The Prayer Box, page 26
Her hand found mine atop the quilt, our fingers threading. I thought of Iola and Isabelle. I’d managed to read from the boxes a few times since Gina had moved in, but having one more person in the cottage made it harder to slip away.
My sister’s hand in mine reminded me of the last letter I’d read, a note written the night before Isabelle planned to leave Hatteras for good. Isabelle and Iola had curled up together on the big bed in the turret room, the blue wedding ring quilt from Isabelle’s hope chest spread beneath them.
Isabelle had fallen in love with a dashing young aviator she’d met during the summer term at college. Girard Benoit had forbidden the relationship as unsuitable for a young woman of Isabelle’s social standing, but after years of freedom while her father was away, Isabelle would not be denied. She planned to meet Andrew Embry on the beach the next morning, elope with him, and travel to his new duty station in idyllic Hawaii. Her mind was filled with romantic dreams of island life as an aviator’s wife, finally free of her father’s control and the family name that seemed to bring both expectation and a lingering darkness with it.
Iola was filled with sadness as she poured out her heart in her prayer box.
Father, what will I do without Isabelle? My sweet and truest friend, this other half of my soul? She, the one who knew my same loneliness when Madame sent me away to the mission school. She who saw to it that I would be brought here to these beautiful shores, with Maman and Mama Tee, rather than given a position in a cotton mill or a tobacco house. She who comforted me as we laid Mama Tee’s body in the ground. “She’s seeing the face of God, Iola. Imagine how grand that must be!” It was Isabelle who brought the preacher to Mama Tee before her passing so that my grandmother might finally know the fragrance of heaven.
How can we live on opposite sides of the ocean, Isabelle walking one shore while I walk another? Isabelle says it will not be for long. She promises this to me, as we lie atop the bed together, her heart buoyant and mine foundering so.
“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.
He skittered off the porch and darted into the flower bed, disappearing as I opened the door and went inside.
A rhythmic knocking caught my attention when I started toward the stairs, the sound drawing me past the piano room and down the long hall to the kitchen. Above the sink, a bird was beating against the window, trying to get in. I shooed it away, then heard something else—a faint slithering and scratching coming from Iola’s ancient-looking washer and dryer in the utility. Something was back there.
I pictured snakes, raccoons, squirrels. Over the years, living near stables and horse pastures, I’d done battle with all of those and more.
Grabbing a broom for protection, I crept across the floor, moving at an angle, trying to get a view of the area behind the cockeyed dryer. If something’s back there right now, other things could’ve crawled in earlier . . . or yesterday . . . or the day before. A shudder ran through me all the way to the bone, and the next thing I knew, I was running to the dryer and crawling on top, then peering over the edge.
In the shadow of the wall, the accordion-like vent hose had a life of its own. Something was in there. Something large. The hose bulged like a snake’s belly after a henhouse visit, the length of it wriggling on the floor. I watched with a combination of fascination and horror, thinking, Now what? Do I call an exterminator? The humane society? The park service? The Ghost Hunters?
Paul was the first person who came to mind. He would either know what to do or get a laugh out of this—me on top of the dryer, having an I Love Lucy moment.
Something protruded slowly from a slit in the dryer hose—something black, small, furry. A paw, the pads stretching out, grasping the slit and pushing it open, allowing another paw to press forth and touch the floor.
The dryer hose slowly birthed the point of a nose, a set of whiskers, a tattered ear, a familiar face.
“So that’s how you do it.” Setting the broom aside, I watched the tomcat emerge, then shake off the final traces of lint before strolling regally into the house.
Midway across the kitchen, he paused to cast a curious look over his shoulder, as in, Why, pray tell, are you squatting atop the clothes dryer?
“Now I know your secret.” I pointed at him and smiled.
He blinked slowly, then turned away, the movement seeming to say, Oh, there are so many secrets. You’ve only scratched the surface.
He followed me upstairs to the blue room and lay in a stream of sunlight by Iola’s black shoe as I opened the closet and reclaimed the box from 1941, piling the letters atop the quilt and sinking slowly into Iola’s life. Changes were coming fast.
Isabelle’s father was furious after her elopement. He’d tried to force her to return to Hatteras and petition that the marriage be annulled on the grounds that it was not conducted by a priest of the church and no dispensation had been granted. But Isabelle was determined, and she was of legal age. She refused to come home, even when her father threatened to disinherit her. Girard Benoit attempted to use his considerable political connections and his pull within the prewar shipping industry to prevent Isabelle’s aviator husband from being restationed to Hawaii, but even he couldn’t sever every tentacle of the Army’s reach. Orders were issued, channels circumvented, and Isabelle got what she wanted.
In October of 1941, Isabelle and Andrew Embry moved to beautiful Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, where a revolution of sorts was taking place. The island was rife with young minds, adventurous spirits far from home for the first time, free from the social taboos of the mainland.
Iola’s prayers were filled with her reactions to Isabelle’s letters.
. . . and Isabelle writes to me, “Oh, Iola, this is that City of the Future we dreamed of. This is that place where everything is possible. I have joined a group of wives in auxiliary service at the hospital, although there is not much to be done there. The place is peaceful, save for the occasional results of a training accident on board ship or plane or the aftermath of a night of brawling with so many young soldiers and sailors nearby. I want you to come here, Iola. I know that Father won’t provide the funds for it, but we will find a way.”
How can I tell Isabelle that it isn’t the City of the Future my heart wants, but the moments of yesterday? I wish for our long walks on the beach with the old horse, the days as endless as ocean and sand. How can I pray against Isabelle’s dreams? Is it wrong, Father, that my heart says to you, Don’t bring me to Pearl Harbor. Bring Isabelle home, instead?
And yet your Word whispers here also, as Sister Marguerite read to me from the Scriptures of the apostle Paul, “But this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before . . .”
My heart reaches back and back and back. All in this house reaches back and strains for seasons that cannot be again.
And I wonder, Father, if Isabelle is the wiser one when she says that the only way to look is forward.
But how to go forward, when I don’t see good ahead? I think on this as I walk miles along the shore while Maman and Monsieur and Old Rupert sit silent in the shadows of this sad house.
How to go forward, always seeking, always in anticipation? Always a little more and a little more, just a few steps farther, a few moments longer. Something new may have washed up on the tide, just over there or beyond that dune or around that point or just out of sight, waiting in the next curl of a wave.
I desire to live my life this way, Father, as Isabelle has. Not caged by the walls of fear, but in anticipation of the bridges to magnificence.
Help me to find the way.
Your loving daughter,
Iola Anne
When the surprise bombing of Pearl Harbor reached the world through President Roosevelt’s radio address, just two months after Isabelle’s departure, Girard Benoit was inconsolable, raging through the house with a pistol, drunk on Southern whiskey, until finally he sank into a chair and wept, certain that he had lost another child to the curse on his family.
The words now come from Monsieur, wild like a flood. Maman runs to the kitchen room to hide, and I press myself cold and stiff against the wall. Only Rupert enters the study. He speaks softly, as if calming an animal, as he slides the whiskey and the pistol away.
“I have no one,” sobs Monsieur. “The curse. The curse has taken them all. Each of my children. All that I have been, wiped from the earth . . .”
A shiver pulls through my bones, and my body quakes with fear and grief. I cover my mouth and press hard into the wall. I close my eyes, Father, and I call to you.
“No’sah, that ain’t so.” Old Rupert’s voice seems far away. “You know that ain’t so. Miss Isabelle, she gon’ get a message through, you gon’ see. She gon’ get a message through, and she gon’ be fine.”
I pray, I pray, I pray. You, Father, hold the power of death and life.
“My blood shall not survive on this earth!” Monsieur’s voice trembles the rafters. “It is the curse! This wicked curse on my blood!”
“Your blood be livin’ right down there in that room off the kitchen!” Old Rupert’s voice booms deep and loud. I lean closer, my heart pounding, the words loud and strange. My mind cannot take them in.
“Your blood been there all this time, and you know that be true. You know your son, Miss’uh Stephen, he the father of Iola Anne, and it was you what send him off on the ship when he been with Iola’s mama, when they talkin’ fool talk of love, like young folk do. Ain’t no voodoo on this fam’ly. Ain’t no voodoo nowhere but in yo’ mind. You still got blood on this earth. You still got Iola Anne. And Isabelle, she gon’ come home too. Ain’t got nothin’ to do with no blood curse. Nothin’.” . . .
