I’m angry but I pretend I’m not because I don’t understand the rage that courses through me. Mama stops shaking after one day and slows down on the cigarettes. She smiles, forgiving all. Her pale blue eyes have a sparkle I haven’t seen for ages. Berta warms to her and her eyes soften in response, let down their guard for a time. Alone together, Berta and I talk in little fits broken by long silences. I try to grab on to anything that connects me to the dusty years, the mystery years. “Tell me,” I plead. “Tell me more. Why not? I’m your sister.”
She stiffens. “I can’t. I’m sorry I’ve hurt you; I never meant to.”
Long before the end of the reunion it’s clear that nothing I can say or do will penetrate beyond the now. We’ll have to take her on her own terms. No questions, no answers. What happened in the time after leaving her baby in Florida and surfacing in the badlands of the West will stay under vigilant lock and key, as if her own existence depends on erasing the past. And maybe it does. Mama says Daddy misses her and wants both of us home for a visit this summer. Berta shuffles her feet and says she’ll think about it. She’s not sure she’s ready. Whenever you are, darling, Mama says, whenever you are.
Then it’s over. Everyone says good-bye and I’m on the bus again, rolling back up the coastline. The woman sitting next to me opens a bag of peanut butter and cheese crackers. She says she’s retired and traveling to Orlando to see relatives.
“What about you, young lady?” She offers a snack. “Going to or coming back from somewhere?”
I stare at her for a moment. “Coming back,” I say. “I’ve been visiting relatives too.”
She nods, and I think I’m supposed to say more, but I just look out the window. I can’t yet understand what it took for Berta to re-enter our world. She’s come to us wrapped only in the strength that pulled her fingers around a pen and made words bleed onto a page that got folded into an envelope and dropped into the mouth of a mailbox somewhere in Arizona. I can’t explain that this is why I’m here on this bus, at this moment. Something lightens inside me, just a little, and I turn to my traveling companion. “I was visiting my sister.”
“That’s nice.”
“Yes,” I say, “it was nice.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Changes
“Hey, you!” Ellen Swisher waves me over at the end of math class at college. She has chestnut hair and a toothy smile. She hates math as much as I do. She gives a mock groan. “I’m glad that’s over. Wanna grab some coffee?”
“Sure.” My spirits lift when I’m with her; we’re becoming friends. She reminds me of my roommate Beth at Howey. The next week she invites me to her house to study. She drives a blue Ford Falcon.
“Nice car,” I say.
“Well, if you don’t count the rust spots from the beach.”
I didn’t know you can drive on the sand here. She says I should come some weekend and we’ll spend the whole day in Cocoa Beach with her friends. I can hardly believe my good fortune. The Swishers live by the river in a house shaded by willows. Ellen’s room is as happy as she is, with Beatles posters plastered on bright yellow walls. Like most men in this area, Mr. Swisher works for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center, and Ellen’s mother is a schoolteacher. Her brothers are sixteen and fourteen, hefty and loud. After we finish our homework, Mrs. Swisher invites me to stay for dinner, but I say no, I have to get ready for work. Ellen drops me off at the apartment complex. I see the curtain in the apartment move as if someone has been watching from the inside. As I open the door, Denise’s face is set in a sullen mold.
“Hi,” I greet her as if everything is fine, which it should be, but of course it isn’t. I’m home for dinner in plenty of time for our nightly ritual of eating mostly in silence, then me cleaning up and going to work at Sears. I take the bus now; it’s safe enough, and besides, Ellen just got a part-time job in the Junior Department and she’s volunteered to drive me home the nights our schedules match.
Denise just grunts and turns away. “What’s the matter?” I ask as if I don’t know she’s jealous of anyone who wants to spend time with me.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Okay.” I turn to enter my room and Denise slams the door to her bedroom. When Tom arrives she cranks up a smile and puts the spaghetti water on to boil. Tom opens a Pabst Blue Ribbon then flips the television dial while I set the table.
After our wordless dinner, I wash dishes and retreat to my room to write Berta. I’m still in some kind of limbo after the Miami reunion. I sort of have my sister back, but I don’t, not really. We don’t seem to be able to talk on the telephone without a lot of silences; maybe because I keep asking her questions she doesn’t want to answer. I hint at how it would be fun to take a trip to Arizona when I save up enough money for train fare. Maybe someday, she says after a long pause. Sure.
So letter writing is safer. I’m not sure what we are to each other now—but we’re not exactly friends. In time our letters get longer and I struggle to add pieces to the puzzle that is my sister. She’s taking up motorcycle racing so she writes about rallies in places like Red Rock and Cave Creek. The family she lives with is related to some famous science fiction writer, so she’s now reading books by Asimov, Bradbury, and other authors I’ve never heard of. She sends me a paperback copy of Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. I have trouble understanding the book but the title fits how I feel.
THE NEXT SUNDAY, a car honks once. It’s Ellen; I’ve been ready for an hour. Denise and Tom have gone shopping for new stereo speakers. They wanted me to go with them, but I said I had other plans and Denise raise her eyebrows and said, “Oh?” As if nothing could be more fun than being with the two of them.
Ellen’s Falcon whizzes over the causeway to Cocoa Beach and swings down a ramp onto a long strand of hard-packed sand. The beach is crammed with cars, families, teenagers, old men with fishing poles at water’s edge, dogs chasing seagulls, and surfers riding the small waves. Ellen pulls up next to a turquoise Mustang convertible. A handsome boy in baggy shorts waves us over, one hand resting against a surfboard. The day is a haze of Coppertone #4 suntan oil, warm ocean water, and blasts of music from the car radio. We bake in the sun, splash in the waves, and get sand in everything. Ellen’s friend Donny holds a bottle of suntan lotion like a microphone, screaming “Help!” along with The Beatles, and we laugh until we can hardly breathe.
At four o’clock we take a final rinse and Ellen drives me back to my apartment, radio blasting The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Summer in the City.” As I bounce up the stairs, I have a new feeling I can’t quite place except that it feels like one of those times at Cocoloco when Daddy didn’t drink and we fell asleep to tinkling rain after a good day. My cheeks ache from laughing and my body tingles with almost too much sun and a slick of coconut-scented lotion Ellen says will help cool the sunburn.
The good feelings dissipate when I open the door. I’m half an hour late for dinner, and I forgot to call Denise. She’s waiting for me. I just stare as she storms and screams that I’m an inconsiderate bitch and look at everything she’s done for me and the least I can do is show up on time. Tom raises his hand to calm her but she just wheels away, shouting, “You can make your own damn dinner!” I mumble I’m sorry and escape to my room. The next morning Denise is all normal again, smiling, showing me the new stereo system as she hands me a cup of coffee.
In math class Ellen says, “What’s wrong with you? My gosh, you look like someone went and died on you.”
I tell Ellen about Denise’s fit and how it’s been this way ever since I had to move in with her and Tom. She shakes her head.
“No one should treat you like that! Don’t you see Denise is nuts?” It hasn’t occurred to me that I might have a say in how I’m treated. After all, I explain to Ellen, it’s because of Denise I have a room of my own and a roof over my head.
Ellen’s jaw tightens and she looks at me like I’m the crazy one. “You don’t understand, do you? That you deserve better?” I j
ust look at her and shrug. I don’t know if I can believe that.
Ellen invites me again to study at her house. When I arrive, Mrs. Swisher and the boys are waiting for me in the living room. Ellen says her mom has something she wants to ask me. I’m being invited to live with them until I finish junior college—if I’d like that. The Swishers are something I’ve never experienced: a real family, not like ours, even if Daddy always says we are a damn happy family. Tongue-tied, I nod yes, even though I’m scared about how Denise will take the news.
The next morning I head toward the kitchen, where Denise is pouring cereal into a bowl for Tom. My voice sticks in my throat and just a grunt comes out.
“Something wrong?”
This is what it would be like to face Daddy, I suddenly realize. That’s why I’m so terrified. Denise isn’t Daddy, I tell myself. Finally, the words squeak out, as if they’ve been strained through a metal sieve.
“I’m leaving. I mean—I’m moving out.”
The words hang in the air, frozen. Tom clears his throat. Denise does a slow turn from the refrigerator and slams a bowl onto the counter. Her eyes spit fury. “You can’t do this,” she hisses through gritted teeth. “You can’t leave.” She turns to Tom for backup ammunition, but he doesn’t take a shot. Instead, he just lifts his palms into the air.
“You can’t stop her, Dee. It’s a free country.”
I’m buzzing with adrenaline, a hurricane swirling inside and threatening to turn my stomach inside out. I steady myself on the kitchen counter. It is the first time I’ve stood up to anyone, and so far it hasn’t killed me. I can’t look straight at Denise, so I glance at Tom, who gives me a small smile and starts fiddling with the salt and pepper shakers. Click, click.
Except for that sound, the room is silent. There’s nothing left to say. The apartment feels airless, all sucked in on itself. I manage to pick up my feet and turn to the bedroom, wondering if a frying pan will fly through the air at my retreating back. Denise is still rooted in the same spot, glaring now at Tom. I pick up my key and walk two blocks to the nearest public telephone. I insert coins with trembling hands.
“I did it, Ellen. I did it.” Now I sag with relief, shake off the storm clouds, and wince at how bright the sun is, the heat that’s spreading through me like a balm. It all happens in a single afternoon, a blur of packing and Denise’s grim face. In less than an hour the Falcon swings out of the driveway for the last time. The sign for the King Street Apartments—Affordable Living on the Space Coast—shrinks from sight. Finally, at nineteen going on twenty, I feel safe—and something like free.
The next Sunday I attend worship services with the whole family, taking my first step inside a Catholic church without being afraid of what Daddy would do if he found out. A guitarist leads a chorus of singers, and the stained glass windows cast brilliant sheets of color as the sun rises in the summer sky. I watch as the parishioners stand or kneel and perform their rituals. I don’t go up to the altar for communion; that would be wrong, since I’m an impostor here, although I’m tempted to see if the silver cup holds wine or grape juice. I think about Daddy and all the years I was forbidden to enter Padre Daniel’s church in Miches. During the final prayer, I bend too, knees resting on the worn wooden bar. I haven’t been permitted to believe in God, and can’t really see Him as an old white man in a fraying beard anyway. But here, as voices rise in prayer and the light bends rainbows onto our heads, I whisper, “Thank you.”
After church, Ellen and I fly away to the beach in the Falcon. I’m soaring, a bird myself, skimming the ocean waves and landing softly on the salty sand. Later, back home with my new family, Mr. Swisher fires up the charcoal grill to barbecue steaks. Ellen and I strip corn from stalks and wrap them in foil with butter and salt and pepper, lining them up like silver presents around the edges of the grill. The boys, complaining mildly, make a salad of tomatoes and iceberg lettuce. We chatter, laugh, and eat at the picnic table under the shade tree as the sun sets, in the magic time before the mosquitoes show up. No awkward silences here. A wedge of watermelon and a plate of brownies appear. Sated and sticky with watermelon, I sigh in disbelief. For the first time I have the American family I used to dream of—and a best friend, too. Slowly the ever-present knots in my stomach loosen and I feel like I can breathe without taking in jagged breaths. I’m smoothing out somehow.
I’ve saved up enough money to buy my first car. I hand over four hundred dollars to a friend of Donny’s and become the owner of a 1961 white Oldsmobile F85 with glasspacks, whatever that means. What it means, I find out, is a very loud muffler that impresses the Swisher boys, and a car I can accelerate up to 110 miles per hour on the long stretch between Cocoa and Daytona Beach, which I don’t tell anyone about. Eventually the muffler falls off and I replace it with a regular type, which disappoints Ellen’s brothers immensely.
Just as the car is expanding my actual horizons, the Swishers gradually push me further into other worlds into which I’ve never dared venture. In the few months I’ve been with them, cracks and deep fissures have appeared in my body armor, though the dark fog of fear that lives inside is still there. There’s room now, for the first time, for something else. In listening to Ellen and her parents, I learn that it’s okay to question, to ask, to wonder about almost anything. They discuss what jobs Ellen and I might be able to get once we’ve finished with junior college. Mrs. Swisher hastens to add, that is, unless either of us plans to get our bachelor’s degree. As if we actually do have choices. Mr. Swisher says there are hundreds of jobs opening up at Cape Kennedy what with the Apollo-Saturn projects and the race to land a man on the moon. My head spins with excitement, and I tell the other voice, that one that says “No, you’ll never be good enough to do any of this,” to shut up.
I buy a flowered notebook with a tiny lock. Inside, I write: “A Plan for 1967”—for next year. The blank page stares at me, and the fog settles in. It feels dangerous and too daring to write down actual words, plans for the future. Instead, I tuck the blank diary under my pillow. A few stray thoughts linger like wispy breezes. I close my eyes and let myself dream that I have my very own apartment, just for me. It’s tidy and shipshape, bright and filled with friends on weekends. I imagine that during the week I’ll drive over the Merritt Island causeway to Cape Kennedy, where I’ll be waved into a tall building humming with scientists and the thrill of space travel.
I feel brave enough to call Berta again to see if she’s ready for a visit home. This time she doesn’t hesitate too long before saying yes. We make plans to fly to the Dominican Republic in December, after both the hurricane season and the political turbulence in Santo Domingo have simmered down enough for travel. It will be Berta’s first trip back since she was forced by Daddy to leave Miches that pregnant summer seven long years ago.
I guess Berta is finally ready to face Daddy, but now the long-ago fog settles back into my stomach as if it never went away. I hug a pillow and breathe slowly. The heaviness lifts a little, but I’m not sure if I’m ready for whatever fireworks await on the island.
I’m only now putting together the pieces of myself, patching the cracks and creating something that’s almost whole. We’ve been blown apart for so long, I’m afraid what another explosion will do to me—and to the rest of the family.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Homecoming
Mama and Daddy won’t be meeting us at the airport. Daddy, it seems, has been stricken harder than usual with gripe and is still recovering. I wonder if he’s really been sick at all. He’s never apologized for anything he said to Berta that horrible summer or about her in the years after. The night before our flight home, Berta and I meet at the same Miami hotel where we stayed with Mama and Aunt Betty in April. Her hair isn’t all stiff and sprayed up any more. It’s loose and pretty and ripples against her shoulders. That is the only thing that’s flowing easily. Her back is hunched as if for battle, she’s bitten her fingernails until they bleed, and even as we talk, she picks at her lips. My
stomach is all bunched up, wondering and worrying how it’s going to be with Daddy.
“You excited?” I ask after we’re settled in the booth of the hotel coffee shop, aware this is a stupid question. Terrified would be the proper response.
“It will be nice to see everyone again,” she answers in an even tone, looking at the menu.
“Oh, come on.”
“My friends, I mean.”
The waitress takes our orders for tuna sandwiches and iced tea.
“What about Daddy?’
Her tone gets sharp. “That’s up to him.”
I don’t know what else to say, or how to have a conversation. We eat our food and make small talk about movies and books. We share a slice of key lime pie that is so tangy Berta makes a funny face, and we both laugh. It feels odd not to have the kinds of intimate talks with her that I have with Ellen, but I figure we’re just getting used to each other. Berta’s twenty-four and I’m twenty, all grown up but almost as scared as we were when we were children waiting for nighttime and the sound of rum being poured over ice.
Layers of Spanish and English babble over the loudspeakers near the Dominicana Airlines counter. Christmas ornaments and garlands frame the departure gates. Bright red, green, blue, and yellow colors shimmer in the long line to the ticket counter as colorfully dressed Dominicans going home for the holidays push huge boxes, bundles, and suitcases along in front of them. The shifting sea of travelers flows around the obstacles like a tide, and no one seems to mind the queue. Laughter and chatter surround us as we join the throng. We stand out like tall, pale ghosts in our sensible traveling skirts and small suitcases. Berta still uses the old white bag with a brocade pattern, now scuffed and dulled to gray.
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