The New Moon's Arms Read online

  “Pam?”

  “Okay.” She sounded like she was agreeing to have her teeth pulled without anaesthetic. Why they let somebody so flighty work as a paramedic? But she was gentle, and quick. The child never screamed once. When I got up a little bit later, he had some kind of bright blue plastic sheath around his lower leg, keeping it from moving.

  Pamela and Jerry put straps around his body and the stretcher to keep him still. Hector let go, shook his hands out. I said to him, “You have a gorgeous singing voice.”

  He smiled bashfully. “Men’s choir. When I was in grad school.”

  “I’m Calamity.”

  His smile became a grin. He shook my hand. “Interesting name. Must have a story behind it.”

  Pam and Jerry picked up the stretcher. There were trails of tears on the boy’s face. He must have been exhausted from battling the sea. How long he had been out there? And then strangers tie him down and take him away. “We taking him to the waterbus dock,” Jerry said. “Coast Guard will take him to hospital. To Cayaba Mercy.”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “No. I’m sorry. Regulations. You could go and visit him after. Besides, a Coast Guard officer going to want to talk to the both of you, since you were first on the scene.”

  “I’m right here,” said a familiar voice. I turned.

  It was Gene. “I decided to walk,” he told Jerry. “See what I could see.” His face completely neutral, he held out a piece of sandy black cloth to me.

  My skirt.

  “ABOUT WHAT O’CLOCK you think you found the boy?” asked Gene.

  I finished wriggling into my skirt. I zipped it up. “What time it is now?” I couldn’t make myself look him in the eyes, not after what he and me did last night.

  “Ten of eight, ma’am.”

  Ma’am. Thank heaven. He wasn’t going to make people know that he knew me. “I found him probably about six-thirty, quarter to seven.” I swallowed. Now that some of the excitement was over, my belly was starting to turn again.

  Hector nodded. “Yes, it’s about that time that I heard you shouting for help.”

  Gene examined Hector a little longer than was necessary. He scribbled in his notebook, then said, “You went for a sea bath? You still have some sand on your skirt there. Left hip.”

  “Thanks.” I brushed the sand away. What had him so vexed? Never mind. Stand tall. Look him in the eye. “Yes. I went for a sea bath.”

  “And your relationship to this gentleman?”

  My headache made itself known again. “No relations—I mean, no relation. I never saw this man before this morning.”

  “I see.” Gene made another note in his book. His face was a little less grim now. “So, you came down to the beach, at about what o’clock, you would say?”

  “Maybe six-twenty?” I lied.

  “And where you were when you discovered the child?”

  “On that rock over there.” I needed water. My head was spinning.

  “So, you were lying on top of a big, flat rock with Mr.—?”

  “Goonan,” said Hector. “But I wasn’t—”

  Shit. “No, he wasn’t—”

  “I wasn’t with her. I was snorkeling. Didn’t see her until later. I was just heading back to my boat when I heard her calling for help.”

  “And what condition was he in when you found him?”

  “He was under a pile of seaweed.”

  “You know what kind of seaweed?”

  “Bladderwrack, I think. It’s still over there. I could show you.”

  “In a bit, ma’am. Any jellyfish were around the area?”

  I couldn’t remember. My head was spinning. “No, I don’t think so.” I felt queasy. “Anybody have drinking water?”

  “Here.” Hector held out a water bottle wrapped in a screaming-red neoprene sleeve. He had unclipped it from the waist of his suit. The sleeve matched the suit perfectly. “I been drinking from it,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “I not fussy.”

  “Evidently,” Gene grumbled. Fuck him. I grabbed the water bottle and sucked in huge mouthfuls. The water was warm and stale, but to me, it tasted wonderful. My stomach began to settle.

  “He was conscious when you found him?” Gene asked me. “Or not?”

  “I… I not sure. All I saw was a lump of seaweed, you know? He was under it. When I poked it, he moved.”

  Gene nodded, turned to Mr. Goonan. “That tallies with your memory of the events?”

  “I wasn’t there when she found him.”

  Gene pressed his lips together. Scribble, scribble. Bastard! He been trying to see if he could catch Hector in a lie! “And you are?” asked Gene.

  “Hector Goonan. I lecture at you-wee Mona. I’m visiting Cayaba.”

  Mona campus, University of the West Indies. Yes, I had marked the Jamaican accent.

  “And you lecture in what, Mr. Goonan?”

  “Marine biology.”

  I took another swig of water. The sudden movement of my head brought on another wave of nausea. “Excuse me,” I managed to choke out. I ran behind the rock and puked.

  “You all right?” It was Hector. Gene was with him.

  “I’m fine. Something I dra… I ate.” I washed my mouth out with more of Goonan’s water. Spat. I stuck out a hand. “Somebody help me up?” They both leapt forward, almost crashing into each other in the process. Gene made it to my hand first. He helped me to my feet.

  “You sure you’re fine?” asked Gene.

  “Yes. You were right. A drink of water can work wonders.”

  His face went frozen. “Then will you show me exactly where you found the child, please?”

  Oh, my overquick mouth. “Over here,” I said.

  The headache had faded to a sullen, low gonging. The smell of the sea wasn’t making me so queasy any more. The storm had washed up the usual detritus; plastic drink bottles, shivered timbers, a shredded shirt embedded in the sand. The scrap of cloth was bright pink, with a pattern of hibiscuses and dancing girls. Just looking at it made my head want to start pounding again. Give thanks, no one would be wearing that monstrosity any more. One less piece of tasteless tourist attire gaudying up Cayaba. We came upon my bottle sticking up out of the sand. Gene pulled it free, sniffed at the neck of the bottle. I pretended I didn’t recognise it. When we reached the seaweed, Gene knelt and prodded at it. Hector and I stood out of his way.

  I drank again from the water bottle in its garish sleeve. Plain water to give me plain courage. For it was time to be honest with myself. To survive all the shame this world will throw at you, you have to hold yourself tall, look your accuser straight in the eye. Even if it’s your own face looking back at you.

  You know the story about Old Joe, the slave who helped dig all those people out way back then after the big hurricane? 1831, I think. For four sleepless days, Old Joe worked with the rescue team. He just seemed to know where there were people buried in the rubble. Since then, Cayabans talk about people who are “finders.”

  You must understand; finders probably rank right up there with Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. But still; sometimes, not often, little Chastity used to find. Seemed so, anyway. I found little things: dropped paper clips, lost keys, the change that slid down behind the sofa. Made sense for a little girl to find little things, nuh true? Once in a while I would get a prickling in the fingers of my left hand; the last two fingers that were fused together at the lowest joint. Sometimes when that happened, I could just put my hand on something that had gone missing. Not every time. But often enough that Dadda used to joke about his little finder girl. Often enough that my school friends would beg me to help them look for things they had lost.

  I grew up. Eventually you stop hoping that Atlantis was real. The finding itch stopped, even though I was sad to see it go. I hadn’t felt it for decades now.

  But yesterday, my fingers had begun to tingle again. All these years willing it to work again. And when it did come back, I didn’t take it seriou
sly. Maybe it’s not this morning I’d found that child. Maybe it was last night. Maybe my itchy hand had been telling me he was out in the water, in need. But I had been too busy throwing myself a pity party.

  You can’t find your very large ass with two hands, said my rational mind. No such thing as finders. What you would have done if you knew he was out there? Charged into that rough water? Drowned yourself trying to help?

  But logic didn’t make a difference. The part of me that didn’t pay no mind to reason sobbed, My fault. Mine.

  “By the pricking of my thumbs,” I whispered to myself.

  “Pardon?” Hector said.

  “Nothing. Nothing.” I might have found the boy before he broke his leg, before he lost his family, before he nearly drowned.

  “Calamity, you saw anything else when you came down to the beach this morning?” asked Gene. “Maybe pieces of a broken boat, anything like that?”

  “Not a thing.” He’d slipped, used my name. I hoped Hector hadn’t noticed.

  Gene frowned. “And no reports of any capsized boats in the storm,” he said almost to himself. “I wonder where his parents are?”

  I wondered where my skirt had been. And why the rass my so-helpful fingers hadn’t led me to it before Gene had found it.

  In my head, something was surfacing.

  The daylight was hurting my eyes. I shaded my face from the sun. I blinked in the glare.

  My breath stopped in my throat. The sun went still in the sky for an eye-blink, and the waves hovered mid-curl. A membrane had flickered across the boy’s eyes whenever the sun got in his eyes. He didn’t seem to understand clothing. He had a bluish tinge to his skin.

  Memories sideswiped me: of a bluish-yellow brown body bobbing and swimming as though the sea were its home, gurgling at young Chastity in an alien tongue.

  Dadda and Mumma had told Chastity that she’d imagined the little girl! Would the little boy waddle when he walked upright? Did he play at swimming through schools of tiny fish, his mouth open to catch them?

  Gene stood and looked out to sea as though he were hoping a boat would show up with the boy’s parents in it. Maybe that would never happen. Maybe the child’s sire and dam didn’t need boats to travel the waves.

  And maybe pigs would fly out my ass and dance the lambada. Gene was right: grief turning my brains to shit. Imagining mermaids behind every tree; imagining the trees and all.

  But just suppose…

  “You need me here any longer?” I asked Gene.

  “No, I suppose not.” What a grumpy voice!

  “Good. Then I’m going to the hospital. Mr. Goonan—”

  “Hector, please. After what we just been through together. I could give you my number?”

  Oh, nice. “Certainly,” I said.

  His face like thunder, Gene tore a page out of his notebook so Hector and I could exchange numbers. “I work nights,” said Hector, “and I have to get some sleep now, or I’m going to drop right here. But please call me tonight and tell me how the little boy doing?”

  “No problem. Or you can call me.” Then I hurried away. I wanted to take a good look at the little boy’s eyes. Wait till Ife heard this! Not now, though. Maybe she wouldn’t be up this early on a Sunday morning. Didn’t want to disturb her. Not after the way I’d messed up with her last night.

  GENE WAS ALREADY IN THE HOSPITAL waiting room when I got there. The grim face went back on the moment he saw me. Probably mine didn’t look too welcoming, either. “What you doing here?” I asked.

  “My job. Trying to help that child.”

  There were about twelve chairs against the walls of the waiting room. White enamelled metal with padded vinyl seats. Probably standard hospital issue. Another man was sitting on the other side of the room, leafing through a magazine he wasn’t really looking at. I sat in a chair next to Gene. Under my breath I muttered, “Coast Guard, enh? You didn’t tell me.”

  “Wasn’t any need. Besides, you didn’t tell me about Hector.”

  “Hector? I met him this morning. Minutes before you did.” What the ass was this? One sympathy fuck and now he owned me?

  “Hello, hello,” said a woman in a doctor’s lab coat as she bustled into the waiting room. Her features looked Chinese. “Who’s here for the little boy who doesn’t speak English?”

  “I am.” Gene stood up and flashed his badge. “I’m Officer Eugene Meeks, with the Coast Guard.”

  She shook his hand. “I’m Dr. Chow. So pleased to meet you.”

  The name. That stuck-up voice and manner. The face. “Evelyn?” I said.

  “Yes?” She turned towards me, chin high. She still had the same hauteur. Her mouth still formed perfect, pinched syllables.

  I stood up. “Evelyn, it’s me. Calamit… Chastity. Chastity Lambkin.”

  Evelyn slid her glasses from the top of her head onto her nose and squinted at me. Her face cleared. “My God,” she said, “it’s Charity Girl!”

  I discovered that I still hated her. I wished we’d never studied that bloody novel in school. Evelyn’s nickname for me had followed me until I left. “It’s Calamity now,” I told her.

  “Of course it’s a calamity! That poor child!”

  “No, Evelyn. My name. It’s Calamity now.”

  “Calamity?” said Evelyn. “That’s your name?”

  Thank heaven I’d put on some decent clothes to come to the hospital: good pants, the fitted cream blouse with the cap sleeves, a bit of lipstick. At least I looked respectable to face Miss Priss

  Evelyn Chow. I turned up the corners of my mouth in a fake smile.

  “How is the boy, Doctor?” asked Gene. “Mistress Lambkin probably wants to know, too; she’s the one who rescued him.”

  “Me and Hector. You know; who I just met today?”

  Evelyn boggled. “You rescued him?” She still looked like a hungry baby bird when she let her mouth gape open like that.

  “Well, I found him…”

  “But my dear! How wonderful of you!” She beamed at me and patted my hand like I was five years old and had managed to recite my ABC’s in mostly the correct order. “Lucky little boy. What a good thing you had your wits about you.”

  Well, eventually I had, anyway. “He will be all right?” I asked. I pulled my fingers out of her too-warm grasp.

  “We think so. No apparent head injury.” She turned to Gene. “He blew overboard a boat in the storm last night, I think your people said?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Gene told her. “No sign of his parents. His leg is broken?”

  “Yes. A greenstick fracture. Common for children. Their bones are so flexible that they often don’t break all the way through, just bend and splinter. Like when you try to break a green twig.”

  I winced. Ifeoma had broken her leg when she was young. I still remembered the horrible dull crack when she had jumped off the roof of my car and landed wrong.

  “I’ve got him in a cast. He has some bruises, but other than that and the fractured ankle, he seems all right. Physically, anyway. Can’t really tell, for nobody here can understand him. But he’s had no adverse reactions to any of his treatment so far. We’ll monitor him over the next few days, just to make sure.” Evelyn frowned. “There are other things about him that are disturbing me, though.”

  “Like what, Doctor?” asked Gene.

  “For one thing, his chest is overbroad for a child his age. I wish I could understand what he says!”

  “Maybe it’s German?” Gene suggested.

  “No, I speak German. It’s not German.”

  Of course she spoke German. And French, I remembered. Had been top of our class in school. And she was still as graceful as a hummingbird. Bitch.

  “His eyes are strange, too,” she said. “He seems to have some sort of haw.”

  “Of what?” I asked.

  “A transparent third eyelid,” she said.

  My heart jumped a beat.

  “Sometimes a reptile is born with haws,” continued Eve
lyn; “a throwback, you know? And cats and dogs have vestigial ones. Humans too. Not usually fully developed, though. And he has rough skin on his inner knees.”

  “Like callous?” asked Gene. “Could somebody have been keeping him bound up?”

  Evelyn looked horrified. “Oh, God; you really think so?”

  He shrugged. “It’s possible.”

  “I didn’t notice any ligature marks, though.”

  “Can I see him?” I asked. Maybe if I looked at him closer, I could convince myself he was just a little boy. Bigfoot wasn’t real, either. Or happy endings.

  “You know,” Evelyn said to Gene, “you might be right. That big chest, the eyelids, the webbed fingers and toes…”

  Webbed? Oh God. He really was like my mermaid girl. “I want to see him,” I told them, a little louder.

  “Even the webbing is odd,” she said.

  “How you mean?” I asked.

  “Some humans are born with fingers and toes fused together.”

  “Like you forget?” I held up my left hand, the two last spread to show the membrane of skin that didn’t quite come up to the lowest joint. “Partial syndactyly.”

  “I did forget.” She flushed. “Yours is pretty common; only between two fingers, and so slight it doesn’t impair your ability to function. His is like that, too; tiny. Not like some people where it’s so pronounced that it pulls the longer fingers down to match the shorter ones, and the whole hand curls up. His not worth putting him through the trauma of surgery. They will be something for him to impress his school friends with.” She smiled.

  “So what’s strange?” Gene asked.

  “To have them between all four fingers.”

  He nodded. “With all those deformities,” he said, “maybe his parents are embarrassed about him. They keep the child locked up, sometimes restrained. They don’t teach him language or social skills.”

  “What a horrible thing!” said Evelyn. “And no sign at all of his parents?”

  I felt a wave of anxious heat. “I need to see him,” I whispered. I rubbed my sweaty, tickling hands against my thighs. The rush passed through me.

  Then a high wail came from down one of the corridors. “That’s him!” Dr. Chow gasped. She took off at a run. Gene followed, me at his heels.