Chapter 38

Chapter 38

Violet

A Single Rose Petal

She worries she will not be able to find comfort in a world that feels this big. All she can see, day after day, is the sweeping breadth of the ocean moving all around her. It is like waking up in the story her father used to tell her, a tale filled with giants. She doesn't think she has ever felt so small.

At home, the boys used to fight over who was the biggest, squabbling and pushing over inches and half inches. Sometimes an indrawn breath could make all the difference. Now she wonders how to measure the vast world she has come to inhabit.

She has crossed an ocean before, of course, on the journey from Argentina to England, but she cannot recall ever thinking about the distance she was travelling. Then, her world was fenced by her mother's expectations; ‘Take your sister and show her where the bathroom is'; ‘Keep the boys away from that lady's cat'; ‘Don't wander too far'. Her world is still restricted by certain rules– where the stewardesses can and can't go– but it feels for the first time in her life that she is walking with her head held up, taking in everything around her.

But how to measure it? In miles? Or by the number of waves in the ocean? Or maybe the number of dolphins?

When she stands on the deck at night, she wonders how she is ever going to count the stars that fill the enormous expanse above her.

The Big Barbadian offers her some words to help her. He tells her that an ocean is only a number of drops of water, like the raindrops that drip down the portholes some mornings. Without these drops, there is no ocean. She thinks of the day she found her way onto the ship, when she concentrated on the small details, the ones she could fit into her mind. She thinks the Big Barbadian may be right, so she looks around the ship, her head still held up, but with a new eye. Without the thousands of small iron rivets, the massive hull cannot exist. Without each single petal, there is no golden bowl overflowing with roses to decorate the captain's table. And without each silken stitch, the passengers could not gaze at the thirty-foot tapestry that cascades from above the grand staircase.

It comforts her to think that such small things matter. For if this is the case, then maybe she has a place in this new world after all.