Silhouette of a Sparrow

I stayed in the hotel suite until Friday came. How could I see Isabella? What would I tell her? It’s over I’m going home to marry a boy I don’t love so I can support my mother and myself without quitting high school to find work. I desperately didn’t want to have to say those words to Isabella. She, the daring girl who had left her home and family at age fifteen to forge her way in the world as a dancer, would never understand. She’d made her decision, and now I’d made mine too. There was no other way. So I hid there, and Charlotte brought me my meals. The Harringtons knew what had happened to my family and they stayed out of my way, either out of pity or because the scandal embarrassed them. I didn’t care which.

Finally, on Friday morning, I ventured down to the veranda. Mother would be arriving that afternoon and I needed to pull myself together. But my nerves were still raw and every word out of Mrs. Harrington’s mouth grated on them like old chalk on a blackboard.

She began:

“Our Trudy Swims Channel”

Gertrude Ederle courageously struggled against the tide for three hours before her triumphant finish on the French shore at ten o’clock Wednesday night. Our Trudy, the first woman to swim the English Channel, beat the male record by almost two hours. Is there nothing the new American woman can’t do?

I stared at her picture, Trudy’s picture, there on the front page of the Minneapolis Star. She was sleek in her black bathing costume and swimming cap, like a seal. No, like a loon, that graceful diving waterbird of the north. Her bare arms hung, exhausted, from her broad shoulders, but there was a look of incredible strength in her eyes, as though she now knew for sure that she could not be conquered.

“Must you read that rubbish?” Mrs. Harrington said, interrupting my thoughts and Hannah’s reading. She reached over and snatched the paper away. “Can you believe any woman would allow men to take photos of her in such a revealing bathing costume?”

“I think she’s amazing,” I said under my breath. “Here, Hannah, let’s read this.” I opened my bird book to a picture of a loon. A proud bird, a powerful bird. A swift swimmer with a haunting call that raised goose bumps on the arms of anyone within earshot. Hannah read, and I tried to focus on the description of the bird, its fishing techniques, nesting habits, its migration patterns, but I kept looking back to the photo of the animal, with its steady eye and confident posture. And my mind kept roaming back to Trudy and the English Channel. Her strength. I grew restless and squirmed in my seat.

“Now this,” Mrs. Harrington exclaimed, jabbing her finger at the catalog in her lap, “this is a proper bathing costume. Look here, Hannah, isn’t it lovely? Simply divine! Pretty but modest and just a little bit elegant. I must order you one. It would look gorgeous on you. You may need two, in fact, since they make them in all different colors now. Would you like that, dear? Shall I buy you two?”

As Hannah listened to her mother I could hear her breath coming out in little bursts. Her hands clenched into fists. Then she stood up suddenly, jostling me, and the book we’d been sharing fell to the floor with a thump.

“I will not sit down and I am not crazy. You are crazy. Why do you do this? Pretend we are so rich when all our money’s gone? You keep spending and spending so that no one will find out our secret, and it’s me who’s going to have to sell my life to pay for it all. It’s cruel and deceitful and ... and positively shameful, Mother.”

It poured out of her in a jumble of bitter words. Mrs. Harrington just stared at her daughter in shock afterward as the girl puffed with anger. I was so proud of her, standing up for herself like that, and without thinking I rose from my seat and took her hand.

“It wasn’t Charlotte, Mother. It was me,” Hannah growled, slapping my hand away. I hadn’t meant to let on that she’d told me—I should’ve acted surprised. It couldn’t matter now, could it? Since Hannah had blurted the truth out to the world, I was sure she wouldn’t care that her mother knew she’d already told me.

Our fragile pact broken, Hannah spilled out the truth about Isabella. Or most of the truth. Thankfully there were still intimate details that she didn’t know and couldn’t tell. She told about my lies, my sneaking off, my adventures on the town and in the park with “that common harlot from the dance hall, that little slut with the drinking problem and the tiny dresses.”

“How could you associate with such riffraff?” Mrs. Harrington gasped. Then her voice dropped and an ugly sneer spread over her mouth. “First the business with Rachel, then your father, and now this, as if your family needs another scandal! I will be telling your mother about your behavior, young lady.”

And then I was out the door and running, running to the lake. Heartache and anger poured down my face in tears as I ran until I could hardly see where I was going. Then I stood at the shoreline, in the little inlet that would never host a summerhouse for Mrs. Harrington. I stared out at the hypnotic waves until my sobs mellowed into sniffles and hiccups. I reached down and took off my shoes, dipping my bare toes into the cool, clear water. That coolness jolted me awake, and I knew I had to feel it against all of my skin. Like Trudy, like the loon. Trudy was strong enough to make her way in the world of men. But there were all kinds of strength. If she had to make sacrifices for her family, to leave behind anything and anyone who tempted her away, wouldn’t she do it?

I looked right, and left. No one. Once I was sure I was alone in the secluded cove, I pulled my dress over my head and tossed it on a rock. My underclothes would serve as an even more scandalous bathing costume than Trudy’s, but with no one there to disapprove, I didn’t care. The breeze tickled my bare arms and legs.

I crept slowly into the water, letting the coolness inch up my body and pull my mind into my skin. I shivered and strode out farther as the water climbed to my knees, then my waist, then my chest. I took a deep breath and allowed my legs to buckle under me.

The water lapped against my chin and I felt suddenly light, as though the lake cradled me, rocked me in cool watery arms. Water pressed against my skin and my skin pressed back against the water and the boundary was, in that moment, so wonderfully defined. I was myself because I wasn’t sky or water or sand. Where I stopped, the lake began, and I began where it stopped. The water opened up a space for me and held me close. This is who you are, the lake said to me, speaking through my skin. Just like a dark bird against a clear sky, just like a sleek black loon against glimmering waves, I had a silhouette. I’d thrown away the one I cut of myself at the island, because my dream for what I could be had gone up in smoke when Mother’s letter arrived. But now I had to retrace myself, fit myself into a different shape. I could do that, couldn’t I? I could be the shape of a young lady, a beautiful bride, a wife, a mother, a good daughter. That was the shape I needed to be now. And maybe life was just a matter of putting on the right costume moment to moment, and smiling for your audience.

I squeezed my eyes shut, took a deep breath, and dunked. The world I knew disappeared. There was a moment of close, silent darkness, and then I emerged, sputtering into the daylight. It was a rebirth, I told myself. Now I was ready to do what I had to do—to meet Mother at the station and tell her yes, of course, I would help us survive without Father. I would put aside all those selfish desires, leave Isabella, and go home to Teddy and to the rest of my life.

It was Isabella, standing on the beach, pulling her shoes off, stripping down to her underclothes without a moment’s hesitation. No! No, no, no. Not now. She ran into the water with splashes of her pale legs and ducked under the waves. Before I knew it she was right there, on me, her slick wet limbs entwined with mine as she tried, playfully, to drag me under the water.

“Where on earth have you been?” she said. “I’ve been looking for you for days. You haven’t been to work, or to town, or to the park . . . I didn’t dare go to the hotel. Avery said something was wrong, but he didn’t know what.” She turned serious then. “There’s, um, something I need to tell you. Something important.”

“I have to. My mother can’t support us on her own. And I want to finish high school and graduate with my class. We need a breadwinner—and quickly—so I have to marry. And Teddy, well, he’s a good man. He’ll take care of us. He can start working his father’s business while he finishes school. We’ll get by.”

“I can’t, Isabella.” I had to make her stop asking those questions, those painful questions. The pain turned to meanness and I could feel it building in me, needing an enemy, needing to spit the pain back at someone. At her. “I’m not like you. I have an obligation to my family and I’m going to honor it.”

I was firm—ice in my eyes and hot lava behind them, just waiting to spew out. Whatever she wanted to tell me, I didn’t want to know. I was done with her. Done. “Mother will be here soon and I need some fresh clothes before I go pick her up. I can’t see you again.”

“You hypocrite. You coward.” She threw the words over her bare, trembling shoulder and they hit me like blows. Coward? But I was being strong, doing what I had to do. What did Isabella know about obligation, responsibility? She just threw out rules when they didn’t suit her, and threw out people when they got in her way. Even family. Family! My fury built up until I couldn’t help but hurl it at her, all the pain and meanness erupting. It came out in Hannah’s voice.

She turned to me slowly; her smudged scarlet tanager lips fell open in shock at my cruelty. Other people’s insults she could shrug off, but from me those words sunk in deep. “Do you know where that rumor comes from? No? Well, I’ll tell you. The job I worked before this one didn’t mind a bit that I was underage as long as I was willing to leave my dressing-room door open after the show and let men in—any man who paid the manager the price. I was supposed to entertain them, and I did, even though some nights I had to swallow a fair amount of gin first. Tough job, huh? But I did it. I’m no coward. I was willing to do anything so that I could dance onstage. Anything. So I guess that makes me a common barlot and not fit to associate with a fine lady like yourself. And that’s fine with me. Just fine. So go,” she said. I didn’t move. Lead had filled my bones and I was so heavy. “Go!”