The Girls of August

by Anne Rivers Siddons

  “We all ran outside,” Rachel said.

  “In our jammies…and they didn’t amount to much.” I slid the omelet onto a sea-green serving plate.

  “I don’t even think I was wearing that. I remember grabbing a towel,” Barbara said, topping off her drink.

  “That’s right!” The memory flooded back. “You held that mallet in one hand and kept the towel around you with the other. And Melinda…” I shook my head. “She said in that sweet, soft south Georgia drawl of hers, ‘I swear to Jesus, I’ll beam the fucker.’”

  “Oh my God, that was a funny night!” Rachel said, and I thought her eyes teared up with mirth, or was it because life is so bittersweet? She looked at Baby and spoke directly to her, as if she were trying to teach her something. “We stayed out on the beach all night. We made Maddy go in for wine and chips.”

  “And she took the mallet with her.”

  “Yes, she did,” Rachel said, still speaking to Baby. “And we fell asleep under the stars, that wonderful breeze blowing over us. And you know what?”

  Baby’s deep eyes were cat-wide. She bit down on the celery stick and chewed. “Nuh-uh. What?”

  “None of us were afraid. We were the girls of August. Melinda. Maddy. Barbara. And me. We were like our own fabulous, light-up-the-sky constellation. And we knew that out there under the stars, with that big ocean singing to us, no one was going to break us up. Not man or beast or ghost. Nobody.”

  Baby didn’t say a word. She just nodded. Like the rest of us, she probably didn’t know if the words were a condemnation of God for having taken Melinda from us, or just something Rachel felt like getting off her chest.

  “Well,” I said, wiping my hands on a dish towel and lifting my glass, “here’s to Melinda. Gone but not forgotten. Always a part of us. Forever loved.”

  “Hear! Hear!” Barbara said. “God, I miss her.”

  And we clinked our glasses and we drank. Baby too. And that’s how it was supposed to be. Because if she truly wanted to be one of us, from the very get-go, she was going to have to deal with Melinda’s ghost. It was one thing to say she felt as though they were sisters. It was entirely something else to live that sisterhood.

  * * *

  After brunch, Rachel and Barbara stacked the plates in the dishwasher and Baby wiped down the counters. As the cook, I put up my feet and watched them work.

  “You know, I think that house on Dauphin Island was one of the best we ever stayed in,” I said.

  “You mean that old hippie joint?” Rachel looked over her shoulder at me.

  “Yep.”

  “And why is that?” asked Barbara.

  “Because nothing in it made sense. It was as if somebody would get stoned and say, ‘Hey, there’s a great place for a window,’ and then they’d cut a hole in the wall with a hacksaw.”

  “How does that make it a nice place?” asked Baby, who then proceeded to suck something off her thumb.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. It was original. The place was relaxing, no pretense.”

  “Don’t forget the weed,” Rachel said.

  “Ooooo, the weed!” Barbara spun around, her eyes merry. “Mel found a bag of it under the deck. Remember? Somebody must have dropped it.”

  “Mel got stoned and went up on the widow’s walk, ripped off her shirt, and shouted, ‘I am queen of the world!’ I thought that old man next door was going to have a coronary,” I said.

  “Actually, I think it extended his life.” Rachel wiped her hands on a dish towel that was the same sea green as all the plates. “That girl had a body that could stop a train.”

  “She sure enough did,” Barbara said.

  Baby’s face clouded over. She opened her mouth to say something but then seemed to reconsider.

  “And that’s the house where you, Rachel, pulled on your underpants and suddenly screamed bloody murder and we all ran in there and you were pulling them off, hollering, ‘It’s biting me! It’s biting me!’” I could barely get out the words because I was laughing so hard.

  “What was biting you?” Baby asked.

  “A tiny scorpion, but you would have thought it was a ten-foot-tall rabid tarantula,” said Barbara.

  “I’m sorry,” Rachel said, “but you let a scorpion sting your labia and see how loud you scream.”

  “I will never forget as long as I live you lying in that hammock with an ice pack on your coochie!” I got up from the table and hugged Rachel. Barbara joined in.

  “You all are crazy, but I love you,” Rachel said.

  Baby the Outsider—in her own house, no less—stood there watching, and I felt certain she was waiting for one of us to wave her over, but the invitation never came. As Rachel planted a kiss first on my head and then on Barbara’s, Baby said, “I’m going for a walk. Anybody want to join me?”

  “Not me. I’m pooped,” Rachel said, holding on to us.

  “Me too,” Barbara said. “That Bloody Mary did me in.”

  She headed out of the kitchen, snapping off her bathing suit straps as she went.

  “What are you doing?” I asked, fearing she was about to take everything off.

  “I don’t like tan lines. Neither does Teddy. Maddy, you should know that.”

  “Oh-oh,” Rachel said.

  And to think I had actually been considering going with her. “Sweetie, anything I ever had with Teddy was a long, long time ago. And we never made it to the tan line stage, so get over it.” I’d had just enough liquor that I could speak my mind.

  Baby’s bikini bottom was half down one hip. Barbara broke free from us and squared her shoulders. “Baby, going skinny-dipping in front of the house is one thing. But please tell me you’re not thinking about walking naked as a jaybird down the beach. That is something totally different.”

  Baby cocked her head at Barbara, defiance lighting her eyes. “And if I did, what business is that of yours?”

  “I’ll tell you what business it is,” I said, my slow temper flaring. “This isn’t a deserted island, Baby. You know that. The Gullahs might live on the other side, but it doesn’t mean they stay there. Why do you think any of them would want to see you prancing around naked?” I was fed up with her nonsense.

  “Maybe they’d like it,” Baby retorted.

  Rachel swung around and came close to putting a finger on Baby’s chest. “You listen to me. This may be your house but it’s not your show. We are the girls of August, not the tramps of August. I’ve changed my mind. We’re going to go for a walk together, and it’s going to be pleasant. And not a single damn one of us is going to take off our clothes. Your coochie stays covered. Got it?”

  Baby lifted a defiant little face at us, her jawline set hard, yet still pretty. She had moxie; I appreciated that in her.

  “Fine. Let me wrap up like I’m from Riyadh,” she said, grabbing a beach towel off the back of a chair and wrapping it around herself so tightly she looked like a human Q-tip. “Number one, I had no plans to march down the beach naked. And number two, if I wanted to frolic nude from one end of the island to another, I damned well would do it. And there’s nothing you could do to stop me. This is my island.” She tossed back her head as though she were the queen of England, pulled the towel even tighter, and snapped, “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Despite the kerfuffle with Baby, it was, all in all, a glorious first day on Tiger Island. We walked the entire island, south to north—me trying and failing to figure out where Mac’s old house might once have stood—and didn’t come across a single soul until we neared the northern tip, where a young black man stood alone on the beach, surf-fishing. His face looked carved from basalt, like a statue’s.

  “Earl!” Baby squealed, and she ran ahead of us, greeting him with a hug.

  “Who in the hell do you suppose this is?” Rachel grumbled.

  “They sure do appear to know each other well,” Barbara said. “Look, she’s holding his hand.”

  “He looks like he ought to be on Easter Island,�
�� I said.

  “I’m glad he’s on Tiger,” Rachel said, and growled softly in her throat.

  Baby waved us over. “Come on, come meet Earl,” she hollered.

  Earl, it turned out, was a Gullah fisherman from the other side of the island.

  “Welcome to Tiger Island,” he said. “Baby tells me it’s your first time out here.”

  “Yes. Yes, it is,” I said.

  “It’s a magical place. We can tell that already,” Barbara said.

  “You live here full-time?” Rachel asked, as if the very idea were nutty.

  “Oh, yes. Me and my whole family.”

  “How wonderful!” Barbara said. “I wish I lived here full-time.”

  “But Barbara, where would you get your hair done?” Rachel teased.

  “I tell you what,” Earl said. “Out here, if you don’t have it, you don’t need it.”

  “That’s true,” Baby said, squeezing his hand.

  “Now listen,” Earl said. “Maybe Baby has already told you, but it’s worth repeating. Don’t you go in the water when it’s murky. You want to see those tiger sharks coming. We don’t call it Tiger Island for nothing.” And then he winked at us and I had two impressions. One, I wasn’t sure if he was teasing or not. And two, I thought that wink was aimed solely at Baby.

  “Those little sharks wouldn’t hurt a fly,” Baby said, and then she started laughing as if she’d just told a whopper of a joke. She pecked Earl on the cheek. “We gotta go, sweets, but you let me know if you need me. OK? I’m serious.”

  “You know I will,” Earl said.

  We said our good-byes and headed off in the direction we’d come from. We had gone only a few feet when Rachel, pausing to pick up a honey-colored scallop shell, said under her breath, “What do you want to bet he’ll need her.”

  If Baby heard her, she didn’t let on. She simply continued to chatter in that stream-of-consciousness way she had.

  “Earl is the nicest fella. Well, next to Teddy, that is. Looks like the tide is coming in. I’m so hungry I could eat a whale. I want to find me a sand dollar. I haven’t found one in a coon’s age. I wish we were like the Indians and used shells as money. We’d ALL be rich then. Lookee there, down a ways, at Mr. Blue Heron. Isn’t he pretty! Fishing the shallows, just like an old man. Hey, are y’all having any fun?”

  “Loads,” Rachel said.

  “We’d have more fun if you’d…” Barbara didn’t finish her sentence, which I was relieved about because I was certain she had intended to say something such as keep your big mouth shut.

  “If I’d what?” Baby asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m going for a dip,” I said, congratulating myself on how adept I was becoming at avoidance.

  “Watch out for the tiger sharks!” Baby chortled, dropping the towel to the sand and plunging into the surf.

  By the time we got back to Tiger’s Eye, we were sunburned, famished, and exhausted. I threw together shrimp and pasta in olive oil and lemon for supper. Barbara tossed a good green salad. And Rachel made sure to pour lots and lots of pinot grigio.

  We ate outside, the sea breeze whipping our hair and tingling our sunburned skin, and we laughed as we told stories of Augusts past. The time the fishmonger came to our house and proclaimed his love for all four of us (Mississippi). And the time Barbara got confused because we’d rented a little, nondescript house on the Florida Gulf Coast that looked like all the other nondescript houses in the neighborhood. After a beach stroll one afternoon, she walked into the wrong bungalow, helped herself to a Coca-Cola, and flopped down on the couch. The old couple who owned the place screamed bloody murder when they opened their front door and saw Barbara sitting there like she owned the place (Longboat Key). The full moon that was so big and low over the water, Melinda burst into tears and said it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen (St. Simons Island). Hurricane George forcing us from our charming digs in Orange Beach, Alabama, on our final night, so that we moved on to Mobile and had a raucously fine hurricane party that was crashed by a contingent of young Swedish marine scientists who were studying the effects of freshwater intrusion on oyster beds. That old, run-down place on the Outer Banks with its defunct gas pump that Barbara was convinced was going to blow up, shredding us all to smithereens. The last house we shared—Melinda’s final August—where we gazed at the calm Gulf and made promises to each other that we’d probably never, ever be able to keep, such as the one I made to Rachel: I will never complain when you say something sarcastic as long as it’s also funny (St. Teresa, Florida).

  “I think a return trip to St. Teresa might be in order one day,” I mused.

  Rachel picked at the last of her shrimp and said nothing.

  Barbara, who had cleaned her plate, said, “I dunno. Might be too damn sad.”

  Baby sighed as though she did not want to hear Melinda’s name spoken even once more and then—having eaten three helpings (where did she put it all?)—pushed herself away from the table, walked over to the hammock at the opposite end of the porch, flopped down, and said, “Awwwww. I sure wish Teddy was here,” admiring the rock on her finger.

  “Just ignore her,” Rachel growled.

  “Attention-seeking little twit,” Barbara purred.

  “I’m getting fed up with the Teddy this and Teddy that,” I whispered.

  “Looks like the floor show is about to begin.” Rachel tossed down her napkin and watched as Baby pranced down the steps and began to cartwheel across the front yard, expertly missing the rugosa roses and their torturous thorns.

  “Wheeeeee!”

  “Baby,” Barbara called, reaching for the wine bottle, “your pretty house sort of reminds me of Cornelia’s home.”

  She did a backward somersault.

  “How’s that?”

  “The roses,” Rachel said. “The goddamned roses.”

  “How old is this place, Baby?” I asked.

  “I think Granddaddy built it in the nineteen twenties. Or was it the thirties? I don’t remember. But anyway, he’s long dead. And my mama—did I tell you she’s dead? Passed on almost a year ago now—gave it to me as a wedding present. I redecorated. Got rid of a lot of the old stuff. I mean, I kept some things…stuff my mama and my grandparents loved. But some of the pictures, furniture, photos, what-have-yous, I chucked.” She did a split and then spun into a standing position, which led into something that resembled a backbend.

  “Why?” If she would just stop moving, I thought, my growing nausea might ease. “Why would you throw away family photos?”

  Indeed, she did stop for a moment. “Clean slate. I paid a family on the other side of the island to bag up all the old crap and do whatever they wanted with it. And I hired Mrs. Louise K. Baker, of Louise K. Baker Interior Designs, to fluff up the place. I think she did pretty good.” Baby got on all fours and crab-walked.

  “For heaven’s sake,” Rachel spit.

  “I still don’t understand. How could you get rid of family heirlooms?” Barbara asked, rising and walking over to the rail.

  “Just did.” Baby grunted and then collapsed in the grass. “I tried to get Teddy to take down that damn lightning rod, or at least that blue glass ball my daddy put up there. But he wouldn’t do it. He will, though. Just you wait and see.”

  “I like that glass ball. It’s pretty,” I said.

  “No! It’s not! It’s like an eyeball that watches my every move,” Baby said, staring skyward.

  “Well, anyway,” I said, “Cornelia’s house was where we first gathered, so even though none of us could stand her, that house is a part of us.”

  “Yep. Shit. I guess so,” Rachel said.

  “Wasn’t that wedding something? Like a Great Gatsby wedding.” Barbara reached over to the table, picked up her wine, and swirled it.

  “Teddy and Cornelia’s?” Rachel looked at Barbara as if she’d lost her marbles. “It was ridiculous.”

  “You could have solved world hunger with what they spent o
n flowers alone,” I said.

  “Teddy never talks about her,” Baby said as she made grass angels, her arms and legs flapping against the green sod. Somebody keeps this yard up, I thought. Probably one of the Gullahs. “Is she pretty?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. Barbara glanced at me over the lip of her wineglass and rolled her eyes. Rachel said, “If you like Barbie dolls with money for blood, yeah.”

  The nausea that had stalked me on and off all day eased and I started laughing. Teddy might have dumped me for the Ice Queen, but I got a keeper and he got a divorce.

  “Were you always a caterer? You cook good,” Baby said to me, sitting up, her bikini-bottomed bum nestled in the grass.

  “She’s gonna get worms sitting like that,” Rachel said into her glass.

  “Nope,” I said, and I downed a healthy gulp of pinot.

  “She stopped teaching when she and Mac moved to Charleston,” Rachel answered for me.

  “Why?”

  “Because teachers don’t get paid squat in South Carolina and she followed her bliss.” Barbara took a deep breath, filling herself up with the ocean breeze.

  “Her what?”

  “Bliss!” Rachel spun around in her chair. “B-L-I-S-S.”

  “Oh!” Baby crowed. “I thought she said ‘piss.’”

  I looked up from my wine and Rachel, Barbara, and I caught each other in a shared glance that was solid, born of old times with the promise of new ones. We all began to sputter and giggle—Baby too.

  “I followed my piss!” I said between hiccupping laughter.

  “She followed her piss and her dreams came true!” Rachel screamed.

  “Follow your piss, Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Barbara intoned.

  “Ignorance is…,” Baby started.

  “Piss!” we all yelled.

  And that’s what we were doing when the first star pierced the night sky. Being silly. Laughing as loudly as we possibly could, as if we wanted God to hear.

  * * *

  Later that evening, after a round of “Good nights” and “Sleep tights,” I slipped under the damp-and-salt-smelling sheets feeling more exhausted than I had a right to. Still and all, despite my bone-tiredness, sleep did not come easily. I listened to the surf crash and recede, crash and recede, and with each onslaught, thoughts of my family—my real family—washed over me. Out there, outside my closed bedroom door, when the girls and I were chatting and laughing, swimming and strolling, my real family seemed like a distant, pleasant galaxy that I soon would return to, so I gave it little thought. But when I was alone, in the dark, memories of Mac welled up and I missed him so badly my spine ached.