Nine Straw Hats at the First Port

Vicky’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.

“I’m not saying what you did was all right,” I said. “It wasn’t. You threw my daddy’s hat in the river, Vicky, and Mama stood there and watched it go. That’s done. Nobody can get it back.”

“I know,” she said. “I know it.”

“But Daddy’s not here to buy Mama a new one,” I said. “So I did. And I bought one for every woman in this family. And you’re in this family. You’ve been in it twenty-two years whether you wanted to be or not.”

Vicky put both her hands over her face.

I stood there holding out the hat. My arm was starting to shake.

Then Mom stepped up beside me.

She took the hat out of my hand. She took one of the coral ribbons from the little paper sack Miss Viola had put them in. She slid it around the crown of the hat, slow and careful, the way she does everything.

Then she reached up and set the hat on Vicky’s head.

Vicky stood very still. She was about four inches taller than Mom, and she bent her head down without being asked, the way a little girl does when somebody is fixing her hair.

Mom pulled the ribbon ends together at the back and tied them in a bow. She took her time. She tugged each loop until it was even. She smoothed the tails flat with her thumbs.

“There,” Mom said. “Dexter used to tie mine. He always did it crooked. I’d come home from church and fix it.”

Vicky made a sound I had never heard a grown woman make. Not a sob. Something smaller and older than that.

“Sonya, I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I did it. I wanted to hurt something. I don’t know why.”

“I think you do,” Mom said. She said it softly. “I think you know exactly why.”

Vicky nodded. Her face was wet under the brim of that new hat.

“Everybody was standing around it,” she said. “Everybody had a story about it. Every one of you. And I didn’t have one thing. My mother didn’t leave me so much as a hairbrush.”

“Well,” Mom said. “Now you’ve got a hat.”

Vicky laughed, a wet, broken laugh.

“And you’ve got me,” Mom said. “You’ve had me all along, honey. You just never would let me.”

Then my mother put her arms around my sister-in-law on the top deck of that ship, in the full sun, and Vicky held on to her like she was the rail.

I turned and looked out at the water so they could have it to themselves. My eyes were running. I let them run.

I want to tell you that everything was fixed after that. It was not all fixed. A hat is not a magic trick.