Dream of the Blue Room by Michelle Richmond Read Free Book Online

starts with drops as big as my fingertips. It ends in exactly the same manner.

SIX
    Too often I find myself thinking of Amanda Ruth, summers by Demopolis River, her parents’ cabin in Greenbrook with the path that led down to the water. In the afternoons Amanda Ruth and I would walk out to the pier, which swayed so wide beneath us I thought it might collapse, plunging us into the murky water, where thin snakes curled their slick, harmless bodies around the barnacled stilts. At the end of the pier was the boathouse with its sun-bleached door. She would slide her finger under the rusty latch, coax it out of the hook, and swing the door open. When the light flooded in, dozens of roaches scurried into the corners.
    The boathouse had only two rooms. The blue room was the one farthest from the door. It had no floor, just the water rising against three wooden walls and, on the far side, a blue canvas curtain. When the tide was out you could see the film left on the walls, a slimy green line marking where the water had been. The blue room housed the boat, which bobbed on the surface like an immense fiberglass toy. Amanda Ruth would climb in first, then hold my hands as I stepped carefully over the rail. We would descend into the hull and lie on the narrow vinyl seats. We closed our eyes and listened to the boat knocking against the wooden walls, the stilts of the boathouse creaking beneath us, the occasional hum of passing Jet Skis, the voices of kids as they floated downstream on inflatable rafts. There in our secret room, Amanda Ruth told me stories of her grandparents’ lives in China, and of her father’s immigration to San Francisco when he was a boy. The stories were her own invention, a rich history to substitute for the one her father refused to reveal. “That makes me first generation,” she would say.
    “First generation what?”
    “American, doofus. My dad says he’ll take me to China, to my ancestral village.”
    This was only wishful thinking. Both of us knew that Mr. Lee would never take her there. China was Amanda Ruth’s romance, not her father’s.
    The door from the pier opened onto the barbecue room, which had a small metal table, two wooden chairs, and a grill on wheels, the lid always raised to reveal a dusty pile of charcoal. In one corner there was an old mattress and, beside it, an Igloo chest. A small window faced out to the river. It was in the barbecue room during our sophomore year of high school that Mr. Lee came upon us, Amanda Ruth lying on her back, her short summer skirt hiked high above her knees, her bare stomach glistening with sweat. We had the boom box on, some heart-shattering Ella Fitzgerald tune, so we didn’t hear the rubber soles of his deck shoes padding down the pier. I remember how, when he opened the door, a shaft of light shot through and set Amanda Ruth’s legs aglow, and how, for the split second before I saw him, I believed something otherworldly had happened, that my touch had set in motion some miraculous transformation. Amanda Ruth gasped and shot upright, tugging at her skirt, and then Mr. Lee’s shadow intersected the sunlight, and I knew we’d been caught. His hand came down hard against the boom box, the music shut off, and without a word he toppled the grill, which struck Amanda Ruth on the shoulder. Coal dust filled the air, blinding us, and in an instant he was gone. Ashes and bits of charred shrimp settled in our hair, on our tongues.
    Amanda Ruth was crying, her shoulder cut and bleeding. “We should leave,” I said. “We can go to my house.” But Mobile was half an hour away, and besides, we were too young to drive.
    After a few minutes Amanda Ruth combed her hair with her fingers, wiped her eyes, and became very businesslike. “We’ll wait until he leaves and then we can go up to the house. Mom will talk to him, calm him down.”
    “What if he comes back?”
    “He won’t.”
    “Do you think he’ll call my parents?”
    “No. He’d be too