In the light of the next day, I tried to tell myself that I had only imagined the great evil of the scene the night before. Hadn’t I once tried to convince Call that the Captain was a Nazi—a U-boat delivered spy? Why, then, was I so upset over Grandma’s accusation? I saw again in my mind those glittering eyes and knew it was not the same. Grandma, however, seemed to have forgotten everything. She was quite her grumpy, silly self again, and we were relieved to pretend that we, too, had forgotten.
In February, Call dropped out of school. His mother and grandmother were destitute, and my father offered to take him aboard the Portia Sue as an oyster culler. My father would tong, bringing up oysters with his long fir-wood tongs, which looked like scissors with a metal rake at the end of each shaft. He would open the rakes and drop his catch onto the wooden culling board. There Call, his hands in heavy rubber gloves, would cull, using a culling hammer. With the hammer head he knocked off the excess shell, and with the blade at the other end he struck off the small oysters. The debris was shoved into the Bay and the good oysters forward until they could be sold to a buy boat, which would take them to market. From Monday well before dawn to Saturday night, they would be gone, sleeping all week on cramped bunks in the Portia Sue’s tiny cabin, for the best oyster beds were up the Eastern Shore rivers, too far away for daily commuting when gas was so strictly rationed.
Of course I was jealous of Call, but I was surprised to realize how very much I missed him. All my life my father had followed the water, so it had never seemed strange to have him gone, but Call had always been around, either with me or close by. Now we only saw him at church.
Caroline made a fuss over him every Sunday. “My, Call, we sure do miss you.” How could she know? Besides, it didn’t seem quite ladylike to say something like that, straight out.
Each week, he seemed to grow taller and thinner, and his hands were turning more and more into the rough brown bark of a waterman’s. Even his manner seemed to change. The solemnity that had always lent him, as a small child, a rather comic air, now seemed a sort of youthful dignity. You could sense his pride that he had come at last into a man’s estate, the sole support of the women upon whom he had until now depended. I knew we had been growing apart since summer, but I had been able to blame that on Caroline. Now it was more painful, for the very things that made him stronger and more attractive were taking him deep into the world of men—a place I could never hope to enter.
Later that winter I began going again to see the Captain. I always went with Caroline. It wouldn’t have been proper for either of us to go alone. He taught us how to play poker, which I had to be persuaded to do, but once I began it made me feel deliciously wicked. He probably owned the only deck of regular playing cards on Rass. Those were the days when good Methodists only indulged in Rook or Old Maid. We played poker for toothpicks, as though they were gold pieces. At least I did. Nothing gave me greater satisfaction than totally cleaning out my sister. It must have shown, because I can remember her saying on more than one occasion in a very annoyed tone of voice, “For goodness’ sakes, Wheeze, it’s only a game” as I would lick my chops and scrape all her tumbled stacks of toothpicks across the table with my arm.
One day after a particularly satisfying win, the Captain turned from me to Caroline and said, “I miss your singing now that Trudy’s gone. Those were some happy times.”
Caroline smiled. “I liked them, too,” she said.
“You’re not letting down on your practicing now, are you?”
“Oh,” she said. “I don’t know. I guess it’s all right.”
“You’re doing fine.” I was impatient to get on to another game.
She shook her head. “I really miss my lessons,” she said. “I hadn’t realized how much they meant.”
“Well, it’s a pity,” I said the way a grown-up speaks to a child to shut her up. “Times are hard.”
“Yes,” the Captain said. “I suppose lessons take a lot of money.”
“It’s not just the money,” I said quickly, trying to ignore the vision of my own little hoard of bills and change. “It’s the gas and all. Once you get to Crisfield, it’s worth your life to get a taxi. Now if the county would just send us to boarding school like they do the Smith Island kids—”
“Oh, Wheeze, that wouldn’t help. What kind of a music program could they have at that school? We beat them all to pieces in the contest last year.”
“Well, we should be able to request a special school on account of special circumstances.”
“They’d never pay for us to go to any school, much less a really good school,” she said sadly.
“Well, they ought to.” I wanted to dump the blame on the county and deal the cards. “Don’t you think they should, Captain?”
“Yes, somebody should.”
“But they won’t,” I said. “Anything dumber than a blowfish, it’s a county board of education.”
They laughed, and to my relief the subject was closed. It was too bad about Caroline’s lessons, but she’d had a couple of good years at Salisbury. Besides, it wasn’t my fault. I hadn’t started the war or caused the storm.
The Captain did not come to our house. He was invited perfunctorily every Sunday, but he seemed to know that he oughtn’t to come and always managed an excuse. So I was startled one afternoon a week or so later to see him hurrying up the path to our porch, his face flushed with what looked like excitement and not just the effects of his rushing. I opened the door before he had stepped up onto the porch.
“Sara Louise,” he said, waving a letter in his hand as he came. “Such wonderful news!” He paused at the door. “Your father’s not here, I guess.” I shook my head. It was only Wednesday. “Well, please get your mother. I can’t wait.” He was beaming all over.
Grandma was rocking in her chair, reading or pretending to read her large leather-bound Bible. He nodded at her. “Miss Louise,” he said. She didn’t look up. Mother and Caroline were coming in from the kitchen.
“Why, Captain Wallace,” said my mother, wiping her hands on her apron. “Sit down. Louise, Caroline, will you fix some tea for the Captain?”
“No, no,” he said. “Sit down, all of you. I’ve got the most wonderful news. I can’t wait.”
We all sat down.
He put the letter on his lap and pressed out a crease with his fingertip. “There are so few opportunities for young people on this island,” he began. “I’m sure, Miss Susan, a woman of your background and education must suffer to see her children deprived.”
What was he leading up to? I could feel a faint stir of excitement in my breast.
“You know how much I think of you, how indebted both Trudy and I are—were—to all of you. And now—” He could hardly contain himself. He smiled at me. “I have Sara Louise to thank for the idea. You see, Trudy left a little legacy. I didn’t know what to do with it, because I swore to myself I would never touch her money. There isn’t a great deal, but there is enough for a good boarding school.” He was beaming all over. “I’ve investigated. There will be enough for Caroline to go to Baltimore and continue her music. Nothing would make Trudy happier than that, I know.”
I sat there as stunned as though he had thrown a rock in my face. Caroline!
Caroline jumped up and ran over and threw her arms around his neck.
“Caroline, wait,” my mother was saying. Surely she would point out that she had two daughters. “Captain, this is very generous, but I can’t—I’d have to talk with my husband. I couldn’t—”
“We must convince him, Miss Susan. Sara Louise, tell her how you were saying to me just the other day that someone should understand that special circumstances demand special solutions—that Caroline ought to be sent to a really good school where she could continue her music. Isn’t that right, Sara Louise?”
I made a funny sound in my throat that must have resembled a “yes.” The Captain took it for approval. My grandmother twisted in her chair to look at me. I looked away as fast
as I could. She was smiling.
“Isn’t that right, Sara Louise?” she asked in a voice intended to mimic the Captain’s. “Isn’t that right?”
I jumped toward the kitchen with the excuse of making tea. I could hear the Captain talking on to Mother and Caroline about the academy he knew in Baltimore with the wonderful music program. The words roared in my ears like a storm wind. I put the kettle on and laid out cups and spoons. Everything seemed so heavy I could hardly pick them up. I struggled to pry the lid from the can of tea leaves, aware that my grandmother had come in and was standing close behind me. I stiffened at the sound of her hoarse whisper.
“Romans nine thirteen,” she said. “‘As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.’”
15
I served the tea with a smile sunk in concrete pilings.
“Thank you, Louise,” my mother said.
The Captain nodded at me as he took his cup off the tray. Caroline, distracted with happiness, seemed not to see me at all. I took the cup that I had prepared for her back to the kitchen, brushing past my grandmother, who was grinning at me in the doorway. After I had put down the tray, I had to squeeze past her once more to get to the protection of my room. “Jacob have I loved—” she began, but I hurried by and up the steps as quickly as I could.
I closed the door behind me. Then, without thinking, I took off my dress and hung it up and put on my nightgown. I crawled under the covers and closed my eyes. It was half-past three in the afternoon.
I suppose I meant never to get up again, but of course I did. At suppertime my mother came in to ask if I were ill, and being too slow-witted to invent an ailment, I got up and went down to the meal. No one said much at the table. Caroline was positively glowing, my mother quiet and thoughtful, my grandmother grinning and stealing little peeks at my face.
At bedtime Caroline finally remembered that she had a sister. “Please don’t mind too much, Wheeze. It means so much to me.”
I just shook my head, not trusting myself to reply. Why should it matter if I minded? How would that change anything? The Captain, who I’d always believed was different, had, like everyone else, chosen her over me. Since the day we were born, twins like Jacob and Esau, the younger had ruled the older. Did anyone ever say Esau and Jacob?
“Jacob have I loved…” Suddenly my stomach flipped. Who was speaking? I couldn’t remember the passage. Was it Isaac, the father of the twins? No, even the Bible said that Isaac had favored Esau. Rebecca, the mother, perhaps. It was her conniving that helped Jacob steal the blessing from his brother. Rebecca—I had hated her from childhood, but somehow I knew that these were not her words.
I got up, pulled the blackout curtains, and turned on the table lamp between our beds.
“Wheeze?” Caroline propped herself up on one elbow and blinked at me.
“Just have to see something.” I took my Bible from our little crate bookcase, and bringing it over to the light, looked up the passage Grandma had cited. Romans, the ninth chapter and the thirteenth verse. The speaker was God.
I was shaking all over as I closed the book and got back under the covers. There was, then, no use struggling or even trying. It was God himself who hated me. And without cause. “Therefore,” verse eighteen had gone on to rub it in, “hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.” God had chosen to hate me. And if my heart was hard, that was his doing as well.
My mother did not hate me. The next two days part of me watched her watching me. She wanted to speak to me, I could tell, but my heart was already beginning to harden and I avoided her.
Then Friday after supper while Caroline was practicing, she followed me up to the room.
“I need to talk with you, Louise.”
I grunted rudely. She flinched but didn’t correct me. “I’ve been giving this business a lot of thought,” she said.
“What business?” I was determined to be cruel.
“The offer—the idea of Caroline going to school in Baltimore.”
I watched her coldly, my right hand at my mouth.
“It—it—well, it is a wonderful chance for her, you know. A chance we, your father and I, could never hope—Louise?”
“Yes?” I bit down savagely on a hangnail and ripped it so deeply that the blood started.
“Don’t do that to your finger, please.”
I grabbed my hand from my mouth. What did she want from me? My permission? My blessing?
“I-I was trying to think—we could never afford this school in Baltimore, but maybe Crisfield. We could borrow something on next year’s earnings—”
“Why should Caroline go to Crisfield when she has a chance—”
“No, not Caroline, you. I thought we might send you—”
She did hate me. There. See. She was trying to get rid of me. “Crisfield!” I cried contemptuously. “Crisfield! I’d rather be chopped for crab bait!”
“Oh,” she said. I had plainly confused her. “I really thought you might like—”
“Well, you were wrong!”
“Louise—”
“Momma, would you just get out and leave me alone!” If she refused, I would take it for a sign, not only that she cared about me but that God did. If she stayed in that room—She stood up, hesitating.
“Why don’t you just go?”
“All right, Louise, if that’s what you want.” She closed the door quietly behind her.
My father came home as usual on Saturday. He and my mother spent most of Sunday afternoon at the Captain’s. I don’t know how the matter was settled in a way that satisfied my father’s proud independence, but by the time they returned it was settled. Within two weeks we were on the dock to see Caroline off to Baltimore. She kissed us all, including the Captain and Call, who turned the color of steamed crab at her touch. She was back for summer vacation a few days before Call left for the navy, at which time she provided the island with another great show of kissing and carrying on. You couldn’t doubt that she’d go far in grand opera judging by that performance.
After Call left, I gave up progging and took over the responsibility of my father’s crab floats. I poled my skiff from float to float, fishing out the soft crabs and taking them to the crab house to pack them in boxes filled with eelgrass for shipping. I knew almost as much about blue crabs as a seasoned waterman. One look at a crab’s swimming leg and I could tell almost to the hour when the critter was going to shed. The next to the last section is nearly transparent and if the crab is due to moult in less than a couple of weeks, the faint line of the new shell can be seen growing there beneath the present one. It’s called a “white sign.” Gradually, the shadow darkens. When a waterman catches a “pink sign,” he knows the moulting will take place in about a week, so he gently breaks the crab’s big claws to keep it from killing all its neighbors and brings it home to finish peeling in his floats. A “red sign” will begin to shed in a matter of hours and a “buster” has already begun.
Shedding its shell is a long and painful business for a big Jimmy, but for a she-crab, turning into a sook, it seemed somehow worse. I’d watch them there in the float, knowing once they shed that last time and turned into grown-up lady crabs there was nothing left for them. They hadn’t even had a Jimmy make love to them. Poor sooks. They’d never take a trip down the Bay to lay their eggs before they died. The fact that there wasn’t much future for the Jimmies once they were packed in eelgrass didn’t bother me so much. Males, I thought, always have a chance to live no matter how short their lives, but females, ordinary, ungifted ones, just get soft and die.
At about seven I would head home for breakfast and then back to the crab house and floats until our four-thirty supper. After supper sometimes one of my parents would go back with me, but more often I went alone. I didn’t really mind. It made me feel less helpless to be a girl of fifteen doing what many regarded as a man’s job. When school started in the fall, I, like every boy on Rass over twelve, was simply too busy to th
ink of enrolling. My parents objected, but I assured them that when the crab season was over, I would go and catch up with the class. Secretly, I wasn’t sure that I could stand school with neither Caroline nor Call there with me, but, of course, I didn’t mention this to my parents.
We had another severe storm that September. It took no lives, in the literal sense, but since it took another six to eight feet of fast land off the southern end of the island, four families whose houses were in jeopardy moved to the mainland. They were followed within the month by two other families who had never quite recovered from the storm of ’42. There was plenty of war work on the mainland for both men and women at what seemed to us to be unbelievable wages. So as the water nibbled away at our land, the war nibbled away at our souls. We were lucky, though. In the Bay we could still work without fear. Fishermen of the Atlantic coast were being stalked by submarines. Some were killed, though we, like the rest of the country, were kept ignorant of those bodies that washed ashore just a few miles to the east of us.
Our first war deaths did not come until the fall of 1943, but then there were three at once when three island boys who had signed aboard the same ship were lost off a tiny island in the South Pacific that none of us had ever heard of before.
I did not pray anymore. I had even stopped going to church. At first I thought my parents would put up a fight when one Sunday morning I just didn’t come back from the crab house in time for church. My grandmother lit into me at suppertime, but to my surprise my father quietly took my part. I was old enough, he said, to decide for myself. When she launched into prophecies of eternal damnation, he told her that God was my judge, not they. He meant it as a kindness, for how could he know that God had judged me before I was born and had cast me out before I took my first breath? I did not miss church, but sometimes I wished I might pray. I wanted, oddly enough, to pray for Call. I was so afraid he might die in some alien ocean thousands of miles from home.
If I was being prayed for mightily at Wednesday night prayer meetings, I was not told of it. I suppose people were a little afraid of me. I must have been a strange sight, always dressed in men’s work clothes, my hands as rough and weathered as the sides of the crab house where I worked.