Barren Island

by Carol Zoref

  There was a lot of sulking in the days and weeks that followed, everyone waiting for arrest warrants and eviction notices that never came. Being afraid was enough to keep everyone quiet and miserable. The boys were placed on probation on condition that they stayed put. If they got caught leaving the island they would go to jail.

  This meant going to Brooklyn by myself. My father would not hear of it. A week passed, then two. Ray wrote to ask if I was coming back. Another letter that came over on the barge. He had read about the hijacking in the papers. He said he missed me; he wrote that Dolores missed me too. There is missing and then there is missing. Dolores, to be sure, missed my help. From Ray I wanted the wanting kind of missing.

  “It’s not fair,” I told my father. “Noah’s on probation, not me.”

  “I didn’t say it was fair,” he replied. “I said it’s not proper.”

  “I’m not alone; you know where I am.”

  “Better you should visit your cousins, help your aunt if you want to go somewhere.”

  “I’m helping plenty by rolling bandages, not tomcatting around like Noah.”

  “Don’t ever speak that way. Girls don’t tomcat. And Noah doesn’t either.”

  He was right. Noah was not much of a liar. This was the boy, after all, who left his French journal lying around for anyone to see.

  “Can we make a deal?” I begged.

  “I don’t bargain with my children.”

  “What if Noah walks me to the barge and meets me when I get home?”

  “It’s not Barren Shoal that worries me.”

  “Ray can meet me at the dock in Brooklyn and bring me back when we’re through.”

  “Who is this Ray that I should say yes?”

  Who was Ray? Ray was my purpose. This is what people do. We decide on a purpose; we expect others to understand and cheer us on. Or at least not stand in our way. But why do we expect what we can barely do for ourselves? Because we are desperate to find the courage we lack.

  “Ray’s the boy from Miss Finn’s street. You met him at the graduation party.”

  “It’s not right.”

  “You don’t think it’s right to help the Spanish?”

  “I should’ve said I don’t reason with my children, never mind bargain,” he replied. “Just make sure this Ray doesn’t let you travel alone. Not one step.”

  I threw my arms around his neck.

  “I love you so much...”

  “Go on already,” he said. “And don’t tell your mother.”

  Noah was still out of work when school reopened in September. Having no prospects or plans, he announced he was volunteering to fight in Spain.

  “With Ray?” I asked. Ray was now a part of our lives the way that outsiders enter the folklore of small towns. He was part of my life because of the way we kissed on the way to the dock and the way he draped his arm around my shoulders as we walked. For the time being, that was plenty.

  “Who says Ray’s going to Spain?” said Noah.

  “Nobody’s going to Spain,” cried my mother.

  “Over my dead body,” said my father, at which point my mother slammed their bedroom door and did not come out for three whole days except to use the outhouse, which she did infrequently, like she was some kind of camel.

  Ray had not left for Spain. He was still in Brooklyn, two doors down from Miss Finn. He was still in the warehouse on Sundays. He and Dolores still spoke in code. That was okay: we had our own code, Ray and I. I even asked Miss Finn about Ray going, but she said the decision was not up to him. If not him, who? I would no more ask about that than I would ask about the source of the money. I had my own worries. I was torn between dreaming of Ray fighting in Spain and being heroic, and wanting him safe in Brooklyn, close by, meeting me on Sundays.

  Marie Dowd left that fall to live with a cousin in Brooklyn Heights and attend Hunter College. Miss Finn read Marie’s letters aloud to us. I had never written a letter of my own before, but I worked up the courage to write to Ray. I asked Miss Finn to deliver it that weekend so he could read it before seeing me on Sunday. It was hard to talk with Dolores around. Miss Finn smiled in a coy, knowing way. I said that I wanted to ask him more about Spain, that it was difficult to speak at the warehouse in front of Dolores, who would think I was stupid. If I had asked anyone else to mail the letter, the whole island would have been talking. Besides which, it cost pennies to mail a letter, pennies I did not have.

  Ray handed me his reply on Sunday. I still have his letters in a box of other things from back then, including a couple of pages from the Odyssey Project and some botanical drawings. I never look at any of it, but I cannot throw it away. Someone else will have to—my children, I suppose—but not yet. Ray had this to say:

  You ask if I’m a communist. Is there a right answer? No, I’m not a party member. Nor am I a member of any other party, union, league, or church. I support actions, not ideologies. Ideologies are always disappointments; they demand that we believe in them unconditionally. Actions don’t require that kind of devotion. I don’t need to be a communist to know that no man should starve while another grows fat. Nor must I attend Catholic mass—the religion into which I was born—and take Holy Communion in order to treat another man as I would treat myself. I do not trust the Communist Party any more than I trust the Catholic Church. The consolidation of power in the hands of the few is always dangerous, especially when the actions of those who govern cannot be questioned by those they govern.

  I wrote back asking how it was possible, then, for him to be involved in the Spanish cause when so many members were communists. On Sunday he handed me his next reply:

  The writer Archibald MacLeish says, “The man who refuses to defend his convictions for fear he may defend them in the wrong company has no convictions.” There’s a difference, Marta, between allies and friends. Alliances are constructed upon agreements; friendships endure despite disagreements. Don’t confuse the one with the other. It’ll break your heart.

  It became impossible to not think about Ray, no matter what. Maybe it was the same for Sofia about Joey; maybe she could not help herself. The harder I tried, the more important he became. Noah had the unions, my parents had Zyrmuny, Sofia had Joey, Ray had the Spanish Civil War, and I had Ray. Everyone needs a purpose, including me. Does anything make us feel more alive?

  I wrote back saying I hoped we could talk about it on the coming Sunday and on all the other Sundays to come. I handed him my reply the following Sunday when I got off the barge. He opened it right there.

  “You’re a hell of a girl, still coming after everything that happened with the boys.”

  “I don’t worry about defending my convictions with the ‘wrong company,’” I said.

  “Very clever,” he said with a knowing grin.

  When we got to the warehouse, he steered me into one of the alleys that flanked either side. He was still clasping my hand when he kissed me. My lips opened just enough, then opened more.

  He released my fingers and rested his hands on my shoulders. He kissed me again and slid one of his hands across my breasts. I pressed my mouth closer. When his fingers found one of my nipples through my thin cotton dress, I moaned.

  On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, Gray and Lois appeared at the dock in their speedboat. Joey hustled off to find Noah. The very official letter they carried came addressed to James Peck, a name Noah had evidently invented for himself. It was from the Civilian Conservation Corps and was sent in care of Gray. Noah had applied again on one of those days he left me at the warehouse. I could guess what he was thinking: a fellow named James Peck would get picked faster than a fellow named Noah Eisenstein. He was right. Only people who routinely choose Pecks over Eisensteins would think that using an alias is cheating.

  Instead of going to Spain like he had been vowing to do, Noah was to leave in a week for a job with the CCC cutting trees in Washington State and Oregon. No one from the police had ever checked on him after the hijacking, so he reckoned t
hey never would. The new application was a secret. Or not telling us was a lie. One gives birth to the other—yes? But which comes first? Oh, these baffling little chickens and eggs. If we could answer that grade school question we would know the answer to everything.

  Noah took what little clothing he owned and stuffed it into a bag along with his journal and his pencils. Had he been able to fit his radio, he would have taken that too. Gray and Lois came back for him in the speedboat and got him to Pennsylvania Station.

  He said goodbye and then he was gone.

  On Sunday I rode the barge to Brooklyn because not going would have been harder. Ray took my hand on the walk to the warehouse, but I did not care. He tried to guide me into the alley, but I shook him off. When he put his hand on the small of my back, I opened the door and took a seat by Dolores.

  “What’s eating you?” he asked.

  “Cannibals,” I replied. With that, I took the jacket Dolores was stitching and I sewed.

  CHAPTER 19

  Noah wrote every few weeks. The first pieces of mail were lonely letters postmarked from Washington State, where he was clearing rubble along the Columbia River to make way for the Grand Coulee Dam. He worked there long enough to write a bunch of times but he never included a return address for the fishing camp where he was staying. Did he honestly think the NYPD would trace a piece of mail across a continent to arrest a boy who hijacked a garbage barge? If they had wanted him in for punching a cop, they had plenty of chances and they never came. Noah was another piece of junk they were glad to be rid of.

  In his early letters, Noah asked for details about Joey’s recovery from his brothers’ beating and Yorgos’ luck finding a job. He asked for news from Europe. He also asked after Ray and about our work at the warehouse. Without a return address there was nothing to say, not even that, after my pushing him away for a couple of weeks, Ray and I had returned to our routine, no explanations required. Besides which, I had not even told Noah about me and Ray.

  Then came a worrisome silence of two months, after which a letter arrived from a logging camp in Oregon. Noah reported that the work was hard but he was keeping up. The weather was wet and always cold; there was oatmeal every day for breakfast and potatoes and beans for dinner. In one letter, he described rigging a fishing pole from a red oak branch and buying line made by a local the old-fashioned way, out of horsehair with catgut leaders. After that he added freshwater trout to his diet.

  Later on he was sent to California, where a crew was clearing a road buried by a mudslide. A dozen houses had been forced into the Pacific; two shotgun shacks were still wedged between the cliffs and the boulders below. Noah described how a few more pieces pulled away every time the tide came in until the houses finally collapsed.

  California had more of everything—people, food, sun—and he sounded happy to be there. He heard Upton Sinclair address a group of loggers one night at a tent revival. He read The Jungle, which brought back the smells of Barren Shoal. He confused Upton Sinclair with Sinclair Lewis, which turned out fine because he read It Can’t Happen Here, which he said was terrifying, what with Charles Lindbergh playing footsies with Hitler and the economy taking another dive. By that point a Jew in Germany could not be a dentist anymore. The Nazis were now going after the homosexuals, too. Of course it could have happened here; it still can. Nothing has changed since antiquity, from the times of Antiochus. Every Jew must be ready to live as a Maccabee. I make no apologies for saying so. The facts stand.

  There was enough work to keep Noah in California forever. He befriended another boy from the east named Tyson Johns, whom he described as a handsome fellow, 6’ 2” to Noah’s 5’ 10”, with bright eyes and an easy smile. Tyson lived with his family on a chicken farm in South Jersey until the bank called in the paper when the Johnses missed some payments. The farm was auctioned for a pitiful sum, made more pitiful by the fact that Tyson’s parents were unable to raise it. His father and brothers worked the same land now as tenant farmers. They need to make cash, wrote Noah, so Tyson came out here.

  The only baby born that fall on Barren Shoal was another Dowd. This made number eleven. I wonder if the word no was in that woman’s vocabulary or what Mr. Dowd would have done had Mrs. Dowd refused him. Maybe she did and he climbed on her anyway. Or maybe she liked being pregnant and nursing and the whole to-do. I liked it well enough myself for my two, but I cannot help thinking he was killing her. When the baby died of a fever my mother went silent again, as if was Helen dying all over. I did not hesitate when my father asked if I wanted to visit my aunt and uncle for a weekend.

  Instead of riding the garbage barge, I went to Brooklyn on the police boat with Miss Finn. The plan was for me to ride back with her on Monday morning; I do not know how Miss Finn got the police to agree, but they did. Maybe her sister, Miss Doctor Finn, had helped out one of their wives or a girlfriend at some time or another. They were not friends but had learned to be allies, just like Ray explained.

  On Saturday, my cousin Ruthie took me to see The Life of Emile Zola, my first movie ever. Sidney was at work and Flat Sammy howled when Ruthie told him he was staying behind, that the movie was for grown-ups.

  “Marta’s no grown-up,” he wailed.

  “She certainly is, but would you mind telling me when that happened?” asked my uncle as he helped me into my coat. “Overnight? On the sly? When I wasn’t looking?”

  Jews loved Zola because he defended Alfred Dreyfus. I loved Dreyfus because he was played by Paul Muni, my celebrity crush before the end of the first reel. Ruthie said that Muni was Jewish, a Galitzianer just like our family. That sealed the deal.

  Ruthie and I ate popcorn while Dreyfus ate bug-infested gruel in the Devil’s Island prison. We wiped our hands on paper napkins; Dreyfus got dysentery. We were completely absorbed; Dreyfus was finally pardoned. Time and history zipped by, which is pretty terrific for a character living in an unjust world.

  On Sunday, instead of my going to the warehouse, Miss Finn insisted on taking me to the Brooklyn Museum. I was delighted that Ray came too. I think it fair to say that he came to see me, not the art.

  “Good to see you again,” Ray said, as if speaking to an acquaintance.

  “So what,” I replied.

  “You’re in a lousy mood,” he said, purposely falling behind Miss Finn.

  “It’s okay that we’re a secret; it’s not okay to pretend you barely know me. And besides, it’s not as if Miss Finn doesn’t know I volunteer.”

  With Noah gone, I had no patience for being treated like a little girl. We had long been a confederation of children, even after Helen died. Without him I could not stand it. Being an only child was too lonely and I resolved to not be one. Helen was gone; Noah was gone. Therefore, I was an adult.

  “The entrance used to be a wide set of steps, like at the Metropolitan Museum,” Miss Finn explained as we walked in. “Three years ago the Municipal Art Commission decided that the steps were ‘undemocratic’ and demolished them. They didn’t make the entrance democratic; they made it ugly.”

  She led us to the Egyptian collection. “Look at these steps the Egyptians climbed at their temples. Their priests and rulers were perched at the top so they could look down on the supplicants who brought offerings. That was undemocratic. But who was looking down from the steps of the museum? No one but the other visitors who had entered the same way. It’s the private collectors who make art unavailable and elitist, not public museums.”

  “They should’ve ripped out the steps of the U.S. Capitol while they were at it,” said Ray.

  “Who exactly are you referring to?” asked Miss Finn. As always, she demanded specifics.

  “Whoever decides these things, that’s who.”

  “Perhaps you should tell them.”

  “I don’t matter a damn.”

  “Mr. Whitmore,” said Miss Finn in a scolding tone.

  “And won’t till I ship out.”

  “You’re still going to Spain?” I asked anxiously. My b
eing annoyed did not mean I did not care.

  “I better be.”

  “Never mind that,” said Miss Finn. “You’re standing in front of one of the most celebrated tablets in the collection. The head on the left is the king, on the right the queen.”

  “Heads without bodies,” Ray observed coolly.

  Further along was a statue of a man and woman, seated in an embrace.

  “That’s more like it,” said Ray. “A guy with his arm wrapped around his girl; a girl with her arm around her guy. She’s even smiling.”

  Miss Finn gave him an appreciative look.

  “Speaking of smiling, I need to find a Ladies Room,” she said. She was so good at changing the subject when things got prickly.

  Ray and I waited in the Egyptian gallery for Miss Finn. He tried to kiss me, but I held him off.

  “I want to go too,” I announced.

  “Catch up with Miss Finn,” said Ray.

  “Not the bathroom, stupid. Spain.”

  “Anyone with half a brain wants to go.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Except you’re not,” he said. “I mean you’re not going.”

  “You don’t get to decide,” I said. “You can’t even decide about yourself.”

  “We’ve discussed this. Are you a nurse? Can you drive an ambulance?”

  “There must be something I can do,” I said. “Rolling bandages isn’t nothing.”

  “Stay here. Keep reminding folks.”

  “No one’ll forget you.”

  “This isn’t about me.”

  “But it is. I’m trying to tell you.”

  “Oh, Marta.”

  “Don’t say my name that way.”

  “How should I say it?”

  I blushed.

  “Oh, Marta,” he said. “You’re sweet.”

  “Don’t.”

  “I’m flattered. Truly.”

  “I’m not trying to flatter you. I lo—”

  “No, no, no,” he interrupted. “You can’t. Not that way.”