Gilda Joyce: The Bones of the Holy

by Allison, Jennifer

  “Oh, there’s plenty of ’em!” Mrs. Furbo flicked her hand with a dismissive wave. “I’ve seen ’em, anyway. You just have to know where to look.”

  Gilda wondered what Captain Jack would say if he were here at the table. She guessed he would explain how the gopher tortoise habitat had been broken up by parking lots and highways. She also sensed that there would be no end to the argument if she attempted to stick up for the rights of gopher tortoises—or for that matter, anything else that threatened to change some of the old family traditions.

  “Go on—dig in!” said Mr. Furbo.

  Eugene slurped some clam chowder, leaving a milky stain on his mustache. “This is mighty good, Theresa!”

  Mrs. Furbo shook her head. “It’s not near as good as the gopher stew would have been.”

  “Now, let me tell you something about gopher tortoises,” said Mr. Furbo, addressing Gilda as if he were about to begin an educational lecture. “Back when my daughter, Charlotte, was little, whenever I found a gopher burrow on our property, I’d dig a hole about four feet down to wherever it was hiding in the burrow. Then I’d grab little Charlotte by the legs, pick her up, and lower her headfirst down into the gopher burrow. From a young age, she was a natural. In a minute she’d grab that big ole tortoise and pull it out for me. Then we’d go prepare the gopher stew together. . . .” His voice trailed off, and he looked suddenly stricken with the weight of a terrible memory.

  Is he nostalgic for the old days when Charlotte was around? Or is he just sad about not being able to eat gopher tortoises? Gilda wondered. To the Furbos, the animal seemed to represent a lost history—perhaps a simpler life that had disappeared.

  “It sounds like you miss seeing your daughter,” said Mrs. Joyce, gently.

  Mr. Furbo shook his head, as if trying to physically shake off the sad feelings. “No,” he said with surprising emphasis. “She made her choice.”

  Mrs. Furbo looked grim.

  “What choice?” Gilda asked, now feeling as if she was going to die of curiosity if someone didn’t tell her the whole story about Charlotte soon. Whatever the choice was, she thought, it seemed to have had the effect of ending her relationship with her entire family.

  “Bob,” said Eugene, obviously hoping to change the topic of conversation, “why don’t you tell Patty and Gilda how you used to make the gopher stew?”

  “But—” Gilda was still desperate to talk about Charlotte. She was sure that Mr. Furbo had been on the verge of revealing some juicy piece of information.

  “Well, after you manage to catch the gopher,” said Mr. Furbo, “you whack it real hard on the back of the shell so the legs come out. Then you grab a hatchet and cut down each side, take off the toenails, cut out the guts, and don’t forget to eat the eggs—that’s the best part. Then just cook it up with some datil pepper, onions, bacon fat, garlic, potatoes, and whatever else you want to throw in there. Charlotte just loved it when she was a kid.”

  “Until she became one of those animal rights people and wouldn’t help you do that no more,” said Mrs. Furbo angrily. She regarded Gilda and Mrs. Joyce with a deadpan expression. “You aren’t vegetarians, are you?”

  “If it walks, I eat it,” Gilda quipped, half wondering if they might have some poor gopher tortoise hiding in the kitchen that she would be forced to kill to prove herself.

  “Because we don’t allow vegetarians in our house.”

  I think she might actually be serious, Gilda thought. “Is Charlotte still a vegetarian?” Gilda had struck a nerve; there was a silence before anyone answered.

  “We don’t know,” said Mrs. Furbo. She stood up abruptly and began to gather empty soup bowls. She paused and stared at Mrs. Joyce’s virtually untouched soup. “What’s the matter? You’re not hungry?”

  “Don’t worry; there’s no gopher tortoises in there,” Mr. Furbo joked.

  “It’s delicious,” said Mrs. Joyce, who was suddenly fighting a queasy stomach that had more to do with nerves than the clam chowder.

  “Small appetite, huh?” Mr. Furbo chuckled. “Sounds like Patty here is like Charlotte in more ways than just looks!”

  “I’ll leave that chowder there for you to finish,” said Mrs. Furbo, still frowning at Mrs. Joyce as if she were a petulant child. “It’s perfectly good chowder, and I don’t want it to go to waste!”

  “Thank you, Theresa, but I’m not your child,” Mrs. Joyce blurted, shocking everyone at the table.

  Even Gilda was surprised. Her mother normally reserved her most direct, critical statements for her children. Uh-oh, Gilda thought. Sounds like the wedding stress is starting to get to Mom.

  “Oh ho! You’d better watch this one, Eugene,” Mr. Furbo joked, pointing an accusing finger at Mrs. Joyce. “Next thing you know, she’ll up and leave you for a colored man just like Charlotte did!”

  The atmosphere in the room turned brittle. Gilda’s jaw dropped with surprise at the revelation of this detail about Charlotte’s past, not to mention the reality of lingering racist views in the Furbo family. Mrs. Joyce lowered her eyes as if she were a teenager who had just been reprimanded by an authoritarian father. Eugene seemed to concentrate very hard on the process of buttering his dinner roll.

  Gilda was torn between an intense desire to escape the room and never return and a wish that her mother would say something—anything—to let both Mr. Furbo and Eugene know what she thought of the tactless comment.

  Taking a deep breath, Gilda resolved to turn her attention back to the task of finding out more about Charlotte. She had to make sure she had this story straight. “Mr. Furbo,” she said, cautiously, “are you saying that Charlotte left Eugene to move to Europe with an African-American man?”

  Mr. Furbo regarded Gilda with suspicion. “You can call it whatever you want, but the fact is that Charlotte ran off with a Black man, and I personally couldn’t stand for that.”

  So it wasn’t just a bad breakup that happened between Eugene and Charlotte, Gilda thought. Charlotte had a total falling-out with her entire family! Gilda looked at Mrs. Furbo to gauge whether she shared her husband’s views, but her face was inscrutable.

  “I couldn’t forgive Charlotte for what she did,” said Mr. Furbo. “She knew how I felt about that. I told her; ‘You come home when you’re done with this nonsense.’” He shook his head and tossed a napkin on the table with a violent gesture of disgust. “Well. She never did come home. She made her choice.”

  Gilda felt a wave of sadness and something close to nausea. It must have been hard for Charlotte to have Mr. and Mrs. Furbo as her parents when she was a kid, Gilda thought. I mean, what if my parents had said that Wendy’s family should “move back to China” or that I shouldn’t spend so much time with her? Gilda tried to imagine what it would feel like to have parents who would make her choose between her relationship with a boyfriend—or any friend—and her family. My family would never do that, she realized. They might be mad at me, but they’d never tell me, “Don’t come home.”

  Maybe I’m lucky, Gilda thought. I mean, my family definitely isn’t perfect—Stephen is a little selfish and Mom doesn’t always believe my stories and Dad is dead and gone—but at least we’re all free to be ourselves.

  One thing was certain: The situation with Charlotte was far more complicated than Gilda had imagined. She hadn’t expected the ghosts of a racially segregated past to play a role in this family drama.

  “She made her choice,” Mrs. Furbo repeated. “She wanted nothing to do with us anymore.”

  But you forced her to choose, Gilda thought. And now she’s gone.

  Gilda now understood the hidden sadness that pervaded the Furbos’ environment: Even as Mrs. Furbo served traditional favorites like shrimp with datil-pepper sauce and Mr. Furbo and Eugene spoke of favorite hunting trips, beautifully carved antique rifles, and the heroic survival stories of the Minorcan community in Florida, Gilda sensed that the reminiscences were not enough to overcome a missing piece. They won’t admit it, Gilda thought, b
ut they miss Charlotte.

  Without warning, the room went dark and something crashed to the floor. “Oh!” Mrs. Joyce cried out in surprise.

  “What the blazes—” Mr. Furbo muttered.

  “Must be a blown fuse,” Mrs. Furbo suggested.

  “It’s the wiring in these old houses,” Eugene suggested. “I have the same problem at my place lately.”

  “Well, let’s not just sit here like bumps on a log,” said Theresa. “I’ll get a flashlight.”

  Then, just as suddenly, all the lights came back on.

  “That was strange,” said Mr. Furbo, gazing up at the overhead light fixture.

  “Oh, I’m sorry!” Mrs. Joyce had just realized that her bowl of clam chowder had crashed to the floor after the lights went out, shattering and splattering soup everywhere. “That bowl just seemed to jump off the table!”

  “I’ll get some paper towels.” Theresa sounded annoyed; she clearly didn’t believe that Mrs. Joyce’s bowl had “jumped off the table.”

  “Looks like you might have a poltergeist here, Mr. Furbo,” Gilda ventured, partly to gauge his reaction. “Does this sort of thing happen often?”

  “There ain’t no ghost but the Holy Ghost,” was Mr. Furbo’s terse reply.

  So that’s where Eugene learned that phrase, Gilda thought. But before she could ask any more questions, they were interrupted by the horribly loud metallic clatter of a large pot toppling from the kitchen stove onto the floor.

  “Good night! Are you okay in there, Theresa?” Mr. Furbo called.

  A moment later, a grim-looking Mrs. Furbo emerged from the kitchen, her apron completely soaked with clam chowder.

  “Don’t you say anything,” she snapped at Mr. Furbo.

  “You’re supposed to put it in your mouth, not take a bath in it!”

  Gilda suppressed a sudden urge to giggle; Mrs. Furbo clearly didn’t see any humor in the situation.

  With everyone’s help, Mrs. Furbo focused on cleaning up the spilled soup, refusing to speculate about the possible causes of the strange series of events. “I don’t buy into that ghost-tour trash that goes on in the city these days,” was her snappish reply to Gilda’s query about a possible ghost in the house.

  Nevertheless, Gilda noticed that something about Mrs. Furbo’s demeanor had changed following the poltergeist activity: Her hands now shook slightly as she cleared away dishes and served a peach pie for dessert. At the end of the meal, she joined her guests for pie and coffee, but her eyes darted strangely, as if scanning the room for the presence of some predator who might be lurking in the shadows.

  30

  The Freedom Trail

  To: MRS. RABIDO

  From: GILDA JOYCE

  RE: TRAVELOGUE ASSIGNMENT ENTRY #3

  Dear Mrs. Rabido:

  I hope you’re doing well and managing to keep your spirits up during my absence.

  What have I been doing, you ask? Where, pray tell, is my latest travelogue submission?

  Sorry to keep you waiting, Mrs. Rabido, but I happen to be embroiled in a very perplexing mystery that seems to involve several ghosts, not to mention some very unnerving wedding plans. I mean, it’s not as bad as an in-class essay, but it’s no picnic either, just in case you’re picturing me sipping piña coladas down here on the beach. In fact, I have not been to the beach a single time since my arrival (which I don’t really mind because I burn really easily). However, you’ll be happy to know that this evening I did have the opportunity to dine with an older gentleman named Bob Furbo who is a descendant of the colonial

  St. Augustine settlers, loosely grouped as “the Minorcans.”

  Tonight I learned that the lives of this community have been closely tied to the natural Florida landscape. For example, during the Depression years when hardly anybody had money to spend, Bob Furbo’s family found plenty of fish, gopher tortoises, and sea turtle eggs to eat for free—right in their own backyard. “In fact,” Mr. Furbo noted, “when I was a kid, we’d sometimes catch a gopher tortoise and take it down to the grocery store to trade it for some bread and meat. And sometimes the guy behind the counter would give us back a smaller tortoise as change because he didn’t have any money either.”

  Well, Mrs. Rabido, after a life of struggles many old-timers like Mr. Furbo feel that they’ve paid their dues and don’t want anyone telling them what to do or what to eat. For example, if you happen to catch one of them sneaking a handful of sea turtle eggs from the beach to eat raw, you’ll know it’s not so much a sign of disrespect for the law as it is a declaration of love for the slimy reptilian flavors of their hometown. Nevertheless, the law is the law, Mrs. Rabido, so don’t let me catch you or any of your friends sneaking some turtle eggs into the teachers’ lounge if you get a job down here!

  THE FREEDOM TRAIL IN ST. AUGUSTINE:

  Mrs. Rabido, my report would not be complete without some mention of the important Civil Rights struggles that have taken place here in St. Augustine. (In this section of my paper, I’ll refrain from quoting Mr. Furbo. Let’s just say that a handful of the old-timers have a way of reminding us both how far we’ve come and how far we have to go when it comes to viewing each other as equals.)

  As I write this entry, we’re driving past the atmospheric “Old Market” in the city, where people of all nationalities and colors are just sitting outside, playing chess, talking, or walking hand in hand to the restaurants. It’s weird to think that there was actually a time when this same place was called “The Old Slave Market”—a place where people could actually be bought and sold like objects in a store.

  It’s also hard to imagine that back in the year 1964, Martin Luther King was arrested just for trying to enter a “whites only” restaurant right here in St. Augustine.

  I think it’s hard to imagine how scary and downright unpleasant it must have felt to walk into a restaurant and be asked to leave just because of a simple fact of your appearance. The only personal experience I can compare it to is one time when my family was asked to leave a fancy restaurant in Grosse Pointe because my dad wasn’t wearing a dinner jacket. (We didn’t realize the restaurant had a dress code.) Mind you, Mrs. Rabido, I’m not saying that this was anything even close to being the victim of racist laws in the Jim Crow South! I’m just saying that I remember the feeling of shame and anger we all had as we filed out of that place with all the other customers just staring at us. It made me want to throw eggs at the building (which Dad also wanted to do, but Mom wouldn’t let us).

  Mrs. Rabido, I guess we’re lucky to live in a time when people are free to pursue their dreams and go anywhere they want in this country. But some of us are not completely free, Mrs. Rabido. I’m beginning to see how the ghosts of a painful past still drag their chains through a few of these old houses.

  On that somber note, I am signing off and retreating to my boudoir, Mrs. Rabido!

  Sleep tight; don’t let the bedbugs bite!

  GILDA JOYCE

  31

  The Message in the Dream

  The rope tightened around Gilda’s ankles as she descended headfirst into the open pit, flashlight in hand.

  “Do you see it?”

  “Not yet,” she said, feeling unsure what she was looking for.

  “Grab it when you see it,” the voice said. “Grab it, and pull it out!”

  Down she went, farther and farther underground. I can see it now, she thought; I can see the layers of history. Lizards and spiders scuttled around her, then came the generations of skeletons.

  Some of the skeletons lay prone, holding crosses; others sat upright, as if buried sitting around a campfire. Then she glimpsed something smooth and gleaming—the shell of the endangered gopher tortoise. How strange to find one burrowing so deep below the surface—even below the secret graves, she thought.

  “Grab it!” a faint voice shouted from above. “Grab it and kill it!”

  “I can’t,” she said. She didn’t want to kill it.

  “Give ’er here—we’ll t
ake care of it. Don’t let ’er get away!” The voice now came from below. Gilda found herself looking down into the Furbos’ kitchen, where she saw Mr. and Mrs. Furbo holding rifles. They stood on either side of the kitchen table, where they had placed the tortoise. “Give it a good whack on the back,” said Mr. Furbo. Gilda squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to see.

  “Help!” It was a woman’s voice—a voice that sounded familiar.

  “Finish the job,” said Mrs. Furbo.

  Gilda opened her eyes just in time to see the Furbos backing away from the table. To her surprise, there was no tortoise. Instead, a young woman lay unconscious on the table, her long, white dress stained in blood. Gilda recognized her face: It matched the picture Mr. Furbo had shown her—the photograph of his daughter, Charlotte.

  It’s Charlotte, Gilda thought. And she’s dead!

  Gilda awoke with a start and immediately sat up in bed. I have to write down everything I saw in the dream before I forget! she thought. Gilda often picked up clues to her mysteries through images in her dreams, and she felt certain that this had been a psychic dream.

  TO: GILDA JOYCE

  FROM: GILDA JOYCE

  RE: PSYCHIC DREAM REPORT

  ALERT!!

  NEW HYPOTHESIS FOLLOWING PSYCHIC DREAM!! IS IT POSSIBLE THAT CHARLOTTE FURBO IS DEAD?? IS IT POSSIBLE THAT THE FURBOS KILLED THEIR OWN DAUGHTER?!

  The dream:

  In my dream, I saw Mr. and Mrs. Furbo holding guns. They stared down at their daughter, Charlotte, who was lying on a table, apparently dead. She wore a bloodstained white dress.

  When I awoke, I had two questions in my mind: 1) What if Charlotte never made it to Europe with her new boyfriend after all? 2) What if she was murdered?

  The idea that the Furbos killed their own daughter is almost too awful to consider, but it’s also true that the Furbos had a motive to kill Charlotte (albeit a disturbing one): They were furious with her for breaking off her engagement to Eugene right before the wedding. Maybe their racist feelings made the situation all the more volatile. On top of everything, they clearly have easy access to guns.