke her first words. “True gentlemen are merciful toward the absurd and never mistake personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, Ava. And true gentlemen make everyone feel at home, despite collision of feeling or suspicion.”

  The man gave me a smirk and walked out of the room. Dahlia and I removed her burdensome dress and corset, and then I rummaged through the boxes until I found her sleeping attire. I pulled it over her head and then rested her back down on the bed.

  Dahlia collapsed beside her on the bed with her dress still on.

  I kissed Abigail on the forehead. “I am sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to do this to you,” I said, pulling a blanket up over both. She closed her eyes and fell asleep, and so I continued in a whisper. “But I can’t help it. I think it’s inherited, probably from Grandmalia.” I was glad neither of them heard that. I wanted those to be my last words. I was too tired to debate any further.

  I climbed into bed and pushed the blankets down to my toes. I was glad when Dahlia started humming. I loved her humming. It always made me believe the world was a good, safe place and that I could rest my eyes and fall into slumber with not a care in the world. She always hummed the same tune. Her mama had hummed it to her as a little girl, and she had then hummed it to my mama. Some day I’d hum it to my babies. Then again, I didn’t want babies if having babies meant I needed a husband first. So, instead, I decided I’d hum it to my grandchildren, if that were possible without having to have children first.

  But tonight, when her humming turned into snores, I was still alert, so I crossed the room to a dark wooden desk with a pineapple carving on it, lit a candle, and opened my journal. I had a lot on my mind, the move and all, and worried about my father and missing my friends back home. There I wrote until the wee hours when I heard a knock at our door.

  “Are you awake in there?” It was Tootie’s voice.

  “Yeah.”

  She opened the door and peeked her head in. “I noticed light under your door. Don’t go falling asleep without blowing it out.”

  “Oh no,” I replied. “I’m sorry about tonight, about what my mother calls my wild and lawless temper and outspokenness and for causing a scene out there. It all just makes me so mad.”

  “What?”

  “Men. They can drink and hang out at saloons while the women are living out their God-given roles as wives and mothers, keepers of the household and guardians of the moral purity of all who live therein, and we’re the ones who are pagans if we don’t feel like doing all that domestic stuff.”

  “Is that all you think women do?”

  “It’s what they’re supposed to do, and if you ask me, they deserve to be married to angels, not men.”

  Tootie laughed loudly and then covered her mouth in response to a change in Dahlia’s snore pattern. “What are you doing up so late?”

  “Writing.”

  “Writing what?”

  “About our journey here.”

  “You like books?”

  “Love them, especially anything by Louisa May Alcott,” I said. She was my favorite author, and at least one hundred cubic feet of tears per second spewed out of me for two weeks straight after she died. “I’ve read everything she’s ever written. It’s sad there will be no more books from her.”

  “I’ve got some of her books. I get them from a boat that comes by the island. Does your mama read?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Your grandmother?”

  “Nope.”

  “You keep reading and writing, you hear? There’s a school on the island I’m sure you’ll attend in the fall. Reading and writing can change a girl’s world, you know. There’s power in creating a world for yourself.”

  I thought about what she had meant as she closed the door. I wanted a new world for myself. I wanted a world where my mama stayed happy dancing in flowers that blossomed year-round and where Dahlia could have her husband back and her senility gone and where boys would have to cook and clean and be nice and girls would be smart and in charge. I wanted a world where I no longer had to do chores from sunrise to sunset and where I had more time to read and write so I could know such a world or better yet, create one of my own. Reading and writing about an interesting and adventurous fictional world is far better than living in a plain and boring real world.

  VIII

  LYDIA

  I ONLY CLOSED AVA’S journal when I became self-conscious that girls, entering the bathroom for a second powdering, might peek under the bathroom stall and recognize my same pair of shoes still there. And when the bell rang, I knew my behind belonged in study hall anyway, and not on the toilet reading.

  It was the first time I ever enjoyed the quietness of study hall. I didn’t want to write notes or toss spit wads or make faces at the gawking boys from two rows back. I wanted to sit there and think about the world I wanted to create for myself.

  I wanted a bigger one—a world that stretched outside the walls of the mansion I lived in, a world I could discover for myself, not one I observed through the backseat windows of a limousine. I wanted a world where girls had choices, like up to a hundred bus stops and they got to decide when and where to get off. I wanted a world where I could set my eyes on the things I wanted, like I had the flowers this morning, and go after them with no one stopping me.

  I thought about how I might get such a world. It wasn’t something Lloyd could buy for me. And I didn’t want to read about it in a novel or create a fictional one through creative writing. I wasn’t creative. Besides, there was already a world out there, and I knew nothing about it. I’d rather get to know more of the one out there before searching for another, and I knew exactly how I’d go about doing that. I’d ask my nannies to order me a newspaper subscription in my name, to be slid under my bedroom door every morning. And I’d have them wake me an hour earlier so I could read it. I’d get to know the world one step at a time, like a baby osprey taking its first flight. I’d start simple and eager as a fledgling.

  Learning about the world through current affairs all fit so nicely with my newfound plans of becoming a journalist. It was the most productive study hall I had ever sat through, I decided, and there was still more time; so, I opened the journal and continued reading about the world Ava lived in.

  Ava

  An hour later I was still sitting there at the desk listening to Dahlia snore while writing about the world when suddenly I heard a knock at the front door of the house and a man’s voice, and the sound of something being dragged down the hallway toward our room. It startled me, causing a big blob of ink to form on my paper. I stared at our door, trembling in hopes it wouldn’t open.

  I looked around the room for a weapon, and when I spotted a broom, I held it high over my head and stood behind the door. I’d use it if I had to. I swear I would. I’d slam an intruder over the head the way Dahlia used to smack those turkeys back home. I liked the turkeys, and I agree with Ben Franklin who favored the turkey as our national symbol, and I didn’t at all respect Dahlia for the way she treated the turkeys, but I’d do it for the sake of protecting us women. I’d do that and more. I’d do anything a man would do.

  I held my breath as the door opened and a tall, thin figure sauntered in dragging something large. I nearly fell facedown to the wooden floor with pride at the sight of him. It was Stewart. I quietly set the broom down on the floor and covered my mouth, trying to keep all my jubilance from noisily parading out of me. He had secured a Silver King and had returned to us, his beloved family.

  Tootie quickly tiptoed in behind him and set a bright lantern on the desk, lighting up the entire room. “Here, Stewart,” she whispered, handing him a second lantern. “So you can get yourself settled in.” She left.

  “Daddy?” I whispered from behind the door. “Is that really you?”

  His face was r
ed as a lobster from the sun, and when he looked into my eyes I couldn’t help but notice him tearing up. My daddy never cried before, and I didn’t know what to make of his teardrops. They weren’t clear like teardrops ought to be. I could only assume they were darkened from dirt, and I wondered whether they had left his ducts dirty like that or had picked up dirt on their trek down his dusty sunburned cheeks. As I got closer, I noticed his tears smelled like gin, but how could that be? God, my daddy would make a fortune if he produced gin droplets from his eyes.

  “You did it,” I said, choking back my own tears, for seeing Stewart, tenacious as a hemp plant, holding a silver fish of that magnitude over his head as if it were the ark of the Lord’s covenant, made me believe that anything at all was possible. “What a merry thing!” I declared.

  “I’ve never killed anything like this before, blossom,” he finally said to me.

  “It’s a fish,” muttered Dahlia, her head lifting from the pillow slightly.

  “You’ve never killed a fish before?”

  “Not one I loved,” said Stewart, lowering it into a cradle position in his arms. “I’ve got more respect for it than I’ve ever had for any person.”

  “Looks like you love it more than your own family, your wife,” stated Dahlia.

  Lydia

  I heard footsteps entering the study hall, and when I looked up to see the principal coming my way, I quickly slid my history textbook over Ava’s journal and pretended to read about the Spanish Civil War. Mr. Smith stopped walking and placed a note from the office on my desk. It read:

  Your father called. Just wanted to confirm you arrived safely to school. Thought you might like to know.

  Surely Lloyd must have found out that I refused to ride the limo this morning, that I was tardy for school, and that I lied to the secretary about our plane arriving this morning and the limo breaking down. But his note gave no indication of any concern. A part of me longed for a father who might stomp right over to school and address such issues with me, and I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I thought of Stewart loving that fish more than his family, and I only hoped my father didn’t love his work more than me. But I thought he did.

  I needed solace as I pulled the journal out from under the textbook and went on reading:

  Ava

  I watched Stewart, scraggly-looking, wobble across the room toward the end of Dahlia and Abigail’s bed where they had the sheet pulled up to their eyes to escape the smell. “You weren’t bit by anything, Daddy, a raccoon, dog?” I asked, watching him set the fish down on the bed, near their toes. “Because you’re moving like you’re rabid.”

  “Drunk, Ava. He’s drunk,” corrected Dahlia.

  “In God’s name, Stewart Witherton, get that stinking fish off our bed!”

  Abigail opened her eyes and looked at him as if she wanted to grab him by his delicate antennae and drop him in a pot of boiling water, and I knew she too had smelled gin in his tears.

  “But look at the size of it. One hundred and fifty pounds,” he said, wiping the sweat from his face. “I’ve decided to preserve it, give it eternal life mounted on this board. You like it?”

  “Yes,” I said, thrilled to see him holding in his hands a fish that was more than a fish. To me it represented accomplishment. Stewart achieved what we all had feared he couldn’t. He did it, and now he stood before us gleaming with pride. I grabbed a cloth and dabbed it at my father’s handsthat were covered with scabs.

  “Ava, shut that door and get into bed,” jabbed my mother. “Now that your father is back, we’re homesteading in the morning, and we all need our sleep.”

  I climbed into bed, and Dahlia slipped out of her bed to join me in mine. Stewart then got into bed with Mama.

  I lay in bed thinking of all the good that has happened. If Stewart could catch that fish, then maybe there were other things possible. Maybe things I could do with my life that I thought were impossible. I thought about the island. I had never known such beauty existed, but now I wondered whether there might be other forms of unknown beauty out there in the world. And maybe there was an oasis of hidden beauty deep within my own self, waiting to get discovered.

  “Grandmalia,” I whispered.

  “Go to sleep,” she said.

  “I will, but there’s something I want to tell you.”

  “Doesn’t your tongue ever tire? What is it?”

  “I want to be a writer one day, a famous writer.”

  “You got that desire from your granddaddy Milton. Did I ever tell you he wanted to be a poet?”

  “Yep, you did. Was he any good?”

  “Worst I’ve ever read,” she said softly, then rolled over and turned her back to me and I knew she was about to talk about Milton leaving her. “Why did he, the love of my life, have to turn into a deranged, wandering writer?” she asked. “I’ll tell you why,” she answered. “I loved Milton more than he loved me. That’s where I went wrong in life. Always marry a man that loves you more, you hear? Otherwise, they’ll go off and leave you for something they love more.”

  “Don’t worry about me. I’m never getting married,” I said.

  “You sound like your mother. She said that once. She also said she wanted to be a ballerina. Look at her now. She married your father, and that was the end of that. Eventually, your views will change. You’ll realize a woman’s place in the world.”

  I didn’t like what she was saying to me. I tried telling myself that my desires and ambitions are gusty strong and that they’re not going to be blown over by negative words.

  “You just wait and see, Grandmalia. I’m going to write novels. I’ll write novels that will make you proud.”

  “Then do it now, young lady, at your age, before the trivialities of domestic chores and insanity set in. I don’t know if I ever told you this, but your granddaddy Milton may have been crazy. He’d have his lows and then his highs, and I’d give him hot salt baths to calm him down. Your mother is certainly reminding me of him. I just hope you don’t have it in you. It’s too early to tell.”

  As Dahlia began to hum, I began counting on all ten fingers how many years I had left before my own sanity, now blooming profusely, might whither away, and then I began counting how many years I had left before I’d have to get married, and I don’t know which I feared more, the insanity or the domestic triviality. I did calculate that the triviality would set in first, then the insanity. And I wondered if the triviality is what causes the insanity. No, chores didn’t make my mama sad. The dark winter months back north did. And I don’t think sadness is the same as insanity, despite Grandmalia lumping it all together.

  When her humming stopped and I could no longer see her beady eyes glowing red in the dark room, I knew she had fallen asleep. I wanted more than anything to fight back, to slay the dragon that tried mutilating my dreams. And she wasn’t the only dragon. She was just one. The world was filled with cowardly dragons, people who chase after and tear down the dreams of others rather than chasing after and accomplishing their own.

  “I beg to differ,” I proclaimed softly to her snores. “I can do with my life whatever I want. And what is it that I want? For starters, a late-night walk on the beach and no one is going to stop me.”

  I stood up and tiptoed over to the door of our room.

  Lydia

  “You can do it,” I muttered, wishing Ava could hear me. Instead, the boy next to me raised an eyebrow at me. “I wasn’t referring to you,” I snarled athim. “I was referring to all the girls in the world. They can do anything they want with their lives, even become presidents of companies or of America.”

  The bell rang, saving me from further conversation with the boy, and as the students burst forth from the study hall desks and out into the halls, I stood there a moment. “I believe in you, Ava, just as Marlena believes in me.”

  I felt bad that her grandmother didn’t think she could ever achieve her dreams, and if only she could hear me cheering her on, she’d know there was one person out th
ere, a dream buddy, who knows her intimate ambitions and supports them. Ava and I would be friends. We’d be walking toward our dreams together were we living at the same time. But still, I’d consider her my dream buddy. Dreams never die. Nor does the written word, and I could almost hear her voice. If she could become a fiction writer, then I could become a journalist, I thought to myself as I walked down the hall, quietly passed the teachers’ conference room, and stopped near the main entrance of the school. I glanced out the windows, craving the outdoors, but I continued onward to my dreaded home economics. And like a robot so familiar with the programmed route, I didn’t need to look where I was going, so I opened Ava’s journal and read as I walked.

  Ava

  I knew I should be sleeping but I couldn’t. I felt too inspired, so I walked down the hall, quietly passing a room of men sitting in the smoke of Cuban cigars. I stole my own whiff, then opened the front door and stepped outside. I walked to the beach, thinking the entire way about how badly I wanted to become a fiction writer.

  And when I kicked off my slippers and set foot in the sand, I was aware that my mother and father would lock me up had they known their young lady was walking on the beach alone and at night. But by the time my toes touched the warm water, it also became clear to me what I didn’t want for my life—a husband. Boys—all but the one who had prayed in the periwinkles for my daddy—were ugly, rude and dirty. Stewart was a good daddy, but the way my mama glared at him whenever he walked into the room taught me one thing: A man doesn’t make a woman happy. Quite the contraire! I wanted happiness. I wanted a world where girls grow up to be happy ladies. And besides, having a husband would mean having babies and I didn’t want to risk dying during childbirth like so many women had been doing.

  When I looked up at the stars, I missed my friends back in Kentucky. I could only hope they too might reach these revelations. There was no way for me to share my new worldly views with them. Before moving to Florida, we shared books and lunches, and the basic, primitive belief that boys were nasty and that we’d rather swallow a raw shrimp than kiss the lips of any boy. We never took it any further than that. By no means had we ever said we’d never marry. And we never shared our ambitions. I had no idea what my friends back home dreamed of doing one day or whether they’d given it any thought.