The Rattled Bones(26)

“It’s okay.” My heart races. No, throbs. “You weren’t talking about my mom.”

“No.” Hattie’s voice is soft. “I’m talking about the islanders who were locked away so the state could take their land.”

I see the old woman, the worn lace high around her neck, the sun at her shoulders, the small bunches of herbs drying on the rafters of her crude porch. The children on the steps of the schoolhouse, the same kids on the ridge with only the wide, fresh sky behind them. I can’t see the islanders in an institution with its bleached, dying air.

“What do you mean locked away?”

“Come on, Rills. Why are we even talking about this? It’s awful.”

“I need to know.” I think of the girl, her baby. Are they connected to the island’s past? And how? “Please, Hattie. I’ll love you forever if you tell me what you know.”

“That’s a weak trade, Rills. You’re supposed to love me anyway, regardless.”

“I do. You know I do.”

“For reals?”

“Forever reals.”

Hattie slides up, sits with her back against the headboard, eats at the corner of her thumbnail. “You remember when my nana got sick?”

I do. It was only a few years ago. Hattie’s nan eventually died from the Alzheimer’s that had plagued her for years. Her nan had forgotten to turn off the stove one morning. Hattie lost her grandmother in that trailer fire, and her funeral was one of the hardest this peninsula has endured. Until recently.

Alice Barter was a lot of years older than Gram, but they were close. Her death hit Gram hard enough that she let weeds grow in her gardens. Gram disappeared into her attic studio for weeks then, Dad and I leaving tea and food outside her door that would mostly go untouched.

“Well, she wasn’t fully lucid in the end.”

“I remember.”

“Nan would talk about things from her past. Confuse me for my mom. All the normal horrifying confusion that comes with Alzheimer’s.”

I squeeze a small prayer to the universe that Gram will never suffer that fate.

“This one day I was helping her with chores around the house like I’d done a million times since she started getting sick, and then she told me how island graves were dug up and trucked to Maine’s School for the Feeble-Minded. At first I thought she was mixing up her story with a TV show—the way she would sometimes confuse an episode for reality.”

“She wasn’t?”

Hattie sighs. “Nope. She said, ‘No, Hattie. Malaga. You could throw a stone to that island from Rilla’s window.’ She sounded annoyed with me, like I should have made the connection. She said the people there were inbred and insane.”

“And that’s why they were institutionalized?”

“No. I mean, yes. That’s pretty much the official reason—even if it wasn’t true.”

“What was the truth?”

“The islanders were poor and biracial and the state wanted their land.”

“You’re sure this was Malaga?”

Hattie nods. “The next day I drove up to Pineland—that’s what they renamed the old state . . . ‘school’?”—Hattie uses air quotes—“even though it was a mental institution and people were basically jailed there.”

“And?” I’m breathless.

“I saw the graves. Seventeen people from Malaga buried under five headstones, all marked with the same date: November, 1932. But, Rills, that was the date the state reburied the bodies, not when they actually died.”

“Hattie, you’re talking about mass graves.”

“I’m aware. Those gray stones were tucked in the back of that cemetery like the deceased were supposed to be forgotten.”

“What you’re saying is literally unbelievable.”

“I couldn’t believe it either. That’s why I made my mom go with me. She wouldn’t admit it, but I think she needed to know my nan was still lucid when she was talking about Malaga’s history, you know? That she still had her mind somewhere under all that sickness.”

“And she did?”

“She knew those bodies were buried together like they weren’t individual people. She knew they were from Malaga.”

“Jesus, Hattie.”

“A few days later, she told me she regretted it.”

“Regretted what?”

“Her exact words”—Hattie takes a deep breath, lets it free—“I’ll never forget them. She said she regretted ‘not having enough love in my heart.’ I think she was trying to tell me to live my life differently, without discrimination.”

Not having enough love in my heart. The words are heavy with a hurt that weighs me down even now. “I can’t believe you never told me.”

“How could I tell you that my nan had been part of all that hate? Maybe even someone who wanted an entire island community to be erased?”

“Of course.” My words, barely a whisper. It’s the same way I would go quiet when my teachers prepared for Mother’s Day Tea in elementary school, or when kids would come to my house and see my gram where a mom should be. Some things are just too hard to talk about.

“Like I said, Rills, who wants to dig that up? It happened and it was awful. Nothing we do can ever undo what happened.”