by Kathi Appelt
And every night when Signe tucked Keeper into bed, she had kissed her on the forehead and said, “You and me, Sweet Pea. You and me.” And every night for seven years, it had not mattered so much that Meggie Marie had turned into her mermaid self and disappeared beneath the waves. Because of Signe, the world unto itself had been cooleoleo.
Until today.
Today, when everything went wrong.
Today, when everything was ruined.
Today, when, for the second time ever in Keeper’s whole entire life, Signe started crying.
26
The power of Signe’s crying dug at Keeper.
Signe crying.
Signe crying.
Signe crying.
Now a fear as deep as the ocean zipped through Keeper’s body, her biggest fear ever, one so deep, she knew not to ever, ever say it out loud, not ever. And then today, it crawled out of her like an ugly toad: If a girl’s own mother can swim away, what would keep everyone else from leaving too, especially if that same girl caused so much trouble? The toad of fear made a big, fat cccrrooaaaakkkk right in Keeper’s stomach.
Where was the blasted moon?
Keeper tested The Scamper’s rope. It was still too taut to loosen the knot. But it was close. Another inch, she reckoned, and the rope would finally slacken, whereupon Step D would turn into Steps E and F. She didn’t know how long it took the water in the pond to rise an inch.
Dogie would. Dogie knew all about tides and how fast they rose and fell.
She’d have to remember to ask him about it.
Once he got over being mad.
Which depended entirely upon her fixing things.
Sigh.
“Come on, moon,” she said, adding a “Grrrr…” of frustration.
“Grrrr… ,” added BD, halfheartedly.
One would think that a dog who has lived his whole life by the water would not worry too much about that same water. But BD was not of the retriever ilk. Not a Labrador. Not a golden. Not a spaniel. He was not bred for paddling through the waves or jumping into a lake or swimming across a pond. He didn’t even enjoy a bath, which Keeper gave him once a week.
No-sirree-bob, water was not BD’s native country. And in the small boat there was only a thin plank or two between himself and a whole lot of water. Pleeeeeaaasssseeeee, let’s go back, he whined. “Woof,” he said.
Right then, in the middle of BD’s woof, a wave came out of nowhere and rolled under them. It pushed the boat against the pier, made it squeak as it rubbed the wooden beams. BD’s voice matched the boat’s squeak. Please, please, please.
Then, as quickly as the rolling wave came, it disappeared. The water smoothed itself out and turned quiet again. Keeper couldn’t see anything on the water but the tiny glimmers of the stars reflecting back up at her.
But when she turned toward the pier, she realized that the boat had inched up against it. The rope, too, had gathered some slack.
“Yesyesyesyes!”
She punched her fists into the air, and, well, she just couldn’t help it, the lines of one of Mr. Beauchamp’s sea chanteys slipped right out of her:
“Hey ho, and up she rises
Hey ho, and up she rises
Hey ho, and up she rises
Early in the morning…”
And as if the sea heard her, another wave rolled under the boat and lifted it another inch.
27
Keeper gave her charm a happy tug. Her lucky charm. It was working! The ribbon it hung from was smooth as silk, a bright pink ribbon that Signe had brought home one day and tied around Keeper’s ponytail.
Keeper remembered the day Signe dug it out of the grocery bags resting on the kitchen table. She held it up, the pink so pink that Keeper had to squint at first.
“Just because,” said Signe.
That was unusual. Signe rarely did anything “just because.”
Keeper knew that the ribbon was an extravagance for Signe, an added expense that she didn’t need.
But while Keeper stood there in the kitchen, Signe had brushed Keeper’s long, black hair and tied the pink ribbon around it, startling in its pinkness, so pink against her black hair.
“A new ribbon for my old girl,” said Signe.
Keeper was surprised by Signe’s use of the word “old.”
“Is ten old?” she asked.
For a moment Signe had not answered, but then, as she finished tying the bow, she whispered, “Older than BD’s lifetime.” That was true—BD was younger than Keeper, at least in human years. But he was older than her in dog years, forty-nine if you counted in canine. In fact, if you went by dog years, BD was older than Signe, who was twenty-five. Keeper had no idea how old Dogie was. And no one was as old as Mr. Beauchamp.
Then she turned to Signe and asked, “Is ten old for a mermaid?”
Signe looked at her and said, “That is a question for the universe.” Whenever Signe did not want to give Keeper a straight answer, that’s how she replied—“It’s a question for the universe”—and left it like that, as if the universe knew.
Keeper had noticed that most of her questions about mermaids, which included questions about Meggie Marie, were answered by Signe in this same way.
Keeper had reached behind her head to feel the satin ribbon between her fingers, as soft as her very own hair. She hadn’t been ten for very long, only a few days, but she liked the roundness of the number, the way it used up all of her fingers or all of her toes, depending upon which way she was counting.
“Stealth kiss,” Keeper had told Signe, and given her a quick kiss on the cheek.
“Take care of it,” Signe had said, smiling.
“I will,” Keeper had promised.
She had set the ribbon on top of her dresser, where it glowed amidst her collection of merlings. The seven of them. It was right there when Keeper dug the charm out from the pile of socks in her top drawer earlier that day. The old chain, rusty and stiff, had snapped in her hands, so she slipped the disk off of it and dropped the chain back into the drawer, then threaded the ribbon through the loop on top of the charm.
Now Keeper stopped tugging. She didn’t want to break the ribbon and lose the charm, the only gift she remembered her mother ever giving her. Keeper remembered three things from that night:
1. Her mother’s laughing voice, singing in her ear, “Happy Birthday, little mergirl”
2. The golden charm
3. Her mother calling to her as she swam away: “Keeper. Keeper.”
Over and over. Her name had come in circles around her ears. It made her dizzy. Signe had held on to her then, held her tight, while Meggie Marie slipped farther and farther into the dark waves. Keeper had reached as far as she could toward her, but Signe wouldn’t let her go.
Keeper. Keeper.
That’s what Keeper remembered from such a long time ago.
And something else Keeper remembered from that night: Signe crying.
28
When a girl is born in the sea, she knows about cabbage heads and kingfishers. She knows about starfish and seaweed and sand. She knows about oysters and salt grass and sun perch. All of these things.
Signe knew about things too, even though she was not born in the sea. She knew how to braid Keeper’s hair to keep it off her neck. She knew how to wrap a seagull’s broken wing in a kitchen towel and how to pluck sandburs out of BD’s fur. She knew about helping old Mr. Beauchamp climb the steps up to his house even when he said he didn’t need the help. And she knew about sitting on the porch in the evenings with Dogie and watching the night settle over them. She knew when to take an extra shift at the Prince Oyster Bar and Bar whenever she could so that she could buy a pink ribbon for her girl.
What she did not know? That Keeper was out in the boat in the middle of the night.
29
As the water beneath The Scamper rose, another rolling wave bumped against her, this one stronger than the last. The boat rocked, then nudged against the pier again, and this
time BD barked at it.
Keeper rubbed his ears. “Shhhh,” she told him. “It’s only the tide.” Even though he wasn’t convinced, he settled back down at her feet.
Poor BD, she thought. He was no sailor dog. Not like Sinbad, who, according to Mr. Beauchamp, had sailed the seven seas.
“He comes from a long line of pirate cats,” he’d declared.
BD had never sailed any seas. “Sinbad!” Keeper grumped. Then she looked at BD and pronounced, “He’s a wax wart,” which was surfer language for a majorly big bump in the wax on a surfboard. Sure, the wax needed to be bumpy, but if it had a great big bump in the wrong place, that was a wax wart.
Sinbad had definitely been a wax wart that day. She said it again: “He’s a wax wart.”
She wanted to be angry at the old cat, but it was hard to be upset for too long with a cat who had only one eye, which at turns was either blue or green depending upon the season or the occasion. And sometimes, on cloudy days, it might even be gray.
No. Keeper wasn’t angry at Sinbad. Or BD. Or Captain, either, even though all three of them were party to the destruction.
However, crabs? She was not at all happy with the crabs. “Stupid crabs!”
And Mr. Beauchamp, she knew, was not happy with anyone.
Keeper rubbed her bare knees poking out from her shorts. Her fingers traced the knobby outlines of her kneecaps. She had studied her knees a million times. Mermaids did not have knees. Keeper did. Her knees were right there. Thinking about her knees reminded her of Mr. Beauchamp kneeling over his flowers, which in turn reminded her of Dogie with his ukulele, and that reminded her of Signe. Crying.
This had been the worst day ever.
30
It was bad enough that the wooden bowl had broken, but the gumbo pot was ruined too. Keeper had spent a good hour scrubbing and scrubbing at the black gunk in the bottom of the pot. Her fingers were pruny, her arms ached from scrubbing so hard, and her newest T-shirt, the electric pink Dogie T-shirt that read SHOP AT THE BUS, was soaking wet and smelled like gumbo. No, make that burnt gumbo.
But no matter how hard Keeper scrubbed, she could not get all the gunk out of the bottom. Finally, she threw the brush in the sink. She felt terrible about the gumbo and the bowl. And clearly the pot was ruined too. Signe’s gumbo pot. Ack! Keeper wiped her face with the bottom of her T-shirt. She could still smell the newness of it underneath the burnt gumbo.
She looked at her pruny fingers. They were sore from scrubbing. She pushed her hair back behind her ears. She wiped the sweat off her lip. The room still smelled like the ruined gumbo, sharp and dense. What a mess!
She grabbed a kitchen towel and dried her hands, and just then, Signe walked into the kitchen, followed by BD. He had finally decided to come out from under the bed. He walked over to Keeper and leaned against her.
Keeper wanted to tell Signe, Sorry. I’m so sorry for ruining the gumbo, but her throat wouldn’t cooperate. Maybe if she explained about how the crabs had talked to her first… But before she could get anything out, she heard Signe say, “You need to go to the Bus and tell Dogie about the crabs, Keeper.”
Keeper closed her eyes. She knew that Signe was right, but the thought of what Dogie’s face would look like when she told him that she had set the crabs free made her queasy.
She heard Signe say it again. “Tell Dogie about the crabs.” Then, to Keeper’s dismay, Signe pressed her fingers against her eyes and said in the smallest voice imaginable, “Tonight was supposed to be just right… and now…”
A silence so thick Keeper could have punched it with her fist filled the kitchen. Even the sunlight streaming in through the window seemed to dim as it entered the room, muted by such a thick quiet. Keeper didn’t know what to do. She stood on one leg, then the other. She did not want to tell Dogie about the crabs.
And then, from outside the screen door, came a familiar cry. “C’mon, c’mon!” It was Captain. At the sound of the bird’s cry, BD wagged his tail. “Woof, woof!” He walked to the door and looked over his shoulder at Keeper who looked back at Signe. Signe crossed her arms.
Signe, Captain, and BD. All three of them were ganging up. There was no getting out of it. Keeper had to tell Dogie about the crabs. Shoot!
“Okay, okay,” she said. “I’m going.”
But as she and BD stepped out the door, she heard Signe say one more thing: “Keep an eye on the dog! Whatever you do, don’t let him chase Sinbad.”
“Woof!” barked BD. Keeper followed him, his tail in the air like a flag. And just above them, flying in wide circles, Captain.
“C’mon, c’mon!”
31
Once outside, Keeper sat on the bottom step and tied her sneakers. She was in no hurry to tell Dogie what had happened.
She felt the familiar sting of a sand flea bite on the side of her ankle. She should have put on a pair of socks. Sand fleas couldn’t bite through socks. She needed a Dr Pepper. She needed to tell Dogie about the crabs.
The Bus wasn’t that far from the haint blue house. A hundred yards, tops. Dogie kept an ice chest filled with Dr Peppers. She wondered if he would let her have one, just like he always did, once he heard about the crabs.
Signe never let her have soft drinks. “All they are is sugar,” she said, as if sugar were a bad thing. Keeper liked sugar, but if you listened to Signe, you’d think that sugar was the same as an oil spill or something, and could ruin coastlines, along with her health. So the Dr Peppers were a secret between herself and Dogie, and besides, now that she was his official waxwing, she counted her Dr Peppers as part of her salary, even though she couldn’t keep one in her red purse like she could the rest of her earnings. And thinking about the purse with its $42.00 reminded her that Signe had told her to save it for a rainy day, but there wasn’t any rain in sight, and there also wasn’t any blue moon gumbo in sight, and it was all because of those “stupid, stupid crabs!” which she needed to tell Dogie about, and geez, Louise…
Her stomach rumbled. She realized she had not had breakfast. Or lunch for that matter. A tiny empty spot opened up inside of her. She wasn’t really hungry. But the Dr Pepper started sounding better and better, and maybe Dogie would only be a little bit mad and still let her have one. She stood up and walked across the yard, followed by BD.
And then… from across the road, she heard the familiar sound of Sinbad, his deep-throated meow slipping into her ear. “Meeeeooooowwwww!”
32
“Keep an eye on the dog.” Six little words. Keep. An. Eye. On. The. Dog.
But as Keeper had walked out onto the steps with BD and Captain, to go tell Dogie about the crabs, as soon as she remembered the $42.00 she’d saved, she started thinking that maybe, yes, just maybe, she could repay Signe for the broken bowl.
Would $42.00 cover the cost of the bowl? She knew it was enough for a man’s corduroy jacket. Corduroy jacket? Keeper didn’t think one word about BD, much less six.
“C’mon, c’mon!” Captain! He was flying in broad circles over the houses.
As she watched him in his semicircular flight, her eye settled on Mr. Beauchamp’s antique roses. They were in full bloom, brilliant in the warm salty air. Keeper felt a flush of pride over her role in caring for the roses. The roses were just like those that grew in his birthplace, French roses! He had shown her how to prune them, instructed her in how to give them just the right amount of bonemeal and how much water to pour into their beautiful pots.
“Keeper of the flowers,” he had called her.
As she admired the bright orange and pink roses, a small bud of hope rose up inside of Keeper. Maybe if she asked him, Mr. Beauchamp would let her have a couple of them to take to Signe. Roses would make her feel better.
But just as Keeper began to cross the road, Sinbad hopped onto the rail and arched his back. He began to spit and glare at them with his one good eye.
Hardly anything looked as menacing as Sinbad’s good eye, especially when he began to hiss and spit, like he was d
oing now.
According to Mr. Beauchamp, Sinbad was the last of his line, the last of the great pirate cats. His great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother and grandfather had sailed with the notorious French privateer Jean Lafitte back in the early 1800s. That’s what Mr. Beauchamp said.
Who knows why they were all born with only a single eye? Some say it helped them focus on the task at hand. It’s true that if you’re trying to look hard at something—something like a rat, say—you might close one eye, the better to zero in on your prey. Maybe those pirate cats spent so much time closing one eye that, eventually, they put all their sight into the single open one.
It didn’t matter to Keeper that Sinbad had one eye or that he was a descendant of pirates.
What mattered was that he loved to taunt BD, which led to crazy, wild chases, chases in which things got knocked over and turned upside down. Something about Sinbad’s hissing and spitting made BD go stark raving nutso.
But that morning Keeper’s mind was not on Sinbad or BD, either. She was just thinking about how beautiful the antique roses were and how surely they’d make Signe feel better.
And just as soon as she got the flowers and took them to Signe, she would then go tell Dogie about the crabs. He would understand. She just knew it. Then the world unto itself would be restored to its rightful order.
She was so busy thinking about the crabs and the flowers and Dogie that for a moment she did not notice—really notice—what Sinbad was up to.
One mistake. That’s all it took. One taking-her-eye-off-of-the-dog second, and that did it. In less time than it took to blink, she got the picture. She got it just before it happened.
“Oh no,” she said.
Too late.
BD. Short for Best Dog, but right then, short for Bad Dog.
Captain. Short for Pep Squad.
Sinbad. Short for Menace. Whose most fun game was to
