Ferris Beach Read Online Free PDF Page B

my blouse upright, slipping the neck to one side; her fingers felt cool to my hot shoulder as she touched the line of white where my bathing suithad been. “Yes, some convertible at that,” she whispered, glanced at him once and then turned away. “C’mon, Katie, I think a nice lukewarm bath and some Jergen’s lotion will feel real good to your sunburn.”
    “Well, sure, she got some sun. We pass right by the turn to Merriman Lake on the way to Clemmonsville. You know that. Went for a swim after we finished car shopping.”
    “At the lake?” Now she looked at me, her eyes steady, and I nodded just as he had done, and then in no time he had his arm around her and had coaxed her into a laugh by demonstrating the difference between a proper and an improper fraction.
Proper,
he said, and guided her onto the sofa, placed me up on her lap.
Improper
, he said and placed me on the center cushion, motioned for her to sit on me.
    But later, when I was stretched out on a cool sheet, nearly asleep, and Mama’s hand was rubbing lotion into my back, I mentioned the waves rolling and rolling and the little animals that dug their own secret hiding places. With my eyes closed, I could still feel the movement of the sea, the surge and pull as I stood at the edge while my father and Angela waved to me from the quilt where they sat side by side. Like the waves and the energy I had felt on that shore, I could not contain myself.
    “You went to Ferris Beach, didn’t you?” The movement of her hand never stopped and I just nodded. “Did you like it?”
    I nodded, my eyes so heavy I found it difficult to focus on the roses of my wallpaper.
    “Did you like . . .” Her voice slipped off like into a well and there was a long pause. I could hear her breath, a deep inhale. “Did you like your cousin?”
    “Yes.” I dozed then, flowing in and out as if I were riding a wave, her hand on my back, her lips brushing my cheek, the soft yellow glow of the ruffly pin-up lamp above my bed.
    After that night, our trip was never mentioned again. The only time I heard Angela’s name for a long time after was late at nightwhen I lay in bed and climbed the roses on my wallpaper, up and down, as their voices carried through the vents. He said,
You aren’t her mother, Cleva,
and she replied,
But I wanted to be.
    Maybe it was on one of those nights, when I heard their voices muffled and unintelligible, that I came up with the Helen Keller game, the prelude to all those afternoons I spent blindfolded in my room as I remembered Angela and that day at the beach. I would lock the bedroom door, blindfold myself, and then I would begin, pacing off the familiar spaces of my own room. It was amazing how quickly I became disoriented, my hands stretched out, expecting to find the chenille bedspread, to touch its rough nubby knots, and striking only air. It seemed the more I tried to find my way, the harder it became, the harder to breathe, like the panic that comes suddenly in deep water. I would end up ripping the blindfold from my face, blinking back the daylight, always surprised by the softness of my room, with its the pink floral wallpaper and the stuffed toys on the window seat. When I could comfortably make my way without panic, I added the earplugs I had found in my mother’s medicine chest. “Katie? Katie, what are you doing up there?” my mother called with each bump and stumble, her voice faint like the distant buzzing of a fly. Helen could not have even heard that. Helen could not have answered had she wanted to. The frustration of it all was overwhelming and left me feeling dizzy and tired.
    “Were you playing Helen Keller again?” Mama asked me at supper one night. My father turned his head to one side and coughed a laugh into his linen napkin. “I just don’t think it’s healthy,” she continued. “I don’t think it’s good to close yourself up in a room and pretend to be blind. My goodness.” She brushed a strand of hair, damp from