There followed a series of days full of bewildering problems for me. The other children on our block, instead of playing with me as I used to dream children would, drew away from me.
“She swears bad words,” I heard one girl tell another.
“That girl off the ship is too rough, my mother says,” confided her little friend. And so it went. Why didn’t they like me? Here were children my own age and I didn’t know how to play with them. Everything I said or did sent them away from me. My own sister and my brothers found excuses to take them away to their friends, leaving me behind. Running her boarding house kept Mother constantly busy and Father was at the ship all day long. When he came home in the evenings it was Mother he naturally turned to. I seemed forgotten. Oh, how I longed for a storm to arise to blow away the fear and loneliness of the land. I couldn’t stay in the house because it crushed me down and the professors didn’t approve of me. I kept out in the backyard as much as I could. Everything was so different on land. My seagull died the second day I was home. I tried to replace it with love for the chickens Mother kept. But chickens couldn’t fly. They seemed as bound down to the earth as I was, away from the ship. Even the roses in the garden had thorns on them. The lilies in the islands were soft-stemmed and lovely. I couldn’t bear it. I wouldn’t obey my mother because I knew she wasn’t strong enough to lick me. Every night Father came home from the ship and she would tell him how difficult I was to handle.
“She is your child. You’ll have to handle her,” I heard her tell Father.
“Joan will get used to land ways soon, Mother, don’t you worry about her.”
I heard Father and Mother discussing me.
“You raised her—so perhaps you can discipline her,” Mother said.
“Joan is your daughter. If you try to understand her she’ll steer as easy as a full-rigger in a fair wind,” came back Father.
“She’ll drive all my boarders away. Last night I heard her ask one of the professors if he had ever gone through a shark’s guts with his hands.” Mother was horrified as she related the facts to Father. Instead of finding sympathetic ears for the story of my disgraceful conduct, Mother saw Father laughing.
“As if that wasn’t bad enough Joan said this was a hell of a house because there wasn’t a bedbug or a cockroach in it. I tell you, you’ll have to speak to her.”