Read Online The Girl of the Sea of Cortez by Peter Benchley - Free Book Online Page A

Jobim who made her feel special, had in effect decreed that she be special. After the second of Jo’s accidents underwater, the one that finally convinced Jobim that his son would never be at home in the sea and would instead have to spend his life upon it, after Jobim had begun to tutor Paloma and had discovered how naturally and quickly she took to the sea and had determined that she would become a person of the sea, he had told Miranda that their daughter was not to be compelled to follow the normal path to womanhood, was not to be confined to the house and the pots and the washboard. He would take her with him and would teach her things about the sea and would teach her how to learn other things on her own. She would of course contribute to the household eventually, but how and what she would contribute must be left up to her.
    Miranda had tried to argue, but Jobim was a man who, when he had made up his mind about something important, tended to reinforce his decision to himself until he became impossible to argue with. And Miranda knew that it was important—even vital—to Jobim that one of his children follow him into the sea.
    What Jobim did not know, and what Miranda could not bring herself to tell him, was that by taking Paloma to sea he was taking her forever away from her mother, depriving Miranda of the solace that a daughter was supposed to supply to a woman. He was condemning Miranda to a dailyloneliness that would sadden her for the rest of her life, for by the time of Jobim’s death, Paloma’s independence had been so firmly established that Miranda could not have changed it even if she had tried. Not only did Paloma relish her way of life, but now she felt an obligation to her father to live as he had guided her to. She saw her life as having no limits. Perhaps the limits were there, and if so, someday she would confront them. But not yet.
    Paloma recognized, however, that she had responsibilities to her mother, one of which contributed to her decision to return home in the middle of the afternoon. It was important that the people in her mother’s world not think that Paloma considered herself too good for everyday chores.
    “It is one thing to be quiet and alone and even a bit strange,” Viejo had said to her one day. “People will call that growing pains and let it pass. But you must not remove yourself altogether. People will not understand. They will resent you and dislike you, become your enemies, and you do not want any more enemies than necessary.”
    Paloma did not want any enemies at all. And so, every few days she returned home in time to be with her mother and help her hang out the wash or prepare the meal or clean the house. Almost as important as doing these daughter things was to be seen doing them, for then the other women would cluck and mutter that Paloma was a good girl, after all, that she was sensitive to her mother’s great loss, that she might turn out to be a source of comfort in her mother’s old age. And so on.
    It was a gesture; Paloma knew it and Miranda knew it. Miranda didn’t need help; she felt she didn’t have enough to do as it was. But neither did she need the patronizing sympathy of others. Miranda was grateful for the gesture, and for Paloma’s presence.
    When Paloma reached the dock, Miranda and the other women were washing clothes. Beside the dock was a shelf of flat rocks that led into the water. The women gathered there and soaked their clothes and pounded soap into them with stones and rinsed them. They piled the clean clothes into baskets that would be taken up the hill for a final, fresh-water rinsing.
    Paloma knelt beside Miranda and pounded clothes. No one acknowledged her arrival; the women chattered on around her. They were not ignoring her: To the contrary, they were accepting her—quietly, naturally, as if she had been there all along. It was their gesture to Miranda, for to have greeted Paloma and asked her questions would have directed attention