The Bay at Midnight

“Which one wears that bikini?” he asked.

“Neither,” I said, but I knew he meant Isabel, even though her bathing suit was not actually a bikini, since the bottom was big enough to cover her belly button. Pam Durant was the only girl I knew who wore an actual, navel- revealing bikini.

“You lie,” he said. “There’s one who wears that two-piece bathing suit. She sits out on the bulkhead sometimes, talking to boys in their boats.”

“That’s Isabel,” I said. “She’s seventeen.”

“She a fine-lookin’ woman,” George said, and the way he said it made me uncomfortable.

“Don’t talk about my sister that way,” I said.

“What way’s that?” he asked, grinning. He had the most perfect set of white teeth I’d ever seen.

“You know what way,” I said.

I thought I heard something, and I cocked my head, listening. There it was—the clucking sound of chickens. I looked over my shoulder toward the Rooster Man’s shack. It was barely visible for all the grasses and reeds surrounding it.

“Have you met the Rooster Man?” I asked Wanda and George.

“Who’s the Rooster Man?” Wanda asked.

There was a tug on my line. I pulled back, reeled it in a bit, but whatever had been there was gone. Most likely, my bait was gone as well, but I really didn’t care about fishing. I was making new friends.

“He lives in that shack.” I pointed to the ramshackle little building on the other side of the dock.

“I seen him,” Wanda said. “George and me went over there to fish one time and he chased us away.”

“I think he’s hiding something,” I said.

George laughed. “You just lookin’ for trouble, ain’t you, girl?” he said.

“He has a rooster and some chickens he just lets run all over his house,” I said.

Salena walked over with a big bowl of raspberries and offered me some.

“Thanks,” I said, taking a couple of the berries and popping them in my mouth.

“Your mama know you’re over here, sugar?” Salena asked me.

I shook my head. “No, but I’m allowed to go anywhere on this end of the canal,” I said, telling what I hoped was the truth. I knew I was allowed to take the boat anywhere on this end of the canal. No one had ever addressed my getting off the boat and visiting someone.

“Well, you ask next time, hear?” Salena said.

I nodded.

“Yeah, you say, ‘Hey, Mama, can I fish with dem niggahs?’” George said.

I was shocked he used that word. He looked at my stunned face, then broke into a laugh.

“Hey, girl,” he said. “I’m just razzin’ ya.”

Salena laughed, too, but Wanda looked at her brother with disgust. “You so retarded,” she said to him. Then to me, “He turned eighteen yesterday and now he’s more retarded than ever.”

So, I had some new friends. They were different from anyone else I knew, but that only intrigued me. I went across the canal a couple more times that week. I liked being over there. Salena turned out to be their cousin, not their mother, as I’d originally thought. I learned that all of them—including the men, who stuck pretty much to themselves—were cousins. Wanda and George had no father and their mother was sick, so this bunch of older relatives took them in.

There was always a lot of “razzin’” going on, as George would say, and it took me a while to realize it was a sign of affection between them. I gave them any fish I caught and discovered that they, too, released the blowfish and sea robins. I shared my binoculars with them, letting them take turns looking through them. I picked a bowlful of berries from the semicircle of blueberry bushes that grew in the sandy lot across from our house and shared them with the Lewises. I brought over The Clue of the Dancing Puppet, sat on an overturned bucket, and read it out loud to Wanda. She never offered to do the reading, and I didn’t ask her, afraid she couldn’t read as well as me and might be embarrassed. I put a lot of drama into the reading, and even George and Salena listened after a while.

I took Wanda for a ride in the boat, making sure I’d brought an extra life preserver with me that day. I wanted to take her across the canal to meet my family but instinctively knew I’d better not. I’d told no one where I was spending my mornings. All they needed to do was look hard across the canal to see me, but they were so used to ignoring the colored fishermen that I guess they never did.

One day, though, I was standing next to Wanda, starting to bait my hook with a killie, when a white man suddenly emerged from the path cut through the tall grass. We all turned to look at him, and my thoughts were so removed from my family that it wasn’t until I noticed his limp that I realized it was my father.

“Daddy!” I said. “What are you doing here?”

I noticed some gray in my father’s brown hair as he walked toward to me. He skirted a fish bucket and gave George an even wider berth. George cut his eyes at my father, looking as though he would happily stick a knife in his side if given a chance. It was a side of George I hadn’t seen before.

“You need to come home,” Daddy said. His voice was very calm, but I knew the calmness masked his anger. My father was not a hitter, not even a yeller, but quiet anger could sometimes be even harder to endure.

“Why?” I asked, knowing perfectly well why. I was holding the killie in one hand, the hook in another, and both my arms felt paralyzed.