The ship was still sliding down the St. Johns River out of Jacksonville when Vicky picked up my mother’s hat. The horn had just blown, long and low, and everybody on the top deck had cheered.
Mom had taken the hat off to fix her hair. The wind on that river comes in off the Atlantic and gets under anything with a brim, so she had set it on the deck chair beside her.
It was a wide straw hat, the color of old honey, with a coral ribbon tied in a bow at the back. The ribbon had faded almost to pink. The brim had a little split near the front.
Dad bought it for her in Nassau in 1976, on their honeymoon. He paid four dollars for it at a stall by the pier. She wore it to every Fourth of July and every church picnic of my whole life.
Vicky turned it over in her hands. She held it up by the brim like something she had found in a yard sale box.
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“Sonya, this thing is older than I am,” she said.
A couple of people laughed, the way you laugh when you are not sure if you are supposed to. My cousin Jackie laughed. I think I smiled. I did not know yet.
“It’s just an old hat,” Vicky said. “You need a new one for the islands.”
Then she flicked her wrist and spun it out over the rail like a paper plate at a cookout.
I think she meant for it to look funny. I think in her head it was going to float down onto the deck below and somebody would fetch it and we would all laugh about it at dinner.
The wind took it straight out and away from the ship. It sailed past the lower decks, turned over once, and landed in the river on its crown.
I stood at the rail and watched it ride the wake behind us. It got smaller and smaller on the brown water until I could not tell it from the foam.
Mom did not say a word.
She stood up from the chair and put both hands on the rail. Her knuckles went white. She was wearing her coral top, the one she bought to match that ribbon.
I had my arm around her before the hat was out of sight. I did not decide to. My feet just went.
“Mama,” I said. “Come sit in the shade.”
She let me walk her to a chair under the overhang. I went and got her a glass of water from the drink station and put it in her hand and held my hand over hers until it stopped shaking.
My name is Leslie. I am forty-five. I run the parts counter at a tractor dealer in Waycross, Georgia, and I have done it for nineteen years.