Judith
August 1971
Judith hitched up her skirt and waddled knee-deep into a tide pool. Uncle Thomas told her he’d seen a pink mollusk shell somewhere down here, and she was determined to find it. She had every color shell you could think of, all lined up on the window ledge in her bedroom—even a black one her cousin Art had thrown in a bonfire last summer because she’d beat him in a race. With a pink shell, her collection would be almost perfect.
Silvery minnows flitted back and forth in the pool, dodging her steps. A dismembered crab claw clacked against a rock. She snatched it up and stuck it in her pocket to give to Art later. He was always collecting weird stuff like that, bits and pieces, sometimes from things that were alive, sometimes from things that weren’t.
She shuffled around the pool for a long time. Mud stirred up, and she dug through pebbles with her toe until her shins were numb from the cold water. Convinced she’d probably buried it with her tromping, she plunged her hand down, hissing when the salt hit a cut on her hand.
There was no pink mollusk shell.
Disappointed and soggy and in for a whacking when her mom saw what she’d done to her new shorts, Judith climbed out of the tide pool and skipped over the rocks toward the shore. She was exactly three jumps away when she saw the body.
She’d seen dead bodies on TV before, on the news late at night when Mom and Dad didn’t know she was watching from the stairs. None of them had looked like this. His skin was stretched out and purple in places and his hair knotted around bits of seaweed and wood. Part of her was scared, but another part wanted to get closer. To touch it. Something wasn’t right about it, the way the limbs puffed out and the face swelled. He looked like an overfilled balloon.
She hopped one rock closer, balancing on one foot.
“Oh my God. Judith! Get away from him!”
Her gaze snapped toward the beach where Uncle Thomas waved both arms at her.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I didn’t touch him.”
“Just come around this way.” He pointed to a path the long way around another tide pool. “Be careful, now.”
Judith obeyed, but not without sneaking glances at the body while it bobbed with the waves. Once her feet touched the sand, Uncle Thomas pulled her into his side, burying her face in his shirt. He stroked her hair and shushed her even though she hadn’t said anything. Grown-ups always thought she was more scared than she was.
He kept a tight hold on her until they were past the boathouse and climbed the hill toward the lighthouse. When she finally wrenched herself away, she was irritated to find she couldn’t even see the beach, let alone the man.
“A damn shame. A right damn shame,” Uncle Thomas muttered. He squeezed Judith’s hand. “You okay, little one?”
Little one. Judith was twelve. Hardly little. “I said I was fine.”
“Okay. Yeah. Good. You be strong. That’s good. Lord knows we all need to be strong right now.”
He held her hand the whole walk from the tide pool to her house. Dad would be gone at work, but she spotted Mom on the front porch hanging up the towels to dry. One look at Uncle Thomas and her face fell. Judith could tell her mom didn’t know whether to be mad or worried, so she settled on confused.
“What’s going on, Thomas? Judith’s not causing trouble, is she?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.” He let go of Judith and pulled a half-melted chocolate out of his pocket. He handed it to her with a smile. “Why don’t you give your mom and me a second, okay there, doll?”
Judith shrugged. Even half-melted chocolate was chocolate. She peeled the wrapper and walked into the house but slowed down once she was out of sight. She couldn’t hear everything, but she caught bits and pieces.
“—going to say to his mother?”
“—it’s not like—”
“—this goddamned war.”
Judith’s ears burned. Her stomach got all knotted up, and she swallowed, warning her breakfast of eggs and waffles to stay put. She knew all about the war.
Four or five months ago, they’d been sitting around the table eating meatloaf that was more breadcrumb than meat—Judith, Mom, Dad, and Judith’s brother, David. David pushed his meatloaf around the plate, which Mom normally would have yelled at him about. Mom had a thing about wasting food and would let leftovers sit in the fridge, refusing to make anything new until they were eaten. Dad shoveled the meatloaf in his mouth between angry bites of mashed potatoes, barely chewing. Mom had one eye on the clock in the kitchen and the other on her uneaten dinner.
Out of nowhere, Mom stood up. Her chair scraped the wood floor. “Upstairs, Judith.”
Judith frowned, trying to remember if she’d done something wrong. “Why?”
“Do as your mother says.” Dad slid her plate away. “Not like you’re eating, are ya?”
“I was just letting it cool off!”
Mom pulled her off the chair and slapped her bottom, but not hard enough to hurt. “Let’s go, young lady.”
“I’ll eat! I promise!”
Mom shushed her and pulled her upstairs, depositing Judith in her bedroom. She closed the door behind her, cutting off any chance Judith had of overhearing whatever it was they didn’t want her to know.
Later, Mom finally opened the door again, eyes puffy and red. Downstairs, someone cried. Judith’s guts rolled when she realized it was David.
Then Mom told her about the war.
“He’s with the good guys, right?” Judith asked.
Mom hesitated a beat, then nodded.
“Then he’ll be okay. The good guys always win.”
Mom hugged her tight. “Let’s hope so.”
For a day, Judith had felt okay with the idea of her brother going to war. Then Art came along and ruined everything. He kept lists of the people who died and read them out loud to her when they went to the bluffs. Every day more names. Every day she held her breath until he reached the end and David’s name wasn’t on it.
Judith’s dad kept lists too, except he didn’t read them out loud. He folded them neatly and tucked them between the pages of a Bible.
“He’s probably hiding,” Judith said to him. “There’s places to hide in the jungle.”
“Sure,” Dad had said. “Lots of places. Great big holes in the ground.”
“Like graves.”
Dad didn’t correct her.
***
After Uncle Thomas left, Mom smothered Judith, her shirt smelling like laundry detergent and bacon grease. “That must’ve been scary,” Mom said.
“A little,” Judith admitted because if she didn’t, Mom would’ve poked her until she did.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Judith pulled away and squared her shoulders. “I already know it was the curse.”
Mom got that stony, blank look she had whenever Judith brought it up. “There’s no curse,” Mom always said.
But Judith knew better. There was a reason Mom never went into the water. A reason the lighthouse light stayed on, even though no boats came to the old harbor anymore. Hadn’t for as long as Judith had been alive. Maybe even longer. There was a reason why Judith didn’t know her grandmother. And that reason was the curse.
“Whatever happened to him, we should be respectful,” Mom said, dismissing her. “That means no spreading wild rumors or bugging the family. Got it?”
Judith nodded.
Later, Mom let her back outside, only after Judith promised not to go back to the water for a while.
“Why?” Judith asked. “I already saw.”
“Just don’t go. Hear me?”
But Judith did go. Not all the way down to the beach, because there were lots of grown-ups down there and most of them were cops. She snuck behind the lighthouse toward the edge of the cliff overlooking the beach. She found Carol and Art peering over the ledge, eyes wide as plates.
Carol’s hair was done up in big waves and flips, like it wanted to be the ocean all on its own. She was fifteen and smarter and prettier than Judith and made sure she told her so at least once a day. Today, Judith didn’t care. Today, Judith had something Carol didn’t.
“I saw him.” Judith crossed her arms smartly over her chest. “I saw everything.”
“Liar,” Carol said.
“It’s true,” Art said. “I heard my dad and grandpa talking.”
Carol scowled.
“It was the curse that got him,” Judith said.
Art laughed.
“What?”
“No such thing.”
“Shows how much you know. I saw him with my own two eyes, all blue and bloated.”
“That’s how people always look when they drown.”
“Yeah,” Judith said, triumphant. “Drowned by the curse.”
Art sat back on his heels and plucked at the grass. “He did it to himself.”
Carol gasped, her hand fluttering to her chest in a way that looked like she’d been practicing.
“What do you mean?” Judith asked.
“His mom said his number got called. He said he was gonna run away far enough they couldn’t catch him.”
Judith shook her head. She knew what she saw.
“Oi!” Uncle Thomas shouted from the light room. “You kids clear out. Nothing to see here, got it?”
Carol stood and wiped the dirt off her skirt. “Serves him right.”
Art and Judith both stared at her.
“You said it yourself, Art. He was going to run away. That’s traitor talk.”
“Oh yeah?” Art’s face reddened. “How fast would you run if your number was called?”
“I wouldn’t.”
Neither Art nor Judith were convinced.
“No one deserves to be dead,” Art said.
Judith nudged his elbow with hers. He was a jerk sometimes, but most of the time she liked her cousin. She remembered the crab claw in her pocket and handed it to him.
His eyes lit up as he turned it over in his palm. “Thanks.”
Carol pretended not to be interested but couldn’t stop staring at the claw. Carol was okay too. Judith just wished she’d stop acting so old.
Under Uncle Thomas’s glare, they went their separate ways—Carol to her dad’s shop in town, Art to the boathouse where he kept all his found things, but Judith kept along the cliff, down the far side that led to the woods and away from adult view. She watched the policemen poke around the tide pool for a little while, get tired of getting their shoes wet, and finally leave with nothing to show for their efforts except a line of police tape staked into the sand. Even that would be gone by tomorrow.
She didn’t know what she was watching for after that, only that she ought to. She thought about what Art said and decided that he was probably right. If any of the whispers were true, the curse didn’t want boys.
The curse belonged to her family.
She watched the dip and swell of the water until her stomach growled. But even then she stayed. If she’d learned anything from stories, it was that no one got anything from running off for a quick snack when they were meant to be looking for something. If it wasn’t the curse, then maybe it was a giant squid that’d gotten him. Or a shark. She swallowed the hunger and stared even harder at the waves.
She could hear them good up here. Water splashed on the rocks a ways down, and the sound echoed up the side of the cliff. She got sleepy sometimes just listening to the water. A couple times she’d been sitting up on the bluffs or even down by the cove and the waves rocked in and out, and it was like her body was being rocked with it, and before she knew it, her mom was standing over her, all wide-eyed panic and bloody lips from biting them too hard.
The only reason she was allowed down by the beach anymore was because of her dad. “What’s the point of living dollar by dollar to keep this place if we don’t enjoy it every once in a while?” he’d said.
She was getting that sleepy feeling now but fought to keep her eyes open. The back of her head went all tingly, like her body knew she wasn’t alone. A small, distant part of her wondered if today would be the day she’d finally see—
A face emerged in the sea foam, pale and sparkling like the water, eyes like holes and hair tangled in complicated knots. A girl. She was stone-still, even as the waves rocked around her. She seemed to flicker in and out as the sunlight rippled off the water, like the light could cut her. Words died in Judith’s throat, and when she made to stand, the girl lunged forward in the water, slicing through an oncoming wave, gone as quickly as she’d come. Judith raced for the beach, tripping twice and bruising the side of her shin and her wrist.
Out on the water there was only foam, but Judith could feel something lingering, eyes digging holes in her body. Maybe what she saw wasn’t a girl at all but something else. What did a curse look like? She kept her distance from the shoreline, careful to keep her feet out of the water yet unable for a long time to force herself to leave.
Finally she began to walk back in the direction of the tide pools—her leg hurt too much to climb the hill the way she came—when something half-buried in the sand caught her eye. She snatched it up before the wave could bury it or drag it away. It was an opalescent pink shell, curled like a goat horn, and as she brought it closer to her face to inspect all the intricate swirls of pink and white laced through it, she heard the ocean.
And beneath the ocean, another sound, almost too faint to hear.
It was a girl, and she was crying.