The Girls of August (19 page)

E
ven in sleep, I knew that the storm was growing stronger. I could see against my
closed lids the white swords of the lightning, hear the ghostly sizzle that it made
just before stabbing the earth, hear the great war cries of thunder, closer and closer,
until the whole cosmos seemed to battle at our very windows. I heard the lashing
of the trees and the banshee keening of the ocean wind and the echoing booms of the
surf that had been so sweet and gentle in our ears just hours earlier.

A particularly loud and prolonged clap of thunder shook the house, waking me fully.
Barbara, in the sleep-stunned voice of a child, called out in the dark, “It won’t
get us, will it?”

“No,” I whispered, not at all sure. “We’ve got a tin roof and a lightning rod,” I
called, loud enough for her to hear.

“Go back to sleep, y’all,” Rachel growled. “It’s been a long damn day.”

From Baby’s bed I heard nothing but little burbling, smacking noises.

I crossed my arms against my stomach and whispered to the baby I prayed I was carrying,
“Don’t be afraid. It’s just a storm. I’m going to take care of you, little one.”

Lying in the wild dark, I ran my hands across my pelvis. No bump. Not yet. I felt
only my own hipbones.
Oh, my God, Mac
, I thought.
We did it. We really did it. If I’m dreaming this, I’m going to cut my throat
.

Eventually sleep took us all again. I don’t know how long we slept, but it was still
dark when a deep and prolonged rumble roared through the house, shaking the very
timbers. And then came the great white crash.

We screamed and scrambled out of bed. We spilled into the hallway, frightened and
confused. Cold, whipping water poured straight down on us. At first I thought I was
in the grip of yet another nightmare, but when Barbara grabbed my arm and shouted,
“We’ve got to find cover!” I knew that this was all too real.

I looked up. The roof was gone. I mean
gone
. Angry coiled clouds roiled above us, and blinding sabers of lightning struck all
around as if intent on skewering us the same way we had skewered those marshmallows.
Under the force of the wind, the house groaned, and I felt the floor begin to heave.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” I yelled.

Panic-stricken, we descended the stairs, and upon entering the living room, saw an
even more frightening sight. Flames bloomed in the darkness behind us. The kitchen
was on fire.

“We’ve got to put it out,” I cried, breaking from the group.

“No!” Baby yelled. “No, no, no!”

Barbara grabbed my arm. “Keep going or we’re all going to die. Now!”

We followed her through the living room, which was filling with smoke, pushed open
the porch door despite the gale wind battering it, and finally, dazed, tumbled onto
the cold, pocked beach.

There was no place to shelter. The forest behind us lashed almost horizontally. We
fell to the ground and huddled alone, our arms covering our heads. The wind and rain
hammered us. Everything—the trees, the ocean, the sky, the house—sounded as if it
were a single howling wild beast, rabid with pain and violence.

Barbara yelled, “We’ve got to get help.”

“No! Where would we get help? We just have to wait it out,” I shouted, but the wind
stole my words and suddenly there was Baby, crawling into my arms, shaking with sobs,
her Donald Duck pajamas soaked to her skin.

“It’s going to be OK, it’s going to be OK,” I said into her ear.

“Where’s Rachel?” Barbara screamed. “My God, where is Rachel?” She rose to her feet
and stumbled as she turned in a full circle.

“She was right behind me,” Baby said. And then she wailed.

That horrible night when I found Rachel in the surf flashed into my mind. “
Just wanted to stop it before
…”

“When was she right behind you, Baby?” I took her by the shoulders. “When?”

“In-in-in the house!”

I looked back toward the fire, and a new horror took hold.
She’s not coming out
, I thought. My God.
She’s not coming out
!

Fast as an eel, Baby was out of my arms and up the steps. I could not have held
her. She was too nimble, too quick, too determined, too slickly wet.

“No, Baby!” Barbara and I yelled in unison. But she was gone, disappeared into the
flames and smoke.

Barbara screamed, “No, no, no.”

“I’ve got to go get them,” I heard myself say.

“You can’t. Please, Maddy, you
cannot
!”

I couldn’t just let them die. I stared at the once gracious house. Flames tongued,
long and furious, out of the shattered second-floor windows. They danced and curled
in the wind, driven by the energy generated from their own heat.

We had, I realized, escaped with only seconds to spare. And now I had to go back
in and get Rachel and Baby. Filled with new life myself, I had to show them the way
to safety, to life. I pulled away from Barbara, and as I did, Baby burst from the
side door. She stumbled down the steps. Through the smoke I saw that she was dragging
Rachel behind her. Both of them were black with soot, crying and coughing.

Baby shoved Rachel into Barbara’s arms and flew back into my own. I felt the fire’s
heat radiating from her shivering body. Her bones were sharp, a child’s bones.

“It’s OK, Baby, it’s OK,” I murmured once more. But I didn’t believe my own words.
How were we going to get out of the storm? What would we do next? What if this house
burned the whole damned island down? What if we were forced into the sea? As my mind
tumbled over itself, searching for something, anything that might save us, I shouted,
“The flares! Where are the flares?”

It was days later that I realized a burning house was visible from farther away than
flares.

Rachel uncurled herself from Barbara’s grip and dashed toward the house.

“No, Rachel! Stop!” I screamed.

I held on to Baby as tightly as I could. We screamed at Rachel.

“They’re just inside the door,” she yelled back, and then she disappeared into the
boiling smoke.

Barbara began her mantra once more. “No, no, no, no!”

I was sick with fear. I feared Rachel was lost to us. I feared she would grab the
bucket of flares and they, having caught a tip of flame, would explode. I feared
she simply would stay. I feared that in this tempest, we would all die. Right then,
lightning struck the rod at the peak of the widow’s walk, and the great cobalt-blue
globe—this house’s eternal eye—exploded. Shards of glass rained down and just then,
Rachel ran out of the fire, bucket in hand, and back to where we huddled on the beach.

Baby began to wail harder. Her body was contorted as though she were racked from
the inside out. She could barely catch her breath and, between her wails, she made
huge heaving noises. I didn’t know what to do. I shot a glance at Rachel and Barbara.
“Help,” I mouthed.

Rachel looked around, her eyes frantic and hollow, and saw my beach towel had been
left on the back of my chair. Even though it was wet, at least it might warm Baby
up a bit. We wrapped her in it and pulled it tight. And still she cried.

“There, there,” I whispered. “Honey, you’ve still got this part of the island. And
Teddy can get you another house built in no time.”

“It’s not the house!” Baby bawled. “I don’t care about the damned house!”

“Well, sweetheart, what’s the problem if it’s not the goddamned house?” Rachel asked.

“If I just could have fit in with y’all I thought I could be like you,” she sobbed,
“but I’ll never be one of you. Not ever, ever, ever! And that is all I’ve wanted
since the day Teddy first told me about you. It’s all
he
ever wanted me to be! But I don’t
know
anything. You made that perfectly clear. I miss my mom. I miss my dad. I miss my
sibs. And I thought with y’all, I’d maybe find another family. That’s what Teddy
said! But I don’t know about your movies and you don’t know about mine. And I don’t
know about menopause or ancient history. And I don’t
have
anything. Nothing!”

“Is that why you stole that photo off my mantel? I mean, we love the puzzle, but…”

“I didn’t steal it! Mac lent it to us. Teddy has already sent it back to him by now.”

“That was real nice of you,” Rachel said. “Really nice, Baby.”

“Yes,” Barbara said. “It touched us.”

“Why are you still crying, sweetie?” I brushed her sopping wet hair out of her eyes.
“What do you mean you don’t have anything? Besides being cold and wet and half burned
up, I mean? Look at all you’ve got,” I said. I’d try anything to stop the desperate
bawling.

“You’re pretty as a picture. You’ve got this island. You’ve got Teddy. You’ve got…”

“No. I mean I don’t have anything
wrong
with me!” she hiccupped.

I looked at Rachel and Barbara in utter confusion. Barbara shrugged. She didn’t
have a clue either. But Rachel stepped closer. She seemed intrigued.

“What are you talking about?” Rachel asked.

“I mean, you’ve got cancer. And Barbara’s getting a divorce. And you,” she said,
nodding her head at me, “you’ve got…I don’t know…you’ve got a pig wound
and
you’re pregnant! Teddy says the thing he admires most about you all is the way you
handle the crazy shit life throws at you. ‘Those gals are indestructible,’ he said.”

“You’ve got
cancer
?” Barbara shrieked at Rachel.

“How’d you know?” Rachel hissed at Baby, hands on hips, and then she glared at me.

“I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell a soul. Not even Barbara,” I said hastily.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Barbara demanded, beginning to cry.

“Because I was sworn to secrecy!”

“Because it’s stupid! Because it doesn’t matter! Because it’s my goddamned cancer!”
Rachel yelled. She jabbed her finger in Baby’s face. “Answer me!”

“I spied, OK? I saw you and Maddy out here and I snuck down and eavesdropped. I thought,”
Baby said, straightening her shoulders, “that I could help. But then it got to be
crystal clear that I wasn’t needed. Or wanted.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Rachel said and she spun away, busying herself with the
flares. Her jaw set, she took them out one by one and planted them in the sand.

Barbara said, “Are you going to be OK?”

“No!” Rachel spit. “I’m dying.”

Barbara’s face whitened, but I didn’t have time for her right then.

“Baby, listen to me. The three of us have known each other for twenty years. You’re
not even twenty-five, and we’ve only known you a little while. You can’t expect to
waltz in and be—well, one of us. It just doesn’t happen overnight.”

“Damn it!” Rachel said.

She was fiddling with the matches that we’d stuck in the bottom of the pail. How,
I wondered, did she think she was going to light a match in this mess? I heard the
scrape of the match and then the beginning whump of the flares, and I thought,
Why the hell are we doing any of this? Surely Mama B or Earl or somebody on the other
side of the island can see this. But why aren’t they here? Maybe everybody in the
whole freaking world is asleep
.

I tried to count the days on my fingers and was pretty sure Fossey Pearson was still
MIA.

As I stood there trapped in my swirling thoughts, there came a muffled whoosh and
then a long, ashy-smelling sigh that faded away slowly, slowly in the slackening
rain. No boom of flame. No great leaping white light. Whoosh and then nothing.

“Shit!” Rachel said.

“See, Baby? The famous girls of August can’t even light a goddamned flare,” I said.

“I’ve behaved like a total idiot,” she wept. “I have to stop.”

Baby looked at the useless flares and then at the house, which was by then fully
engulfed, and she began to laugh. She changed moods the way a stoplight changes colors.

“We are a sight!” she sputtered.

Rachel grunted and Barbara lifted a hand to the sky. “I think it’s letting up, y’all,”
she said.

I tuned in to the storm once more. Indeed, the rain fell more lightly. The thunder
still boomed but it sounded distant and hollow. I looked eastward. The only lightning
I saw emanated from the dying storm as it approached the mainland.

Baby sagged into my arms and I felt her laughter in all my muscles. It felt needed,
like air.

“That’s one helluva bonfire,” I said, watching the flames consume the house. “I guess
it’s better to laugh than cry.”

Barbara went over to Rachel, took the matches out of her hand, and hugged her. They
didn’t speak. They just held each other.

And then Baby broke away and ran to Barbara and Rachel. She flung her arms around
them. Neither Rachel nor Barbara pulled away from her. And just like that, Baby became
a part of them. These two women who so loved each other had allowed her in.

“Mama told me when I was little that I didn’t have a brain in my head,” she wept,
“so I’d have to be really cute. But I’m sick of cute, and nobody else likes it except
Teddy. And I
am
smart. That was the one thing my mama was wrong about. But she couldn’t ever admit
it. And I’m not gonna hide it anymore either!”

Looking at her perfect, sculpted body in the light of the fire, I thought that Teddy
wouldn’t care if she had the IQ of a manatee. But, of course, I did not say so.

With the world as we knew it fast being consumed by the burning house, I stumbled
toward my friends, and as I did, far out on the dark sea, the throb of small engines
began to drift toward us. From off the northern tip of the island, a deeper engine,
fast and authoritative, rolled in, growling over the sound of falling timbers and
snapping flames.

The Coast Guard…yes.

I closed my eyes and put my arms around the girls of August. All three of them were
laughing. How could they find laughter, the will to keep going, in the face of tragedy?
In the face of a broken family and broken vows and broken hearts and looming death?
I didn’t know.