by Nadia Aguiar
‘She’s probably just down in the garden,’ said Mami, but beneath her mother’s calm Penny could detect the same sharp fear they all felt these days.
She bolted out of the screen door, took the porch steps in a single leap, and raced down the hill. Seagrape ducked out of the open kitchen window and flew after her.
When Penny reached the vegetable garden, she saw her grandmother’s basket, half full and abandoned in between the rows, but no Granny Pearl. She kept running, down the hill to the cove at the end of the garden, where the Pamela Jane was moored. It wasn’t until she saw her grandmother standing on the rocks near the cove’s entrance, looking out to sea through a pair of binoculars, that Penny slowed down. Granny Pearl had shrunk in the past months and her cotton house dress billowed like a mainsail in the breeze, its pattern faded from hundreds of sunny afternoons spent drying on the line. Penny looked back to see her mother standing at the top of the hill and waved to indicate that everything was OK. Her mother returned to the house and Penny ran the rest of the way down the hill.
‘There you are!’ said Penny, drawing up breathlessly alongside her grandmother.
‘Oh good, you’re home,’ said Granny Pearl, not lifting her gaze from the binoculars.
‘I didn’t know where you were,’ said Penny.
‘It’s not like you had many places to look,’ said Granny Pearl after a moment. ‘I don’t go very far these days, do I?’ She lowered the binoculars and sighed impatiently. ‘Have you been listening to your parents again? They worry too much! Don’t do this, don’t do that! I’m eighty-six years old and I can tell you – they don’t know everything!’
Penny was in hearty agreement that her parents didn’t know everything. She felt foolish and somehow guilty for having been frightened. Solidarity with her grandmother reaffirmed, she took the binoculars that Granny Pearl handed to her.
‘Here, you look,’ said Granny Pearl. ‘My eyes aren’t good enough any more. Tell me what you see.’
‘Where am I supposed to look?’
‘I don’t know exactly; I’d try near the far reefs.’
Penny squinted at the ragged cuffs of surf along the breakers half a mile out. A few seagulls wheeled in the sky and the horizon was stacked with dirty-looking clouds.
‘Well?’
‘Some gulls,’ said Penny. ‘A rain cloud on the horizon. Doesn’t look like it’s coming in. It might just pass us.’
‘What else?’
‘I don’t see anything else.’
‘You’re sure?’
Penny looked out to sea again. ‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘Hmm,’ said Granny Pearl. ‘It’s still too bright. We’ll have to wait until it’s dark.’
‘How are we going to see anything in the dark?’ Penny asked. ‘And what am I even looking for, anyway?’
Her grandmother didn’t answer. Penny scanned the water once more, slowly. There was nothing there. The rain cloud was tracking along the horizon, not coming to shore. She followed the waves all the way in to the cove, where the Pamela Jane lay lonely on her mooring, and lowered the binoculars.
Penny had been just a year old when her family had left life on the sea, living aboard the Pamela Jane, sailing from port to port, and had moved in with Granny Pearl. Her grandmother had already been an old lady then, but now she was magnificently old, her hair white as cotton and her face a mass of soft, deep wrinkles. Penny was twelve now. She had a sister, Maya, and a brother, Simon, who were much older than she was.
When Penny was young, her parents had been so deeply immersed in their work, noses in their microscopes, skin pale from so many hours logged in their lab, that Penny had been left in Granny Pearl’s care. Her siblings – and Helix, too, when he had lived with them – had always been off doing their own thing, so most afternoons it was just Penny, Granny Pearl and Seagrape in the little house by the sea. That was fine with Penny. She loved her grandmother more than anyone. Unlike the others, she always had time for Penny. Granny Pearl never got irritated with her or scolded her or treated her like a pesky little kid to be shaken off. She enjoyed Penny’s company, always.
When Penny was old enough, she joined Granny Pearl on her early morning swim out to the big anvil rock and back. They’d garden together and feed fish in the cove, watching out for the one big greedy snapper who always stole from the chubs. It hadn’t been that many years ago that Granny Pearl had built the tree house for Penny in the great, broad-armed old Poinciana tree. She’d climbed a ladder with planks of wood on her shoulder, hammering them into the branches herself. Penny’s parents had tried to stop her, but she had done it anyway. It wasn’t like either of them had time to build Penny a tree house. They didn’t even have time to cook dinner. Until recently Granny Pearl had done that, too, with potatoes and carrots and onions fresh from the garden, the kitchen windows fogging with steam from the pots, the house smelling like the handfuls of oregano and chives and mint, warm from the sun, that she rinsed in the cool tap and lay, beaded and dazzling, on the countertop.
In those days, come dinner time the kitchen would be crowded, full of noise and life. Penny’s parents’ lab coats would have been washed and crisply ironed and left on the backs of their chairs for the next day. But eventually Maya had left for university and then to work in a city in America, and Simon was right behind her. Now they only came home for brief visits once or twice a year.
A swell came through the mouth of the cove, and the Pamela Jane strained on her mooring, as if she would have gladly broken free if she could. Penny’s gaze roved over the seashore and up the garden. On such a gloomy day, certain things seemed to cast their own light, a soft burnished glow, as though illuminated from within – a bright-leafed bush, fruit glowing on the end of a branch, the hard curve of Seagrape’s beak. Granny Pearl’s hairpins, the ones she washed in vinegar, gleamed softly in the bleached-out light.
Seagrape was a few feet away, perched on a rock. A gravelly, discontented rumble stirred deep in her throat, like thunder in the distance.
‘You feel it in your quills, don’t you, old lady?’ murmured Granny Pearl. ‘It’s on its way, isn’t it?’
Penny’s shoulders stiffened. ‘What is it, Granny Pearl?’ she asked. ‘What’s on its way?’
But her grandmother seemed to have forgotten she was there. Penny was reminded of how you’re never supposed to wake a sleepwalker. Out on the water, the Pamela Jane creaked uneasily, bow into the wind. Her brass portholes caught the low light, making perfect golden circles. Inside the boat it was dark. The day felt like it was pressing in around Penny, suffocating her.
‘Granny Pearl,’ she repeated softly. ‘What is it? What’s on its way?’
Suddenly the garden looked wild, its shadows damp and unpleasant, and the sea cold, creased by mean currents. A strange menace had entered the afternoon, but it wasn’t from the light or the sea. It was something inside Granny Pearl herself, as if she was being erased from within.
There was little that frightened Penny. Not sharks, not teachers, not cranky old Cab at the Aquarium, not diving off cliffs, or swimming into the shallow cave at the far end of the cove. But there in the familiar garden of her home, with her grandmother beside her and her mother just up the hill in the house, Penny suddenly felt deeply afraid.
Another swell surged into the inlet, rocking the Pamela Jane, and for several seconds Penny thought she saw something reflected in the portholes, not the clouds, not the garden, but some strange scene: tangled vines in a great canopy of trees, creatures crossing on branches high above the earth, bell-shaped flowers trembling beneath their paws, turtles lumbering on a hot shore below. The boat swung to face the breeze and the brass portholes became once again opaque. Granny Pearl snapped back, brisk and ordinary once more, and turned abruptly from the sea.
‘Come up to the garden with me,’ she said. ‘We need to get a few more things for dinner. I want you to have a good meal tonight. You’re going to need your strength.’
‘Strength f
or what?’ asked Penny.
‘You’ll find out soon enough,’ said Granny Pearl. ‘Now,’ she said, firmly changing the subject, ‘tell me about your day.’
Whatever had happened was over. If anything had even happened. Penny wanted to believe that she had just imagined it. They walked slowly up the hill.
‘I scored two goals at lunch,’ said Penny. She was eager to put the strange feeling in the garden out of her mind and happily summoned the satisfying sensation of running with the soccer ball down the field, the wind on her face, the ground blurring beneath her feet. ‘That was great. After that …’ After that it had been as awful as every other day that year, full of tiny humiliations and spells of profound boredom. ‘It’s another girl’s birthday and they’re all going to her house. Angela, too, of course. Since she’s one of them now. Mami wanted to know why I wasn’t invited.’
Penny knew that Angela was right – they were too old for the things they used to do. Even Penny couldn’t muster the enthusiasm for the games that once came so naturally. But she was certain that there was more to life than sitting around giggling about boys and combing her hair. She was sure there was something else, something bigger. Something that felt truly important. Still, she couldn’t escape the feeling that something bigger was happening for everyone else, and she was the one being left behind.
It was a shock when Angela had stopped being friends with Penny, but when Penny looked back she could see it had been happening slowly for a while. They seemed to have lost the ability to play, but nothing else had come along to fill the space. Angela wasn’t interested in dares, like seeing how far down the coast they could swim, or in just riding around on their bikes. She had started making excuses not to come over. She no longer cared about how much fun they’d had playing pirates with the yellow flags that Granny Pearl had sewn for them, or camping out on the Pamela Jane on summer evenings, when Granny Pearl would wave a white tea towel on the shore before she rowed a picnic basket of dinner out to the boat. It was like those times had never even happened.
Penny saw Angela with her new friends each day, sitting under the shade tree at lunch, giggling and whispering about boys. Stupid boys, too – show-offs who did everything for attention. Penny couldn’t believe that Angela might really like any of them. Or like any of the boring girls she hung out with now. It made no sense how everything had changed so much from just last year. Then all the girls had still played ball at lunch. Now they spent the whole time combing their hair and secretly putting on make-up, and when they got in trouble they smirked and only pretended to wipe off their lipstick.
Granny Pearl was the only one Penny confided in about their final argument, tearfully on the porch one afternoon before her parents came home.
‘She said, “Don’t you see, I don’t want to play stupid games – we’re not little kids any more, Penny. You’re embarrassing me!” She told me I was embarrassing her.’
Granny Pearl had hugged Penny and kissed the top of her head. She always comforted Penny, less by what she said, which was usually something mild like, It won’t always be this way, or No one ever looks back and wishes they grew up any faster, and more because she was the one person who seemed to really know what was going on in Penny’s life and to understand how she felt. She was the only one who knew how hurt and bewildered Penny felt this year, how much she hated going to school every day.
Penny’s feelings were hurt on Granny Pearl’s behalf, too. If Angela didn’t want to hang out with her any more, at least once in a while she could have visited Granny Pearl, who had practically been like her own grandmother, after all. Penny consoled herself with the thought that Granny Pearl and Seagrape were all the friends she really needed – even if the latter was inclined to get grumpy and nip.
‘It isn’t even like I want to go to their dumb party,’ she said. ‘All they’re going to do is sit around and talk about boys and clothes. It’s so boring!’
But today Granny Pearl didn’t comfort her.
‘You need other people, Penny,’ she said. She sounded tired. ‘You need to find a way to get along with people.’
‘I have you,’ said Penny. ‘I’d rather be with you than with anyone else.’
But Granny Pearl shook her head. ‘Not me,’ she said. ‘You need people your own age.’
Hurt, Penny fell quiet. Was Granny Pearl mad at her? They were halfway up the hill now, almost at the garden. They passed Penny’s bike leaning against a tree. It was Simon’s old bike, which he had painted and polished for her on a previous visit home. For a moment Penny imagined jumping on it and riding as far away as she could. That reminded her of what she had seen on the drive home earlier.
‘I forgot to tell you,’ she said to her grandmother, eager to bring back the good feeling between them. ‘I saw thousands of pampas seed pods on the way home today. They aren’t usually out for months, and there are so many of them – I’m sure they’re another sign.’
‘Pampas?’ asked Granny Pearl. ‘You mean on the lane? I don’t remember that from before … but maybe. It’s possible.’ She paused, leaning on her cane as she considered. ‘And your brother and sister coming home in a couple of days … that may be part of it.’
‘What do they have to do with anything?’ asked Penny.
‘I don’t know for sure yet,’ said Granny Pearl. ‘But,’ she muttered, ‘it tells me that there isn’t much time.’ She would say nothing further.
It took a long time to make it up the hill. Seagrape flutter-hopped along behind them. They stopped at the garden to pick up the basket.
Penny bent down to pluck a few sage leaves, velvety soft as rabbits’ ears. Granny Pearl seldom made it down to the garden any more, and it wasn’t the bountiful, shipshape plot it used to be. It was shrinking, its edges scraggly, caterpillars chomping their way through the tomatoes with new brazenness. A few rows at the end had been lost to the saw grass. Penny picked up the basket to carry to the house, feeling the familiar weight of carrots and muddy potatoes against her hip. Foamy leaves of parsley tickled her leg and the bristles of the basket pricked her every now and then. She had been carrying the basket up from the garden for as long as she could remember. When Penny was very small, Granny Pearl had just pretended to let her help, then they had taken it together, and now Penny carried it on her own, walking slowly alongside her grandmother, who moved stiffly, pausing to rest a few times as they went up the last bit of the hill.
Across the garden, from the dark mouth of the lane, Penny saw a breeze blowing seed pods out of the trees, buoying them into the sky where they swirled, a mute flock of messengers bearing their urgent, secret message into the dull afternoon.
CHAPTER TWO
The Drawer ✵ Maya’s Journal ✵ A Frightening Episode ✵ ‘All these things have explanations’ ✵ A Mission
Penny left the basket with her mother and grandmother in the kitchen and sneaked down the hallway to her bedroom.
Something that Granny Pearl had said in the garden had stuck in Penny’s mind. She said that Seagrape knew something. You feel it in your quills, don’t you? It was true that Seagrape had been temperamental lately, agitated and restless and more intolerant than usual. Penny’s fingers bore the scars of impatient nips. But what the parrot might know Penny had no idea.
Granny Pearl had also said that Maya and Simon’s visit home might have something to do with what was happening.
Simon hadn’t been home in close to a year now, but Maya had last been home six months ago. The city had made her sister elegant, and Penny had felt a little shy of her for the first few hours after she was back. She felt newly aware of her own tangled hair, her chin scabbed from a tumble on the soccer field, a fresh bump on her forehead from when she had tried to jump from the railing of the Pamela Jane through the hatch into the cabin earlier that week. Angela was right – she looked like a little kid.
Penny had helped her sister lug her suitcase down the hallway.
‘Everything always looks so small when you co
me back,’ Maya had said.
‘It’s the same size it always was,’ said Penny.
‘Well, your perspective changes,’ said Maya.
Whatever that means, Penny had thought, with a flicker of irritation. She had sat swinging her legs on Simon’s old bed while Maya unpacked. Maya had been showing off in her city clothes, but the humidity was already making her dress limp and curling her hair. Soon enough her feet were bare, like they always used to be.
No mention was made of Maya’s boyfriend – James or Julian, no one could seem to remember his name – who had been in the wings for the past year. Though he had come to visit the family once – and, as they all said, he was perfectly nice – none of them warmed to him. Even Maya herself didn’t seem thrilled about him. Seagrape had brayed rudely at him any time he came near until eventually Mami made Penny shut the parrot in her room, an act of betrayal that Seagrape rewarded by shredding a blanket with her beak.
‘You two are still inseparable,’ Maya had said, pausing from unpacking to reach out to Seagrape on Penny’s shoulder, letting the parrot gnaw her knuckles gently. ‘Helix knew you’d take good care of her.’ A soft, wistful glimmer came into her eyes. Through the window a breeze had sighed in the darkening orange grove.
‘It seems like forever since we’ve seen him,’ said Penny.
‘Seven years,’ said Maya. ‘It’s been seven years.’
She had been about to say something else, but stopped herself.
In that moment, even with her sister right there, Penny had the sensation of missing her, or as if part of Maya was missing. When Maya was just a girl herself, she had carried Penny through the jungle in a sling and kept her and Simon safe. She had crossed mountains, lived in the treetops, and escaped from pirates – she had been brave and free and done all these amazing things in Tamarind. Now she was restless and preoccupied with a mysterious life far away and thoughts she never shared with Penny.