The High Tide Club

Varina

I never was what you’d call a grown-looking girl. “Skinny Minnie” is what the other kids called me. So I kept on going to school at Most Pure Heart of Mary, keeping my secret the whole time. When my belly started to pooch out a little bit in the spring, I moved the buttons on my school uniform, and then moved them again.

The crazy thing is, except for my secret, I was happy as could be. I missed my daddy and brothers and friends on the island, but I loved my new school and getting to learn about the world outside Talisa. In April, at a school assembly, Sister Helen called me up on the stage and gave me a prize for being the best student in her class. It was a little gold statue of Mary, and I got a framed certificate too.

But that afternoon, Sister asked me to stay after school. I thought maybe she had a new book for me to read, but when the other students were gone, Sister closed the classroom door, and when she turned around, she had a real serious look on her face.

I knew she had figured out my secret. I sat at my desk and I folded my hands on the top, just like all the students at Most Pure Heart were taught to do, but my hands were shaking and my mouth was so dry I couldn’t swallow, and that secret in my belly was kicking so hard I was sure Sister could see it from where she sat at her own desk. In my head I was saying that Catholic prayer we said every morning, right after we said the Pledge of Allegiance.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

“Oh, Varina,” she said, and she sighed. Her face was as white as that wimple she wore on her head that covered her hair. “What have you done?”

I didn’t say a thing. Just stared at my hands.

Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

“For several weeks now, I’ve seen something different about you. I thought maybe you were gaining a little weight, and that was good, because you are such a skinny little thing. But today, on that stage, I realized, you are … that is…”

I looked up and Sister turned her head, and when she looked back at me, her cheeks were bright pink.

“I had such high hopes for you,” Sister said. “And now you are about to throw all of that away because you’ve been a wicked girl.”

What could I do? I couldn’t look at her, and I couldn’t tell her it wasn’t me that was wicked, it was that bad man whose name I would never say.

I felt something wet hit the back of my hand and realized I was crying.

“Does your employer know?” Sister Helen asked, meaning Josephine.

I nodded, but I still couldn’t speak. It was like my mouth was full of cotton.

Sister sighed. “Well, I’m afraid you will have to leave this school immediately.”

I jerked my head up then. “Leave school?” I whispered. “But graduation isn’t until two more months.”

“You will not be graduating with your class,” Sister said. “And I’m sorry about that, but Mother Superior has rules. We can’t let the other girls and boys in this school be exposed to something like this. Most Pure Heart is not a school for fallen girls like you.”

“No, Sister,” I whispered.

She drummed her fingertips on the top of her desk.

“Is there something you’d like to tell me? Some … special circumstance you’d like to tell me about?”

“No, Sister.”

“Was it a boy at this school? This is very serious, Varina, because if the boy is a student here, I will see that he leaves this school too.”

“No, Sister.”

She drummed her fingertips some more. “Would you like to see Father? I realize you are not Catholic, but perhaps a good confession and an Act of Contrition…”

I shook my head hard. That priest went around with a mad face all the time. I could never tell him what had happened to me. Besides, I was kicked out of school, so there was nothing more to say.

“May I go, Sister?” I said.

“I suppose.” She rummaged around in her desk drawer and brought out a black leather change purse. I’d seen her take that change purse out before, on the sly, when some of the boys and girls who came to school looking hungry and raggedy and didn’t have enough money to buy milk in the school lunchroom.

She walked over to me and put one hand on my shoulder as I stood for the last time beside my desk, and she pressed a coin into my hand. “For the streetcar fare,” she said.

I wanted to throw that money back at her face. I wanted to scream that I hadn’t been wicked and that I wanted to stay in school and read all the books and someday, maybe, be a teacher, like her.

Instead, I said, “Thank you, Sister. I still have your book. Would it be all right if I brought it back to you tomorrow?” Sister lived at the brick convent attached to the school.

She wrinkled her brow. “What book do you have?”

“It’s Treasure Island, Sister.” I didn’t tell her that Mr. Robert Louis Stevenson’s book was my favorite one so far, even better than Jane Eyre.

She hesitated, looking down at me, and that’s when I saw her eyes get all watery. “You keep it, Varina. Keep reading. Keep learning, no matter what.”

“I’ll try,” I whispered.

“Take care of yourself, Varina. And the baby.”

“And you never told anybody?” Felicia asked.

“He told me he’d kill me if I told anybody what he’d done. And he took my pretty pearl pin that Millie gave me, because he said I’d stolen it,” Varina said. “I couldn’t go home the way he left me, so I snuck back here, to try to clean up, and that’s when Josephine found me. She guessed, just as soon as she saw me, what had happened, and she made me tell her everything.”

“That bastard,” Felicia said, the color rising in her cheeks. “Raping a child. I wish you had killed him, Auntie. I wish he were still alive so I could kill him for you.”

“No need,” Varina said. “He’s dead and gone. Everybody, all my family, all my friends, they’re all gone. Josephine was the last one, and now she’s gone too.”

Varina

March 1942

After I got kicked out of that school, there wasn’t much for me to do. Josephine thought I shouldn’t go out, because nice people would see me and figure out I was going to have a baby, so I stayed in her house and I did laundry and some cooking and listened to the war news on the radio.

We didn’t really talk much about what would happen next. Just the one time, really.

One night, Josephine came home from a party and she came up to my bedroom on the third floor of that town house her daddy owned. I was reading Treasure Island again, thinking about pirates and buried treasure and such.

She knocked on the door and then came in and sat on the little chair. “Varina, we need to talk about what will happen when your baby comes.”

“I know that,” I said, struggling to sit up in the bed.

“It’s going to be very hard on you, trying to raise a baby as young as you are. And there are going to be people saying terrible things about you, because that baby is going to be half-white,” Josephine said. “Your family might not want to take you back once they find out.”

“I don’t want to go back home,” I said, because I’d been thinking a lot about that. “I want to finish high school and then get me a job.”