I follow them to the shore and watch, letting the surf glide over my bare feet. I seek sea glass with my toes, but everything feels like grains of sand or bits of shell. There’s no point in dredging up sand and running it through my fingers in the darkness. After a storm, after the tides come in full and go out, and the sun rises, that’s the best time to look for sea glass.
The boys yell and dive and show off. Two even do handstands. Only their legs stick up out of the water. I imagine their faces pressed against the sandy bottom, how they hold their breath and how their eyes bulge when their lungs crave air and they spring to the surface, gasping.
Shouts come from behind me. A couple of men, one of them Dr. Bindas, dash into the waves, demanding that everybody get out of the water. “Out, come on out!”
Mother, breathless, appears at my side. She grabs my arm.
“Where’s Kammi?”
“There.” I point. Kammi is closest to shore. She’s waving her arms, sweeping water over her head. She turns at the shouts.
Mother drops her hand from my arm. “Why didn’t you stop her?”
“Everyone went in.” Everyone but me. “Mayur says it’s safe.”
“So if everyone jumps off a cliff, that’s your excuse? Someone says it’s safe?” Mother’s voice rises. “Kammi’s our guest. What if something happens to her?” Like it did to Dad, she means. But she doesn’t say it out loud.
I do. “Like drowning?”
Mother sets her mouth in her tight, flat way. “Whose fault would that be?” She steps past me to meet Kammi, motioning her forward. “Kammi, come on. Aren’t you cold?”
Kammi splashes out, the sea coursing down her skin. She’s laughing, just like the boys. Not even Dr. Bindas’s scolding makes them sheepish.
Mrs. Bindas bustles to the water’s edge, a stack of towels under each arm. She makes each boy take one, though they try to scoot out of her reach. Mother takes one for Kammi, wraps her into it against the breeze. Kammi’s teeth chatter, but she’s grinning, I see as we get closer to the bonfire.
“We’re going home. Right now,” Mother says. “Get Kammi’s things.”
I grab Kammi’s neat stack of dry clothes off the log.
“I’m okay, Mrs. Walters. That was fun. I’ve never been in the sea at night.” Kammi picks up her shoes, holds them in the hand not holding the towel around her. “Mrs. Bindas, thank you for the party.”
Kammi’s beaming. Saco comes close. He sweeps his hair back from his face, water still streaming down his neck. He smiles.
“Good night,” he says.
Kammi says good night back.
Mother steps between them. “We’ll send Martia back tomorrow with this towel,” she says to Mrs. Bindas. “Thank you.” She keeps watching Saco leave while telling Mrs. Bindas about how delightful everything was, how much like an American party it all turned out to be.
Mrs. Bindas clucks over Kammi’s wet hair.
“She must go home, get dry. Children, always they are not thinking.” Mrs. Bindas is clucking at Mayur, too, but not in anger. She’s more like a hen hovering over a chick that’s been out in the rain. Like Martia would do.
Mother is already stalking toward the lawn, to wipe the sand from her feet. She’ll put her shoes back on to protect her feet against broken shells on the walk back.
Chapter Seventeen
ON SUNDAY MORNING, Martia rises even earlier than usual so she can make breakfast before she walks down the road to catch the bus for her home near Santa Rosa. I can hear her in the kitchen. Once, when I was little, I ran after her as she left. I wanted to go with her. Martia might have let me, and Mother might have relented, but Dad said no, Martia needed her day off from Blauwe Huis—and all its inhabitants. Even me. Having Martia leave made her return all the better, even when she didn’t bring me any sweets. Once, she brought me a picture of a stick house she said her little boy had drawn on the rough brown paper I’d sent home with her, the paper Mother said was good enough for me to use for drawing. In the yard, he’d drawn chickens with three-toed feet twice the size of their bodies.
I wait until I hear Martia turn the key in the front door before I slip into the kitchen. On the counter, she’s left fresh-chopped fruit and fresh-squeezed orange juice, with a basket of mango-filled pastries under a yellow linen towel. I have some juice and make up a tray to take back to my room. On the way back, I remove the master bedroom key from the hook by the locked cabinet where Martia stores her herbs and spices, and probably healing potions she keeps for emergencies. When I was young, I was sure Martia stored powerful remedies that in the wrong hands could be poisonous. I slip the key into my pocket for later, when I’ll look in the room.