Portion of the Sea (10 page)

“Men,” I said, hoping my mother wouldn’t hear. “They sure can be lazy asses.”

Tootie bent down and picked a fallen piece of bread up off the floor. “Ava, how old are you?” she asked me.

“Fourteen, going on twenty-one,” answered Abigail for me. “Almost fifteen,” I corrected.

“As you probably noticed,” my mother told Tootie. “All kinds of bold and fearless words slip out of that girl’s mouth. My Ava has a big space between her two front teeth, and I’ve never wanted her to feel self-conscious about it, so for years I never corrected anything she said. Now I’m in trouble.”

“Outspokenness will serve her well,” said Tootie. “Girls are trained to be perfect little ladies and then they enter the real world and don’t know how to stand up for themselves or be rude to a rude person or strong in a bad situation. But what do I know? So what are you all planning to do with your land once you claim?”

“Grow watermelons,” I answered. “They’re the ‘money crop.’”

“Oh, I don’t know about that, Ava,” my mama said. “I was thinking tomatoes.”

“Muck. I hate tomatoes. Let’s grow grapefruits—but only the pink ones.” Dahlia shifted in her chair and pointed her forefinger at me, then shook it lightly as she always does just before adding her own opinion. Something about that finger gave confidence to what she was about to say and shushed us so we’d listen.

“Yellow grapefruits,” she announced. “They’re the easiest to grow.”

I made a face, the kind of face one makes when they eat a yellow grapefruit. “Yuck,” I whined. “The yellow are bitter.”

“Some people like the bitter,” she said.

“Yes, it’s an acquired taste,” added my mother.

I shook my head and shrugged my shoulders. “Well, unless they’re a bitter person, I don’t know why anyone in their right mind would ever like the taste of a bitter yellow fruit,” I stated.

“I do,” said Dahlia.

“Yeah,” I said looking through her eyes and into the resentment she had toward her husband leaving her and my father disappointing her as a son-in-law. “I’d have guessed you to be the sort that likes the bitter fruit. I don’t at all,” I continued with a proud smile. “I only like the pink.”

“People’s tastes change,” said Dahlia. “Just wait and see. One day you’ll prefer the bitter as well. It’s a natural progression. If we start growing the yellow now, they’ll be mature and ripe for you when you reach that point in life.”

“No way,” I insisted. “I’ve still got years of pink in me.”

“Stewart and I will be the ones to decide what we grow on our land,” Abigail said, slapping me with her look that reminds me I’m still young and therefore I don’t know as much about the world as an adult, yet I’m no longer a child and not yet a lady, but lingering between the two, like in that state called purgatory, only for a young girl no longer a child and not yet a woman, I call it a state of temporary frustration and I need as many prayers as possible to get me out of it.

When I folded my hands and tilted my chin down without any back talk, her eyes then softly patted Dahlia with that look that reminds her she’s getting old and therefore must surrender her knowledge about the world, because the world has changed since her heydays, and now Dahlia is lingering between two states—wisdom, which I believe timelessly transcends a changing world, and senility, which grows roots around wisdom, eventually strangling it.

Grandmalia started fidgeting with a splinter of wood on the table, and I could see she was struggling not to talk back as well. She and I were alike in that we both liked having the last word on matters and speaking our minds without all the fake and sickly embellishments. I didn’t think it was fair of my mama to shut her own mama up. I respected my Grandmalia for the portions of her wisdom unaffected by senility, and I wanted my own
wisdom to start off where hers ended, and in order for that to happen, I needed the chance to hear some of her wisdom, which I never got to hear because my mother would shut her up.

I disagreed with which grapefruit color she wanted, but I didn’t mind her expressing herself. I liked a good debate. I don’t know why people were always so quick to end one before it ever started. And I was actually interested in what Dahlia was trying to say about the fruit and how a person’s tastes change throughout life. But then my mama shut her up.

Is this what happens to us women? We spend our entire lives acquiring wisdom only for it to be covered up by a blanket of senility that others throw over us? The thought of it made my stomach curdle and it made the words that were rumbling deep within me start trekking upward through my system and toward my mouth as if I were going to puke. I knew what had to be done. I had to voice and express all my opinions and knowledge immediately before it was too late and before my own children would one day try to shut me up, like my mama did to Dahlia.

“We’re growing the pink! Final word! I have spoken!” I blurted out so loud that heads from other tables turned my way.

“Ava,” Mama said sharply. “You will quiet yourself.”

“That’s not fair,” I said. “I’m smart, and I feel strongly about growing pink grapefruit on our land.”

“Why, darling?” my mother said hoping the word ‘darling’ might soften me somewhat so I wouldn’t cause more of a scene. “Is it because pink is your favorite color?”

I heard a couple of the boys snicker, and it infuriated me. “Of course not,” I said, rolling my eyes toward them. “Sugar is expensive. You don’t need any sugar with the pink.”

“She thinks she’s smart,” a male voice in the crowd whispered loudly. He was the same man who before was scratching his chin and making a face, the kind that says, “You ladies, with all your irrelevant chitchat are not capable of productivity.”

“She’s got a good point,” defended my mama when she saw the look on the man’s face. “Sugar is expensive.”

The man reared his ugly head once more, this time, more directly. “I
think you ladies better sit tight until the man of the household returns,” he said. “Let him make all the decisions.”

I could contain myself no longer. I knew that a lady should never raise her voice or show a temper, that she is meek and humble and knows when to speak, but I stood up from the table, then slammed my hands down onto the wood, and looked directly into the man’s eyes. “Sir, I beg to differ. Men know nothing in comparison to what women know, and it troubles me every time to think my fellow women were the ones who actually gave birth to men with attitudes as stringent as yours.”

I looked away from him and over at my mother. Her eyes had darkened from blue to brown, and I felt sad and sorry for what I had said and for the anger it had caused her, not the man.

“Ava, apologize,” scolded Abigail.

“No, Mama,” I said. “I can’t.”

And I couldn’t. As sorry as I felt for putting my mama through so much strife, I had to believe that the greater cause—of speaking up on behalf of all the women of the world who are shushed by men and told that they don’t know anything—was more important than my momentary outburst of disrespect. And besides, verbal expression is a form of art. And all the eyes in the room were studying me as if they had just for the first time in their lives seen the art of rebellion. Some liked it, I think, but because art is all in the individual interpretation, my mama and a few others had a right not to like it.

“Ava,” she snapped again. “You will apologize or you will go to the room now.”

“Fine,” I said, looking back at the man. “I don’t give a damn what color grapefruits we grow.”

All the eyes in the room were stuck on me like bugs stuck to damp skin. I knew now if I backed down further it would be one giant step backward for womankind, and so I remained standing and took this as an opportunity.

“Giving my opinion has nothing to do with lack of honor, or failing to be a lady,” I said to the entire room. “Having an opinion and being able to express it is a natural right. We have left behind nearly everything we
owned. We have said good-bye to everyone we ever knew. If we are going to survive on this island, we have to start from scratch! And that means leaving behind the archaic and ridiculous rules by which women live. For starters, we need to rid ourselves of the corsets that potentially harm our internal organs and change our personalities.”

“Oh, Lord,” my mother muttered, waving herself with a napkin. “She’s onto the corsets again and how she wants to dress.”

I continued. “Regarding all that ladylike stuff,” I said, looking down upon some little girls, “toss it out to bay. We shouldn’t have to hold our tongues pretending that men know more than us.” I noticed the mothers of the little girls covering their daughters’ ears, and a couple of them left the room, but I continued. “If anyone cared to ask me, they’d discover I know a lot of intelligent things.”

“Someone shut her up,” said a man’s voice. But that didn’t stop me.

“For instance,” I went on. “… cattle, sugar, molasses, fish scales, shells, bird plumes—which I’d never consider profiting from—deer skins, hides of alligators, otters, bears, panthers and beavers are all principal exports. If a lady has to pretend to be ignorant, for the sake of a man’s ego, then I no longer want to become a lady.”

Suddenly my mother dropped her napkin to the floor, her eyes rolled back, and she slipped out of her seat and down onto the ground. Everyone jumped up from their seats and formed a circle around her and several started fanning her. I scooped her up in my lap and tapped her cheeks. “My God, is she all right?” I cried.

“She’s fine,” said a man. “She just fainted, that’s all. Probably those crazy things you were saying.”

“It’s the heat,” I said. We’ve had a long day, a long sixty days, and a long winter before that. It’s been hard now for a long, long time. You have no idea.”

The same man that ruffled my feathers from before picked her up and carried her down the hall and into our room. When he laid her on the bed, her eyes opened and looked around for me and then spoke her first words. “True gentlemen are merciful toward the absurd and never mistake personalities or sharp sayings for arguments, Ava. And true gentlemen make
everyone feel at home, despite collision of feeling or suspicion.”

The man gave me a smirk and walked out of the room. Dahlia and I removed her burdensome dress and corset, and then I rummaged through the boxes until I found her sleeping attire. I pulled it over her head and then rested her back down on the bed.

Dahlia collapsed beside her on the bed with her dress still on.

I kissed Abigail on the forehead. “I am sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to do this to you,” I said, pulling a blanket up over both. She closed her eyes and fell asleep, and so I continued in a whisper. “But I can’t help it. I think it’s inherited, probably from Grandmalia.” I was glad neither of them heard that. I wanted those to be my last words. I was too tired to debate any further.

I climbed into bed and pushed the blankets down to my toes. I was glad when Dahlia started humming. I loved her humming. It always made me believe the world was a good, safe place and that I could rest my eyes and fall into slumber with not a care in the world. She always hummed the same tune. Her mama had hummed it to her as a little girl, and she had then hummed it to my mama. Some day I’d hum it to my babies. Then again, I didn’t want babies if having babies meant I needed a husband first. So, instead, I decided I’d hum it to my grandchildren, if that were possible without having to have children first.

But tonight, when her humming turned into snores, I was still alert, so I crossed the room to a dark wooden desk with a pineapple carving on it, lit a candle, and opened my journal. I had a lot on my mind, the move and all, and worried about my father and missing my friends back home. There I wrote until the wee hours when I heard a knock at our door.

“Are you awake in there?” It was Tootie’s voice.

“Yeah.”

She opened the door and peeked her head in. “I noticed light under your door. Don’t go falling asleep without blowing it out.”

“Oh no,” I replied. “I’m sorry about tonight, about what my mother calls my wild and lawless temper and outspokenness and for causing a scene out there. It all just makes me so mad.”

“What?”

“Men. They can drink and hang out at saloons while the women are living out their God-given roles as wives and mothers, keepers of the household and guardians of the moral purity of all who live therein, and we’re the ones who are pagans if we don’t feel like doing all that domestic stuff.”

“Is that all you think women do?”

“It’s what they’re supposed to do, and if you ask me, they deserve to be married to angels, not men.”

Tootie laughed loudly and then covered her mouth in response to a change in Dahlia’s snore pattern. “What are you doing up so late?”

“Writing.”

“Writing what?”

“About our journey here.”

“You like books?”

“Love them, especially anything by Louisa May Alcott,” I said. She was my favorite author, and at least one hundred cubic feet of tears per second spewed out of me for two weeks straight after she died. “I’ve read everything she’s ever written. It’s sad there will be no more books from her.”

“I’ve got some of her books. I get them from a boat that comes by the island. Does your mama read?”

“Sometimes.”

“Your grandmother?”

“Nope.”

“You keep reading and writing, you hear? There’s a school on the island I’m sure you’ll attend in the fall. Reading and writing can change a girl’s world, you know. There’s power in creating a world for yourself.”

I thought about what she had meant as she closed the door. I wanted a new world for myself. I wanted a world where my mama stayed happy dancing in flowers that blossomed year-round and where Dahlia could have her husband back and her senility gone and where boys would have to cook and clean and be nice and girls would be smart and in charge. I wanted a world where I no longer had to do chores from sunrise to sunset and where I had more time to read and write so I could know such a world or better yet, create one of my own. Reading and writing about an interesting
and adventurous fictional world is far better than living in a plain and boring real world.