Isle of Palms by Dorothea Benton Frank Read Free Book Online Page A

me.
    Honey, as a practical matter, certain things have to be done at once. Plans have to be made, right, Doc? Sweetie, we know you love this island. All the children love this island. Don’t worry. You won’t go off to a boarding school. Oh! Look at you! Of course, you’ve had a terrible, terrible loss! This is too much for her, Doc! She needs to be in bed, Doc. It’s past ten o’clock, Doc.
    Daddy moved through the crowd, picking me up.
    “Come on, my beautiful string bean,” he said in a weary voice, “Daddy’s gonna tuck in your bony bahunkus and tell you a story. No school tomorrow.”
    I let him tell me one of the same old well-worn yarns to make him feel better, but that night I knew I was too old for any more bedtime tuck-ins. I felt tiny and weak but for all the world, I didn’t want him to know it. He rubbed my back and finally said a few things to me that I needed to hear.
    “We’ll go home in the morning. I love you, baby, and I don’t want you to worry.”
    “I’ll help you, Daddy,” I said. “I’m almost eleven and there’s a lot of stuff I can do. I can cook scrambled eggs, you know.”
    I could see him smiling in the dim light of Merilee’s bedroom.
    “I know, honey. You’re growing up fast but you’ll always, always, always be my baby. Don’t ever forget that.” He got up and walked to the window.
    “Daddy?” He didn’t answer. “Daddy?”
    “What, sweetheart?”
    He turned to face me. Maybe it was the blue light and shadows of night that cast his face in such a way that he looked completely spent. And old.
    “What happened? I mean, how did all this happen?”
    “I don’t know.” After a moment or two he said, “I really don’t know. Try to get some sleep, okay?”
    He kissed me on my forehead and left the room, without closing the door all the way. If I needed him, I would call him, the same way I had when I was really little and had nightmares. It was always Daddy who came to make my world right. After all, Daddy was a pediatrician and he understood children. Most people, except me, called him Doc. The nickname alone implied that he was the one who could make things better.
    But no sleep would come to me that night. And Daddy never came to check on me. I called for him a couple of times, but he never came. Despite the late hour, the front door of Miss Mavis’s house continued to open and close with people offering sympathy and help. While it was really nice of Miss Mavis to let us stay with her, I wished all the loud voices would be quiet. And why wasn’t Daddy at least looking in on me?
    Then I heard Officer Jackson, the Chief of Police, say, “I’m sorry, Dr. Lutz. They were in bed. We’re holding the fellow over in Charleston. Apparently he was giving her a controlled substance—amyl nitrite—and her heart just stopped. He’s going to lose his pharmacist’s license and . . .”
    They had been in bed? My momma had been in bed with that man! The man drugged her? Even though I was a kid, just a Geechee brat from the Isle of Palms, I knew what that meant my momma was. My momma was a whore. From that moment, and for the rest of my life, I was sure I would despise her. I was so ashamed I wanted to die. And, worst of all, where was my daddy to tell me that everything would be all right?

Two
    Split Ends
    May 2002
     
BETWEEN the time Momma died in 1975 and now, enough stuff happened to me to make your hair stand 
up just like it would if you stuck your tongue in a football stadium light socket. I ain’t lying. I got married, had a baby, got divorced, moved back in with Daddy, went to beauty school, became a stylist, raised my daughter, Emily, and learned so much it makes my head spin like a globe in the hands of a third grade boy.
    I pride myself on the fact that I can garden like nobody’s business and, honey chile, I can cook, doing my voodoo on chicken and pork chops in a most excellent and reasonable, down-home fashion. Now, I have no intention of dragging you