The Islanders (23 page)

BY THE TIME THEY LEFT
the hospital, it was after eight o'clock. They walked in a group down toward the ferry landing, unable to think of anything else to do, even though it was more than an hour's wait for the next ferry.

Zoey tried to make conversation with Aisha, but she had withdrawn into herself, silent, barely making eye contact with her friends. Nina, as always when she was in a serious situation, had very little to say.

Lucas was nearly as distant as Aisha, sullen, almost seething.

Zoey led the way to the Green Mountain, a coffee shop where the smell of fresh-roasted coffee and homemade cookies filled the air. They found a small table. Zoey had tea. Lucas and Nina had coffee. Aisha just sat.

“You should have something,” Zoey suggested.

“No thanks.”

“It might make you feel better.”

“I don't want to feel better,” Aisha erupted suddenly, the
first sign of emotion since she had emerged from Christopher's room.

“He's going to be fine,” Zoey said. “He's in great shape; you always said so, remember?”

“Just leave me be, Zoey,” Aisha said bitterly.

Zoey felt annoyed. More than annoyed, she had quite quickly become very angry. Christopher's blood still caked the front of her sweater and now she wore Lucas's jacket to cover the mess. “Aisha, Christopher is my friend, too. He's our friend.”

“He didn't get beaten up for being your friend,” Aisha snapped. “He got beaten up for being black.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Zoey said sharply.

“It means what it means. All right? It means what it means.”

“It wasn't
my
fault he got hurt, dammit.”

“It's all your faults. All of you.” Aisha's voice was rising to a furious shout. “You were standing right there, but oh, no, you can't give any kind of description. But I'll bet if they were black guys, you'd have remembered. Damn right you would.”

“You think I would protect those creeps?” Zoey shouted. She had never been so angry. It was like a volcano erupting inside her.

“The only reason this happened was because he was with you. Because he was with a white girl.”

“You asked me to talk to him!”

“Why didn't you try and tell those bastards he was your friend; did you even try that?”

“Screw you, Aisha. You weren't there. All right?”

“Yeah, and you were, and your white boy-friend and a lot of other white people and all of you did nothing because it was just one more black kid getting what he deserved.”

“Shut up! Shut up! You're so full of crap, Aisha—you know that's a lie!”

Lucas put a hand forcefully on Zoey's shoulder and pulled her back into her chair. She hadn't even realized that she had lunged forward. She was trembling. She felt nauseous. She felt like screaming at the top of her lungs and breaking things.

Aisha shoved her chair back with a loud scrape and started to leave. Nina stood in her way.

“Chill, Eesh,” Nina said.

“Both of you,” Lucas said. “Sit down, Aisha.”

Zoey realized the room had fallen silent. All eyes were surreptitiously watching them. The manager of the place had stepped from behind the counter, like he was gearing up for trouble.

“Come on, Aisha,” Lucas said in a calm voice.

Aisha hesitated, looking mad enough to start throwing punches, but at last she sat down.

“Look, you're both just upset,” Lucas said. “It's normal. It's
what happens when you're this close to violence. Believe me, I've seen more violence probably than either of you. You're just reacting.”

“Come on,” Nina added. “You two aren't mad at each other. You're mad at the guys who hurt Christopher.”

Zoey forced herself to take several deep breaths. Her shoulder muscles were painfully knotted. Her hands were shaking.

“If I could, I'd kill them,” Aisha snarled.

“I wish I had seen them,” Zoey said, a tear running down her cheek. “I'm sorry. I was just scared and it happened so fast and I was screaming and trying to get help.”

Aisha nodded grudgingly. “It's not your fault.”

“I didn't know what to do,” Zoey said bleakly. “I was really scared.”

“I have to get some air,” Aisha said. She stood up again. “I'll see you guys on the ferry.”

Zoey started to protest, but she felt too weary to argue any more.

“I better go keep an eye on her,” Lucas said. “Those guys may still be out there looking for trouble.”

“Those guys?” Nina asked. “Do you know who they are?”

“No. No, I just meant guys like that. Guys like those may still be out on the streets.”

He went after Aisha. Zoey let her head sink down onto the
table. She had the feeling she had missed something important, but the truth was, she was just too tired to care.

Lucas kissed Zoey good night at her front door. Neither of them was up for much more just then. He took the path behind her house up to his own home, skirting below the overhanging deck that was his home's only adornment. His father had added it because it gave a good view of the harbor, and more specifically of the lobster boat that was his livelihood.

Lucas had missed dinner, not that either of his parents cared one way or the other. His mother was in the kitchen, washing dishes. His father was already up in his room, getting ready to go to bed. Mr. Cabral kept very early hours, always heading down to the boat before dawn.

“You want something to eat, Lucas?” his mother asked.

She was a faded, worn woman, going through the motions of life, cooking, cleaning, attending church, sewing little doilies that decorated the backs and arms of all the clean but shabby furniture.

When he was a little boy, Lucas had tried to engage her, cheer her up, make her laugh. She had been uninterested, showing no more pleasure in his good behavior than she showed grief at his later petty criminality. She barely existed, Lucas knew. She wasn't really a person at all, just a subset of her husband.
In this house it was his father, Roy Cabral, who was the only power.

“I'm not hungry,” Lucas said.

“It's in the refrigerator if you want some later. Pot roast.”

“Okay, Mom.”

“How was school?”

Lucas smiled. “School was fine.” There was no point in telling her that what happened after school had not been so fine. This was hardly a liberal household. Neither of his parents would much care if a black guy minding his own damned business got the crap beaten out of him. After all, they didn't subscribe to any of the papers Christopher delivered.

Lucas went upstairs to his spare, functional room and flopped back on the bed. He shut his eyes, and inevitably the images were of Christopher lying delirious on the ground, and of Zoey cradling his bloody head.

Snake's work, he knew. And his pal Jones, and some other guy Lucas hadn't recognized. Typical skinhead treatment—three guys against one. Even that was bold for them. Normally they'd have wanted the balance even more in their favor. Probably they were drunk or high on crack.

He had nearly screwed up and blurted the truth to Zoey, which would have been a disaster. If she knew he could identify the perpetrators by name, Zoey would insist he tell the cops.

He wasn't going to do that. If he ended up testifying in court, there was every possibility that Snake and his skinhead friends would try to retaliate. Lucas wasn't worried for himself. He still had the self-preserving alertness that had served him well in the Youth Authority. But Zoey was another matter.

What the skins had done to Christopher was sickening, the product of marginal humans with below-borderline IQs and families so screwed up they made his home life look like a Hallmark commercial. But Lucas wasn't going to turn Christopher's problem into Zoey's problem.

AISHA RARELY DROVE HER PARENTS'
island car, and she had never before driven it around at three o'clock in the morning. Fortunately, the ancient AMC Pacer had a decent muffler, unlike most other island cars. It had no front or rear bumpers, and the left window was a sheet of plastic held on by duct tape, but it did have a muffler, so the noise as she crept along dark streets toward the dock was minimal.

No one wasted money on a car useful only for driving to and from the ferry to carry groceries.
Real
cars were kept on the mainland in parking garages. In fact, it was almost a mark of pride among Chatham Islanders, whatever their social status, to be able to brag about having the worst, most rusted out, battered piece of junk on the island.

Aisha pulled the car to a stop announced by loudly squealing brakes. She yanked on the door release and slammed the door with her shoulder. It opened just enough for her to be able to squeeze out by using tricks a contortionist would have envied.

The dock was empty, lit by two globes casting lugubrious bluish light over the pilings. The first ferry of the day would not arrive for almost four hours. Even the early fishermen and lobstermen wouldn't be up for another hour and a half.

It was chilly enough to turn her breath to steam, but there was no wind. The water sloshed wearily against the pilings. A sleepy gull looked her over and dismissed her.

Aisha saw the plastic-wrapped papers, four piles sitting on the siding, glistening with frost. She grabbed the two smallest bundles and dragged them back to the car. Then she went back for the remaining papers. It was unbelievable to think that Christopher delivered all these papers by bike, pedaling all this weight up the long slope to her house.

No wonder he had such a nice, hard little butt. Not that she cared. Or maybe she did. Her feelings were a mess right now. The fact that he had been hurt did not automatically resolve all the problems they had. It would be naive to think that he would suddenly be willing to accept her terms for their relationship.

Aisha heard a sound, a squeaky door closing, and looked around. At first she could see nothing, then she saw a figure approaching from the direction of Passmores', a figure wreathed in steam.

Zoey arrived carrying two Styrofoam cups of coffee, waitress-style, both in one hand. Her other hand held a pastry box.

“What the hell are you doing here, Zoey?” Aisha demanded, not sure whether she was annoyed or amused.

“Same as you. I'm going to help deliver Christopher's papers. I've been waiting over in the restaurant. Here. It's fresh. I hope cream is okay.”

She handed Aisha one of the coffees.

“Zoey, you don't have to do this, all right?”

“Eesh, what are you going to do? Crawl in and out of that broken car door at every stop? It would take you a week. You drive, I'll throw.”

“I can handle it. Christopher is
my
boyfriend. At least he was.”

“Look, Aisha, I know you want someone to be mad at over this, and since we don't have the guys who did it, you're being mad at me. That's fine, you can be mad at me if you want. I'm not leaving.”

Aisha reluctantly took the coffee. She took a sip. “What's in the box?”

“Danish. One cherry, one apple. Cherry's mine. Shouldn't we put rubber bands around these papers or something?”

Aisha produced a big box of narrow plastic bags. She had found them when she went through Christopher's apartment, looking for his delivery list. “I'm not really mad at you, Zoey.” She sat her coffee on the hood of the car, rolled a
Weymouth
Times
and stuffed it into a bag. “I'm just mad, period. For some stupid reason I thought this kind of b.s. was something I left behind in Boston.”

“You told me about your school bus getting turned over down there,” Zoey said. She began to roll
Portland Press-Heralds.

“That was just the most dramatic moment,” Aisha said. “People think racists are only in the old South and that's not true. Try being black and moving into most parts of South Boston. You'll think you were in Alabama.” She shrugged. “I just thought things might not be that way here in Maine.”

“They aren't that way here,” Zoey said. “Not with most people, or even very many people.”

Aisha smiled grimly. “Sure they are, Zoey. They're that way everywhere. I don't mean you or Nina or Claire, but still, lots of people. And see, I've had it so easy here on this island that it's like I forgot what the real world was like. It's like I was becoming white, forgetting who I really am. Today . . . yesterday, I guess, now. Anyway, it was wake-up time.”

Zoey looked sad. “I guess there are creeps everywhere.”

“Yeah, well, I had managed to convince myself that wasn't true. But the fact is wherever I go, and whatever I do or become or accomplish, there are a certain number of white people who will never see anything but a nigger. That's the fact, Zo. A fact for me and a fact for Christopher.”

“Well, the facts suck, then.”

“I'm not thrilled about them, either.”

They worked in silence for several minutes, until all the papers were bagged.

“Sometimes things do get better,” Zoey said hopefully. “I mean, we don't burn witches anymore or have slaves or put people in prison for owing money.”

Aisha smiled. Zoey was nothing if not an optimist. She had unchallengeable faith in the future. She thought the future would be like
Star Trek
—black and white, even humans and nonhumans getting along and solving all their problems with a few adjustments to the warp engines.

Aisha had learned to be more cautious. She believed in what she saw and experienced, and a fair amount of that had been bad. Not all, but enough. Faith that the world would someday be perfect just seemed naive, especially when Christopher was lying in a hospital in a far-from-perfect world.

“I know you feel bad about what happened to Christopher,” Aisha said. “And I was wrong to blame you just because you're white. I take that back. But it's not all as simple as you think it is. See, I'm as smart as you are, Zoey, maybe smarter in some subjects. I guess I'm more or less as pretty as you are. I can work as hard as you do, I can deal with people as well as you do, I even come from a family that's not much different from yours.
And what you think is
Hey, Aisha and I are friends, we're mostly the same, what's the big problem?
”

“We are mostly the same,” Zoey said earnestly. “You and I are more alike than I'm like Claire, for example. We're more alike than you and Nina.”

“Only we're not. No one will ever call you a nigger, Zoey, or tell you to get out of town and go back to the ghetto where you belong. And no one is ever going to refuse you a chance or a job or whatever because you're the wrong shade. Cops aren't going to pull you over because you look suspicious driving a nice car, or . . . or treat you like you must be a shoplifter every time you walk through a department store. That's a big difference between you and me, Zo. It's not your fault, I know you're not racist, but just the same it's hard for me not to resent it sometimes when it's like the whole damned world is ready to open up to the lovely, lily-white Ms. Zoey Passmore but just waiting for the right time to try and step on the lovely, ebony Ms. Aisha Gray.”

Zoey nodded silently. There were tears in her eyes. “I do know all that, Aisha. Really. I just don't know what I can do about all those things.”

“Neither do I,” Aisha admitted. “Wait for the human race to grow up, I guess, like I could live that long.”

“In the meantime, I still want to be your friend.”

Aisha sighed. She took Zoey's hand and squeezed it. “Okay, Zoey. Friends. But only if you let me have the cherry Danish. I don't like apple.”

“I feel like it's the least I can do.”

“Come on, white girl. I'll drive, you throw.”

 

I was always fascinated by other people's love lives. When Zoey kissed some guy, or Claire did, that didn't set off any of the alarms inside me. It wasn't about
me
, so it was safe. When guys were interested in me, and yes, there were a few,
that
was different. The first time a male had shown any interest in me it had turned out pretty badly. The memory of those events intruded anytime a guy so much as smiled at me. It was like once, when I was little, I found a worm in a peach.
Half
a worm, actually.

I will pause a moment while you grasp the full meaning of that fact.

For a long time after that I would not eat peaches. But it didn't bother me if someone else ate peaches. In fact, it sort of fascinated me, because underneath it all I had the normal amount of interest in peaches. I mean, I knew the difference between a good-looking peach and a skanky peach. And there were plenty of times when I'd get a sort of internal quiver, a little warmth, a little urge to have a peach, but the memory of the worm kept getting in the way.

Am I being too metaphorical?

Anyway. I'd ask Zoey what it was like when she'd make
out with Jake, and the one time she kissed Tad Crowley at a party, and later with Lucas. And Zoey being Zoey, her version of events involved words like “wonderful” and “exciting” and “amazing.” Even “transcendent” once. Words that don't really convey much hard information.

So, like a dolt, I asked Claire and caught her in a rare helpful mood. She only rolled her eyes once, and made no more than half a dozen smart-ass remarks at my expense. Then she explained making out with a guy you really like.

She said the entire rest of the world just ceases to exist. You don't see, you don't hear, you don't breathe, you don't think, you don't remember.

Then you stop, and the world comes rushing back in. And that's no fun, so you start up again.

It was the exact opposite of what I felt. For me the very thought of kissing a boy was nauseating, a swirl of guilt and self-hatred and fear. I didn't see any way that my feelings would ever become like Claire's and Zoey's and Aisha's feelings.

And yet, I had hope.

Actually, I have started eating peaches again.