before, at the hardware store …
people buy these to take
with them to the beach.
See this disk? They sweep it
back and forth over the sand—
try to find dropped coins
and jewelry and stuff. I’m
pretty sure it’s some sort
of metal detector.” Malcolm
grins. “Seems your gramps
was getting ready to find
that treasure chest before
he died. Now it’s up to
you.” I correct him quick:
“Up to us,” I say. The door
at the top of the stairs opens
and Mrs. Mott calls down:
“Lyza, honey, your father’s
on the phone. He wants you
to come home now.” My father?
On the phone? For me? I give
Malcolm the key. “Lock up
when you’re done,” I tell him.
Then to Carolann: “You two
talk, then call me later and
we’ll decide what to do next.”
I take the stairs two at a time.
Dad never cares where I am.
He never calls when I’m with
Carolann’s family. So this
can only mean one thing:
someone else is dead.
“Lyza … can you come in here a minute, please?”
That’s Dad, calling me
into the living room as soon
as the front door shuts.
I go in and sit down
on the beat-up blue couch. Denise is there, too,
flipping through her paperback copy
of Profiles in Feminism, stretched out in the shaggy
orange chair that used to be Mom’s.
Sometimes when I sit there watching The Ed Sullivan Show
or Laugh-in or Carol Burnett,
I think I can still smell the vanilla scent
Mom always wore to work.
Dad looks tired. I wonder why he’s not
teaching tonight. I wonder
who has died this time. His fingers
are laced together on his lap.
He opens and closes them quickly
as if he’s demonstrating butterfly wings
to a five-year-old.
(Not a good sign—much more serious than when
he runs his hand through his hair
or nervously clicks his tongue.)
“What’s up?” I ask, trying
to sound casual, trying not to think about having to wear
that black dress again.
Dad leans forward. He rests his wrists
on his knees, his tangled fingers still spastically
opening and closing.
He glances at Denise, who nods
for him to continue. (Why is she here?
And what does she know that I don’t?)
“Lyza … I’ll get right to the point.
I realize I’m not here to oversee your activities
most of the time … maybe that’s not right.
Maybe you should have some
adult supervision
more often.”
I shrug. I ask the obvious question:
“Why? I do fine.
I finish my chores. I stay out of trouble.
If I really need anything, I can always
go over to the Motts’ or the Duprees’.”
“Lyza …” Dad shifts uneasily in his seat.
“Denise tells me you’ve been
spending a lot of time in your room. She says you seem edgy,
tired,
nervous,
and sometimes you’re having trouble
sleeping at night.”
I shrug again. Maybe no one’s died this time.
“Only when I forget and drink
too much Coca-Cola after dinner,” I tell him.
“And you’re hiding things,” he adds,
“and making excuses to go off with your friends
in private.”
I glare at Denise. If she knows about the maps,
and if she told Dad …
“Lyza …” Dad frowns like he’s in pain.
Whatever he needs to say is stuck
halfway up his throat. Finally, he delivers:
“Lyza, Denise thinks you’re doing drugs.”
My ears hear, but my mind tries
to find another, saner meaning
for what my father is saying.
“Drugs?” I laugh. I point across at Denise.
“She … is accusing me … of doing drugs?”
I laugh harder now. This must be one of those
catch-you-in-the-act TV stunts.
I look around for Allen Funt
and his candid camera. This is just
unbelievable: not only is no one else dead,
not only does my wing-nut sister
not suspect anything
about Gramps’ maps, but Princess Bradley
of the midnight roof rendezvous,
of the gauze shirts and miniskirts,
of the weed-toting, ponytailed, record store–employed boyfriend
thinks I’m doing drugs!
I can’t stop. I hold my sides. I bend over
double. I gasp for breath.
“I’m sorrr—rry, Daddy,” I manage to say through tears
of hysteria. “It’s j-jusst too f-f-funny.”
Somewhere in the Great Parenting Book
there must be a page that explains
how hysteria equals guilt.
Whoever wrote it should be shot.
Unfortunately for me, it must be the only page
my dad has read, because since
our little family meeting last night, he is convinced
I’m experimenting with drugs,
and no amount of my explaining and pleading
can convince him otherwise.
It would have been so easy to tell him
what I’ve really been doing—about Gramps’ note,
the key, the maps, the locker, and the metal detector—
all of that.
I did, for a minute, consider it.
But then, in the end, it was one memory
that held me back: Gramps’ photos of his
solo trip
from Florida to Maine, the way he’d said:
“I’d never felt more alive” and the way Dad, later on
in the car, had said: “Darn fool!”
In that moment I had to decide
to stay safe in the harbor, like my father,
or to push out to sea, like Gramps.
The decision was easier than I thought:
I kept my mouth shut.
Since then, Dad has concluded that I need more
“structured activities,” more “adult supervision,”
more “accountability.”
Why, of all times, did Dad have to pick
this summer to watch over me?
Denise, meanwhile, is sporting an annoying smirk.
I think she made all this up
just to torment me, just to exercise
her older-sister power over me
while she still can.
I hate Denise. I hate Janis Joplin. I hope she trips
on one of her ugly feather boas
and stays in a coma
for the next forty years. (I don’t mean that, really.
OK, yes I do. Well, maybe not Janis.
Maybe Denise. Yes. Denise. If she trips
and ends up in a coma, I am never
coming to visit her.)
I break the bad news about my father’s plan
to Malcolm and Carolann:
“Tomorrow at nine o’clock sharp,
I report to Mr. Archer at the diner
to start my dishwashing job. I’ll work
three days a week, nine to four-thirty,
and every Saturday night. When I’m not
at my job, Dad’s made a list of chores
for me to do at home; he plans
to call the house and check on me
during his teaching breaks.” Malcolm
can’t believe it. Neither can Carolann.
“Want me to talk to your dad? He’s
always liked me,” she suggests. I shake my head.
“Thanks, but I don’t think he’d listen. Dad’s
equation is ‘chores plus job equals no free
time for Lyza, equals no worries’ for him.
I guess we’ll have to figure a way around this.”
I look at Malcolm, the quiet, thoughtful one.
“Any bright ideas?”
I have been the main dishwasher
at our house ever since Mom left.
So, my job training at the diner
takes about six and a half minutes. Tops.
“Dishes first, cups next, glasses and silver-
ware last,” Mr. Archer instructs. I learn fast.
As I soap and rinse, I think about Malcolm’s
face when I told him I’d be
working here. He’d tried a few times
to apply for a position in the kitchen—
cooking, washing, stocking—but Mr. Archer
doesn’t hire blacks. Period.
By my lunch break at quarter past two,
I am keeping pace with the other washers,
Robert and Mary Sue. I grab a grilled ham
sandwich and slip out the back to where
Malcolm and Carolann are already waiting
in the alley. “Well… did it work?” I ask
through a mouthful of rye bread and mustard.
Carolann hands me a jar full of pennies with
dirt smeared all down the side. “We buried this in
a sandy spot in my yard and covered it
real good. The metal detector picked it up every time!”
Malcolm smiles. (It was his idea.) “But…,”
Carolann continues, “both my neighbors saw us
dragging something big under my father’s
tarp. We had to wait till they were gone to uncover
the detector and test it over the penny jar.”
Malcolm speaks up: “It won’t be easy to hide
this thing once we start taking it to the three
spots your Gramps marked on that map.”
I finish my ham sandwich. Carolann starts
pacing. I hand her the potato chips that came with it
to try and keep her still. Malcolm’s right. We can’t
drag that thing all around town, dig holes in the park or
at the school, and expect no one to notice. The back door
opens and Mary Sue steps into the alley to light a
cigarette. “We’ll have to work after dark,” I say
as we move further upwind, away from her smoke.
“And we’ll have to be quick so I can make it
back for my dad’s calls.” It’s time to get back to work.
“Be on my porch at eight-thirty,” I whisper.
“But let’s leave the detector at home tonight.
We can try to find points A and B and see
if they even exist and what’s around them.
Then we can pick another time to find C.”
They both agree. We say good-bye and as I
watch them walk away, Carolann chattering about
God-knows-what, Malcolm patiently
listening, I wonder if I would do drugs if I didn’t
have them around me every day.
Denise is working the evening shift at the diner. My father
is teaching a statistics class from seven
till ten-fifteen.
He calls me at eight-thirty to check in. “Everything all right?
You keeping up with those chores?”
Yes, Dad. Yes.
I’ve alphabetized all of his office files; I’ve vacuumed the
living room and mopped the kitchen floor,
twice. If he
makes his chore list any longer, I may need a few Cokes
just to stay awake. At exactly
eight-thirty-five,
Malcolm and Carolann and I take the Willowbank town map
to the spot Gramps marked
“Point A,”
which we find smack in the middle of the playground
behind Willowbank Elementary,
directly under
the jungle gym. Besides a pair of slowly strutting crows,
no one is around. “At least it’s
not paved over,”
Carolann points out, climbing up the ladder to get a better
view. I climb up the other side
and look down at
Malcolm, who is drawing a circle on the ground with his
left foot. “But if we have to dig
a hole here, there is
no way we can cover it up again without someone noticing,”
he says. “Or without some little kid
falling in,” Carolann adds.
“OK,” I say. “Point A is easy to get to, but too exposed.”
I check my watch: five past nine. Dad said he’d
call again before ten.
The crows squawk and scatter as we climb down the
jungle-gym ladder. Malcolm folds up the map
and we hightail it to the park.
It’s completely dark. The few people left in the park
are walking out. We wander in to wait
under one of the little picnic pavilions.
When everyone else is gone,
Carolann holds the map under a flashlight
and barks out orders:
“Lyza, walk off sixty feet from the north corner
of the stone wall! … Malcolm, you measure
forty-five feet from the row of willows along the river!
… OK, now where you meet is Point B!”
We each take a flashlight and a tape measure
of another roof-covered picnic pavilion,
which sits upon two feet
of solid concrete.
Carolann comes running with the map.
“Well… unless your grandfather left you another locker
with a jackhammer in it, I’d say we need to pray
that this spot is not
where Captain Kidd lost that chest.”
“The way my luck’s been lately,” I say,
“this is probably exactly where it’s buried.”
But now I don’t have time
to do anything about it.
It’s nine-forty-two
and my father is going to be calling home
any minute.
We do nothing about the maps
or the treasure chest for the next two days.
Carolann watches the twins again
so her mother can visit her aunt in Millville.
I do more around-the-house chores, watch TV,
avoid Denise, and wash dishes at the diner.
Malcolm waits outside the barber shop
while Dixon gets his beautiful Afro shaved off.
Then they go fishing together all afternoon,
and even after the sun goes down, in the muddy
and ever-shifting Mullica River.
Carolann calls to tell me
that she’s been reading up on pirates
while she baby-sits.
According to her books, there were actually
a few feisty female bandits
who sailed the seas
around the same time as Captain Kidd.
(I wonder if the women’s-libbers know this….)
And two of these robber ladies—
Mary Read and Anne Bonny—
sailed and smuggled, robbed and kil
led
right along with their men
(Anne lived with the notorious Jack Rackham,
also known as “Calico Jack” because of his
patchwork pants) across the Atlantic and Pacific,
the Indian and Caribbean.
According to Carolann, one male pirate wrote:
None among our crew
were more resolute, or ready to …
undertake anything that was hazardous.
Which means, I guess, that Anne and Mary
were as courageous and brave in battle
as anyone.
Carolann says those women were also
brainy. When finally caught and sentenced to hang
for their many deeds of piracy,
both Anne and Mary “pleaded for their bellies”
and were released from the scaffold
when the judge discovered
that each of them carried inside
a little pirate child.
When someone you love
leaves,
and there is
nothing nothing nothing
you can do about it, not one thing
you can say to
stop that person whom you love
so much
from going away, and you know that today
may just be
the very last time you will ever
see them hear them hold them,
when that day comes, there is not much
you can do,
not much you can say. This morning, Dixon left
for boot camp.
Soon, the Army’s told him, he’ll be on a plane
to Vietnam.
Malcolm did not come out of his house until
after dark,
when I watched him run past our house
full-out,
his arms and legs pumping like pistons
down Gary Street
to the park, where he disappeared behind
the two long rows
of moonlit willows that waved their
thin arms
in the evening breeze like so many children
saying good-bye.
Part 6
Help me get my feet back on the ground.
Won’t you please, please help me….