Silhouette of a Sparrow

I went to sleep that night pleased with the letter I’d written. I reminded Mother that she herself had worked as a secretary during the war, and told her that Alice’s mother had allowed Alice to get a job in a department store. I trusted that she’d ask Aunt Rachel for advice, and that advice would certainly be in my favor. So many young, unmarried women were working outside the home now that it seemed pretty old fashioned to resist the trend. I placed my faith in the belief that no modern woman could deny her daughter this opportunity, and though my mother was conservative, she was not so Victorian as the Harringtons. She prided herself on being fashionable—reading Freud and following scandals in the paper and hemming her skirts to just the right length. She would say yes. She had to. I put the letter into the hands of the bellboy, who would post it in the morning, and went to bed hopeful.

Three hours later I woke to an awful racket. The sound of steady rain that I’d gotten so used to sleeping with had changed to a clamor. Uneven cracks and thumps and thuds sounded outside my partly open window, and occasional muffled clunks came right into my room. I stumbled out of bed and over to the window. My toes burned with a shocking cold and I looked down.

I looked out. The dark sky had torn open completely and ice chunks thundered down to earth. They bounced off the roof of the veranda outside my window in syncopated rhythms. They littered the grass below. With faint sloshing they pelted the lake, and though I couldn’t see it in the dark, an image of the bay popped into my head as an enormous glass of tea with ice bobbing from shore to shore.

The sound was deafening, but it was a relief to my ears after days of monotonous rain. I laughed and picked up an ice ball from the carpet. The cold burned my skin. I dropped the hailstone into my mouth and let it melt there, cool and clean and almost sweet.

Thunder crashed and a blinding flash of lightening followed just a moment later. The wind picked up to a fierce gale, and outside my north-facing window the maple tree swayed in the gusts. My joy turned to fear in a heartbeat. I slammed both windows shut and backed away from them, in case the hailstones blew into the glass.

I threw a long dressing gown over my nightgown and slid my bare feet into shoes. I opened my door to find Mrs. Harrington and Hannah waiting for me, fully dressed but only half awake. “Come, it’s dangerous up here,” Mrs. Harrington said, ushering us out the door and down the stairs to the lobby like a mother hen.

The other guests, in varying degrees of undress, gathered in a hodgepodge around the front desk. The bellboy, fully awake and still neatly clothed in his clean uniform, was just addressing the group as we joined it. An air of panic circulated among the crowd, but the bellboy was calm. Professional. In charge. Stately and dignified as a cormorant, that large, dark water bird I’d seen on sandbars by the Mississippi.

“I’m going to lead you down the kitchen stairs and into the basement,” he was saying. “It’ll be safer there if the wind blows a tree over, or if this storm whips up a tornado. We’ve got some lanterns and candles to take in case the electric goes out. Grab one and follow me. Please be careful with the fire—these old buildings can catch so easily.”

“I’m not accustomed to taking orders from a colored boy,” she whispered to us, “and I’m certainly not spending the night in some dirty basement with servants. Who does he think I am? We’re staying right here, thank you!”

Just then a rumble of thunder sounded that shook the foundation of the hotel. A window shattered somewhere upstairs. The lights flickered and the room blinked into darkness. The last of the lantern light disappeared into the kitchen.

The basement was hushed and dim and musty smelling. People sat on the dusty floor, huddled around the glow of lanterns and candelabras. Children curled into their mothers’ laps and went back to sleep. I joined a circle of people around an old gas lamp. Somewhere a man with a deep and gentle voice sang a few verses of a hymn.

If, on a quiet sea, toward Heaven we calmly sail,
With grateful hearts, O God, to Thee,
We’ll own the favoring gale,
With grateful hearts, O God, to Thee,
We’ll own the favoring gale.

But should the surges rise, and rest delay to come,
Blest be the tempest, kind the storm,
Which drives us nearer home,
Blest be the tempest, kind the storm,
Which drives us nearer home.

Teach us, in every state, to make Thy will our own;
And when the joys of sense depart,
To live by faith alone,
And when the joys of sense depart,
To live by faith alone.

His voice eased the fear out of me and I dozed, leaning against a cobweb-covered wall. Mrs. Harrington and Hannah stood for a long time, not wishing to soil their clothes, but after an hour they gave up and sat. I was dimly aware of Hannah’s hip touching mine—we were crowded together down there and the proximity was oddly comforting. Mrs. Harrington’s quiet complaints drifted into my sleep and mixed with the words of the hymn that floated in my mind: Blest be the tempest, kind the storm, which drives us nearer home.

It was nearly dawn when the stately cormorant woke us with the news that the storm had ended and we could return to our rooms. Sleepily, we picked our way through the graying darkness, avoiding the glass and hailstones that littered the carpet. He, the bellboy who had watched over us all night, found us extra blankets in case a chill came into our rooms through broken windows, in case our blankets were wet with rain.

When I awoke, the sun was high in a bright blue sky. Disoriented, I took in first the tangle of my sheets, then the closed windows. I rose, meaning to open them—why were they shut? It was only when my toes found wet carpet that I remembered the storm. The panic. The danger. The way joy and adventure had turned to terror in an instant. I shivered.

The hail had melted in the sun, but the grass was strewn with tree branches and debris. Outside the north window, the maple tree looked haggard. Its leaves were tattered, torn to bits by the hail, and wounds on its bark showed that it had lost many small branches during the night. The sky had been scrubbed clean and now arched brilliantly overhead. The plants, though messy, were a lush green from all the rain, and the lake gleamed like it had never seen the sun before. The heaviness in the air had lifted and the breeze off the lake was almost cool. The morning felt new.

The Harringtons, on the other hand, looked terrible. After lunch (which was our breakfast), they retired to their rooms to rest. The hotel was in disarray, with wet carpets and broken windows and a messy yard and no electricity, so it seemed like as good a time as any to get out of there. “I’m taking a walk,” I said as the Harringtons headed off to their rooms. “I’ll be back in time to wake you for supper.”

I tucked my new handkerchief into my pocket, silently thanking the blue jay I’d embroidered on it just the day before for his help in bringing the sky back—no matter his method of doing it. Then I set off out the door and down the front steps.

Then I remembered my letter: the job! I didn’t have permission to job hunt yet, but there was no harm in looking. I’d head off into town to have a peek at the local businesses. That way, when Mother’s letter came in a few days, I’d be ready.

But first, a stroll along the shore. My heart greeted that wide expanse of lake like an old friend. This trip to the country felt suddenly like a homecoming, even though I was far from home.

As I approached the docks, I saw it. A proud, dark profile perched on a wooden post that stuck out of the water, a piece of a sunken dock. No, I wasn’t imagining the bird, it was real: a double-crested cormorant. Just as calm and as stately as I’d remembered. My scissors flew without sense—as if by faith alone.