Either the Beginning or the End of the World (9 page)

“We can make a third more selling the shrimp ourselves. Atlantic wasn't offering much more than the wholesalers. They were robbing us. Don't you see?”

“Here's what I see.” My father is stone-faced with rage. He cannot even look at me. “There's an ocean of paperwork behind selling. The law says you got to have a license to sell. You got to have a peddlers' permit. You got to get inspected. Got to get a state license. Got to get a federal license.”

I feel my arms droop by my side as he blasts these words.

“The reason people don't do what you did is because the fine the government lays on you could be enough to shut a boat down.”

“What do you mean?” He is too angry. He is enraged. He is red with fury. “Did they shut you down on account of what I did?”

“
You're
shut down. That's what I mean.” He turns his rigid back and strides away, then bellows, “Get all that stuff out of here. They cited me, on account of what you did. They said, ‘Grear, you got your daughter up to something on the side?' Do you know what they fine fishermen for illegal sales? Do you know there's not a breath a fisherman takes that doesn't have a law attached to it?”

I burst into tears.

“It was so you didn't have to go. I don't want you to go.”

I run after my father. “Please don't go.”

“Leave me alone, Sophea.”

MY FATHER IS GOING

The next day, we get the news the government is shutting down shrimping early. They sent out a scientist to test the shrimp population. My father can tell you, scientists couldn't find a fish if there were a trail of gulls leading the way. Why don't they send fishermen who know where the fish are? That's what my father says.

Early in the morning, I hear him downstairs. He's on the phone, making plans to take the boat to Chincoteague. “Fine is going to set me back,” I hear him say. “Seven hundred bucks. They're doing their best to rid the state of fishermen.”

I shut my eyes. Seven hundred dollars! I slip down the wooden stairs, sit on the bottom step and listen. Pilot leans in. My father is at his computer, getting the marine forecast. It's one a.m.

“Dad, are you leaving?”

“Not today. Got things to do.”

“Dad, please forgive me.” I want to talk, but I am stupid with the wrongness of me. I am gulping down sobs. Between all the chokes and sobs, I say, “If it weren't for the shrimp you would stay. Let me come. I'll get all the assignments. I'll stay in the motel room. You'll never know I'm there. Dad, please.” He won't be able to make out this last: “I've been so bad. I'm too young.”

“How could you come? Since when you been on a boat? And your dog? What's your plan?”

I am bundled in sweats and a blanket. I drag our old rocker to my father's desk.

He pats my hand. Pilot shows the most concern. She does not like humans crying and tries to wriggle, long legs and all, into my lap. I sob. My father pats.

“I'll be back in May. Not so long.”

“May!”

“Could be sooner. You'll get to know your mom.”

“Jesus.”

We sit in silence. Lydia Sun. Are we both thinking about Lydia Sun? It is all so bad. One thing after another. And then a
baby
. A baby long before May.

“Dad,” I say, “how do you get good karma?”

He is hunched over the computer, studying the numbers. “How do you get it?”

“Tell me again,” I say.

“Karma's what you make for the future.”

“How do you make it?”

I take his bony face and turn him away from the yellow screen in the early morning. All around us is silence.

“It's how you act. I think of it in how you treat somebody, not needing something back. Your mom's an example. I try to wish her well, always wish her well, have a tender place for her, even though she doesn't have many tender places for herself.”

He has said this before. And this takes me to a fragment of a memory. “Were you there when I was born?” I say.

Someone told me about that day. A story of a memory of a hospital room. In it is an entire Cambodian family gathered with rice and soda and changes of clothes and blankets, as if they slept there. And baby dresses and diapers.

A baby was born. I think the baby was me.

“I was out fishing,” he says. “But you are the cream in my coffee, the one I'd drive all night for.”

“Just to buy me shoes.” I know how it goes.

I lean back, lift my feet in the air, make him put up his feet to mine. Then we push with all our might and we each claim victory till my knees buckle and we howl.

“Dad,” I say, “how can you live without me? Please don't make me live with my mother. How about if I go and see her and take her food?”

He said, “You'll be fine. You are a brilliant, ornery girl.”

“You didn't even consider.”

I have a whole secret life. And maybe he does. Maybe he has plans all laid out for a place to go when they close the Gulf of Maine.

“This is a family business,” I whisper.

“You're the light in my attic,” he says. “You're the rabbit in the moon.”

The rabbit. I think of the baby in the cottage in the horseshoe of cottages. Luke straddling the chair. Us wishing for a rabbit to give the baby ease. Now my father's leaving. I won't have him to look for rabbits with. What is happening to us?

And all the while I'm remembering the hair falling across Luke Sanna's forehead.

RULES OF THE HOUSE

My father tells me if I go to Rosa's after school, don't stay late. Come on home. I do. My mother and grandmother are sitting on the couch in my father's and my living room. He says, “Tell them the rules of the house. How things run here.”

I look from him to my mother to my grandmother. “These are very important,” he says to them.

Dad narrows his eyes on my mother in a way that makes it seem that he has two daughters.

My grandmother is tall for a Cambodian woman, the ones I have met. She watches me carefully with her little bird eyes as if I were a new species of person. I vaguely remember—I must have been tiny—playing dress-up in her bright lengths of fabric, the sarongs she wore around the house. And I ate her Cambodian curry. I remember her yellow fingers when she cooked. She does not take her eyes from me.

Today I notice her lips are full and close over her teeth that protrude. She has distinctive high cheekbones. She's wearing lipstick for this occasion. A pale pink lipstick over her full lips.

My mother wears her white coat not zipped. Her face is wide and shimmers with a touch of blush on her cheeks. She's had her hair cut since I saw her, and it comes perfectly at an angle to her chin. It frames dark eyes that dance, looking at my father, who attempts to look at her sternly, but softens. As he does with me. She seems to have the nausea under control and looks like she's on a job interview. Of course, there's the baby.

I'm confused. I turn to my father, questions in my eyes. He can tell he's not getting off that easily.

“You know,” he says. “When you're home. Where you go. Tell them all the curfew rules. Don't teenaged girls have curfews? Friends over. Rules for about who can come over.”

Dad is in over his head. I feel bad for him. He's trying to leave in the morning. But this is the remaining detail—turn over the daughter.

I say, “Is she moving in, too?”

“Who? Don't be rude.”

I glance at my grandmother.

“For the baby,” my mother says. “She wants to be here for the baby.”

My grandmother still does not take her piercing eyes from me. Her hands rest, one in the other, on her belly.

“Like she took care of you,” my mother says.

My eyes flash to my grandmother's hands. Those hands took care of me?

“In Lowell,” my mother says.

“You want to make some coffee or something?” Dad says.

“We have two tiny bedrooms,” I whisper to him. “How's this going to work?”

He shrugs. Then he says, “I'll pile up the nets I dump in the garage.” He and Pete are bringing the nets back that need mending for the next shrimp season. “Give you some room for storing stuff out there if you need.” I drop my head in my hands.

“Rules of the house,” he says. “Sofie's a good cook. She can cook suppers.”

“I'm not a good cook. I only cook one thing.” But then I look at this old woman who took care of me. I have the first realization that I have had boundless freedom with Dad, more than I might have with a grandmother who watches me like this old woman is doing. It's time to step in. I sit tall.

“I run the house,” I say. “But I'm not here that much. I leave early for school. Dad's leaving me his truck. I work at Dunkin' Donuts till eleven.” I'm paving the way to go to the horseshoe of cottages. “And Vincent always wants me to take more hours.”

“She's a hard worker,” my father assures them. He never quite knew what I did. Or when I did it.

Pilot begins to howl. It's five o'clock, and she always howls at five for her supper. I tell her
hush
. She won't. She's spoiled. She believes, it's getting dark and she's supposed to eat.

“Not every night, but I'm on call.”

“For a Dunkin' Donuts?” my mother says. “It's not a hospital.” She lifts her chin. “I had a job there one time. We had a schedule.”

I begin to seethe.

“I've had every job in the book,” my mother says.

“I know,” my father says.

This is
not
going well.

“I'll cook,” my mother says. “It's easy here. The Asian market's just up there.” She can't remember streets. Streets just clutter her mind. She means the main street.

My grandmother says to my father, “She tell her boss nine p.m. on school night.” My father looks at me for the answer to this.

“Tell them I often sleep over at Rosa's,” I say.

“Well, you can tell them.”

I look at my grandmother, who takes me in from what seems like some deep place within her, within the careful way she touches her lips together. Like she has known the world very deeply, including teenaged girls. What was her life like when she was almost seventeen? But I narrow my eyes on her to remind her of her place in this house.

I scoop Pilot's dog kibble into her dish, and she stops howling and I stand with my hands on my hips in the kitchen.

My father stands. “Look, she's a good girl,” he says. “We've been doing just fine. Why don't you show them the rooms?”

“It's okay. We can stay in the same room. In Cambodia, didn't we all sleep in one bed? That's when my brother and cousins were alive. We slept like a bundle of puppies.” My mother gives us her brimming-with-joy smile that I trust like a snake.

I don't show them the rooms. What have we done?

Those people in our living room rise, too, and I see that my grandmother, though taller than my mother, has become frail. She rests on my mother, who guides her wobbly steps out the door. I want to stalk her footsteps and warn her right now,
You are not going to stop me from going to see Luke
.

But I wonder. How many brothers and cousins did my mother have? Do we have eyes like they had, when they were alive?

GOOD-BYE

On two index cards, my father left these notes in small black letters, front and back. I find them in the morning when I wake. My father writes in all caps.

Dear Sofie,

I'd drive all night for you. Get along with your mother. She's working to get it together. Once you asked about fear. Your mother has survived more than a human should ever have to imagine. In Cambodia, soldiers took the children away to work in the fields. They starved the people, even the little children. I guess you're old enough to know some of our background. I met your mom when I was working out of Rye Harbor. I nearly got my ear cut off in an accident on the boat. My family had no use for me, but this beautiful girl took care of me. The thing was, she was on the run from a situation in Lowell. I'm not saying it was good or bad, but she moved in and I loved her. But she's got demons that are chasing her. I don't know if she can get free. But I don't give up on a person.

Love,

Dad

On a second card, was he talking more to himself in the wee hours? But he left it.

My fear is not the day they take our boat. The day I hose her down, paint her hull, haul her nets back to the Heights to mend next winter. Maybe crew for the last fishing boat out of Portsmouth.

My fear is that we shouldn't have called her
Karma
. If you sell your karma, have you sold your soul? But she got me out in the dark all winter, chasing my soul.

I crumple the note in my fist. I did this. I did this.

I'm alone in our house. Nothing looks different. Not the light through the back window. The afghan on the couch, the ball of papers on the desk. My father doesn't take anything. But everything's different.
Who is going to cook for you?
I could have packed meals. At least breakfast to eat after he clears the dogleg. But he loves the expanse of ocean and horizon. For him, all the problems on shore fall away.

The government, the daughter, the daughter's mother with demons. I imagine speeding through the snow roads down to the co-op, boarding the
Karma
just in time. Tell him, Dad, we're going to be okay! Steam back in tonight. I'll make chowder and biscuits. At least wait till spring. Wait. But he'd get back here. Be grounded all February since the season is closed. Grow a jagged beard. Follow the marine report. Watch the bend of the birch trees. Fishing. There's no going forward. There's no going back. We go round and round. Sinking.

I can't see my father opening a Dunkin' Donuts at 4:00 a.m. Doing the crossword in between Mrs. Bennett's cream filled and the kids' double sugars like Vincent. Growing bitter. That's what grounded looks like.