“You must take care of my father. You’re needed here, Iola Anne, even more now that he is so alone. Andrew and I will return soon enough. His station in Hawaii is only for October ’41 through October ’42, and then he will return here to teach. We’ll be back in time for Christmas, and we can celebrate together, I promise. We’ll bundle up and watch the sunrise on a new year, as we always do.”
I say nothing as she goes on. “After a few months pass, my father will have accepted the marriage. What choice will there be by then? In the meanwhile, you must look after him. See that he goes out fishing and gets around town in the car with Old Rupert. See that he doesn’t worry about me. I know that what he does, he does out of fear that some disaster will befall me, that I’ll meet the same ending as my half brothers. But I don’t believe in curses, Iola. There is no curse stronger than the power of love.”
I think of those sons whose photographs hang on the downstairs walls. Those young men dead while Isabelle and I were still so small. They are not gone. They have haunted Monsieur like ghosts. Always.
“If they had not gone out on the sea, they wouldn’t have died on those ships,” I say and clutch Isabelle’s hand so tightly. “Stay here. Stay until Andrew comes home. You’ve only known him a semester’s term. If you go, you’ll never come back. I know it. We will never walk the shore again.”
Isabelle’s green eyes sparkle with adventure, her hair tumbling about the pillow in soft spirals. She is already lost. “Fear builds walls instead of bridges. I want a life of bridges, not walls.”
I close my eyes, pray hard, open them again. I am afraid in every part of me. “Take me with you. Take me to this place . . . this Pearl Harbor.” The idea pushes my stomach, squeezing on every side, cutting in like ham netting. “I hear it’s a good place to be colored.”
“There isn’t room for you to stay with us, Iola. We have only a tiny officer’s quarters,” she says. “And we’ve only an officer’s pay. I’ll be doing my own washing and mending and ironing. Just like a regular wife.”
“Mercy! You do need me, then. You’ll burn that man’s uniforms,” I say, and we, both of us, laugh, but I taste salt in my mouth, bitter against the sweet.
Isabelle takes the corner of the wedding quilt and dries my tears with it. “Now this blanket is part of the two of us,” she says.
I am to send the quilt to her once she is settled.
“And Maman,” I remind. Maman made the quilt from scraps of our old dresses. I’ll stitch Isabelle’s wedding date in the corner before I post the quilt for shipping. Now it carries the water of my sorrow, the proof of my love for this one person who has loved me most.
I imagine that I will wrap myself in the quilt and stow away, but I know it is only a dream, like Dorothy being swept off to Oz as Isabelle and I sat watching side by side, my heart pounding because the theater was not for coloreds. I worried that surely someone would look at me and know, but Isabelle had no fear.
“I’d send you away with a pair of ruby slippers, if I could,” I say to her now as we lie with our hands intertwined. “Click your heels three times and you would be home.”
“I’ll be home soon enough. You’ll see.”
We smile at one another, but Isabelle’s is happiness and mine is pain. She dries my tears again.
“I want you to find someone you love, Iola Anne. Someone you love in the way I love Andrew. You are eighteen. That’s old enough. Your beau could work here for Papa. Or what about a soldier boy? There are the new bases at Holly Ridge and Wilmington. Andrew says they’ll be bringing in units of colored soldiers for training. When you fall in love, you won’t even think of anything else. These are changing times. When all this rumble of war is over, we’ll settle in and raise our babies side by side, and we’ll take them right into the theater together —just like Futurama at the World’s Fair. Can’t you imagine it?” She closes her eyes and rolls back against the pillow, drinking in air as her curls spill wild. “I want you to be happy, Iola. You’re the closest I’ve ever had to a sister.” Her lips spread into a smile as if her very soul is fair to bursting.
But my soul knows something else. I feel it, heavy like a stone. My Isabelle, my sister-girl who sees in me what I do not see in myself, is gone away already, and nothing will ever be the same again.
Please, Father, send the angels to watch over her. Keep this sister of my heart from harm and keep me as I wait on my side of the ocean.
Your loving daughter,
Iola Anne
Iola’s story teased my thoughts, preventing me from drifting off as Gina fell asleep beside me, her breaths long and even, her fingers relaxing against mine.
Could it ever be that way between us? Could we get beyond all the wounds of the past —all the hurts and disappointments —and just love each other? I wanted to believe it was possible. I wanted to believe that, in some way, Gina was hoping for the same thing, and that was the reason she’d come here. She seemed lost right now, as lost as I was when I’d moved back to the Outer Banks. Maybe this place could work its magic on her, too. Yesterday when I’d come home from work, I’d seen Gina standing in Bink’s parking lot with Brother Guilbeau. Maybe she was seeking something here, and I just needed to give her time to find it.
In the morning, I was up early again. Lately there had been so much on my mind that I was wide awake, my thoughts moving the first time I shifted in bed. Beside me, Gina was flat on her back, snoring, a nest of blonde hair flopped over her face. Not a pretty picture. I was tempted to snap a photo with the cell phone Ross had given me and keep it for all those times my inferiority complex flared up, making me feel like the ugly sister.
The thought made me giggle as I got up and woke the kids for school. Since we were awake early, I made pancakes to get Zoey’s day started off right. She’d been doing better than I’d thought she might with the return to school. Sandy’s shopgirls, Stephanie and Megan, had been friendly to her, which made some difference. That wasn’t a substitute for having a popular boyfriend and a crowd to hang out with, but it helped repair the damage Rowdy had done by dumping Zoey and then telling lies about her around school. I’d told her to ignore him and not give him the satisfaction of reacting. Aunt Gina’s approach was different. She’d shown Zoey a karate maneuver designed to incapacitate people of the male variety. No telling where she’d learned that, but if the karate didn’t work, Gina had offered to run Rowdy over with her slick, silver Acura sedan. No telling where she’d gotten the car or who’d paid for it, either. My sister had never saved up that much money in her life.
Zoey was quiet during breakfast. She looked tired as she and J.T. started out the door to catch the bus.
“No punching anyone’s lights out . . . or anything else Aunt Gina told you to do.” I held her head between my hands before letting her off the porch. The last thing we needed was Zoey ending up in detention.
“You told me that already.”
“I know.”
As much as I wanted to be the one to help my sister find the same thing I’d found here on Hatteras, life in close quarters with Gina was a challenge, especially with Zoey at an age where she was struggling to define herself. Gina’s beauty, her clothes, her nice car, even her irreverence lured Zoey in —I could see it. Zoey’s birthday was coming up on Friday. Gina had already promised to take her out shopping. Where in the world Gina had managed to come up with all this money, and when it would run out, I couldn’t say, but a homemade driftwood box and sea glass necklace would probably pale in comparison to whatever Zoey and Gina picked up on their shopping trip.
“At least it’s Wednesday already,” Zoey sighed. “I’m almost halfway through the stupid week.”
I kissed J.T., and then they were gone, off across the salt meadow in the ribbons of morning fog.
Gina wouldn’t be up for hours yet, and I wasn’t due at Sandy’s until lunchtime, so I took advantage of the chance to go over to Iola’s house. I’d been dreaming about Iola and Isabelle all night, but in a way, I was dreading opening the boxes again. I’d paid attention in history class enough to know that the bombing of Pearl Harbor was imminent, and because of the historic-homes booklet I’d found downstairs, I knew that Isabelle died young. At some point, Iola would lose her sister-friend to a home much more distant than Hawaii. As far away as earth is from heaven.
But still I had to know the story.
The one-eared tomcat greeted me on Iola’s porch. He’d been lying low lately. Gina hated the cat, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. For several days now, he’d taken advantage of the opportunity to leave sandy tracks all over Gina’s Acura in the middle of the night. Two days ago, he’d left a dead rat on the ground by her driver’s side door. She was convinced that the cat was out to get her.