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I wasn’t smiling much that fall, but my handwriting didn’t improve a whit thereby. Without Mr. Rice, all the fun of school was gone. Although he had not been our teacher when we were in the eighth grade, we had been allowed every day to join the high school for music since the chorus could not do without Caroline. Even having to acknowledge that debt could not diminish my delight in our hour of music. Now, however, there was nothing to look forward to.
On the other hand, there was a certain safety in the unrelenting boredom of each day. I heard once that there are people who commit crimes with the sole purpose of being caught and put in jail. I rather understand that mentality. There are times when prison must seem a haven.
The ninth grade was seated in the worst possible place in the classroom, at the front, and to the right, away from the window. I spent hours gazing into the disapproving face of George Washington as painted by Gilbert Stuart. This experience left me with the conclusion that our first president, besides having frizzy hair, a large red hooked nose, and apple cheeks, had a prissy, even old-ladyish mouth and a double chin. All of these would have rendered him harmless, except that he also had staring blue eyes, eyes that could read everything that was going on underneath my forehead.
“Really, Sara Louise,” he seemed to say every time he caught my eye.
My mental project that fall was a study of all the hands of the classroom. It was m
y current theory that hands were the most revealing part of the human body—far more significant than eyes. For example, if all you were shown of Caroline’s body were her hands, you would know at once that she was an artistic person. Her fingers were as long and gracefully shaped as those on the disembodied hands in the Pond’s ad. Her nails were filed in a perfect arc, just beyond the tip of her finger. If the nails are too long, you can’t take the person seriously, too short, she has problems. Hers were exactly the right length to show that she was naturally gifted and had a strength of will to do something about it.
In contrast I observed that Call’s hands were wide with short fingers, the nails bitten well below the quick. They were red and rough to show he worked hard, but not muscled enough to give them any dignity. Reluctantly, I concluded that they were the hands of a good-hearted but second-rate person. After all, Call had always been my best friend, but, I said to myself, one must face facts however unpleasant.
Then there were my hands. But I’ve already spoken of them. I decided one day in the middle of an algebraic equation to change my luckless life by changing my hands. Using some of my precious crab money, I went to Kellam’s and bought a bottle of Jergen’s lotion, emery boards, orange sticks, cuticle remover, even a bottle of fingernail polish, which though colorless seemed a daring purchase.
Every morning as soon as there was enough light to see by without turning on the lamp, I’d work on my hands. It was a ritual as serious as the morning prayers of a missionary, and one which I took pains to finish well before Caroline could be expected to wake up. I carefully stashed my equipment at the very back of my bottom drawer in the bureau we shared.
Despite all my cunning, I came in one afternoon to find her generously slathering her hands with my Jergen’s.
“Where did you get that?”
“From your drawer,” she said innocently. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Well, I do mind,” I said. “You have no right to go poking around my drawers, stealing my stuff.”
“Oh, Wheeze,” she said, placidly helping herself to more lotion. “Don’t be selfish.”
“Okay,” I screamed, “take it! Take it! Take everything I own!” I picked up the bottle and hurled it at the wall above her bed. It smashed there and fell, leaving a mixture of shattered glass and lotion to ooze down the wall after it.
“Wheeze,” she said quietly, looking first at the wall and then at me, “have you gone crazy?”
I fled the house and was headed for the south marsh before I remembered it was no longer there. I stood shaking at the spot where the head of the old marsh path had begun, and through my tears, I thought I could just make out across the water a tiny tump of fast land, my old refuge now cut off from the rest of the island, orphaned and alone.
13
Caroline kept the Jergen’s lotion incident to herself, so no one else suspected that I was going crazy. I kept the knowledge locked within myself, taking it out from time to time to admire in secret. I was quite sure I was crazy, and it was amazing that as soon as I admitted it, I became quite calm. There was nothing I could do about it. I seemed relatively harmless. After all, I hadn’t thrown the lotion bottle at anyone, just the wall. There was no need to warn or disturb my parents. I could probably live out my life on the island in my own quiet, crazy way, much as Auntie Braxton always had. No one paid much attention to her, and if it hadn’t been for the cats she would have probably lived and died in our midst, mostly forgotten by the rest of us. Caroline was sure to leave the island, so the house would be mine after my grandmother and my parents died. (With only a slight chill I contemplated the death of my parents.) I could crab like a man if I chose. Crazy people who are judged to be harmless are allowed an enormous amount of freedom ordinary people are denied. Thus as long as I left everyone alone, I could do as I pleased. Thinking about myself as a crazy, independent old woman made me feel almost happy.
So since no one knew about me, the crisis demanding the family’s attention centered around Auntie Braxton. She was going to be released from the hospital, which meant that the Captain would soon be homeless again.
To my father it was perfectly simple. We were the Captain’s friends, we would take him in. But my grandmother was adamant. “I’ll not have that heathen in my house, much less in my bed. That’s what he craves. To get in my bed with me in it.”
“Mother Bradshaw!” Momma was genuinely shocked. My father glanced nervously at Caroline and me. She was on the verge of laughing. I was numb with rage.
“Oh, you just think when a woman gets old no man is going to look at her that way again.”
“Mother,” my father said. His intenseness made her pause. “The girls—” He nodded at us.
“Oh, she’s the one stirred him up,” Grandma said. “She thinks he craves her, but I know. I know who he’s really after. ’Deed I do.”
My father turned to Caroline and me and spoke quietly. “Go to your room,” he said. “She’s old. You got to make allowances.”
We knew we had to obey, and for once I was eager to. Caroline hung back, but I grabbed her arm and started for the staircase. I couldn’t help what my parents heard, but I didn’t want Caroline to hear. It was she who knew that I, not Grandma, was the crazy one.
As soon as our door was shut Caroline burst out laughing. “Can you imagine?” She shook her head. “What do you suppose is going on in that head of hers?”
“She’s old,” I said fiercely. “She’s not responsible.”
“She’s not that old. She’s younger than the Captain and he’s not the least bit crazy.” She didn’t even look up to see how I was reacting. “Well,” she continued in a chatty tone of voice. “At least we know he can’t stay here. I can’t imagine what she’d do if we invited him in again.” She pulled her legs up and sat cross-legged on her bed facing toward mine. I was lying on my stomach with my head on my hands. I turned my face toward the pillow, trying not to betray myself any more than I had already. “I don’t see why he can’t just keep on living at Auntie Braxton’s,” she said.
