The Sea Keeper's Daughters

by Lisa Wingate

  She finally stops, keeping a dead eye on me as she waits for an answer, but I’m like a deer in the headlights. I’m completely locked up.

  “Say something,” she nudges.

  “S-something.”

  “Cute. Now say something meaningful. Give me your thoughts. I talk, then you talk. That’s how this works, Whit.”

  She sounds so much like my mother, I’m temporarily lost in time. This is a kitchen table counseling session from back in the day. I’m being led by the nose, and part of me is aware it’s for my own good, but part of me still doesn’t like being told what’s good for me.

  Tandi and the crew from Sandy’s Seashell Shop wander by, providing another distraction. Denise and I slip into food-vendor mode again. The girls twitter about the chow and the festival and how well things went at their booth.

  “We were close enough to the stage, we had music all afternoon.” Sandy lifts her arms and gives a spunky senior hip wiggle. I can’t imagine why she’s not tired. “We just danced our way right through it. And it’s for a good cause. I feel like Excelsior House is part ours, since Seaside House inspired it.”

  “I’m glad. Thanks for everything you did to help.” We share hugs and trade a few anecdotes from the day. Sandy boasts that she got the headliner band to autograph CDs, which she’ll sell in her shop.

  Denise waves after the Seashell Shop crew as they move on. “I like them.”

  “You know she moved here from Michigan too, right? She just wanted to have a store by the sea. It’s a really cute place. They make some beautiful jewelry, and …”

  Denise clears her throat and delivers a thin lip that says, That’s not what we were talking about here. “And? The restaurant plan? With my part of the money from selling Tazza 2, plus the insurance check from Tazza 1, Mattie and I can be sitting pretty, and you’ll have more than you need to start a place here, without even tapping into your reserves. Besides that, if the museum ever does put together the funds to actually buy the sea keeper artifacts, you’ll be rolling in dough—the real kind, not the kind we whip up at the restaurant.”

  “I’ll just have to … think about it.” Another groundswell of panic. That’s what I feel. But I’ve grown up enough to know that Denise is right about me. This is my knee-jerk reaction to commitment. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.

  I think about being here with Mark all the time, about finally making the plans we haven’t quite gotten to in the rush of the last thirteen months. Panic slowly finds itself wrapped in a thick, warm blanket.

  “You have until Monday to mull it over.” Denise emits a huff to let me know I shouldn’t need that long.

  “That’s the day after tomorrow.”

  “Don’t overthink it, then.”

  “You’re being a jerk.” She knows I don’t mean it … but at the same time, I do. If she’s been pondering this long enough to apply for a job and go to an interview, and get an offer … She could’ve told me sooner, given me more time to think, to plan.

  “I’m tired. I’m a jerk when I’m tired.” She isn’t flinching.

  “You’re really that unhappy in the restaurant?” Is she, or is all of this just a way of cutting me loose because she’s convinced that she should?

  “Yeah, Whit, I am.”

  There’s no way to tell for sure. Denise has her poker face on.

  “Okay …” I stand up. Mark is headed our way, weaving through the crowd of exiting festivalgoers. In the amphitheater, the last notes of an encore song have died.

  “And look what you have to gain,” Denise leans down and whispers in my ear before she slips out the back of the tent.

  I maneuver around the table and start across the green, letting the fresh breeze off the water cool the heat of emotion.

  “Success!” Mark cheers, pumping a fist. When we’re close enough, he scoops me up and spins me around. I throw my head back and revel in the overwhelming flood of joy. Denise is right. Look what I’m missing every time I pack my suitcases and head home to Michigan … every time I let that last little bit of insecurity nudge me back to the same old place.

  Sometimes you’ve gotta take a big leap to get over the hump. Clyde’s words to Joel about going away to college. But once you’re there, it’s a whale of a ride down the hill.

  “I missed you all day,” I say, and smile up at Mark. I’ve caught glimpses of him from a distance, hurrying here and there, people whispering in his ear and grabbing at him from all directions. He’s so cool under pressure, it’s impressive. He’d be good in a restaurant… .

  One dark brow lifts. “Whitney, why are you … looking at me … that way?”

  “What way?”

  “In a way that scares me.”

  I wonder what he’d say if he knew I was thinking about the Excelsior and whether the space in the corner could be outfitted for a bistro-style eatery. The lease on the boutique runs out soon. They’re behind on their rent, and I doubt they’ll try to catch up.

  “Hey, Surf Dude, I’m gonna make like a banana and split.” Both Mark and I look across the way and see Joel sauntering toward the bridge to Manteo.

  Mark plants a kiss on my hair, then whispers, “I’d better give him the talk again. He heads off to school in the morning.”

  Mark jogs away, and I watch him go because … he looks good jogging … and going.

  I’m just hovering there, mooning after him, when I realize someone’s standing nearby. I turn, and she’s perhaps ten feet from our tent, in the shade of a tree. She’s looking at the festival program, then at me, then at the festival program again, then at me. She’s tall and thin, willowy and beautiful, a thick black braid lying over her shoulder. The light bleeds through her white sundress, outlining her slender form. She looks like an actress or a model. Maybe she was with one of the musical acts that performed today. Maybe she’s lost.

  “Can I help you?” I move a few steps closer.

  She checks the program again, then me. Her eyes narrow, then widen. “I was afraid we were too late.” Her voice is soft and musical, her words laced with the melody of a slow Southern drawl. Maybe she’s a singer. There were some gorgeous voices on stage today.

  A set of keys dangles from her fingers, and I notice that she looks fresh and neat, not windblown and sweaty like the rest of us. I hope she hasn’t just arrived here. “The festival is over. It just ended.” I hate to be the one to break the news, but it’s kind of obvious, anyway.

  She approaches tentatively, until we’re standing face to face. Something about her seems vaguely familiar, but I can’t place what. Maybe I’ve talked to her before. Maybe she was supposed to be involved in the goings-on today, but she’s late getting here?

  I would remember her if I’d ever met her, though. She’s striking.

  “We got stuck in traffic forever,” she complains. “I didn’t think we’d make it here in time.”

  What is it that I recognize about her? She reminds me of somebody I know. Who? “Well …” Sorry, but you’re not in time. “They just closed down the stage. We’ve got a few food samples left in our booth. Some other people might too. You could probably still eat.” Poor kid. She can’t be more than about twenty or so.

  “I brought my granny.” She thumbs over her shoulder toward the boardwalk that leads to the water. “We came to find you. Granny saw you in a magazine story.”

  Ohhhh … maybe that explains something. Between the cookbook, the press releases for the festival, and the coverage of the planned story keeper exhibit at Benoit House Museum, it’s definitely a possibility.

  Lily. The name trips through my mind. Maybe this girl reminds me of Lily, the intern at Benoit House… . Maybe they resemble one another a little? I take the opportunity to scrutinize her as she glances over her shoulder again.

  “Can you just come talk to her for a little bit? We drove in from Tennessee.”

  “Tennessee? And you came here to see me? Why?” Now I’m afraid that they’ve traveled all this way with an expectation�
��that they’re hoping for something I can’t deliver. I have absolutely no idea what it could be.

  “She won’t tell me.” The girl’s silver-blue eyes plead for me to come with her. “She wanted to see the water, so I left her down there on the bench. It’s not far. Please?”

  “Okay.” Now I’m curious. “Sure. Okay.”

  We cross the park together, and on the way we make innocuous chatter about the traffic and her grandma. The girl’s name is Angela. She’s a college student from Knoxville. I have a fleeting thought that I should try to introduce her to Joel, since he and Kayla didn’t work out. Angela’s grandmother is ninety-four. Angela is one of thirty-seven grandchildren. The number staggers me.

  “Her and Grandpa Tom had twelve kids, so thirty-seven grandkids isn’t that many.” Her laugh is quick and melodious. “Granny Abby always liked to tease that they didn’t stop until they got an even dozen.”

  I barely hear the joke. My mind is running ahead. Tennessee … Grandpa Tom, Granny Abby.

  When we finally reach the bay and I see an old woman sitting there, time has stopped moving around me. She seems almost like a statue, staring out at the water, a lace shawl wrapped over her old-fashioned floral dress. A chill travels over my body, even though the day is warm. I circle around her, catch my reflection in cloudy eyes that were once a bright blue-gray, like Angela’s.

  I know who I’m looking at.

  “Able?” The word is little more than a whiff of breeze. It seems to come off the sea.

  The woman takes a moment to turn away from the view.

  “She’s never been to the ocean, not in her whole life, until today,” Angela interjects sweetly.

  I sit down on the bench, because I’m afraid if I don’t, I’ll fall. I’m conscious of Angela’s curious regard flying back and forth between us, but even if I wanted to, I couldn’t explain this to her right now. I can only stare at Able, only feel the trembling warmth of her hand as it slowly circles mine.

  “You come by my necklace,” she says, her gaze searching me, seeming to reach inside me, groping for something. “You was the one. I seen your picture.”

  “Yes. Yes, I found the necklace in my grandmother Ziltha’s building. It was hidden away in an old desk.” The sea keeper necklace I unearthed … was it Able’s necklace? Perhaps she’d given it to Alice, or maybe to Grandmother Ziltha, in gratitude? I thank you for what you have done for Able—that’s what Thomas’s letter had said.

  Tears frame her eyes now, wash into the folds and estuaries of her skin. Her hand squeezes tight, and I’m conscious of nothing around us. Not people moving, not waves lapping at the shore, not boats motoring along in the distance. All hangs suspended. Even time.

  I don’t know how long it is before she speaks.

  Her other hand rises, touches my face, cups my cheek, trembling against me. Her skin is sun-warmed. “I put that necklace on my boy. Wrapped it in the swaddlin’ blanket ’fore I’s to hand him over to her at that hospital. Was all I had to give ’im, and him just a tiny little thang, borned too soon, while my body was all broke up. She give me a promise that she’d git ’im cared for and find ’im a good home. Her bein’ in a fam’ly way her own self, I figured she knowed how to look after ’im ’til she got him to a safe place. She told me it were best thang I could do for ’im, to let ’im go and not ask after ’im no more, so that’s what I done. Guess I’s always thinkin’ that, some yander day, that bitty boy would git all growed up and hist on home ag’in, but he never come. Thought somehow’s he’d know he was mine, even if nobody’d ever told’t him.”

  I’m caught off guard. I can’t breathe. I’m trying to make sense of it all. Beside the bench, Angela sinks to her knees in the grass, and we stare at one another, and I realize why she seems familiar. She looks like my father. Like the pictures of him. Like the small shreds of memory I still carry.

  “My dad?” I babble.

  “When I seen you, I knowed.” Able’s thumb strokes my cheek, rough and bent and calloused. The hand of a woman who’s worked hard and raised twelve children and lived ninety-four years. “Welcome home, child.”

  She beckons me close and begins to weep, and we wrap our arms around one another and hang on. As I hold her, my mind fills with questions. How can this be? How could Ziltha take another woman’s child and tell everyone he was hers? What happened to the baby she was carrying? Did it die? Was it stillborn? Is it possible that she was never pregnant at all—that after losing several pregnancies, she invented one as a way of clinging to Benjamin?

  Did the Benoits figure it out?

  Maybe Ziltha and her son weren’t disinherited because of a family feud, but because the truth became obvious eventually. Babies may look alike when they’re small, but as children mature, their heritage shows. Perhaps Girard Benoit knew that the son Ziltha was raising couldn’t be Benjamin’s?

  Despite the lack of answers, I know I’ve found the truth of who I am and where I come from. The path isn’t straight. It winds and bends in magnificent ways, its course shepherded by strong women who’ve left their footprints behind.

  I think of my mother, who raised me and loved me.

  I think of Nurse Merry Walker, who brought a frightened girl down the mountain.

  I think of Alice, who journeyed into the wilderness to discover the stories of others, but instead found the echoes of her own voice. I think of the baby she was determined to protect, the baby she saved from those who would have seen it perish.

  I think of Able Kerth. My grandmother. I feel the flesh and bone and marrow of this woman, this daughter of those who long ago crossed the sea.

  I am not just one person. I am the sum of those who have come before me.

  My blood rises up, embracing an inexplicable knowing that has been there as long as I can remember. It is the legacy passed from mother to daughter for generation upon generation, and now from my grandmother to me.

  The sea whispers, and so does its Keeper. For all the generations, in the old world and the new, we have been his daughters, and he has guided us on our journeys.

  We have come full circle, and now the sea has called us home.

  Note to Readers

  Dear Reader,

  It’s my hope that, at this point, The Sea Keeper’s Daughters has taken you on a journey and that now, at the journey’s end, you are returning with moments of adventure, romance, and discovery that are yours to keep. The best stories are the ones that become part of our own personal histories.

  Speaking of history, I hope Alice’s letters have stirred an interest in the true tales of the Federal Writers and the stories they gathered. Never before in American history had such a thing been attempted. Yet through the work of thousands of field interviewers, who were out-of-work writers, secretaries, housewives, professors, and so forth, a struggling America was preserved for all to revisit.

  Those involved in “Federal One” were far ahead of their time. They were the beginning of the Civil Rights movement before there was a Civil Rights movement. They pushed toward equality for women before anyone was openly discussing equal opportunity. Their mandate was to be all-inclusive, to break down hard and fast societal boundaries, much like Kathryn Stockett’s main character does in The Help, when she interviews black maids in the South. The Federal Writers not only documented the natural wonders of the country, but the hidden lives of minorities, working women, immigrant laborers, sharecroppers, and others typically ignored by the history books. Their writings helped to inspire Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, among other classics. Sadly, much of the Federal Writers’ work was stored away as the Red Scare heated up, congressional committees held hearings to search for communist infiltrators on American soil, and World War II gripped the nation.

  Now, many of the field interviewers’ original works are available via Internet. Lives long gone and places long past can be yours at the touch of a button. I hope you’ll spend a bit of time with them. (See below for some links to get you started.) You may even fi
nd names you recognize and places you know. Most certainly, you’ll realize that so many of the things we struggle with as human beings are not unique to our generation. There are lessons to be learned from those who’ve wandered these paths before us.

  I doubt that writers like Alice could have ever imagined their stories would fly through the air, spanning the globe in an instant. I can’t help believing that, eighty years after they traveled the hills and dales and back roads, the Federal Writers would be happy to know that many long-silenced voices can now be heard.

  May your journey be filled with great stories,

  Lisa

  Links:

  Library of Congress Federal Writers’ Project information: http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/newdeal/fwp.html

  Manuscripts from the Federal Writers’ Project: http://www.loc.gov/collection/federal-writers-project

  WPA Depression-era photographs: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/fsa/

  Slave narratives transcriptions and recordings: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/snhtml/snhome.html

  WPA posters and advertisements: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?st=grid&co=wpapos

  CHAPTER 1

  WHEN TROUBLE BLOWS IN, my mind always reaches for a single, perfect day in Rodanthe. The memory falls over me like a blanket, a worn quilt of sand and sky, the fibers washed soft with time. I wrap it around myself, picture the house along the shore, its bones bare to the wind and the sun, the wooden shingles clinging loosely, sliding to the ground now and then, like scales from some mythical sea creature washed ashore. Overhead, a hurricane shutter dangles by one nail, rocking back and forth in the breeze, protecting an intact window on the third story. Gulls swoop in and out, landing on the salt-sprayed rafters—scavengers come to pick at the carcass left behind by the storm.

  Years later, after the place was repaired, a production company filmed a movie there. A love story.