Jacob Have I Loved Read Online Free PDF Page B

eight.
    â€œWhat time’s the ferry due?”
    â€œThe same time as always, Grandma.” I wished only to be left to my book, which was a deliciously scary one about some children who had been captured by a bunch of pirates in the West Indies. It was my mother’s. All the books were hers except the extra Bibles.
    â€œDon’t be sassy.”
    I sighed and put down my book and said with greatly exaggerated patience, “The ferry is due about four, Grandma.”
    â€œDoubt but there’s a northwest wind,” she said mournfully. “Likely to be headed into the wind all the way in.” She rocked her chair slowly back and forth with her eyes closed. Or almost closed. I usually had the feeling she was watching through slits. “Where’s Truitt?”
    â€œDaddy’s working on the boat, Grandma.”
    She opened her eyes wide and sat up straight. “Not tonging?”
    â€œTonging’s done, Grandma. It’s April.” It was spring vacation, and here I was sitting all day with a cranky old woman.
    She settled back. I thought she might tell me not to be sassy once more for good measure, but instead she said, “That ferry of Billy’s is too old. One of these days it’s going to sink right there in the middle of the Bay, and no one will find neither plank of it never again.”
    I knew Grandma’s fears were idle, but they stirred up a little fuzz ball of fear in my stomach. “Grandma,” I said, as much to myself as to her, “it’s got to be okay. Government’s always checking it out. Ferryboat’s got to be safe or it won’t get a license. Government controls it.”
    She sniffed loudly. “Franklin D. Roosevelt thinkshe can control the whole Chesapeake Bay? Ain’t no government can control that water.”
    God thinks he’s Franklin D. Roosevelt.
    â€œWhat are you grinning about? Ain’t nothing to grin about.”
    I pulled in my cheeks in an attempt to appear solemn. “You want some coffee, Grandma?” If I made her some coffee, it would distract her, and maybe she’d let me get back to my book in peace.
    I slipped my book under the sofa cushion because it had a picture of a great sailing vessel on the front. I didn’t want Grandma upset because I was reading a book about the water. The women of my island were not supposed to love the water. Water was the wild, untamed kingdom of our men. And though water was the element in which our tiny island lived and moved and had its being, the women resisted its power over their lives as a wife might pretend to ignore the existence of her husband’s mistress. For the men of the island, except for the preacher and the occasional male teacher, the Bay was an all-consuming passion. It ruled their waking hours, sapped their bodily strength, and from time to tragic time claimed their mortal flesh.
    I suppose I knew that there was no future for meon Rass. How could I face a lifetime of passive waiting? Waiting for the boats to come in of an afternoon, waiting in a crab house for the crabs to shed, waiting at home for children to be born, waiting for them to grow up, waiting, at last, for the Lord to take me home.
    I gave Grandma her coffee and stood by while she noisily sucked in air and coffee. “Not enough sugar.”
    I whipped the sugar bowl out from behind my back. She was clearly annoyed that I’d been able to anticipate her complaint. I could see on her face that she was trying to decide how to shift to something that I wouldn’t be prepared for. “Hmm,” she said finally in a squeaky little tone and spooned two heaping measures of sugar into her cup. She didn’t thank me, but I hadn’t expected thanks. I was so delighted to have outsmarted her that I forgot myself and began whistling “Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition” as I returned the sugar bowl to the kitchen.
    â€œWhistling women and crowing hens