She opened her eyes wide and sat up straight. “Not tonging?”
“Tonging’s done, Grandma. It’s April.” It was spring vacation, and here I was sitting all day with a cranky old woman.
She settled back. I thought she might tell me not to be sassy once more for good measure, but instead she said, “That ferry of Billy’s is too old. One of these days it’s going to sink right there in the middle of the Bay, and no one will find neither plank of it never again.”
I knew Grandma’s fears were idle, but they stirred up a little fuzz ball of fear in my stomach. “Grandma,” I said, as much to myself as to her, “it’s got to be okay. Government’s always checking it out. Ferryboat’s got to be safe or it won’t get a license. Government controls it.”
She sniffed loudly. “Franklin D. Roosevelt thinks he can control the whole Chesapeake Bay? Ain’t no government can control that water.”
God thinks he’s Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“What are you grinning about? Ain’t nothing to grin about.”
I pulled in my cheeks in an attempt to appear solemn. “You want some coffee, Grandma?” If I made her some coffee, it would distract her, and maybe she’d let me get back to my book in peace.
I slipped my book under the sofa cushion because it had a picture of a great sailing vessel on the front. I didn’t want Grandma upset because I was reading a book about the water. The women of my island were not supposed to love the water. Water was the wild, untamed kingdom of our men. And though water was the element in which our tiny island lived and moved and had its being, the women resisted its power over their lives as a wife might pretend to ignore the existence of her husband’s mistress. For the men of the island, except for the preacher and the occasional male teacher, the Bay was an all-consuming passion. It ruled their waking hours, sapped their bodily strength, and from time to tragic time claimed their mortal flesh.
I suppose I knew that there was no future for me on Rass. How could I face a lifetime of passive waiting? Waiting for the boats to come in of an afternoon, waiting in a crab house for the crabs to shed, waiting at home for children to be born, waiting for them to grow up, waiting, at last, for the Lord to take me home.
I gave Grandma her coffee and stood by while she noisily sucked in air and coffee. “Not enough sugar.”
I whipped the sugar bowl out from behind my back. She was clearly annoyed that I’d been able to anticipate her complaint. I could see on her face that she was trying to decide how to shift to something that I wouldn’t be prepared for. “Hmm,” she said finally in a squeaky little tone and spooned two heaping measures of sugar into her cup. She didn’t thank me, but I hadn’t expected thanks. I was so delighted to have outsmarted her that I forgot myself and began whistling “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” as I returned the sugar bowl to the kitchen.
“Whistling women and crowing hens never come to no good end.”
“Oh, I don’t know, Grandma, we might be terrific in a circus freak show.”
She was clearly shocked but couldn’t seem to put her finger on my specific sin. “Thou shalt not—thou shalt not—”
“Whistle?”
“Sass!” She almost screamed. I had clearly gotten the best of her, so I sobered to an elaborate caricature of humility. “Can I get you anything else, Grandma?”
She humphed and hemmed and slurped her coffee without answering, but as soon as I’d gotten my book again and was settled down on the couch and reading, she said, “It’s onto four o’clock.”
I pretended not to hear.
“Ain’t you going dow
n for the ferry?”
“I hadn’t thought to.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to think a little. Your mother’s likely to have heavy groceries.”
“Caroline’s with her, Grandma.”
“You know full well that little child ain’t got the strength to carry heavy groceries.”
I could have said several things but all of them were rude, so I kept my mouth shut.
“Why do you look at me like that?” she asked.
“Like what?”
“With bullets in your eyes. Like you want to shoot me dead. All I want you to do is help your poor mother.”
It was useless to argue. I took the book upstairs and hid it in my underwear drawer. Grandma was less likely to poke around in there. She considered modern female undergarments indecent and if not precisely “of the devil,” certainly in that vicinity. I got a jacket, as the wind would be chilly, and went downstairs. When I reached the front door, the rocking stopped.