The Girl of the Sea of Cortez (21 page)

Once more she had misjudged him. He didn’t realize he
was being teased. He viewed her explanation as another victory: He had warned her not to tell the truth, and she hadn’t. He felt he was in control—of his mates, who had to respect him, if only for his daring; and of Paloma, who must fear him.

Jo crossed in front of Miranda and hugged Paloma—turning his head and touching her with the same affection with which he would have caressed a leper—and said he had been worried about her.

Miranda sensed something awry between her children. She could feel a current of hostility surging back and forth, and she knew that they were communicating in a kind of code that expressed nothing directly but sparked with hints of antagonism. She was apprehensive but helpless, so she covered her anxiety with a veneer of relief that everyone was home safe and sound.

And she was further diverted from worrying by the arrival of a few neighbors, who dropped in to chide Paloma for causing her mother concern and to tease Miranda about being so concerned. See? they said. We told you she’d be all right. Miranda interpreted that as a reprimand and responded to it by scolding Paloma for staying out so long. What she was really saying was: How could you cause me to make a fool of myself in front of my friends? Paloma knew that, and she apologized and said that yes, after all, she
had
been in some danger and was lucky to be back alive—thus justifying Miranda’s concern and giving her a tale to tell her friends.

And through it all, Jo sat in the corner on a chair tilted back against the wall, and smiled.

I
n the morning, Paloma did not go out to the seamount. She told Miranda that her terrible experience of the day before had frightened her and that she wanted to stay ashore for a day or two and help with the wash and the house. Miranda was pleased. Paloma could tell the other women in her own words what a miracle it was that she was still alive, so the other women couldn’t accuse Miranda of exaggerating and they would see that her worries had been well founded.

Miranda also chose to regard Paloma’s decision as a hopeful sign: Perhaps she was outgrowing this foolishness with the sea and would recognize and begin to accept a more traditional position in the community.

The reason Paloma stayed ashore was that she knew that if she went out to the seamount and watched Jo and his
mates, she would not be able to keep silent, she would surely provoke another confrontation with them. And this time, someone would get hurt.

She had walked to the top of the hill above the dock and watched them and the other fishermen prepare their boats for the day. She could hear most of what was said and guess at the rest, for the conversation did not change much from day to day, and she knew that Jo was not telling the other fishermen where he and Indio and Manolo were going. Jo waited for the others to leave, pretending to be furious at being delayed by tangled fishing lines.

Paloma took some small comfort in his selfishness: If Jo was smart enough to know that it was against his interests to tell anyone about the new seamount, his greed would delay, for a while at least, the mass slaughter of the animals.

But she could take no comfort from the last piece of gear she saw Jo and Indio sling aboard: a big net, with lead weights at the bottom to drag the snare down to the top of the seamount.

When he was sure he was alone, Jo started his motor and headed to sea. He did not yet know precisely where the seamount was, but, given a whole day to search for it, with no pressure from Paloma or any competitors, he was certain to find it: With one of his mates peering through the viewing box, Jo would drive the motorboat in straight lines up and down the general area until, eventually, he would have to pass over the seamount.

Depending on the tide and the bottom currents and the movement of the vast schools of baitfish and of the other, tinier creatures at the small end of the food chain, it was possible that Jo might be prevented from doing much damage right away. He might toss his net and let it sink and haul in nothing but a stray pufferfish, for the big schools of robust
jacks and
cabríos
moved constantly, following their own food, and catching them as they passed over the seamount was a random chance.

But it would happen—if not this morning, then this afternoon, if not today, then tomorrow—because with so many schools of so many fish passing over the seamount so many times every day, even if Jo’s ignorance led him to anchor his boat in a wrong place at an inopportune time, he was bound, sometime, to spot a big school through the viewing box.

Paloma watched until the wake from Jo’s motor melted into the moving water and the white hull of the boat itself was consumed by the shining light on the sea.

The dock was empty, so she could work on her boat without bothering anyone. She found some pieces of canvas and some pieces of plywood, and she cut and shaped them into patches that would block the hole inside and outside, and she nailed them in place and sealed them with daubs of pitch.

Then she walked back to the house.

Miranda was darting around the house like an agitated bird, and Paloma knew she was feeling a bit nervous, a bit excited, a bit apprehensive—a bit of a dozen different emotions, some of which complemented others, some of which contradicted others, and the sum of which confused her.

Mainly, Miranda was happy that Paloma would be staying with her and doing woman’s work, and she wanted to make sure that the day was good for Paloma because she worried that if Paloma had a bad day she would go back to the sea, immediately and for good.

She longed to recover her daughter, to claim the companion Jobim had deprived her of by taking Paloma to sea. She wanted to be able to be proud of Paloma, proud of having a daughter who would be working with her. Raising a female child to do female work was a normal thing, a healthy thing,
a good thing in the community. It made Miranda a normal person, someone to be accepted and treated like everybody else. She wanted to show Paloma off to the other women, partly as a symbol of her own achievement. But in the back of her mind she worried that Paloma might say or do something that would not seem normal, and that might make things more difficult than ever.

She was worried that the other women might not like Paloma and that Paloma might not like the other women. She wanted everybody to like everybody, but that meant that the women would have to contain their ceaseless complaining about everything. Paloma had been taught by her father that complaining was a waste of time. If something was not to your liking, went Jobim’s guideline, change it. If it couldn’t be changed, accept it. If you could neither change nor accept it, then alter your own circumstances to cope with it. But under no circumstances whine about it, because whining accomplished nothing but aggravation.

Paloma would have to be accommodating, too. She would have to conceal her contempt for complainers. And that, after all, was fair, because Paloma was not familiar with the women’s lives and problems. She could not evaluate the genuineness or seriousness of the complaints.

If all you did all your life was wash clothes and clean house and cook food, why, then, the minute details of clothes-washing and housekeeping and cooking would be the most important things in your life. It was vital that Paloma be convinced that these details were not trivial and silly, at least not to the women, and so she must not scoff at them.

As Miranda flitted about the house, dusting things that didn’t need to be dusted, cleaning things that were already clean, putting away things that she never put away, she started sentence after sentence, then stopped and started again, then
tried another avenue of thought, then stammered and changed the subject. She was so fearful of being too specific that she was too vague, and it took Paloma several minutes to realize what Miranda couldn’t say. When finally she caught on, she said, “Don’t worry, Mama. We all have hands.”

“What?” Miranda stopped.

“I row with the palms of my hands. They sew with their fingertips. If they cut one of their palms, it’s nothing. They laugh at it. If I cut a palm, it’s a tragedy. But if I cut a fingertip, it’s nothing. We all have hands.”

Miranda did not completely grasp why cut hands were central to the expression of what she had been trying to say, or to Paloma’s comprehension of it, but there was an atmosphere of compassion to Paloma’s voice that gave Miranda confidence that everything would be all right.

And it was, finally.

At first, the women treated Paloma carefully, eying her as a curiosity. This was only natural, since they had all regarded Jobim as a curiosity, and more—as an oddity, almost a menace. He had obeyed the laws and customs he agreed with and either rejected outright those he disagreed with (if he felt that they unwisely deprived a person of a freedom) or tolerated them with silent disdain (if he felt that they were harmless vehicles to convey the insecure along a path to self-regard). Jobim’s attitude could make him appear superior, and he might have become intolerable to many people had he not shown just as piercing an eye for his own failings. Even so, there were men—mostly those who used rituals to give themselves stature they could not otherwise attain—who did not like Jobim and were not particularly sorry when he was no longer on the island. And some of those men were married to the women with whom Miranda worked. The women knew how close Paloma and Jobim had been and knew that Paloma
had been behaving like her father’s child. They would need to be convinced that Paloma intended to act more like a woman now.

She convinced them. She kept her mouth shut except to answer direct questions, and replied respectfully, even when she judged the questions to be either provocative or inane. She listened attentively to every monologue and nodded sympathetically, though the women’s words made no impression on her brain: They rattled around like marbles in an empty shell, for the occupant of the shell was elsewhere—out on the water, imagining what was going on on the seamount.

She worked hard, abusing muscles she was not accustomed to using, never stopping to rest as most of the women did, not permitting herself a grunt of weariness or a sigh of tedium—until, that is, she discovered that the women wanted her to be exhausted and to appreciate physically the hardness of their lives. She did appreciate, and so she did echo a few of their complaints. And at the end of the day, several of the women took Miranda aside and complimented her on how well Paloma seemed to be turning out.

Walking up the hill under a heavy load of wash, Miranda was silent but obviously elated. Paloma thought that if the day had accomplished nothing else, it had given her mother some happiness, which was a rare and good thing.

Paloma did not stop wondering, though, how many animals had died during Miranda’s brief happy time. She flayed herself for not stopping the animals from dying, even though she knew it was foolish of her to take the blame.

While she helped sweep the house and hang the wash to dry and feed the chickens for the second time and stoke the cook fire, Paloma forced her thoughts to stay ashore. But as soon as the chores were done and Miranda turned to cooking
the evening meal, Paloma went outside and looked at the sky to tell the time.

The sun was very low; it was late, later than Jo and the others would normally stay out. And as she looked toward the path that led down to the dock, she saw several of the fishermen strolling home, which meant that they had already been ashore for an hour or more, for it took that long to unload fish and clean them and swab the boat and stow the gear.

Perhaps some trouble had befallen Jo and his friends … nothing too serious, for Paloma was not capable of wishing real harm to anyone. But something inconvenient, time-consuming, uncomfortable, perhaps something frightening that might discourage them from returning again to the seamount.

Perhaps they had fouled their net on the bottom and had been capsized trying to retrieve it. They would have to right their boat and row home, for the saltwater-soaked motor would never start.

Or perhaps they had cast their net into a mass of king mackerel or wahoos and seen it torn to shreds as they struggled to free the thrashing, snapping animals before they could drag the boat underwater.

Perhaps now, as night approached, they were being harassed by a herd of porpoises who had smelled the fish in their boat and wanted some and were playfully bumping, jarring, slamming the boat with their noses and tails. The fishermen would toss a few fish over, and the porpoises would interpret that as encouragement to play even harder, so they would bump the boat from underneath on both sides and the boat would rock and spill more fish into the water, which would convince the porpoises that their game was a rollicking success and one to be continued with increased vigor. Jo
and the others would hear the clicks and whistles and grunts as the porpoises chatted with one another, and in the thick, impenetrable blackness they would translate the conversations as the ravings of monsters. Soon they would panic and lose the balance of the boat and be tossed into the water, there to be engulfed in splashing, roiling foam filled with fish blood.