Nothing But Blue

by Diane Lowman

  When we stepped in, the chatter and clang of silverware went silent. All heads turned toward me. I already felt lightheaded from my stuffy head and cramped abdomen. I watched them watch me. Please let me not pass out right here. Please let me not pass out. Alois pointed me to the seat closest to the door, facing the others, and disappeared. He had dropped me in place like a discarded rag doll. And like a rag doll, I sunk limply into the chair. I had no context to make sense of any of this, so I just followed were I was led and took cues from others about what to do.

  The show over for the moment, the men resumed eating. Soup steam soothed my sinuses, and I could just taste the warm bread. It was a harbinger of the freshly baked goods on board that would be my delicious downfall. And tea. Very distinctively flavored and ubiquitous green tea, always on the table in bronze plastic carafes with black flip-up lids. It eased the squeeze in my head a bit. The tea I sip now when I feel a cold coming on takes me right back to that table and the first moment I tasted it. I finished quickly and slunk back to my cabin, guideless, with eyes still averted lest I meet anyone along the way.

  We were set to push back from the dock at 11:00 p.m. or 2300 hours; container ships use military time, and that was just one of the things I had to get used to quickly. But the seafaring life held many surprises and lessons for me. Like learning to step over those doorframes. Like the fact that arrival and departure times for container ships, unlike cruise ships, were merely broad, unreliable estimates. This big red vessel would challenge my control-freak, early-is-on-time tendencies for the duration, and stretch what was to have been a ten-week round trip to nearly twelve. I hoped we would depart while I was still awake so I could watch, but I gave in to exhaustion and crawled under the crisp white sheets to sleep. I checked the lock on the cabin door for the third time, and put one of the table chairs in front of it. To protect me from what, I was not exactly sure. At that moment, I feared everything.

  The beige phone startled me just as I began to drift off a few moments later. In that hazy half sleep, I hoped against hope that my parents were calling on separate extensions like they did every Sunday at Middlebury. But sleep-induced delusion prevented me from recognizing that the phone was only a glorified intercom, a way for the crew to communicate on board. I groggily wondered if I could order room service on it. And laughed with myself at my little joke. Who in the world, or on the ship, could be calling me? When I’d stepped on board, I had become anonymous. I picked up the receiver with considerable trepidation.

  “Herr Most here.” It sounded more like “Must” in his mouth. “Chief steward. You will report to me while you are on board.” I heard my father in the moment before I fully woke up.

  “Yes, it’s Diane.” I had no idea what else to say.

  “You come to the officers’ mess. Meet me in the galley there. Oh eight hundred tomorrow.” Oh eight hundred? “Breakfast first. Seven thirty. Ya?”

  “Yes, I’ll see you then.”

  “Good.” Goot, I heard. He hung up.

  I curled back up in a fetal position and waited to sleep. The ship, even when still, hummed with the generators’ steady Zen vibration. It seeped into my muscles and lulled me, but not for long. My stuffy head made breathing difficult, especially lying down, especially on pillows that were not mine. Cramps gripped my innards. Every time I heard a sound, I threw off the covers, leapt over to kneel on the sofa, and looked outside to see if we were pushing back, but there we stood, still.

  Had I known what it would feel like when the engines started up and we began to move, the false alarms would not have fooled me. The ship, so wide that she just fit through the Panama Canal, and several football fields long, literally roared to life. I felt the unmistakable and unforgettable sensation in every cell. The quiet vibration of the ship at rest supercharged to a rattle evident in everything, including my bones, on board. Constantly. 24/7. Anything with any mass that came in contact with anything else clanged.

  The ignition jolted me out of the tenuous deal I’d made with sleep at 0600 hours. Light poured through the portholes I’d failed to cover with the curtains. We peeled away from the dock with a motion I felt before I could even get to the porthole to see it. My stomach sunk and tightened. Although I’d driven away from home the day before, now I knew the leaving was for real.

  I folded myself up into the wide windowsill, really more like a shelf that just fit me, to watch. It reminded me of the space behind the back seat of the VW Bug we had as kids. My sister Suzanne used to ride, all tucked up, in that small space between the upholstery and the engine during family drives. I thought of her as I hugged my knees to my chest in the smooth plastic space below the porthole, my back against the wall. She was three years younger than I, and off on her own adventure to live with a Navajo family on a reservation in Arizona. I would be at sea on her birthday. This was the first time in her sixteen years that we would not celebrate together.

  The motion riveted me to the Plexiglas pane. The dock sat on my side of the ship, so I saw it recede, the lifted crane arms waving goodbye. After a few minutes, the open harbor approached. Eyes forward. Don’t look back. The tugboats were invisible to me from this vantage point, high up in the superstructure. So tiny compared to the ship, they adeptly finessed this leviathan through the densely populated New York port and safely out to sea, gently guiding us with their thick rubber bumpers.

  What I did see was the tip of Manhattan, the Twin Towers presiding proudly, looming large, but then diminishing. The Statue of Liberty waved goodbye, but then she began to disappear as well. Slowly at first, while we were still on the local streets of the inner harbor, and then more rapidly as we passed under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and out to the superhighway of the Atlantic. I had never seen a bridge from that vantage point before. It was fascinating, but imposing and intimidating. I felt relieved when we had cleared it. The protected harbor kept the surface calm and the waves at bay, but away from it, the water seemed more ominous. Slowly, the coastline disappeared, and there was nothing but blue.

  At Sea

  June 2, 1979

  40.6066 N, 74.0447 W

  Winged marionettes, the gulls followed the ship for quite a distance, scavenging for food scraps. Once this feathery halo vanished, land was a distant memory. We were at sea.

  I could have stayed and gazed out for a long time. I would never tire of the intricacies of maneuvering my massive new home in and out of port, nor of the magnificence and ever-changing moods of the ocean and its doppelgänger, the sky. But I had to get down from my perch and break the reverie. It was time for breakfast, and I could not be late for my first day of work. Downstairs, I slid into the same seat I’d sat in at dinner. I had no idea if we had assigned places, but I didn’t want to break a rule before I even knew if it existed.

  “Morgen,” said Claudia, the crew mess stewardess, one of only two other women on board. She nodded quietly as she placed a basket of warm breads, butter, and honey on the table.

  “Morgen, danke,” I said with a smile. I knew at least that much German.

  “Tea for you, ya?”

  “Ya, bitte. Danke.” I simply could not over-thank people on board. As on shore, I wanted to please everyone, starting with my father. But I felt it particularly acutely here.

  She returned with a familiar plastic carafe of the vaguely eucalyptus-flavored green tea. As popular as green tea is now, it was virtually unknown in the States then. It was the only thing we got to drink at meals, unless we purchased soda or, like most of the crew, beer with our own money.

  Claudia was tall, slim, and only a few years older than I. Her nose was slender and pointy, and she had straight teeth but a pronounced overbite. A crown of tight, dingy-blond curls piled high on top and shorter on the sides made her look a little like an exotic bird. She was permitted on board because she was married to the second cook, Bruno, who looked swarthy and threatening to me. He was as dark, compact, and tightly wound as she was light, lithe, and loose. In contrast, the first cook,
Ingo, was as wide open as the sea we sailed. He was a big, hulking man with close-cropped blond hair, a little soul patch on his chin, and a laugh that filled the mess hall. If it weren’t for his impish wit and a smile as big as his belly, he’d be intimidating too. His ubiquitous white apron tried, but could not hide his Santa Claus, beer-induced girth.

  “Morgen, Fraulein,” he said. He smiled and winked, but not in a lewd way. He was the only one besides Claudia to greet me at all.

  Again, I ate and left quickly, eager to report for duty. I felt like the train wreck everyone rubbernecks to gawk at with a mixture of curiosity and disgust. Once back in the hallway, I realized I had no idea where either the officers’ mess or the galley were, so I slipped back in, and motioned meekly with my head to Claudia. I did not want her to think I was summoning her, nor did I want to draw anyone else’s attention. But I needed her to point me in the right direction. Fortunately she saw me and came over quickly; I must have look distressed.

  “Ya?”

  “I’m sorry to bother you. Can you tell me, bitte, where is the officers’ mess?”

  “Ya, ya. Take the stairs to the top. Follow the hall to the wooden door.”

  “Danke,” I said, as if she had given me something much deeper than directions.

  In the superstructure’s internal stairway, the rarified air became lighter and sweeter as I neared the level of the bridge, the officers’ area, and my cabin. Rank, I began to see, had its privileges. I pushed tentatively on the wooden, windowed door and stepped, like Dorothy, from drab into Technicolor. The internal hallway floors begrudged their muted blue, and the practical and practically colorless walls deliberately didn’t shine. For a moment I straddled both worlds, one foot decidedly part of the lower caste while the other floated slightly above the deep pile of the officers’ deeper-than-ocean-blue plush. The eddy of affluence pulled me in. The reverent and respectful quiet did not allow for the clip-clop of shoe soles up here. The long, polished-to-gleaming wood table and amply upholstered chairs whispered rather than rattled. The china and crystal clinked only politely, unlike the plebian clatter of the crew’s plastic dinnerware. The room was soft-focus backlit, in stark contrast with the fluorescent glare downstairs. Carefully curated and appointed nautically themed art adorned the paneled walls.

  My head revolved in slow motion to take it all in, including the few crisp, white-shirted, black-trousered officers lingering languidly over their morning meal. Unlike the crew downstairs, the officers barely looked up. They could not be bothered; I was not that important to them. Then my gaze met Herr Most’s. Waiting sylph-like, blending into a corner of burled wall, he was still and silent except for his beady blue eyes. They now spit sparks in my direction, as he discreetly twisted his head, as I had moments ago with Claudia, magnetically drawing me toward the galley door and away from the idyllic scene. I tiptoed over the twisted-wool carpet fibers and followed him as he slipped in.

  He turned to me abruptly, and by way of greeting and introduction whispered sharply, “Bitte, do not use that door again, Fraulein Meyer. You come in here always, ya?” And he guided me by the elbow toward the separate galley door. “Ya, ya,” I agreed. I’d made a tremendous but unintentional faux pas by entering directly into the officers’ mess, and probably embarrassed him. Not a particularly auspicious start to our working relationship.

  I couldn’t do anything but hang my head and nod. Herr Most was not much taller than I, with a slight, tight, wiry build. I never saw him wear anything but the uniform he had on then: a starched-stiff, white, short-sleeved shirt tucked into slightly bell-bottomed, black trousers, with a matching belt and utilitarian, thick-soled shoes.

  His closely cropped, gray hair framed fine, chiseled features. There was not an ounce of fat on his frame, and I immediately sensed it was because he was in constant motion, even when he was standing still. I never saw him sit and could not imagine him prone, even to sleep. His hands were always busy; he looked like he was fingering a cigarette even when he wasn’t “schmoking.” As chief steward, he had many responsibilities that mostly included keeping the officers happy and the crew under control. And now, figuring out something for me to do.

  After a quick tour of the long, narrow, mostly stainless-steel galley, he broadly outlined meal schedules, including “schmoke” time, at 1500 hours. Similar to teatime in England, on board it included cigarettes in addition to hot beverages and warm, freshly baked pastries. Almost everyone on board “schmoked.” My non-partaking of the tobacco ritual set me yet further apart from those on board. Given the fact that fire was one of the most dangerous threats on a ship, the habit seemed ill-advised, but I dared not venture that opinion.

  He led me through another door to a flaxen-carpeted and upholstered lounge, outfitted with a television and radio, which only functioned when we were within antenna range of a port. He pointed for me to sit—I was dropped like a ragdoll again—on a couch under one of the large portholes. Since we were so high up in the superstructure, the light that poured in gave everything a Golden Fleece hue.

  On the cushion next to me sat an immense pile of fabric and a box of sewing supplies. I could not quite discern what the pile contained, but he pulled out a few items and said, “You fix.” Some were fitted bed sacks that served as bottom sheets. They had tie closures, many loose, and some missing. I was meant to mend or replace those. Also, there were the ubiquitous coveralls that the crew wore while working: rough, heavy material that, despite its evident durability, had worn bare in spots. This testimony to work so rough that the fabric didn’t stand a chance meant I would need to patch, darn, and mend where I could. If a pair was beyond repair, I would cut them up as fodder for future patches. Then there were more delicate officers’ linens that I would need to finesse back to usability.

  So. I would sew at sea. Betsy Ross of the TS Columbus Australia, representing our nation. I remembered the Home Economics course I’d taken at Westfield High School that had seemed so stupid back then. Clearly Herr Most assumed women knew how to sew from birth. I was now glad for that dumb class. It seemed a slow way to pass a long time, but the room was comfortable, the work easy, and I’d be left alone. I wondered if he had other things in store for me, but dared not ask.

  As if he were reading my mind, he added, “And before meals, you will set up the officers’ mess, ya?” He may have formulated it as a question, but I had no doubt that it was a directive. I would set their tables for lunch and dinner, but disappear before they appeared. He would clear the dishes because he did not want me in the dining room when the officers were there. He could not trust me with them yet.

  The pile seemed endless, and surely Herr Most would replenish it regularly, but it was cool and bright in the lounge, and I could get up for a break whenever I liked. He showed me where I could help myself to coffee, tea, or water any time. My fingertips would bleed, heal, and callous over from the needlework, but over all, the work was hardly arduous. For now.

  While we still paralleled the Eastern Seaboard, the radio played familiar music, albeit on stations that changed as we sailed in and out of each city’s reach. It was like constantly needing to tune and re-tune the car radio on a long road trip in our black VW Bug, except no pavement supported us. This fact uprooted my sense of balance and unsettled me, especially for the first few days. I felt the unmistakable forward motion of the ship through the water—which, out here in the Atlantic showed more muscle than it had in port. A churlish blue-green, it poked at the vessel like an annoying sibling, just to remind us it was there, but was no match for our bulk.

  When the engines were on full power, as they were now, out in open water, the loud white noise formed the canvas on which everything else appeared. Its inescapable hum could be an om or a growl, depending on exactly where in the ship I was and what I was trying to do. And everything moved. Always. Even the furniture, even the heavy things that were bolted down vibrated. Smaller items—those merely bracketed or braced or cushioned—shook, slid, and clunked constan
tly, the cacophony changing with the ocean’s mood. Smooth seas muted the inventory’s symphony. When the waves acted up, it could sound like a bowling alley with everyone scoring simultaneous strikes.

  As a result, we had to secure everything in some way: dishes, glasses, and cutlery sat, penned in by partitions, on spongy cushions. Books, as I learned quickly after I left a few on my small table, had to be corralled like milk bottles in wooden crates. Clothes in the closet swayed with the swell, and the hangers, imprisoned wind chimes, clinked together constantly. Shoes ended up in a pile in one corner of the closet, heedless of the nonslip surface they stood on. Toiletries tucked tightly into the medicine cabinet tried to tumble out whenever I cracked the door open to retrieve something.

  Our bodies fell under the ocean’s swell as well. I learned to tune in to my center of gravity, like the passing radio signals, at all times. Like parents of newborns who develop a rhythmic bounce with their babes in arms, I intuitively adjusted my body in space to accommodate the ever-shifting surfaces on which I walked, showered, and supped. I never felt steady. Of course, it was impossible to recalibrate while asleep, so I vibrated, rolled, and slipped all night in concert with the ship’s speed and the ocean’s sway.

  Not only did I get used to this within the first few days, as the seasoned seadogs around me had, but I came to find stillness and silence more disturbing. On board, slowing signaled either a problem with the ship, or that we were nearing a port. The rattle and hum meant all was well. On land, it became hard for my body to readjust to solid, un-shifting surfaces. It still wanted to bob and duck like a prizefighter, and when my body moved to adjust to ground that wasn’t in motion, it was very disconcerting to my equilibrium. I understood “sea legs” as a very real phenomenon; throughout the trip I felt more nauseous on dry land than on even the roughest day at sea.