CHAPTER 14
IF THE CHILDREN were not apt pupils, they were good company, and I began to appreciate their distinctions. Mary thrived on organization. She anticipated the materials we’d need and kept an eye on her siblings to be sure they were paying strict attention. She had a small silver pocketknife of which she was proud, and she was forever sharpening pencils with it and polishing the blade with her apron. She ordered by species the items we continued to collect from the beach, using the book she’d kept from the traveling library, and of all the items in the Sears catalog, she coveted most a spice cupboard with eighteen cunning drawers. She wasn’t quick, but she was dogged and would worry a problem or a passage until satisfied that she understood its meaning perfectly. If this tended to make her literal and somewhat humorless, it also made her careful and thorough, and I admired her for it.
As so often happens with siblings, Edward, quick, restless, and impatient, was nearly Mary’s opposite. She blamed him for breaking the points of his pencils on purpose to annoy her. Edward was confident and outgoing; it was no accident that he was the first person we’d met when we landed at the light station. He loved machines, either because he associated them with his father, who had taught him their workings, or from a natural proclivity, and he was fascinated by Oskar’s electrical contraptions. I liked to see them together, their heads bent over some mysterious bit of wire. Edward was protective of his siblings, always shouldering the heaviest burdens and stepping forward to test anything that appeared questionable or dangerous.
Nicholas was prone to daydreaming. He spent hours charging back and forth over the bridge to the light tower, waving a stick and mouthing encouragement to his troops. (I was gratified that some of his commands echoed those I’d read to him from The Battle of Mobile Bay). He was the most avid collector; he gave Christian names to nearly all of the items he picked up, including the stones and the weeds, and then told Jane little stories in which these creatures and objects figured as characters. He had a keen sense of fun and was the only one who dared to tease the formidable Mrs. Crawley. You could see that she was pleased to be allowed relief sometimes from her strictness.
Jane was the most curious and forward. She seemed to suspect that information was being kept from her—perhaps it was; she was the youngest, after all—and she questioned vigilantly and exhaustively. She tried out roles for herself, sometimes aping her mother, sometimes her sister or brothers. I was flattered the day she tried looping the two front locks of her hair to the back, the way I did mine. But her own strong personality—inquisitive, willful, and self-assured—overwhelmed any she might copy. I saw something of myself in her, and while I’d quickly become fond of all the children, I believed that she and I had a special sympathy. I sensed that she’d chosen me as a model much the way I’d chosen Miss Dodson.
With Miss Dodson in mind, I gradually decided that, given our unusual situation and my students’ interest in aquatic life, I ought to become more of a real teacher of science. The children had recently found a sea urchin freshly expired on the beach. Some Species contained a picture of that creature’s insides with the parts labeled, and I thought it would be instructive to open the animal and observe the complex structures beneath the shell. I’d not expected its outside to be so hard, however. Because of the roundness and the spines, it was difficult to hold the thing steady enough to plunge a knife in safely.
“Edward, run and get your mother’s big shears, or we’ll never open it.”
While we waited, the others pretended to prick their fingers on the bright purple poisonous needles.
When Edward returned, I fitted the jaws of the shears around the middle of the urchin and squeezed until the shell broke with a snap. With dish towels to protect my hands, I pulled the halves apart. The children leaned forward for a better view. Inside were soft twists and folds, glistening clusters of red and gray ribbon, and drifts of yellow seed pearls.
“There”—I pointed triumphantly, feeling quite like Miss Dodson—“is Aristotle’s lantern!”
The whole looked like a tulip. Nature repeating her patterns, I thought, remembering Miss Dodson quoting Mr. Emerson. There was an important idea in this somewhere if I could figure out how to articulate it. Oskar, I was sure, would be able to explain it. The lesson, I believed, had been a great success.
Then Janie reached with her fork—utensils were our only dissecting tools—and poked at the soft ocher flesh. The briny smell of the sea rose from it, and suddenly, the tangle of innards, which a moment before had been a gorgeous arrangement of colors and shapes, stood out to me as what they were, a cup of guts, some small measure of which had tipped out onto my kitchen table. What had possessed me to take the thing apart?
“I’m sorry,” I said. With great effort, I forced a feeling of sickness down, as cold sweat rose on my neck.
The children clamored for my attention.
“He spilled!”
“Can we open another?”
“Ow! Don’t poke me!”
Their voices scraped at me unendurably. My collar was so close about my neck; it seemed to restrict my breathing. When the bell clanged at last, calling the children to their lunch, I fled the kitchen and stumbled up the stairs to lie down.
? ? ?
I slept for an hour or so, waking when Oskar slipped into the bed beside me for his “night.” Feeling better, I went back to the kitchen. Oskar had left his lunch plate of sardines and pilot bread atop the gore. I scraped the violated urchin into a pail and carried it to the edge of the rock to hurl the mess into the sea. Mrs. Crawley was there, disposing of her family’s garbage in the same way. I confessed my weakness.
“I’m surprised,” I concluded. “I’ve never been squeamish before.”
She gave me an appraising look. “Some women have these episodes when they’re with child, although I never did.”
My mother had admonished me to keep careful track of my bleeding, so as to avoid stained sheets and undergarments, but that was another instruction I’d resisted. I had no need of calendars and notebooks; I could tell by the tightening and the ache when the blood was due. My lax habits meant that I didn’t know how many weeks had passed since I’d last bled, although I’d been vaguely aware that more than the usual had gone by. I’d attributed this irregularity to the strangeness of the place, of the diet, of the entire life here. In reality, nothing extraordinary had occurred; the simplest, most obvious explanation was the truth.
I pressed my hand against my abdomen as if to hold the incipient child back. “I can’t have a baby here!”
Mrs. Crawley laughed. “Of course you can. I’ve had two in this very place, and if the good Lord sees fit to send me more, I’ll have them here as well.”
“How?”
“The same way you would have it anyplace else. It’s you who has to do it, you and the baby, not anyone or anything else.”
“What about Oskar?” I hardly knew what I meant, but it seemed to me that he had to be included somehow.
“I’d say he’s done his part. The rest is yours, I’m afraid.”
“What if something goes wrong?”
She looked pensive, her eyes fixed on the milky water churning among the sharp black rocks far below us. “Babies don’t always live, it’s true. But something may just as easily go wrong in Monterey or San Francisco. Even in Milwaukee, I dare say.”
I must have looked stricken, because Mrs. Crawley put a hand on my arm. Though it was cold as a fish, its pressure was firm. “I’ll be here, you know. I do have a bit of experience. In the end, you’ll see that there’s little for you to do other than endure. Nature will take care of it one way or another. You needn’t worry.”
I attempted a smile, but it wouldn’t stick on my lips.
“You’ll want the nursery cleaned up,” Mrs. Crawley said brightly. “Won’t take more than an hour to pitch all that junk into the sea.”