“We understand,” the lieutenant said. “And we’ll keep that in mind.”
Julie
1962
“H
ow about we go to the beach today, girls?” Mom said. All the women in the family—my sisters, grandmother, mother and myself—were relaxing around the porch table after a breakfast of fruit salad and French toast.
“Okay,” Lucy said. “Just don’t expect me to go swimming.”
“Not if you don’t want to.” My mother leaned over to brush a crumb from Lucy’s lip, then she sat back to admire her youngest daughter. “You’re turning a nice nut-brown color,” she said.
Of the three of us girls, Lucy was the least tan, since she spent most of her time indoors reading or playing cards with Grandma, but it was impossible to be at the shore and avoid the sun altogether.
“I promised Mitzi and Pam I’d go to the beach with them,”
Isabel said, then added quickly, “but I’ll see you there.” She was sitting on the side of the table closest to the house, the seat that would give her the best view of the Chapmans’ backyard. Her huge, almond-shaped eyes darted in that direction every twenty seconds or so. She was so obvious I couldn’t believe my mother never caught on. Did Mom think for one minute it was Mitzi Caruso and Pamela Durant that Isabel wanted to hang out with at the beach?
But I supposed I was no less skillful in masking my real intentions.
“And I want to stay around here,” I said, wishing I could turn around in my seat to see if the Lewises had arrived yet across the canal.
My mother raised her eyebrows at me, obviously suspicious, and I ran my fork through the syrup on my plate to avoid her scrutiny. “Maybe I’ll fish and catch something for dinner,” I added, for something to say. I waited for her to admonish me not to cross the canal, knowing I could not disobey her direct command to stay in our yard, and I was relieved when she didn’t give it. Instead, she turned to Grandma.
“Why don’t you come with Lucy and me today, Mother?” she asked. Grandma always seemed content to stay in the house, sweeping the floors or doing the laundry, an arduous job without a washing machine.
“Well, maybe I will for a change,” she said, surprising everyone.
Perfect
, I thought. No one would be around to care what I did. Grandpop was on an all-day fishing trip with some of his buddies. He’d invited me to join him, but I’d gone with that group last summer and had felt like I didn’t belong—which I didn’t.
Everyone took off for the beach after we’d cleaned up from breakfast. I grabbed my bait bucket and walked to the end of the road. Happy in my freedom, I made up a little song about the dragonflies as I walked along the path through the tall reeds until I reached the area where Grandpop kept his killie trap. I dropped to my knees in the damp sand, tossing my binoculars over my shoulder so I didn’t get them wet, and was pulling the trap from the water when someone called out, “Who’s there?”
I jumped, startled, before I recognized the voice as Ethan’s.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Over here.” His voice came from somewhere to my left. I had to wade into the water to circumvent the reeds and cattails and finally saw him sitting cross-legged in the shallows, the water lapping at his knees. He was wearing only his trunks, and the freckles on his bare chest seemed to have converged to give him something of a tan.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Come look,” he said. “I found some baby eels.”
I had never seen a baby eel, and I was curious. I stepped as close to the grass as I could, trying not to disturb the water. Then I knelt down next to him, so close I could smell the suntan lotion on his skin.
“There.” He pointed.
I saw three squiggly black eels, thinner than a pencil, wriggling below the water’s surface.
“They’re so cute,” I said.
“I wanted to catch one of them to dissect,” Ethan said, “but I can’t. They’re just babies.”
He was weird, but I was touched nevertheless. “Yeah,” I said. “Don’t do it.”
He glanced in the direction of the bait trap, which he could not possibly see through the tall, thick wall of grass. “Didja get a lot of killies?” he asked.
“Haven’t checked yet.”
“Where’s your grandfather?”
“On a fishing boat.”
“So…” He pushed his thick sunglasses higher on his nose. “You going across the canal to fish today?”
“Yes,” I said. “And keep your big mouth shut about it.”
“I will if you take me with you.”
“I’m the only one allowed over there,” I said, not even sure what I meant by the statement. All I knew was that I had no desire to share my new friends with Ethan. He’d want to study Wanda and George under a microscope the way he did his sea creatures.
“I’ll tell, then,” he said.
“You are such a spaz.”
“Takes one to know one,” he replied.
“Don’t you dare tell, or else,” I said, without finishing the sentence. I let the implied threat hang there in the air as I walked through the water, hoping that would be enough to deter him.
There were loads of killies flapping helplessly against the wire walls of the trap as I pulled it onto the sand. I emptied the small fish into my bucket, then tossed the trap into the water again. I didn’t bother calling goodbye to Ethan as I walked back along the path to the road.
Wanda waved from her side of the canal as I got into the runabout. I couldn’t wait to get over there. I was bringing
The Bungalow Mystery
with me today, since I thought it fit perfectly with being down the shore. I put everything I needed in the runabout, then headed across the canal. The current was strong in the di
rection of the river, but I had no problem and I pulled easily into the dock between the Lewises and the Rooster Man’s shack. That dock felt nearly as familiar as my own these days. I kept thinking of how Mr. Chapman had defended my being over there to my father. I had the respect of the chief justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. I adored my father, but he was wrong about this.
George stood on the bulkhead above my boat.
“Can you carry me and Wanda to the river?” he asked. He pointed in the direction of the Manasquan River.
“What?” I wasn’t sure what he meant.
“We ain’t catching nothin’ here,” he said. “But a guy told us they biting in the river.”
Wanda appeared at his side. “Salena says we can go if you can carry us,” she said.
Salena’s crazy
, I thought. Couldn’t she see how fast the current was moving? I was not allowed to take the boat to the river, which was a mile and a half north of my house through the canal. I wasn’t allowed to take it north of my house, period. But what an adventure it would be! I looked toward my bungalow, barely able to see the porch because of the bulkhead being in the way. No one was there, though. No one would know.
I tipped my head back to look at George and Wanda again. “Okay,” I said. I leaned over and grabbed a rung of the ladder to pull the boat close to the side of the dock. “Get in,” I said. “And bring a net. I don’t have one.”
They grabbed their gear and climbed down the ladder into the runabout. Salena appeared above us.
“Come back by one, hear?” she said.
“Okay.” I yanked the cord on the motor and inched into the
canal, making sure I wasn’t pulling out in front of any boats that might be close to the bulkhead.
Once in the canal, the current grabbed the boat and I held tight to the tiller handle to keep us on a steady course. As we passed my empty bungalow into the water north of it, I felt exhilarated. The low Lovelandtown Bridge was directly ahead of us, though. I’d sailed beneath it with my grandfather and others, but had never taken my boat through it by myself. The current was fast, and the too-close-together pilings of the bridge were coming up on us quickly, the water racing between them as rough as rapids.
“Girl,” George said, “you know what you doin’?”
“’ Course,” I said, hanging on to the tiller handle for dear life. I realized there was only one life preserver in the boat, and none of us was wearing it.
A bigger boat was ahead of us and I knew its wake would only add to the turbulent water. If the current hadn’t been so strong, I would have tried to stall my boat and wait for the wake to run its course, but I had no choice. My sweaty palm was getting jerked back and forth on the tiller handle as we headed beneath the bridge. A huge wave from the wake of the boat rose up in front of us, and we sailed over it, then plunged into the water on the other side as a second wave headed straight for us. I may have screamed. I surely said a quick prayer. I had just enough time to think about the sin I was in the middle of committing and how death might be a fitting punishment for it. The wave washed over the front of the little runabout, soaking us, splashing salt water into my eyes and my mouth, and for a moment I wasn’t sure if we were on the surface of the water or beneath it. How I kept control of the runabout, I couldn’t say, but I must
have seemed very confident, because George and Wanda just whooped with the fun of it all, as though we were riding a nice, safe roller coaster.
We made it through. My heart pulsed in my ears as we met the calmer water on the other side of the bridge. The speed of the current no longer seemed so daunting after what we’d just endured. I was not looking forward to the only other bridge we had to pass beneath, but as it turned out, the water there was not nearly so rough. I had managed to put enough distance between us and the larger boat that its wake was not a problem, which I think disappointed my passengers.
The current carried us into the open water of the Manasquan River. I headed west instantly, afraid that George might suggest we travel east to the inlet and out into the ocean. I’d had enough boating adventure for one day.
We were not the only fishermen on the river, but we found a nice spot just to the side of the channel out of the way of the traffic. I turned off the motor and George lifted my anchor and tossed it overboard, handling it as if it were made of paper.
Wanda took one of the killies out of my bucket and began baiting her hook. “That another Nancy Drew book?” She nodded toward
The Bungalow Mystery
, which now rested in an inch of water in the bottom of the boat.
“Yeah,” I said. I lifted it up and rested it on my knees. “I’m not sure how readable it’s going to be now,” I said. I felt terrible. Grandpop had given me that book for my birthday the year before.
We all cast our lines into the water, and then I found the bottle of suntan lotion floating beneath my seat. I unscrewed the cap and rubbed some of the lotion on my arms and face. George took off his shirt, and he looked so handsome that I started having
some impure thoughts about
him.
I wondered what was wrong with me that even a colored boy could make me feel that way.
“Can I have some of that?” he asked, pointing to the lotion.
I must have looked surprised.
“What?” he said. “You think black people don’t need no suntan lotion?”
He peeled an inch of his shorts down and I could clearly see the difference in the color of his skin. Wanda smacked his shoulder.
“We don’t want to see your ugly drawers,” she said.
I laughed as I handed George the bottle. He used some and passed the lotion to Wanda. Then, to my surprise, he put his shirt into the water in the bottom of the boat. He soaked up the water, wrung it out over the side, then soaked up some more. I was grateful. I hadn’t known how I was going to explain an inch of water in the bottom of the boat to my grandfather.
I opened the book resting on my thighs, but the pages were clumped together, already wavy from the water. It was ruined.
“Maybe when it dries you can pick them pages apart,” Wanda said. I could tell she felt sorry for me. I’d really come to like Wanda. She was quiet, except when razzin’ her brother, and although she never told me everything that had happened in her life, I knew it hadn’t been easy for her. One day when I complained about how my father’d dragged me home from her side of the canal, she’d responded with, “’Least you have a father,” which gave me something to think about. I was glad she had Salena looking out for her.
Whoever had told George that the fish were biting in the river was right. We caught black fish and fluke and a couple of feisty snappers, reeling them in one after another. I wondered how I was going to explain my magnificent haul to my mother without
telling her where I’d been. I figured I would let Wanda and George take most of my fish, just keeping a couple of fluke for myself.
“Can I borrow them binoculars?” George asked, after we’d been fishing a while.
I slipped them over my head and handed them to him. He lifted them to his eyes and started exploring the world around us, his fishing pole snug, for the moment at least, between his knees.
I was baiting my hook again when I spotted something pale bobbing in the water a few feet from the boat. I handed my pole to Wanda and reached for the object with the net.
“What’s that?” Wanda asked as I lifted the net from the water.
“A doll, I think.”
It
was
a doll, a baby doll, no bigger than the length of my fingers. She was naked, with plastic, painted-on brown hair and perpetually open blue eyes. I took it out of the net and picked it clean of seaweed.
“What you gonna do with that raggedy ol’ thing?” Wanda asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t like to see trash floating in the water,” I said. Even Wanda didn’t know about the Nancy Drew box.
None of us had a watch, but when the sun had passed overhead, I knew we’d better start back. George raised the anchor and I pulled the cord to start the motor. It made a sputtering sound, followed by silence. I pulled again, and it made a sound like someone blowing air through his lips. I kept yanking, the boat drifting, and I imagined all sorts of nightmarish scenes of being rescued by the Marine Police and having to explain to my parents what I was doing with the colored people I’d been forbidden to visit on the river I had no right to be in. I couldn’t seem to breathe.
“What’s wrong with it?” Wanda asked.
“Hey, ain’t that your sister’s boyfriend?” George was looking through the binoculars in the direction of the canal.