Etta said nothing more; she listened to him breathing and sat waiting for him to speak again.
He raked a hand through his hair. “I have a terrible feeling of premonition. There’s something lingering in the air, something unsettled. Several men have been seriously injured working on the wall. Soon every building and tree is to be raised off the ground and dirt brought in to raise the elevation of an island that nature intends to wash away someday. The heat is more oppressive than ever. Every day I watch men slaving in the heat. I rarely do anything else. And the people in my social circle are restless. They seem fevered. The gossip is worse than ever.”
Such silly concerns, Etta thought, but she held herself in check. “Haven’t they always gossiped? Why does it concern you now?”
“They can say all they want about me. But when it comes to Grace . . .”
This was getting more interesting. Etta perked up. “So her work in the alleys has become something of an oddity, and people can’t resist discussing it. It’ll pass.”
“It’s not about that. And it’s not really about Grace. Well, not about her exactly.”
Etta kept her voice light. “Then what?”
“I’ll not repeat it.”
Etta sat still and silent until they had arrived on Broadway. “You’re troubled. Perhaps you would feel better if you talk about it. I won’t breathe a word of anything you tell me. You have my promise.”
He turned to her then. “I can’t say more.”
Chapter Eighteen
THE GIRL
The girl had taken the satchel from Madu without hesitation. Then she ran all the way back to Reena’s without opening it, hoping that no one would see her. The satchel was made of fine, soft leather, and people might think she’d stolen it. Besides, she had a feeling she wouldn’t want to share what was inside.
Safely inside the privacy of Reena’s yard, the girl opened the satchel to find a book of blank papers and a box of thick colored sticks, almost like crayons but chalky instead of waxy. She touched them lovingly. So many colors, even several shades of blue.
The girl picked up the dark-blue one and placed the tip on the first blank sheet of paper in her book. The art sticks, as she began to think of them, left a bold color on the page. Across the page, she drew a straight blue line like the surface of the sea. Soon she figured out that the color could be smudged and blended with the other blues in the box to make a multicolored ocean. She worked for hours on the sea and the sky above it, even adding the dark silhouette of a boat against her imagined horizon.
Her drawing was not good. She had not even begun to capture the beauty of her favorite place—where the sea met the sky. It always sparkled and shimmered out there. What color would an artist use for that? White? Yellow? She didn’t know, but despite all her questions and self-doubt, this felt like a beginning. Maybe the woman named Grace would teach her to become a real artist.
When the girl stopped for the day, her hands were covered in pigment. She put the supplies back in the satchel, hid it in a special spot under the house, and then washed her hands free of any evidence.
The next day, she had to make herself more useful. It was a hot morning. At Reena’s feet, the girl dropped a pail of crabs she’d been sent for. Reena smiled approvingly into the bucket of crabs, which would go fine with the Spanish mackerel she was cooking for supper that night. As always, Reena smelled of some sort of food and cleaning supplies; today it was sweet potatoes and laundry soap. Laundry was just one of her many duties, which included all the cooking and cleaning, polishing silver and dusting crystal, marketing and gardening, as well as washing and pressing everything from doilies to woolens. Yet seldom did she complain, because as she told the girl once, her employers “was better than most.”
That day Reena looked back in the direction of the gulf, where the house on Avenue Q had stood, and she slowly shook her head, the whites of her eyes beamy and liquid. The girl had noticed that her presence often made Reena remember . . . “Lord knows that storm was the devil’s making.”
Then she shook her head, let out a long sigh, and adopted a wistful expression. “At first, I was hoping it might have done washed away everything all clean and new so that everything could just start all over again. All different.”
With the girl simply sitting and listening, Reena sighed again and finally moved on to another thought.
Reena hadn’t completely given up on getting the girl to talk; she was the only one who hadn’t, and today she sat her on the steps and plunked down across from her in a hand-me-down chair and said, “Now, when is you gonna stop all this foolishness and start talking again?”
The girl didn’t move.
“Now, come on. I know you can do it. It’s in there somewheres, I know it is.”
The girl looked away, and Reena went on. “Just try, will you? Just do it for me? Come on now. Just open up that mouth of yours and try. Don’t matter what it sounds like. Lord knows you’re out of practice, but just go on now and try. Come on.”
After Reena’s demands went unheeded, she sighed again in that mournful but accepting way of hers and said, “Well. Maybe that storm really did steal it out of you, or maybe a thousand other storms are up and trapped there inside you.”
The girl waited and listened, because if you spent time in the company of someone who could put together words like that, why did you need to talk anyway?
As though she might pluck answers from her fruit trees, Reena gazed around. Then she stared back at the girl. “But whatever it is, it’s all done closed up behind a big ole door in there, ain’t it?”
The girl nodded.
“And locked behind a big ole padlock, too, ain’t it?”
The girl nodded again.
Reena stood and lifted the girl for a hugging spell and then pulled away and held her at arm’s length. “Honest to Pete, I don’t know what to do with you most of the time. But I do know one thing. You listen to me now, child. You been going around in that fine yellow dress, and there’s people who done stopped searching for you that’s gonna start up again. It was best when you looked like a boy. You hear me? Don’t you go running around in it no more.”
The girl backed up; she hated to argue with Reena. She wrapped her arms around the porch post and gave Reena an expression of feigned obedience that promised, I won’t.
“Lord, I pray you be telling the truth.” Reena wiped her brow, and then seeming hesitant, she went back to work, the girl assisting her.
Even though it was still early morning, the day was hot enough and the scrubbing hard enough to bring a sheen to Reena’s ripe-plum-colored skin. “I know some fine lady done gave that dress to you. I just hope she’s a good one.”
The girl shrugged.
Reena gazed off into the distance. “Maybe . . .”
Something in Reena’s voice made the girl dart a look.
“Maybe this time . . .” Reena stopped and shook her head.
The girl made her face into a question mark, asking, What are you saying?
“It’s nothing. I was just hoping that maybe this one could do something, maybe just a little something, good for you, child.”
The girl shrugged, looked down, and started drawing patterns in the sandy ground with her big toe. They didn’t speak again for a long moment. Then Reena finally said, “Well, anyway . . . I has news for you.”
The girl glanced up.
“Harry’s got himself something to show you. Down on the docks. It’s an important thing, and that’s why I’m scooting you off to see it. But I want you to change out of that dress first.”
Why had Reena waited so long to tell her there was some news? She sprung up and grabbed Reena by both of her upper arms. Then she squeezed in a way that said, You must tell me.
“I most certainly is not saying nothing more. You go on down to the docks and see for yourself.”
After planting a kiss on Reena’s cheek, she tore out of the yard and down the alley. Faintly she heard Reena call af
ter her, “You ain’t changed outta that dress!”
Friends of Reena’s were outside in their backyards or on their shaded porches, starting their washing or shucking corn or swapping stories about their white families, and the girl waved as she passed them by.
The alleys were sandy and unpaved or covered with oyster shells, which crackled as she ran over them. She hurried silently past Madu’s house, where all was quiet. She didn’t want to rouse him from his nap. She reached Market Street and entered a different world of shops, selling everything from French perfume to Cuban cigars. Wooden block paving on the elevated sidewalks was as solid as bedrock beneath her feet, although during high tides the blocks tended to pop up and float around. The sun was coming up big and lemon bright, and around a corner she caught a first glimpse of tall masts and furled sails on Water Street at the port.
The girl headed to Pier 19, where the handcrafted, family-owned boats, called the Mosquito Fleet, rocked in the water. Soon she was hidden among their skinny masts, crusted nets, and sails the color of bleached bone.
Galveston was once home to pirates, then it was the largest slave market west of New Orleans, and now it was one of the biggest cotton ports, but down here on Pier 19 the businesses were still run by families who lived on their boats. She walked past piles of fresh gulf shrimp, crabs, and scallops spread out for sale on straw mats, along with stacks of firewood, fresh oranges, green bananas, and pots of honey brought back from sails up the bayou.
The girl spotted Harry by the hair that always stuck up out of his head, thick tufts of mixed blond and brown perpetually windblown in every direction. He was knocking about in the stern of a small shrimp boat, and as soon as he saw her he stopped what he was doing and squinted up in a grin.
“Well, here you are,” he said.
Harry tossed some lines aside and reached up to help the girl on board. He acknowledged the question on her face, Is it yours?, and answered, “Would I be working alone on another man’s boat?”
She looked about hard. The boat was an old, hand-constructed skipjack with a racked mast, a jib, and a leg-of-mutton mainsail, newly painted and outfitted with nets and equipment so that Harry could make a living on the sea, just as his father had. After the storm, he had traveled back up Buffalo Bayou in search of his father’s boat one last time. It had been a skipjack like this one, but he hadn’t found even one plank. Ever since, he’d been living with relatives, on other men’s boats, or in spare rooms not far from the docks, working at the wharves and warehouses and on other people’s boats, trying to earn enough money to buy his own. Now Harry was a full-grown man, a fisherman, who could stand on his own.
Harry struck a match, lit the rolled stub of tobacco on his lip, and sucked in the smoke, then immediately coughed it back out. “She’ll do.”
In the bay, the first river steamer of the day was chugging across the high line on the horizon. The girl pointed out to open water.
Harry directed his gaze that way, too. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time you and me went out together?” He shook his head. “We don’t have us a good record.”
She held still.
Harry started working again. He checked the rigging and mended a hole in one of the sails. He spent about an hour making her suffer, acting as if he weren’t taking her out. But the girl waited for the breeze to pick up, knowing there was no chance she’d let him go out on the water today without her.
When a good breeze started blowing in, Harry didn’t say a word, just got everything ready and then pushed off from the pier, raised the sail, and they drifted quietly until the onshore breeze flew over the island and popped the sail. Soon they were skimming over smooth seas like silk on marble. They blew for the oyster shell reef in the bay known as Red Fish Bar, where Harry turned the boat into the wind, furled the sail, and dropped anchor.
For a while they simply sat and watched the water on both sides dip and drop, small waves cupping against the hull, like a parent whispering to a sleeping child, broken only by occasional clinks and pops. There was no need to speak. The storms inside the girl settled on this calm water.
It had been almost three years since she’d been out on a boat, but even so she remembered. Harry had taught her and her brother the rudiments of sailing back when she was eleven, and she’d made a decent ship’s mate. He’d also taught them about the sea and the life on it. She knew that plovers were the seabirds with short beaks, that sandpipers had long slender ones, and dozens of different species of gulls cluttered the air over the gulf. And oddly, oyster, clam, and snail shells could be found every day on the gulf side instead of the bay side, where they belonged. Harry grumbled that farmers and others on the mainland had cut up too much grass and chopped down too many forests, making for muddy rivers and an increasingly murky bay. When the sun rose high, the girl rolled up her sleeves and tore off her bonnet so she could face the sunlight directly.
“You’re fixing to get burnt,” grumbled Harry.
She gave him a look, and he scratched his chin while terns dove into small whitecaps over a sandbar. Finally Harry asked, “How do you like her?”
The girl studied the weathered wood beneath the paint along her railings and frowned, then fluttered her fingers like flames.
“I know. She’s a tinderbox. If we don’t catch her on fire, though, she’ll do me right fine.” Harry raised an eyebrow. “You want to start working with me?”
The girl nodded.
“That new yellow dress of yours is bound to get ruint,” said Harry. “Where’d you get it?”
She shrugged again, as if saying, It’s of no importance. But even though she tried to hoist up her skirt, it bothered her that the hem was getting wet as it dragged along the deck. She decided not to wear the dress for working again, to save it for special days.
“I don’t expect you to be helping me for nothing.” Harry paused from his work. “We can make us a deal, you and me. You help me on this here boat, and I’ll give you a share of the haul.” He tossed his head toward land. “Is Reena still cooking?”
Before the storm, Harry had been a frequent guest at her family’s house for dinners, cooked primarily by her mother, but with Reena’s help. The girl nodded.
“Reena’s shrimp batter is the best on this island. Bring me some of her shrimp all fried up sometime?”
The girl nodded.
Harry was still studying her new dress. “Who gave you that? Some lady do-gooder?” Anyone could see that it could only have come from someone with money.
“I met me one of them society types once.” Harry smiled. “Your pa, Anson, and me was sitting in one of the bars off The Strand when you was about six years old, and here this do-gooder comes waltzing by one day. Stops dead in her tracks outside the window when she sees your pa enjoying a bit of the spirits with a little girl on his lap.” He stopped and winked her way. “You know, he never went nowhere without you. But your pa, he wasn’t bothered by her hoity look. He just grabs you on up and walks out the door, right up to that lady, and introduces himself.”
The girl smiled.
“You sure got his gumption,” said Harry with a smile.
And that was a real compliment.
Later, as they sailed back to the docks, the girl watched the sun just beginning to touch land. Clouds drifted overland. Set on either side of the sun, they looked like long flowing golden arms, and the wind in the sails was prettier than a hymn sung by any church choir. Harry’s boat was light on the water. The girl took a deep breath and enjoyed the ease of the day. With her hair of red ribbons streaming behind her, her face warm with the light of the sunset, she hadn’t felt this weightless in three years, even when she glanced down and saw that her dress was soiled, the hemline drenched with seawater. Her face was burned again, and her arms were screaming new freckles, too, but it was no matter.
Madu thought she should hate the sea, because it took her family. But instead, out on these waters she felt closest to the family she had lost. She remembe
red her mother’s hands, which had done everything from baking bread, to cross-stitching, to washing the grit off collected shells, to combing and curling her daughter’s hair. She remembered her father, who despite a limited education (he couldn’t read and could only sign his name) had managed to build both his shop on the beach and then a home on Avenue Q. He had babied her constantly despite her mother’s protest to “let the girl be.” And then there was her brother, who had been tall and big boned, had excelled at everything, and was destined to become the first in their family to go to college. But the girl blamed neither the sea nor the people on the island, who were warned about the 1900 Storm and did nothing, not even those people who stood by and watched, who believed the sea couldn’t hurt them. She blamed no one really, not even those still foolish enough to believe that human beings could tame such a force.
Since the storm, everyone on the island was trying to re-create the Galveston that was, to rebuild everything in a way that would prevent another scourge of the island by hurricane. But fishermen like Harry had different ideas. Harry shook his head when he heard about all the plans to put Galveston back the way it was, only better and stronger. Harry wanted only to work off the island’s waters, make enough money to feed himself, and find a safe place to put in for the night. Much of the city had already been rebuilt, but it was of little matter to people like Harry and the girl.
For them, Galveston had always been the sea, and the sea remained.
Chapter Nineteen
GRACE
“You’re not yourself,” Jonathan told me one evening after supper. We had slipped away from the house and were strolling the back lawn, lost among the rosebushes and spindly oleanders that he pointed out were in need of trimming.
“My day was long.”
“I understand. But your days are the exact same length as everyone else’s.”
Exhaustion seemed to come out of my very feet, loosen my ankles, and then unpin my knees. I faltered in my steps. I could still feel the rhythms and music of the alleys in my head, and still see Ira’s face beside me. Lately when Ira and I were alone, we both became overly aware of each other, and the atmosphere had transformed, as if a mysterious illness had overcome us. When we walked about, I found myself pulling closer into his shadow. “Have I been neglecting you?”
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