I staggered back onto the main deck, the memory of Moses being hurled overboard large in my mind. Why he hadn’t lowered the sail was beyond me. Perhaps he had been desperate to get out of the storm using as much wind power as possible.
Seawater soaked my blouse and capris to the skin, but the rubber soles of my canvas shoes didn’t slip. I grabbed one of the ropes to steady myself and pulled myself to where the sail was tied into the mast. There was a metal crank there and I tugged at it, but the lever refused to budge. Spray slapped my face. I could hardly see, and if not for my firm grasp on the rope, the bucking deck might have thrown me from my feet.
I searched in vain for a locking mechanism. I couldn’t figure out how to release the crank. It came to me that I had to cut the rope.
Lightning ripped jagged lines in the sky. Thunder crashed over my head. Angry clouds unleashed torrents of stinging rain, forcing me to squint to protect my eyes. The sail was dragging us over the crests, threatening to capsize us at any moment. Maybe I could release the sail by cutting the line. There had been a red bucket and a filleting knife on deck earlier, but no more. Both were long lost to the sea.
I clawed my way back to the hatch, descended the ladder without falling, retrieved a knife from the galley, and returned to the deck. With each step I took, the waves seemed to rise higher, like rolling mountains on either side. I had to get the sail down!
But the moment I tried to saw into the rope, I realized that it wasn’t rope at all. It was a cable. Thick strands of steel wire.
I stood there, frozen by indecision. I didn’t know how far out to sea we were. I didn’t know the direction in which we were headed. I didn’t know where the sea ended and land began.
We were in the Coral Sea, I knew that much. The boat might have been blowing west into the Pacific, north toward New Guinea, south toward Australia, or east, back toward Thursday Island. I could only hope that it was the last. Thoughts of the open Pacific filled me with the certainty of death.
Screaming at the wind, I lunged for the sail and thrust the blade at the stretched canvas. Repeated jabs rewarded me with a small tear in the material before a large wall of water threw me to my knees. The knife flew free.
Grasping at any surface that gave me a hold, I managed to crawl back into the galley and close the hatch. Stephen still slept—how, I’ll never know.
Only then did I think to secure him to the cushion using the strap from a life jacket so that he wouldn’t be thrown off the seat if the ride grew worse.
After I did so, there was nothing else I could do but crouch over my boy and beg God to save us. We were ants on a piece of driftwood being pummeled by crashing waves. Each clap of thunder rattled the metal stove.
The wind ripped into us with a savagery that left the boat groaning and screeching. My only hope lay in the fact that we hadn’t already been torn apart or flipped under the waves. The crash that had first awakened me must have been the rudder rather than the keel.
The beating seemed endless. Minutes dragged into what must have been an hour and then what might have been several hours.
I can’t fully understand how the boat held together under those pounding walls of water. I only know that somehow we made it through the storm’s worst. The wind finally began to ease. The waves weren’t as high and the rain lightened.
After hours of terror, a calm began to settle over me. Real hope for our survival slowly edged back into my mind.
The moment the storm finally destroyed us came suddenly, with a deafening crack below us, much louder and more jarring than the one that had broken the rudder. At first I thought the hull itself had split in two.
But as soon as the boat began to tip, I knew that the keel had somehow snapped. The long underwater wedges that keep the wind from pushing a sailboat over are normally the sturdiest part of a boat, so I don’t know why the keel broke before the hull.
What I do know is that one moment the boat was upright, and the next it had been pushed all the way over on its side. The impact forced part of the mast through the window.
I find it nearly impossible to relate the full horror of our capsizing at sea. The floor jerking up to my left. That coffeepot smashing into the ceiling. The tabletop flipping away. Water gushing into the cabin.
I could see the cabin collapsing around me, but my mind was swallowed by what was about to happen to Stephen. I instinctively grabbed for him, releasing my hold on the table post. The instant my hand came free, I was thrown across the cabin.
I remember screaming, a pitiful cry as my body flew through the air. I remember thinking that all of this had happened because of a recurring dream that had drawn me halfway across the world. Then my head slammed into one of the low-hanging cabinets and the world vanished.
Chapter Two
EACH OF our stories begins long before any event that suddenly and often irrevocably catapults us onto a new path.
My story began with a dream.
But really it began with my father, who guided my understanding of the world, and with my mother, who influenced my every waking moment. I will write here only what will give you a general context for my life before I was ripped from the bosom of one world and thrust into another, all because of that simple, recurring dream.
My mother, Ellen Carter, was a proper British woman from London who met my father in New York, married him a year later, then moved to Atlanta in 1933. She soon gave birth to my older sister, Patrice, then to me, Julian, and finally to Martha. We lived in Georgia with all the Southern belles, but Mother brought us up as proper English. We were referred to as “the Brits” by many in our social circle. My accent was far more British than Southern drawl, and I preferred hot tea to mint juleps on summer afternoons.
Our estate consisted of a mansion and four smaller homes, and to hear Mother talk, you would think she was the queen, our estate her country, and we her subjects. Anyone not part of our family was a foreigner who did not belong on her soil for more time than it took to have tea or play a game of croquet, and she saw no harm in making her opinion known.
Her eccentricity grew as she aged and eventually gave way to a disposition that might be considered senile. Her choice of words made foreigners cringe, but we knew her heart was golden.
She got it in her mind that the servants, all of whom were colored, were slaves, and she had no problem saying so to their faces. “Slave Regina, what have you done with my slippers?” Or, “Where are the rest of the slaves, Jacob?”
Our servants were with us for many years, and Mother was thoughtful of them on all occasions, particularly at Christmas. She was the first to bandage up their scratches and send anyone with the smallest cough to the doctor.
And yet my mother was distant. Her own mother and father had shipped her off to boarding school for a proper education and were barely present in her life. I suppose she was only doing what she knew. I often thought she was more present for the servants than for me.
If my mother was distant, my father, Richard, was almost entirely absent. And when he drank, he was downright obstinate—which was most of the time he was home. We learned early to stay clear of him to avoid a smack or a verbal lashing.
Furthermore, he was a racist. His great-great-grandfather had been one of the wealthiest plantation owners in Georgia. The family no longer farmed cotton, having traded cotton farms in the South for oil fields in Texas, but Father still hadn’t shed the bigotry that ran thick in his blood. He could talk the proper line and work up some kind words for Martin Luther King if required, but his veneer vanished after a couple of drinks.
Nevertheless, as is the case with many children, I grew up under his spell—a daughter desperate to be accepted and loved without achieving either. As I grew older, I swore that my own children would receive my full love and attention. Like many young girls, I dreamed of an idyllic marriage to a loving man who would shelter me in a beautiful mansion surrounded by lush green lawns and a white picket fence. There, in bliss, we would sing around the fireplace with our children, because singing had always been my most treasured escape when things became difficult.