Free Ahab's Wife by Sena Jeter Naslund Page B

above the gray ceiling and see some color before sundown. How welcome a flash of crimson would be, a billow of pink. I determined to try to climb up the tower to get a better view.
    Without asking permission, I creaked open the door to the Lighthouse and disappeared. I carried a candle with me, and its weak light shone on a world more dismal than that outside. The barren gloominess of stone and steps presented a silent indifference to my presence. I climbed only to the slot of the western-facing window. The sky held no blush of sunset for me, but I sat down and waited. Perhaps the sky would change.
    When it did change, it was to darken from gray to black, and then all at once there were hosts of stars. I felt afraid, as though a swarm of yellow jackets had appeared in the distance. Behind glass, encased in stone a hundred times thicker than an elephant’s hide, what did I have to fear, even if they had been a host of stinging wasps? But they entered my mind, through my eyes, and buzzed of my loneliness and insignificance. Disconcerted, I sprang up, slapped first one cheek and then the other, as though to swat insect pests, and hurried down the steps.
    As I descended, I heard Uncle opening the door, carrying up his light for the Argand lamps.
    â€œI’m late tonight,” he said. “Without the sunset, I was careless.”
    Then he asked me if I wanted to go up with him. I quickly declined, and as I went down carefully, I heard him hurrying up the steps, higher and higher. I wanted to shout up for him to look out for the star swarm, but I knew my November fancy was bleaker than the reality. Stars were only stars, but I shuddered at the thought of them.
    That Christmastime, sweet Frannie, to distract my depression, suggested we make a holiday wreath to encircle the Giant. Then she asked Uncle if we might cut some branches from the cedars—trees and wood being scarce enough on the Island so that no one would ever thoughtlessly mutilate any of the trees. Uncle replied that a full, encircling wreath would require too much greenery, but we might make a smallwreath to place on the side, and he would drive a hook, or we might make a garland.
    I chose a garland, and all four of us stood in the afternoon wind, while Uncle hammered two iron nails into crevices at either end of one of the five-foot granite blocks. I winced at the sound of the blows. How could one stand such nails going through the palms of his hands? The ends of the garland tossed freely in the wind, and the swag of the midsection luffed out.
    That night, after Uncle had come down from lighting the high lantern, I suggested that we all come out to see the garland. Aunt suggested that we each carry our own lantern, and we did. As we stood in the cold, my eye traveled from the holiday greenery up the gray tower to the top. “Now it looks like the Star of Bethlehem,” I said, with satisfaction, and Aunt hugged me with her free arm.
    And the year turned round the tower again.
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    D URING ALL THAT TIME , my aunt, and my uncle, too, proved as liberal in their attitudes toward religious belief as ever my mother had described. During the third and fourth winters on the Island, we celebrated Christmas royally, with much preparatory baking, and the making of gifts as fall gave way to the blowing cold. We sang Christmas songs, and each did as he or she wished in terms of exact belief.
    Aunt Agatha renamed Billy the goat “Liberal,” for challenging the preeminence of the Giant. She herself challenged not only the narrowness of the prevalent Christianity but also the rigidity of education, the inhumanity of the slave economy, and the position of women.
    For me, Aunt’s liberality in education meant essentially that I, like Frannie, might learn what I liked when I liked. I learned at least one new word every day, and all kinds of random facts springing from the words adjacent in the dictionary. Aunt encouraged me to write in tiny print beside