Chapter Twenty-One
THE GIRL
It was a rust-colored early morning, with dusty lines of pale-orange light leaking through the slats of the house walls. The girl awakened and imagined her favorite place on that ocean that never stirred. She had been trying to create that special shine and shimmer on her sea drawing but hadn’t been able to do it. She needed to take a fresh look at it, make more of a study of it, with an artist’s eye.
Not heeding Reena’s advice, she slipped into her yellow dress, wishing she could wear it every day, but she didn’t want to ruin it on Harry’s boat, and of course there were the times when she couldn’t wear it because Reena had washed it for her and hung it on the line. But even when she watched it dry in the wind, there was a feeling of pride. When she wore it with the matching bonnet, she recalled those days before the storm when she and her mother had dressed up and gone to church together. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to wear something girlish.
The girl donned the bonnet and walked down through the alleys. Too bad she didn’t have any shoes to complete the outfit, but it was no matter. The bottoms of her feet were as tough as hooves.
It was early, and few people were up and about yet. She could chance it. The girl made speed until the gravelly soil underneath her feet had changed to sand. The city gave way, and she slipped across the road, unseen like a coyote, and then it opened out before her: the ocean waters, sunlight on dips and swells, a surf hushing against the shore, and out in the depths the silent and massive ocean, moving heavily like liquid metal.
She found her way to the water’s edge, where slippery waves lapped at her toes and made a fine-textured foam with a regular cadence, a mere whisper today, and then she gazed back toward the city and began to stroll. There was only a light breeze, and the streets were still quiet. But with the seawall in the midst of construction, laborers and engineers were already at work on the project when she reached it.
Farther down the beach, on the completed part of the wall, people had already been taking to the top to enjoy the view. A promenade on the seawall was the newest and far and away the most exciting thing to do on Galveston Island, and several couples were already strolling there to watch the sun climb the sky. Even the women were willing to step up a ladder to see the view. Ever since she’d been watching the wall go up, the girl had wondered what could be seen and studied from up so high. It hit her then. Up there she’d be able to look out at that special spot she was trying to paint and see it better.
She found an old ladder and dragged it to the wall. After scrambling her way up the ladder, which didn’t quite reach the top, she hoisted herself up the final three feet. She gazed out to the open ocean, out past the lazy waters, where seaweed floated. Galveston Island was nearly flat. Not since looking out with her father, up high on his shoulders, had she been able to see so far, to lose herself in those distant, planed waters that were her favorite, out to that shelf that held up the sky and made all the cries inside her die down. The sparkles and shimmers in her favorite place were silver, not white or yellow. She could create silver by blending her black and white art sticks.
After the quiet calm of that distant water settled into her bones, she felt like walking. She followed the length of the seawall, passing by ladies wearing high collars and long silky skirts who lifted parasols high over their heads, past men in waistcoats and tall hats. Her hair was flowing free under the bonnet, wild and tangled, and only then did she realize how noticeable it was that she had worn no shoes, heeding looks of disapproval from other strollers.
Slowing her pace, she tucked up her long red tangles under the yellow bonnet and tried to walk in a way that was sedate and ladylike. She alternately walked and stood and studied until the morning sun came up fully and the day was no longer quiet. People rushed along the walks on their way to conduct business. The streetcars were running, clanging on the tracks, and wealthy women were out and about, wearing hats and gloves, carrying baskets and going to market.
A group of knicker-clad and hatless boys moved along below the wall. They were looking up, squinting into the sun, walking along with her at the same pace as she was, following her progress. She remembered hearing about such boys. Along with the seawall promenade had come enterprising young men—boys, really—who made a penny offering their help to the ladies with a ladder.
A mistake! The girl had lingered too long, and by now the boys had homed in on her. A small pack of them were scurrying along the city side of the seawall, weaving through pedestrians, calling and hooting at her, offering her a way down.
“We’ll get you down, girl,” shouted one of the boys.
“Leave it to us,” said another.
Heat gathered in her brow, and she thought of Reena’s warnings, and also Madu’s warnings, which she had so often ignored. She walked along for a while more in hopes that the boys would lose interest. But they stayed below.
The girl picked up her pace, glanced their way, and tried to give them a discouraging glare. She shook her head at them and frowned determinedly in an effort to dampen their spirits. But it did little good. She returned to the spot where she had first gained the wall. The ladder was gone. Someone had removed it, and she hadn’t any way down.
Of course she didn’t have a penny on her. She took a few deep breaths, then focused ahead and would not even gaze down at the boys again, feigning disinterest. But they continued to follow her. She’d have to outrun them, but her long skirt hindered her progress, tangled about her legs, and besides, the rowdy boys just started running below as fast as she did. She ran anyway, until she lost her breath, and still the boys jogged, matching her pace. She stopped running and tried to catch her breath, but there was only more heat, more unbearable, scorching, heavy heat.
“Come now, let us get a better look at you,” said one boy with a face full of peppery freckles.
“Be a sport,” said another. “Let us get you down now, girl.”
She shook her head vigorously.
Another boy said with mock seriousness, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
At that the others hooted and clapped their approval.
Finally one yelled, “All right, then. You win. We’ll fetch our ladder for you and not charge a cent. Come now. Who are you?”
Reena had told her that the boys’ real purpose was to sneak a glimpse of a woman’s leg. But showing a bit of her leg was the girl’s least worry. If they caught her, they would ask questions. They would expect her to talk. And when she couldn’t talk, that might lead to someone figuring out that she was the one the authorities had been seeking off and on for the past three years.
Two of the boys were now dragging a ladder toward the wall. Soon they would climb it and gain the top.
The heat of the day somehow became even hotter. She wiped beads from her upper lip as fat lines of sweat traveled down the sides of her face. Even though the bonnet shaded her, the skin on her cheeks and brow and around her mouth was searing.
Along and below the seawall now, groups of people were watching the spectacle. The girl, scared but trying to act haughty, trying to escape. Some of the boys were on top now, running closer, determined to catch her. More people gathered, and a man was setting up a big black camera on a stand.
Running again and faster was her only option. This time the girl hiked up the yellow skirt and the petticoat beneath it, but she cared little who saw her legs. Now she could run much faster and make good speed on the hard surface of the seawall, faster than the boys below could run among the crowd, and thus she pulled out ahead, all to the enthusiastic shouts of watchers and passersby. She reached the end of the wall before the boys did and stopped.
Below was a pile of sand, but it had to be a ten-foot drop to get there. She would have to take the leap and pray she wouldn’t be injured. The boys on the wall would probably not take the same plunge; they had mothers and fathers who would punish them for taking such a risk. If the fall killed her, so be it. With a glance at the
boys closing in on her and with a relieved smile, she kissed her hand, lifted it into the air, turned, and jumped.
The fall knocked the wind out of her, and her legs trembled with the shock of the landing. But in only a split second she had conquered a distance even those daredevil boys wouldn’t dare try. Instead, they only groaned in disappointment and shouted out their protests. She scrambled to her feet, while the crowd that had been following her plight below the wall began to close in.
She ran, gained the alleys, crossed streets, and still running, she took Fat Alley and Tin Can Alley, where no white person would ever go, elated that she’d outfoxed them and, more importantly, that she had not given herself away. Soon she was lost in the rears, darting among kids playing stickball, rolling tires, and throwing marbles.
She finally slowed her pace and made her way to Reena’s backhouse, where she found a plate of cold breakfast Reena must have left for her sitting on the stoop. She ate the drying eggs, bacon, and biscuits and then stretched out on Reena’s porch in the shade. She hadn’t realized how exhausted she was, and before she knew it she’d finished reliving the episode on the seawall and had drifted off to sleep.
The next day, when she awakened the sun was high in the sky. Today she was to go out with Harry, so she slipped out of the dress and into some old clothes that had once belonged to Reena’s boys. Then she walked through the alleys to the other side of the island and followed The Strand until she had made her way to the docks and Harry’s boat.
He was working as usual. When he heard her, he looked up and fixed his mouth into a stern line. “You’re late,” he grumbled. She eased into the boat and helped him ready it for sail. Before they could cast off, the wind stopped blowing. Harry gazed about as though reconsidering his decision to set sail. And then came an odd pulling sensation in the air. Nearby a waterspout, a small tornado filled with water, was coming toward land. All the fishermen on dock that day stopped what they were doing to watch the unusual phenomenon play out.
The waterspout spun across the docks, leaving behind slippery trails of flipping, silvery minnows.
“You cain’t save them all,” said Harry, already knowing what she would do.
But the girl scrambled out of the stern and dashed down the planks, where she scooped up handfuls of minnows and tossed them back into the bay waters, all to the raucous laughter of the fishermen, who couldn’t understand the fuss she was making.
When the wind picked up, they headed out on the gently swelling water. Harry put out the seine. Over the water, the sun was hot, but the breeze was sweet and the water calm. A perfect island day.
“There’s gossip in town,” Harry said without looking up. He coughed into his hand, wheezed, and then went on working.
The girl glanced his way. Harry was thin, and he had been coughing a lot lately, more so than usual.
“Something about a girl in a yellow dress outrunning some boys on the seawall.”
She bit her lip.
“That new dress you got that you wore the other day. I was just wondering if it’s the same one.” He coughed again, then followed it with a gasp.
Meeting his eyes, she wouldn’t deny it.
Harry shook his head.
“Anyone asks, don’t let on.”
She nodded.
“You hear?”
She nodded again.
Back in the alleys later that day, nearing sunset, Reena looked the girl over, too. She pursed her lips. “I been worried about you.”
Reena lifted a water bucket and carried it away from the cistern with one fleshy, strong arm, all the while pointing her finger. “I knows what you done. It’s been all over. In the newspaper, too, I hear. Some girl in a yellow dress on the seawall.” Reena let out a long exasperated sigh. “It’d be a good thing that most people don’t know you in that frock. And now here you is, smiling ’bout it.”
It had ended up being a thrill. Sure, she’d been trapped there for a few minutes, but outrunning the boys had ended up exciting.
Chapter Twenty-Two
GRACE
I stood on the beach with a group of children. After the children had been in the surf, wading and playing for more than an hour, they were finally tiring out. I had them sit on the dry sand just above the high-water mark, where Joseph stood on his own, still afraid to venture any closer to the waves. Already I’d found a sand dollar to show him that day, and we’d watched the sand crabs scurry sideways across the small dunes at our back.
We were down below the wall, near the segment under construction, and I had just taught the children to play London Bridge and some circle games. I thought I might see Jonathan on the wall, but unfortunately he must have found a way to slip away, or else he was doing his required observation in another spot.
Over three miles long, the seawall was being built of solid concrete. The top rose to over a foot higher than the top water level reached during the 1900 Storm. Crews had brought in the finest granite from west of Austin and the largest pines for pilings from East Texas. It was indeed a huge and impressive thing, sixteen feet wide across at the bottom and five feet on top. After the wall was completed, the entire city would be raised behind it.
In opposition to the seawall, some people had had the audacity to recommend that we relocate the city, or have a daytime Galveston for business and a nighttime Galveston for sleeping. But we would show those who had made such suggestions. No storm would be able to penetrate that wall, and Galveston would regain her former glory.
Before long, Joseph and the rest of the children were building castles and digging moats in the putty-colored sand, having a grand time. The water shimmered as if strings of jewels rode the swells. The wind sprinkled me with tiny grains of sand while I stood and watched the children at play.
As I led the children back toward the school, I heard shouting coming from the seawall. Men were working there, and my first thought was that someone had been injured, but then I heard laughter, and I looked up to see the girl, my girl, on top. She was wearing my old yellow dress. Barefoot, she had her hair tucked up under the bonnet I had also given her.
It was ironic that I’d been searching for her and picturing her somewhere hidden and secreted away, but now I’d found her again, and she was in plain view in a very public place. Not only that, she was causing something of a spectacle.
Many people were watching. A group of boisterous boys below her were following her progress. She was refusing them with a very definite shake of her head. Soon she began to run.
Oh, to run like that! To be so free!
She left my sight, and I was unable to follow, as I had the children in my charge.
I didn’t know what had happened until I read about the occurrence in the newspaper the next day. An article described a so-called Miss Girl, who had run upon the seawall, had successfully evaded the boys, and then escaped without anyone knowing who she was. The account was dramatized and interjected with humor, and it was liberating for a young woman to outrun boys of her own age.
It was also the talk of the town for the next few days. People speculated as to who the so-called Miss Girl could be, when she would return, and why she preferred to keep her identity unknown. Why not come forth and tell her story and bask in the attention for a while? A few young men even wrote love letters professing their undying devotion to her, which were printed in the paper. She inspired awe in men and pride in women.
The next day Ira was wearing a new suit of lightweight gray wool. “Ira,” I said, “you’ve visited the tailor.” Neither of us had mentioned our embrace on that prior day of such terrible grief, when we’d both forgotten who we were and why we were there.
He touched his right lapel. “I do receive a salary from the charity.” He seemed embarrassed, ashamed of even this tiny streak of vanity. His old shoes were polished to a shine, and his beard looked freshly clipped, too.
“I decided it was time to purchase something nice to wear. I have meetings with some influential city leaders co
ming up soon.”
I told him about seeing the girl on the seawall. At this new bit of information, he looked bemused. He raised his eyebrows, set aside his work for the moment, and said, “She is quite a puzzle, isn’t she?”
“I’m thinking of trying to communicate with her. If she can remember a poet’s exact words and write them well enough that I recognized them, then she has had schooling. I’ve also seen her draw. Her memory must be excellent.” I turned to him. “Aren’t you curious about why she doesn’t speak? And about how she ended up living as she does?”
“Of course.”
“Wouldn’t you like to know her background? Where her family is?”
“Of course. I have a natural curiosity about people. As do you, I see.”
“I’ve an idea I’d like to propose. I could borrow a slate board and chalk from the girls’ academy and then see if she would write to me, if perhaps she would answer questions. Perhaps then we could learn why she doesn’t speak and why she lives here in apparent hiding.”
Ira was gazing at me in an unusual way. These days, whenever his eyes fell on me, I found myself in a dreamlike state, floating on water. If he touched me, most often inadvertently, I was paralyzed by both apprehension and a pleasing sense of heat. In my bed at night, I reexperienced those moments, perspiring under my sheets, stunned by the immensity of what I was feeling. Now I turned away and focused on work, my hands trembling.
Outside, storm clouds were gathering, and beneath them the sky had turned an ominous shade of green. I had no idea how I was going to get through the day holding in these feelings I had for Ira. “If she is receptive to me, however, I want to give her a few things. I’ve already passed on some art supplies. But perhaps another dress and some shoes. She goes about without shoes, and it’s a wonder she hasn’t cut her feet and come down with lockjaw. The yellow dress I gave her is the only one she owns, as far as I can tell, and already it’s soiled. I found a book of poems by Emily Brontë in our private library at home. Don’t you think she might like another dress and a book to read?”
The Uncertain Season Page 18
