Songs of the Humpback Whale Read online

“Oh, Rebecca,” I say, “Relax. You just got your period.”

  “That’s all?” she says, dazed. “Is that all?”

  She starts to smile, and then she actually laughs a little. I help her stand up outside the car and we survey the damage: her bathing suit is covered with a spreading brown stain and there is some blood on the vinyl MG seat. I wipe this clean with a rag from the trunk, and then Rebecca and I take a walk further into the flatlands on the side of the road. There are no cacti or brush to hide behind here, but then again there aren’t many passing cars either. We take my pocketbook, which Rebecca, thank God, had remembered to grab in San Diego, and rummage through it for a tampon or a sanitary napkin. I am hoping for a napkin; I don’t want to have to explain the use of a tampon. When I find one I help Rebecca position it in the bottom of her bathing suit. “We’ll get you something else to wear at the next store.”

  “This is disgusting,” Rebecca says. “This is like a diaper.”

  “Welcome to womanhood.”

  “Listen, Mom.” Rebecca looks at me sidelong. “Don’t give me any of those talks about how I’m growing up, all right? I mean, I’m fifteen and I must be the last girl in school to get my period, which is bad enough. I know all about sex, so I don’t want the responsibility lecture either, agreed?”

  “No problem. But if you get cramps again, let me know. I’ll give you Midol.”

  Rebecca smiled. “I’ve been wanting this to happen for so long, you know? So I could get boobs. I can’t believe this is what I’ve been waiting for.”

  “Someone should tell you when you reach twelve that it’s no great shakes.”

  “I feel like an idiot. I thought I was dying.”

  “When it happened to me I said the same thing. I didn’t even tell my mother. I just went to lie down on my bed and folded my arms across my chest and expected that I would die before the day was out. Joley was the one who found me, and got your grandmother, and then she gave me all those lectures you don’t want me to give you.”

  We reached the car and Rebecca hesitates before sitting down. “Do I have to sit there?” she says, although it is clean.

  “You’re the one who wanted the sports car.” I watch her climb in and adjust herself in her seat several times, getting used to the sanitary napkin. “Okay?” I ask, and she nods without looking at me. “Let’s find a place to go shopping.”

  Rebecca leans her head against her arm, propped on the open window. There is so much I wish I could warn her about; the chain reaction that is a consequence of this event. The acquisition of hips, for example, and the discovery of men, and falling in love, and falling out of it.

  Rebecca, suddenly self-conscious, sifts through the glove compartment she has already inventoried. She is looking for something, or pretending to look for something, that isn’t there at all. She closes her eyes, letting the wind unleash her hair and blow the garbage twist-tie in the direction of Montana.

  30 REBECCA July 18, 1990

 

  The people wearing white T-shirts marked CREW ask us to join the line of cars. It stretches like a snake along the dock in Port Jefferson. While we are waiting my mother makes up stories about the people she passes in surrounding cars. A woman with a baby beside her is going to visit her long-lost aunt in Old Lyme, the one for whom the baby is named. A businessman is really a government spy, checking on the U.S. Coast Guard. Sometimes I wonder about my mother.

  “This way,” a man yells. My mother puts the car into gear. She rolls it up a side ramp and into the hinged mouth of the ferry. It is like we are driving right into the jaws of a great white whale.

  We are beckoned by another crew member and told to park the car halfway up a steep ramp on the side. There are two symmetrical ramps, and cars are parked on them and beneath them. I had been wondering how they would fit us all in.

  It is a one-hour-and-fifteen-minute ride. We spend it on the upper deck, lying on our backs on the compartment that holds life jackets. Between this and the convertible I am starting to get some color. Even my mother is looking tan.

  “Well,” she announces, “we’ll be in Massachusetts first thing in the morning. We should get to Uncle Joley’s by noon.”

  “It’s about time. It feels like we’ve been gone forever.”

  “I wonder what it is he does on an apple orchard?” my mother says. “We didn’t even have a garden as kids. Well, we tried, but everything kept dying. We blamed it on the New England soil.”

  “How did he get it?”

  “Get what?”

  “The job. How did he get a job, without any experience farming?”

  My mother flips onto her back and shields her eyes against the sun. “He didn’t quite tell me. Something to do with a visit, I think, and this guy hired him. The guy who runs the place. Supposedly he’s younger than Joley, even. He took over from his father.” She sits up. “You know the types. The real ambitious ones, who’ve wanted to be farmers ever since they were knee-high to a beetle.”

  “A grasshopper. Knee-high to a grasshopper.”

  “Whatever,” my mother sighs.

  “How can you pass judgment,” I say to her. “You don’t know the man, and you don’t know anything about growing apples.”

  “Oh, Rebecca,” my mother laughs. “How hard could it be?”

  The ferry is gushing a backwash and slowly turning 180 degrees. That way, when we dock, we can drive right off. From what I can see, Bridgeport does not look like someplace to write home about.

  It seems as if every other line of cars gets to drive off before we do. Plus, since we are halfway up a ramp we cannot see if the line is moving. We cannot see anything but the Ford Taurus in front of us. It is very dusty and someone has etched “WASH ME” on the back window. Finally a man wearing a CREW shirt points to the car and motions that we can move ahead. But the Taurus in front of us, instead of pulling forward, has shifted into reverse. It slams us squarely on the front fender. I can hear the metal crunch.

  “Jesus Christ,” my mother says. “It figures.”

  “Well, aren’t you going to stop?” The man in the CREW shirt is yelling something I can’t hear. The overall gist of it is: Move, lady. My mother pulls off the boat with the fender hanging half on and half off. She drives to a spot out of the way, on the right, where the Taurus is waiting.

  She gets out of the car and walks in front to see the damage. “We can drive. We just won’t look very pretty.” She tries to bend the fender back into place with her bare hands. “I suppose you can’t ask for much when you’ve paid five hundred dollars.”

  The driver gets out of the Taurus, which hasn’t been damaged. “Oh, dear,” he says. “I’ll certainly pay for this. I can give you cash, right now, if you like. Or we can exchange licenses.” He wrings his hands in front of himself, so upset that it is almost funny.

  “Well,” my mother says, “it would probably cost at least four hundred dollars to fix. Don’t you think so, honey?” she calls to me.

  “At least. And the car being brand new, and all.”

  “Brand new?” the man gasps. He doesn’t notice all the rust spots, apparently. “I am so sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry. I didn’t mean to put it into reverse. Stupid, stupid me.” He bends down over our twisted fender and smooths his fingers over it. “I don’t have the money on me, but if you follow me I can get it. And I don’t mind giving the cash up front, not at all. Less points on the old insurance, after all.”

  “We really don’t have a lot of time,” my mother says.

  “Oh, it’s just up the road. I’m Ernest Elkezer, the curator for the Barnum Museum on Main Street here. It’s after hours, but I’ll let you look around while I open the safe. It’s the least I can do.”

  My mother gets into the driver’s seat and starts the ignition. “Can you believe this? The car was free, and now we’re getting a bonus four hundred dollars.” She turns her face toward the sun. “Rebecca, baby, the gods are smiling on us today!”

  The P. T. Barnum Museum is next door to a modern city building.It is strange, walking up to this huge door which is locked and being let inside. I feel like I am doing something I shouldn’t. “You know Bridgeport was the birthplace of General