100. Neighbor #2
“But why me?” I ask. I am not uncomfortable by this devotion they have for these women, this Tessa and Ilsit, but I did not know them.
Fox looks at me with her reddened eyes and signs something.
“She says to bear witness,” explains Adelaide. “To be one more soul to pay them honor. To bear witness to the earthly ends of two who loved us and taught us how to better love. To love others and ourselves.”
And suddenly I am crying too, and I do not know why.
We give up on the peas.
In the morning, I explain to my husband that he will have to arrive a little late to the salt shallows, that I need an hour on the beach, that he must look after our children. He is confused, frightened even by the tears already spilling down my cheeks, but he agrees.
I meet them at the footpath. Fox and Adelaide each carry a small box.
They are made of tin with a name etched into each lid.
The four of us take the footpath down to the gray rocks on the shoreline, treading out onto the wet, glistening sand and into the ocean.
The sun is still on its ascent, and the surface of the water is aflame, a sea of pale oranges and pinks, rippling, alive.
When we are thigh deep, I stand and watch the three of them.
Fox opens her box. She takes a handful of ash and then holds it out to Robbie and Adelaide.
I move towards Adelaide so I can hold her box for her, and then I clutch it to my chest like a living thing.
When Robbie and Adelaide have taken their handfuls of ash, they stand in a line facing the horizon.
I step back, unsure of where my place should be.
“For laughter, for not being afraid to ask for help, for saving my life, but mostly for your endless fortitude,” Robbie says and throws her hand out, the ashes flying forth but quickly caught on the breezes of a Vyggian morning.
“For not judging me, for your strength, for a thousand things,” says Adelaide and then she casts out her handful and the wind takes it.
Fox scatters her share and then empties the box into the sea. In the water, she walks slowly towards me and gives it to me. She then takes the box I am holding and hands it to Adelaide. When Fox returns to her place in the ocean, she signs something, her farewell to this woman.
“What did you say?” I blurt out before I can think better of it.
Fox looks over her shoulder and smiles at me.
Adelaide says, a choke in her words, “For teasing me about my pet and telling me I was a smart girl.”
The simplicity of those words, lacking in ritual or grandness, are what break me, and I begin to do more than leak tears down my face. Because I am weeping, because I need to know, I ask, “Who—who was this?”
“Her name was Ilsit,” Robbie answers me, a smile on her face. “The world tried to beat her down. But she didn’t know how to stay down. So she always got back up.”
Tessa is next. Adelaide cannot open the box, her hands shake too much. Fox takes it from her but then shakes her head and gives it back to Adelaide.
I see Robbie angle towards them to take the box, but instead I step forward again and open the tin, the empty one under my arm. Then I hold it away from me, so the three of them can reach inside.
“For loving beyond the grave,” Robbie says when she gives her portion of ashes to the sea.
“For being a mother to me,” is what Adelaide says.
When Fox spills her handful, I resolve not to ask what she signs after, but Adelaide takes the box from me and empties the rest of the ashes into the water, saying, “Fox says for countless joys, too many to name.”
Robbie reaches inside the pocket of her apron and pulls out a smooth gray stone.
It is flat and reminds me of the kind my girls skip on the surface of the water when they play on the beach.
And that is just what Robbie does. We watch as the stone, expertly flung by Robbie’s hand, hits the water once, twice, three times, and then we lose count as it dances into the sunrise and slips beneath once it’s lost momentum.
“For Evangeline,” Robbie says to Fox and Adelaide.
I do not ask for an explanation of that name. I have seen it before, tattooed upside down on Reed’s side above his hip, when he, every so often, swims the jellyfish swim with his wife.
When we reach the shore, I dismiss their invitation for bark tea at Robbie’s.
I explain that I have to see to my children.
That is how they invite themselves over.
Once my husband has set off for his work, they sit in my house, having wrung their skirts out before entering, and I serve them tea, apologizing for my girls’ chatter and my son’s open gawping at Fox’s skin.
I am told not to worry. Soon, my children find distraction with a game, and I am grateful for their occupation, which, though sure to be short, will allow me to sit with my visitors for a time.
When I join them at the table, they are speaking of “the road” and I understand vaguely that Robbie may be referring to the journey she made from the low country to Perpatane during the war.
She has referenced it before and that it was a story of her and her friends ransoming Adelaide from an unhappy life there.
“Might I ask,” I venture, “is this the story of you and Tessa rescuing Adelaide from Perpatane? I have never heard the whole telling of it.”
Fox’s hands fly into the air and flutter, and her eyes widen at Robbie.
Robbie turns to me and relays, “What about me, Jade, and Ilsit?” Then she turns to Fox and says, “You just heard her say she hasn’t heard the whole of it. I didn’t leave you out. She and I have more to discuss as neighbors than all my old stories.”
Fox rolls her eyes, but presses her lips together as if avoiding a smile.
“But it was a rescue,” Adelaide assures me.
“There were many rescues that happened during that time,” Robbie adds.
Adelaide begins to tell me what happened nearly thirty winters before, beginning with a letter she sent Tessa. Fox nods along at certain points, and sometimes she taps the table to remind Adelaide to include something.
I am following along, but out of the corner of my eye, I notice Robbie’s attention has drifted to the window.
She is looking out the one that is on the side of my house, to where she can see her own house on the cliff.
She is smiling to herself. I can tell she is not with us in her mind. She is somewhere else.
“Well, aunt, you had best pick up the story of rescue from here,” Adelaide says to her.
Robbie turns and looks at the three of us. Then she says, “It was the reappearance of my favorite book that saved me.”
The End