Portion of the Sea

by Christine Lemmon

  “Lord,” my mother said as she pulled the sheets from around us and off the bed. “Could it be, Mother?”

  “No,” Dahlia insisted. “She’s been working too hard. For over a year now that child has been beset by long days of labor. She’s exhausted, mentally and physically. No wonder her bones are aching.”

  “She just turned fifteen,” added Abigail. “She’s still growing into a young lady. They’re growing pains. That’s what she’s feeling. Haven’t you noticed? She’s growing like a sea oat, and those legs of hers are tall and long like a wood stork.”

  “Should you send for a doctor?” I asked.

  “No. You don’t need any doctor,” said Dahlia, turning to look at my mother. “I’ll tell you what she needs. She needs time off to be a girl before she turns into a lady.”

  “Should we have her stay in bed today?”

  Dahlia stood up and walked over to the window and looked out. “If that’s what she wants to do. I think she should do whatever she wants today.”

  “I think I agree with you for once, Mother,” said Abigail. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of it myself. I’ll bet any day now she’ll become a young woman, and that alone deserves a break, doesn’t it?”

  X

  I GOT DRESSED IN my black puffed sleeve wool bathing costume and walked out the door of the small, palmetto-thatched house we erected with the help of our neighbors just one year ago. I felt like I was walking away from Monday itself. To me, president of the unladylike club, all the never-ending housework over the last year had become absolute drudgery.

  I passed our garden, where the tomatoes would grow, and walked past clumps of palmetto trees and then through rows of citrus trees. Our crops had proven successful, and we had been sending them to the mainland aboard steamships. It was the first time I had ever walked away from it all long enough to feel any pride.

  Beginning the morning after Stewart returned to us with the tarpon he had caught, we marched around the island of wild, untouched beauty six days in search of our land, and when we found it I had wanted to shout and blow trumpets, but there had never been any time for that. We laid claim to a 160-acre tract not far from the Gulf of Mexico and started work immediately.

  When Dahlia told me to do whatever I wanted today, the only thing I could think of was walking out to the beach to hop over waves, as slight as they were on this side of the state. There, maybe, I could get a different look at the sunrise. I no longer liked sunrises and dreaded them representing the start of chores. But this morning, I wanted the sunrise to mean something other than time to start laundry on Mondays, ironing and mending on Tuesdays, baking on Wednesdays, and deep household cleaning on Fridays. And now I wanted to remember why I ever thought the sunrise was beautiful in the first place, which I did, a long time ago.

  While rounding Sanibel’s eastern end, I noticed plovers, least terns, and black skimmers nesting directly in the sand, which they do in the spring, and an ibis was flaunting its iridescent pink bill and legs. I stopped walking and listened carefully, for I thought I heard the Spirit of God hovering over me, subtle as the first signs of spring in Florida. I’m sure the Spirit of God was with me year-round, not only in the spring, but I’ve been too busy to stop and listen for it.

  I felt blessed with a sense of worth and dignity as I glanced up at the horizon. The sun had already woken and was making its way up, faithfully and dutifully, as always, never skipping out a day here or there, and I wondered how that sun did it. Even on rainy days, there it went, hiding behind clouds but still getting up to make the world more beautiful.

  If I could spend my days writing, I’d rise up faithfully each morning as well. I envied the sun for doing its one significant task, for lighting up the world and making it more beautiful. I wanted to write of a beautiful world.

  I sat down a moment in the sand and yanked off my lace-up bathing slippers, then my long black stockings and, finally, the fancy cap I had over my hair. I felt free and naughty, for the sun was now touching parts of me that I knew it shouldn’t be touching. As I glanced out at the bay, which looked like a bucket of blue-green paint, I spotted my daddy sailing about. I hoped he was too far out to see that my ankles and feet were naked and exposed. I stood up and continued to walk, watching the bay for his boat, but then I looked down, which was a good thing, or I’d have stumbled over some boy as if he were a piece of driftwood.

  “What are you doing?” I asked the boy. He was down on his knees in the sand, kneeling over a half-dead pelican.

  He glanced up. “Fidgeting with the bird,” he answered. “It’s injured. A fishing line.”

  “Need my help?”

  “No,” he said, struggling to hold it down.

  “Sure looks like you do.”

  “Maybe I’d want your help if you weren’t a girl,” he said.

  “That type.”

  “What?” he asked. “What type?”

  I wasn’t going to waste time telling him he’s the typical boy who doesn’t think a girl is of help except with household chores.” Look, my daddy’s out in the bay. I can signal for him to come help, but by then your bird might die a slow torturous death. Or, I can help right here and now. What’s it going to be?”

  “Get down and restrain him. Hold his wings against his body.”

  I tossed my wired sun hat on the ground. I hadn’t ever helped a bird before, or any boy, especially one I did not know, a stranger boy, but it’s not to say I have never done the work of a man. If I weren’t wearing a clumsy dress and bloomers trimmed with ribbons and bows, he’d see the wonderfully unladylike muscles on my arms, shoulders, and back that prove I’ve done more physical labor than most boys, maybe more than this one, although he had an impressively solid build himself, I might add objectively.

  I yanked a cloth out from under his shoe and then wrapped it around the bird’s body. The boy without flinching pushed the hook’s barb through the skin. He then cut off the barb and slowly backed out the hook.

  “He didn’t swallow it. Thank God,” he said, standing up with the bird in his arms. And then his eyes met mine for the first time and I knew him. He recognized me too for neither of us blinked until the bird started fussing.

  “I’ve seen you before,” I said. “But I can’t place it.”

  “My name is Jaden. I know exactly where I’ve seen you,” he said, rubbing the head of the pelican in his arms. “It’s going to be okay, fuzzy head,” he told the bird. “I’ll take you home with me and feed you pureed fish.”

  “Where?” I asked. “Where do you know me from?”

  Jaden smirked and casually started walking.

  “Tell me!” I demanded, following suit. “Where do you know me from?”

  He kept walking, grinning. “You like periwinkles as much as your mama?”

  I tried not to blush. It was him, from a year ago, the boy who had prayed for my father as my mother rolled around lustfully in the dirt. I should have known it was him, not by his square jaw or his sandy blonde hair (sandy as in Midwestern sand, and not at all white as Sanibel sand), but by his eyes, for they were a clear green, almost as if I could see into them and know where I was stepping. His body looked stronger, thicker, and not at all puny like it had been a year ago. He was taller than me by about a foot and more handsome than any of the other boys in the world.

  “You look different than you did a year ago,” I said.

  “So do you.”

  “How?” I asked.

  His eyes were exploring me up and down, as if searching for a treasure, and I wondered whether this was the reason my daddy had warned me to stay away from boys. No girl should allow any boy to reach into her chest and grab her jewels, not without a fight. And there should be laws that protect women from this sort of thing and from the way boys are allowed to look at them.

  “How have I changed since the last time you saw me?” I asked again.

  “I might get myself in trouble answering a question like that,” he said, looking at me
now as if he wanted to hunt me for my plumage. “What about those flowers? You like them as much as your mother?”

  “I hate flowers,” I said, offended that he’d bring my mother and the periwinkles up and rub it in my face after I just helped him with the bird. “I hate them all—roses, hibiscus, dandelions—and I especially hate periwinkles.”

  “But you’re a girl.” He stopped walking and looked cockily at me. “Girls like flowers.”

  “They do,” I replied. “But I’m not an ordinary girl.”

  It wasn’t that I disliked flowers. I didn’t mind them. But I was my own person and didn’t want to be lumped into one big category of what I was supposed to like just because I was a girl. I also wanted to forget about my mama’s behavior that day we first arrived.

  “If flowers aren’t your thing, what is? What do you like?” he asked.

  I looked up at the sky over the bay. The rising sun had lent some pink to it, the same color as the cover of my journal, which my mama had given to me shortly before we left Kentucky. She gave it to me on a day where she had been feeling well and told me that if ever a time returns when she’s not feeling good and where I didn’t have anyone to talk to, I could write my thoughts in the journal. She hand-made it for me herself using the fabric from an old dress of mine to make its beautiful cover. “You still like the color pink, I hope,” she had said when she presented it to me. “It’s my favorite color, Mama,” I had said to her.

  “Oh good,” she answered, taking me in her arms. “You’re still my little girl. You’ll always be my little girl.”

  I did like pink, but I would like any color journal and anything she made for me. The first time I wrote in it, I felt like I was stepping into a world of vast lands, both unexplored and undeveloped, and along with it came responsibility to fill it up with beauty, and to leave only meaningful footprints behind, for starting my new journal was like being a pioneer arriving in a place of natural, primitive potential where I could cultivate whatever I wanted and I could hardly wait to plow through its pages.

  “I like to write,” I said, holding my neck tall and proud like a great blue heron.

  “What do you write?”

  I looked up at the sky. It was such a beautiful pink that even a boy would have to admit pink was beautiful. “Stuff,” I said. “I write about stuff.”

  “Good stuff?”

  I didn’t know what was good and what was bad. I’d have to read what I wrote to determine that and it had been nearly a year since I last wrote. I stopped writing after our first night at Tootie’s boarding house. After that, Abigail was feeling fine. She was there for me to chat with as we waited for weeks for our lumber to arrive on a sloop from Punta Gorda. Then we built our house and worked our land and my journal is still under my bed as it was last spring, unless Dahlia found it and swept it up on a deep-cleaning Thursday.

  “I write good stuff,” I told Jaden. “Novel material. Unpublished, but one day it will be good enough for all the women of the world to read. Sorry, but no men will ever be allowed to lay their eyes on anything I’ve written. It’s a rule and should be a law!”

  “So it’s girl stuff,” he said, making a face.

  I was offended. “No,” I corrected. “Good stuff, not girl stuff. In fact, I take back what I said about all the women of the world liking it. In truth, I don’t think everyone will. I know my own mama won’t. But I’m sure there’ll be at least one girl out there, somewhere, one day, who will hopefully read what I’ve written and maybe like parts of it.”

  “You sound different, smart.”

  “Thank you. I am, but I haven’t been to school in a year. I can’t wait to start up at the schoolhouse in the fall.”

  “I’ll see you there.”

  Just then the pelican started fidgeting in his arms. I bent down to pick up the cloth that had fallen and wrapped it once more around the bird the best I could. “Did I tell you my name was Ava?”

  “I’ll be seeing you, Ava.” He turned and walked away.

  “Wait,” I called after him. “That day I met you, I didn’t know you were moving here. I thought your boat went aground and you were just here for the day.”

  “Yeah, but we liked what we saw and homesteaded 160 acres overlooking the Gulf.” He looked as if he was about to turn and walk away once more, but then he said, “Are you as good as a boy at keeping secrets?”

  “I sure am. Why do you ask?”

  He stepped up close. “There’s an old shack on our property. Us boys call it ‘Fighting Conch,’ “he said in a low voice. “We’ve never invited a girl there before, but since you’re a writer and you’re smart, I was thinking, why don’t you come by one of these nights. We’re usually there around one o’clock in the morning. Don’t bring anyone.”

  “How dare you! Why would a lady like me show up at some fighting shack alone in the middle of the night? I should report you to my daddy.”

  “First of all, we don’t fight there. We have fun. And secondly, you don’t present like a lady, and thirdly, you’re a writer. I’m sure you’re always in search of good writing material,” he said, his eyes now a deeper green like the depths of the bay. “But you don’t have to accept the invitation.”

  “I could never,” I said. “My daddy is as protective as a sea oat.”

  “He doesn’t have to know about it. I told you, it’s a secret. You’ve got to wait for a full moon, then follow the beach west until you spot a piece of driftwood big as a bench, then head up and there you’ll find us and the shack. We’re only there on full moons so don’t try coming on any crescent moon or quarter moon nights.”

  I shook my head in disbelief and gave him the look I reserve for pagans.

  “Forget it. I’ll see you at the schoolhouse in the fall.”

  “See you then, Ava.”

  He walked the beach where the bay lets into the Gulf and I walked a pine-laden trail inward. “Dear Lord,” I muttered, wanting to say a prayer for him. Despite him being a typical boy trying to get a girl in trouble, he had prayed for my daddy that day, and I always liked to return prayers for people. “Please bring that boy’s pelican back to flyable health.” And then I looked back at the sun peeking through the branches and whispered, “Thank you,” to God for letting the sun mean something different today and for making me care less that it was Monday.

  But as I headed back to our home, I knew that come Tuesday, the sun would mean ironing and mending, and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday more of the same, and if I wanted to become a true lady, I would have to rise to the occasion and find joy in it all.

  But I didn’t want to be a lady, a joyless one anyway. And I didn’t want to spend my youth growing old doing never-ending chores that, except for gardening, kept me inside all the time.

  So instead of heading back home, I rerouted myself to Tooties and when no one answered her door, I walked in and helped myself to a book in her library. Flower Fables, by Louisa May Alcott—her first book and probably the only one I had never read before, but always wanted to. I did like flowers. I had lied about hating them.

  I found myself a shady place to sit under a tall tree and opened the book and began to read out loud, but softly.

  The summer moon shone brightly down upon the sleeping earth, while far away from mortal eyes danced the Fairy folk.

  I read until the sun reached me through the branches of the tree, disrupting my canopy of shade, and then I closed the book and walked home. All the while, I wondered about joy. While in a good mood, Grandmalia once said that joy is an abundant and limitless natural resource within every woman, and whenever it feels scarce, all she must do is tap into it. Grandmalia always said neat things when in a good mood.

  But after today, I questioned whether that was truth or just one woman’s perspective, for if anyone asked my opinion, I’d have to say joy is found outdoors only. It’s out there wading along with the birds as they show off their breeding colors and the ibis flaunting its iridescent pink bill and legs and the red-ey
ed vireos and all the other migrating birds that were singing with joy. I wished I was one of them, but I was happy to discover how generous they were, sharing some of their joy with me.

  And so I had a little jar of it stored up inside me as I walked into the front door of the house, and because I didn’t want to spill it out into the hot soapy laundry water, I tiptoed quietly into my room, not wanting anyone to hear me, especially anyone that was doing chores and might need my help.

  There in my room, I pulled out my journal and began to write all about my day outside. I poured my joy into my writing as a way of preserving it forever. I was glad the birds had shared some with me, and I longed to go back out and search for more, gathering it up so that I had more pleasant things to write about. And I wondered where I might find more. Could there actually be joy in a boy? Maybe one night I’d have to find out.

  XI

  LYDIA

  CHOCOLATE BRINGS JOY, I felt like telling Ava as I walked into the soda fountain with my father. A boy, no matter how clear and green his eyes might be, does not! I thought she, president of the unladylike club, knew better, but I was wrong.

  And it made me furious to think I had followed in spirit someone as wishy-washy as her to the beach earlier today, declaring I would never marry a man nor get involved with any boy. And now, after making a fool out of myself, she made it sound like she was changing her views. But I wouldn’t know for sure until I read some more.

  And so I was left wondering whether she deserted the greater cause, but also, where in fact does one find joy? It was something I hadn’t ever thought about before. If I asked Lloyd, next to me, where we might find joy, he’d most certainly say money, for he didn’t at all look to be getting any pleasure from his soda, and his bank reports were open on the counter beside him. As I sipped through my straw, slurping like a boy when I reached the bottom of my ice-cream soda, I knew joy could only come from chocolate. I could think of nowhere else to find any.