Dad would not be there, and we would say, “Is Dad still greeting the dawn?” We thought it was a common thing people did, like getting their hair cut. He would go alone on these excursions, smoke his pipe unperturbed, and watch the sea become a membrane of rolling light.
I’d pictured him on the last morning of his life tapping his pipe on the rail. Have you ever seen how sparks fly from the bowl of a pipe, how far they travel? He taps his pipe, and, un-known to him, the fuel line is leaking. One ember, a hundred times smaller than a moth, flies onto a drop of gas in the well near the engine. There is a pop, a puff of flame. The fire leaps from puddle to puddle like a stone skipping water. It lunges and crackles, and I always imagine that this is the moment he turns, just as the flames slam into the gas tank, the moment when everything blazes and bursts apart.
I’d envisioned it this way so often that I couldn’t fathom it happening any other way. And everyone had said as much—the police, the newspaper, the entire island.
I closed my eyes. I felt that the centerpiece of my history had been dug up and exposed as a complete and utter fiction. It left a gaping place I couldn’t quite step over.
I was gripping the pipe almost painfully. I relaxed my hand.
t h e m e r m a i d c h a i r
85
Bending over, I smelled the bowl of it, and it was like smelling him.
Everything began to rearrange itself then. It wasn’t the pipe that had caused the fire. I sat at the dresser for several minutes while Mother slept across the room, and I let the knowledge pour over me: I was not to blame.
C H A P T E R
Twelve
pq
Itook the pipe to my room. I doubted she would go through the drawer and miss it. As I tucked it inside my purse, the relief I felt became full-blooded anger. I began to pace. I had an overwhelming impulse to shake Mother awake and ask why she’d let me grow up believing that my pipe had been the cause of everything.
Mine had been a private blame, a heaviness no one sees, the kind that comes over you in dreams when you try to run but can barely move. I’d carried it like a weight in the shafts of my bones, and she’d let me. She had let me.
Wait. That wasn’t completely fair. Maybe Mother had thought I didn’t know about the pipe. She’d tried to protect me from knowing—never speaking about it, hiding the clipping—and yet it didn’t excuse her. It didn’t. She would have to think in some small corner of her head that Mike and I would find out.
The whole island had known about the pipe, for Christ’s sake.
How could she think we didn’t?
I could hear her breathing, an accordion rhythm that moved through the house. I didn’t want to be there when she woke up. I scribbled a message and propped it on the kitchen table, saying I needed exercise, some air.
t h e m e r m a i d c h a i r
87
Hepzibah’s house was less than a mile away, down a crook of road that wound past the slave cemetery, toward the egret rookery, and then around to the beach. I could see it as I came around a curve, surrounded by wild tufts of evening primrose and seaside spurge. I knocked on her iridescent blue front door and waited.
She didn’t answer.
I followed the path to the back of the house. The little screen porch was unlocked, so I stepped inside and rapped on the door to the kitchen, which was the same shiny indigo as the door in front. The blue was supposed to scare away the Booga Hag—a haunting spirit said to suck the soul out of you during the night.
I doubted that Hepzibah believed in the Booga Hag, but she loved the old Gullah ways. And just in case the blue doors didn’t deter the Hag, Hepzibah had planted a row of conch shells in her garden.
On the side of the porch she had the so-called show-and-tell table set up as always, heaped with the ragged island treasures she’d spent most of her life collecting.
I walked over to it, besieged by a sudden, potent nostalgia.
Mike and I had spent hours
I’d pictured him on the last morning of his life tapping his pipe on the rail. Have you ever seen how sparks fly from the bowl of a pipe, how far they travel? He taps his pipe, and, un-known to him, the fuel line is leaking. One ember, a hundred times smaller than a moth, flies onto a drop of gas in the well near the engine. There is a pop, a puff of flame. The fire leaps from puddle to puddle like a stone skipping water. It lunges and crackles, and I always imagine that this is the moment he turns, just as the flames slam into the gas tank, the moment when everything blazes and bursts apart.
I’d envisioned it this way so often that I couldn’t fathom it happening any other way. And everyone had said as much—the police, the newspaper, the entire island.
I closed my eyes. I felt that the centerpiece of my history had been dug up and exposed as a complete and utter fiction. It left a gaping place I couldn’t quite step over.
I was gripping the pipe almost painfully. I relaxed my hand.
t h e m e r m a i d c h a i r
85
Bending over, I smelled the bowl of it, and it was like smelling him.
Everything began to rearrange itself then. It wasn’t the pipe that had caused the fire. I sat at the dresser for several minutes while Mother slept across the room, and I let the knowledge pour over me: I was not to blame.
C H A P T E R
Twelve
pq
Itook the pipe to my room. I doubted she would go through the drawer and miss it. As I tucked it inside my purse, the relief I felt became full-blooded anger. I began to pace. I had an overwhelming impulse to shake Mother awake and ask why she’d let me grow up believing that my pipe had been the cause of everything.
Mine had been a private blame, a heaviness no one sees, the kind that comes over you in dreams when you try to run but can barely move. I’d carried it like a weight in the shafts of my bones, and she’d let me. She had let me.
Wait. That wasn’t completely fair. Maybe Mother had thought I didn’t know about the pipe. She’d tried to protect me from knowing—never speaking about it, hiding the clipping—and yet it didn’t excuse her. It didn’t. She would have to think in some small corner of her head that Mike and I would find out.
The whole island had known about the pipe, for Christ’s sake.
How could she think we didn’t?
I could hear her breathing, an accordion rhythm that moved through the house. I didn’t want to be there when she woke up. I scribbled a message and propped it on the kitchen table, saying I needed exercise, some air.
t h e m e r m a i d c h a i r
87
Hepzibah’s house was less than a mile away, down a crook of road that wound past the slave cemetery, toward the egret rookery, and then around to the beach. I could see it as I came around a curve, surrounded by wild tufts of evening primrose and seaside spurge. I knocked on her iridescent blue front door and waited.
She didn’t answer.
I followed the path to the back of the house. The little screen porch was unlocked, so I stepped inside and rapped on the door to the kitchen, which was the same shiny indigo as the door in front. The blue was supposed to scare away the Booga Hag—a haunting spirit said to suck the soul out of you during the night.
I doubted that Hepzibah believed in the Booga Hag, but she loved the old Gullah ways. And just in case the blue doors didn’t deter the Hag, Hepzibah had planted a row of conch shells in her garden.
On the side of the porch she had the so-called show-and-tell table set up as always, heaped with the ragged island treasures she’d spent most of her life collecting.
I walked over to it, besieged by a sudden, potent nostalgia.
Mike and I had spent hours
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