6

That night I was as frightened as I was the night I was raped. The Culler had returned. I was sure it was him I saw lounging against the taffrail. It had to be. Everyone else on the Star’s deck was uncoiling ropes, furling sail, and readying the schooner for docking. I tossed and turned on top of the blankets and cried the night away. What was I to do? Now my secret would be out. Toby would kill Redjack, and probably me. My life was ruined, completely this time. I was so distraught I was late going downstairs. I didn’t know how to face what I knew was coming. My mother’s loud voice told me my father had already gone “down stage,” and what was the meaning of sleeping so late? I forced my way down the stairs and into the kitchen, where the ever-present fish pot was simmering on the hob with my share of breakfast in it.

I crossed the kitchen and said nothing, not wanting my mother to see that I had been crying. I poured tea. I wasn’t hungry, but I would go through the motions, anyway. It was my nature to be hungry every morning. I loved breakfast, and my mother would be asking questions if I didn’t eat this morning. I dipped out the last piece of salt cod from the pot. It was the tail piece. I didn’t like the tail part of the fish very much. Sitting at the table, I was smearing a thin slice of bread with melted butter when my father burst through the door.

“The minister is here!” He fair cried it out.

My mother was as thrilled as he was at the news. “Oh, thank the Lord above, the minister has come! Now our Becky and Toby will be married.” She clasped her hands in delight. I said nothing. All I could think was, Oh my God, now the minister will know about my sin, too.

My father was speaking again, still excited. “Only passenger aboard. Standing at the Star’s taffrail, he was, when one of the boys on the wharf told him about the weddin’ we was wantin’.”

“Where did you say he was standing, Pop?”

“Why, at the taffrail, as he always does. Out of the way so’s he won’t have to help. Bloody loafers, ministers are!” He caught my mother’s raised eyebrows and clawed for backwater. “Wonderful preacher this one is, though—so I hear.” My father seldom went to church. My mother never did.

The relief that flooded through my body was so great I would have lived last night’s sleepless agony over again just to experience that euphoria. There came another clomping of feet outside the kitchen door, and this time it was Toby, who burst through.

“Did ya hear, Becky my love? The minister came last night on the Star. We can be married as quick as you please.” With his back to my parents, he gave me a lewd wink. Toby’s main reason for wanting to marry me was what he thought would be a nightly bout of consensual sex. And all I wanted was to marry him to legitimize the spawn of rape. The seduction was complete. I had won the hand. But I was so naive, I didn’t know that all of the cards were not yet on the table.

We were married the next day. It was the first time I saw my mother in church. She was seated on the first pew inside the door beside my father, wearing her black mourning dress. I knew it was the only garment she owned outside of work clothes. Even on my wedding day, she was uncomfortable in church. Every woman in the Place went to church. They cleaned it and dressed it for the seasons. They climbed its short steeple on foggy days to ring its bell, praying its peal would guide their men in from the sea. My mother was never one of them. She would have nothing to do with the church, yet she was staunchly biblical. I always wondered why.

Toby’s parents and mine, with the help of others, quickly got a wedding meal together in my parents’ kitchen. The spread wasn’t great. It was springtime, the poorest time in our fishing season. Many cupboards were bare. But our wedding night was full with friends who danced jigs to the accordion music played by my father. Salmon nets were in the water, and two large ones caught that day were boiled with small potatoes for our nuptial repast.

A bottle appeared from somewhere and was passed around until it was empty, under the disapproving glare of my mother. My father played faster and louder after he had a swig of the raw, clear moonshine, and Toby and I danced to his music. The crew of the Plunging Star were invited to the wedding. Just after dark the moon shone down, and with the wind being fair for “a good time along,” they left our harbour, following the moon path to the open sea. The minister went with them, and I watched him from the path outside our door, a dark figure who lounged alone at the taffrail under the stern lantern.

Long before midnight the celebration ended, and Toby and I walked up to my bedroom as man and wife. It had already been discussed and agreed that we were to live in my parents’ house, at least for now. Toby and I talked about building a house of our own. He was excited about the plans, but I was not. I had thrown the stone, and I was just going along with the ripples it had created in the water.

I was obligated to accommodate his sexual fervour now. After all, I was his wife. I looked over Toby’s shoulder as he rutted on me on our wedding night, at the molten moon shining through the window. He was as frenzied and as short as a ruffled cock treading a speckled hen. Toby’s rutting was just as quick. I got no gratification from it, only the stirrings of intense pleasure quelled as quickly as they began when my husband suddenly rolled off me. With his back to me, he was snoring before I had cleaned myself. I lay down beside the first and only man who would ever share my bed. And the silvery moonlight poured down on my silent tears.

As the nights went on, the only relief I got from what for me were a few moments of sexual frustration was to finally convince Toby it was ungodly to have sex on the Sabbath. We were married just one week when I told Toby I feared I was already pregnant. He was surprised and asked how I could tell so fast. I explained I suspected it because I had missed “my time of the month.” He looked perplexed for just a moment and then asked, “Well, what did you expect to happen after doing it every night?” He was soon delighted at the prospect and strutted around the Place as proud as a saddleback with two herring. He was sure he would have a son.

I was hanging clothes on the line one Monday morning soon after I had told him. Monday was always washday. I overheard him talking to a few fishermen. They were standing on the path to the harbour, deciding if the ice floes had moved far enough off land to safely set the cod trap. It was late April, and I was a month gone with Redjack’s git in my womb. My belly was showing now. The “love bump,” my friends called it. If only I could tell them that for me it represented a bump of hate.

“Didn’t take ya long to knock Becky up, Tobe b’y,” one of the men said to him. “She must have took it good on her weddin’ night. Or more likely she was christened on No Denial Rock afore the weddin’.” They talked about women as if we were nothing more than nets that needed mending.

“A maid again she ne’er will be!” said another. “You took her cherry, Toby b’y.” This one gesticulated wildly with a bump and grind from the waist down that was even more lecherous than the first one’s grin.

“I ’lows he’s greased the legs o’ the bed so’s her parents don’t hear ’em at it,” the other said.

They all laughed uproariously at this, all but the man we called the Skipper, who was standing apart and seemed ill at ease with such talk. Toby laughed the loudest. I was mortified, and though their bawdy talk was degrading to me, I kept a sharp ear out for what they would say next. I didn’t have long to wait. Their raucous laughter faded. Peeking around the blanket I was hanging on the line, I saw Toby assume his most arrogant stance, which I knew so well. He was so proud of his exploits, he seemed to have grown an inch taller. If only they knew how inept he was at sex. Toby was about to speak, but the Skipper cut him off.

“’Ave a care now, b’y, wot ya say. There is a well-known sayin’ about the rock you may not yet ’ave heard. ‘Wot couples share upon love’s mute stone, the secret is for them alone. ’”

The others nodded their heads at this sage advice, but Toby was taken aback by it. He was obviously about to spew some ribald lies about us on the rock, but he soon regained his composure and said, “Well, in keepin’ with the sayin’, I’ll not say what Becky and I did upon the rock.” This was followed by more laughter. Damn braggart! He hadn’t sense enough to know he had just lied that we had done something up there. There was more to come. “A bed of twine beats one of rock any time, and there is no need to grease the legs, either. The bed does scroop something fierce, though!” All of the men, except he who had warned Toby about his tongue, roared again. I was so mad I broke one of the clothespins.

“Wot ya figure she’ll ’ave, Tobe? A boy or girl?”

“Oh, a boy fer sure! Me mind’s already made up to that fact. Maybe even a twin o’ boys. Both of ’em the spit of their ol’ man.”

“Only the Man Above knows about that, b’y. ‘Male and female created He them.’ Though I always say any boy can git a boy. It takes a man to git a girl.” And the Skipper, who was the father of four girls and no boy, walked down the path to the harbour, and the others, their laughter suddenly stilled, followed him.