17

Leaving Dungeness

c. 1889

 

 

And so I became a Transcendentalist.

And a truant.

Really, what’s the difference?

Actually, I never decided to stop going to school. Each day I set off with the best of intentions. Somehow, along the way, I was waylaid by an impulse. On good days I followed the shore. When the shimmering rain turned from grey to green to white, I stayed dry exploring the forest. One day I hiked for most of the day, following the Gray Wolf River to Moose Lake, another to Sequim Bay where I mingled on the mudflats with starfish and migrating terns. I even considered an overland journey to the New Dungeness Light Station but then ruled it out. It would take two to three hours wobbling over the rocks at high tide to get there. Plus, without the cover of trees, the stately fir, shimmering alder and blushing swamp maples, my father in his fishing boat might see me, which would put an end to freedom.

In late October, on a trip to sell our goods in Port Townsend, Carl chanced upon an acquaintance, the bereaved Episcopal minister Paul Mathieson. His feeble daughter Edith needed a girl. The labor shortage was widespread; a servant that could do it all for the pay of a scullery maid was not easy to find. Though Mathieson had never even seen me, he offered me the job. Carl accepted on the spot. Later, he suffered doubts, but Carl could not go back on his word. White or Indian, in the wilderness or in the city, a deal is a deal. A man’s word is his oath.

No one asked me.

I dropped my traveling case down into the cradle of Jake Cook’s canoe, wedged in between the bloated baskets overfilled with potatoes, mollusks, and goat cheese for the market in Port Townsend. First, Carl would deliver supplies to the lighthouse, where we would stay overnight. The next day, Jake and George would paddle the canoe to the farmer’s market in Port Townsend.

Like crows on a drift log, my family had gathered to see me off. Annie looked out at the white sky and remarked to no one in particular, “She never received her Indian name. Up north to the potlatch on Village Island, they still perform the Winter Ceremony. Millie should go there.”

My father, rearranging the bundles inside the canoe, paused, and stood tall to glare at her. “Don’t you get it? Are you stubborn, or stupid? That’s why I’m sending her away.” He tugged at his beard and added, “Damn it.”

Seya asked, “Why wasn’t she baptized?”

No one seemed pleased. Carl openly regretted his decision. Annie stared at me with sad tired eyes and looked away. Seya, like a bauble-eyed bottom feeder, a flounder or a halibut, stared at me sideways. Sensing disaster, Charley molded himself to me like a starfish on a piling. Seya and Annie embraced me. Even baby Julia reached out her spread fingers. Eight arms lifted me up on my toes, blistered from the shiny boots purchased with cash from the city. The traveling ensemble, altered from the cast-offs of a neighbor lady who hired Annie to do laundry, chaffed my skin and my heart.

Of course it was my fault. If Carl found it necessary to banish me, it was because I had let him down. Humiliated, I climbed into the canoe, and seated myself behind the thwart, and hunkered down in between the baskets. With false cheer I waved.

George, prying the mud with his tapered paddle, remarked, “Lucky you. For getting out of here.”

That undid me.

As the salt pillar of women and children melted into the weepy fog, I began to cry, gently at first, until, all at once, the tears stormed. The minute I left this place, I would become a stranger, even to myself. What hurt most: it was Carl, the one who called me “the pearl of Ostrea Lurida,” who had exiled me. Proud of me, or so he claimed; then why did he want me to change into someone else? If my own family rejected me, how would I succeed with the Reverend’s ailing daughter?

As I sobbed, the gentle rhythmic sounds all around me—the slap of the paddle against the shushing water in the rising fog—gradually consoled me. By the time I had stopped crying long enough to look back, my grandmother and Annie had piled a heap of charred firewood on the smoking sand.