Morse Code Messages

The day Fanny was birthed was the day her grandmother died, so her parents had named her after her grandmother, as if it meant she wasn’t actually dying. Fanny despised the name, but never bothered to complain about it in front of her parents because she knew it would only get her a whipping on the behind.

Fanny was Jewish. Her father wore a kippa and whenever her brother wasn’t around he would take his off, muttering obscenities. A week after I had met Fanny she told me that her family didn’t go to church, they went to a synagogue and that they went sabbath Friday evenings and Saturday mornings, so if I wanted to spend time with her those days I would have to find some other way to entertain myself.

The only reason I had even wanted to be friends with Fanny was because I fancied her brother.

He sported two different personalities, but always seemed to look the same. He had short red hair and eyes that changed colors so much that the neighbor to the left us - Mrs. Cambridge - told us that he had the devil in him. When he was with his friends he had a very cocky attitude about himself, that had drawn me towards him, and when he was with his family he was extremely quiet and unlike the other half of himself that the public saw.

I think Fanny knew I was never really interested in being her friend, I was just using her to get closer to her brother. I don’t really think she cared much either. I’d never seen her with other people before, so I think my presence was welcomed. But one day she had come over to my house and spoken about how much she disliked having to give up her Fridays and Saturdays and did her father not realize just how embarrassing his wearing the kippa was?

After that day I realized that I actually wanted to be her friend.

We were close, but she wasn’t the one I went running to when I had something to tell or complain about. I liked Fanny, but if she were to vanish into thin air I wouldn’t miss her as much as I would the others. She was too snobby and selfish. She liked to shove what she had into our faces. Her mother once went to Miami for the month of October and when she came back she had gotten Fanny a gold locket. Fanny had made sure to gab about it for three weeks after; that’s when my need to keep a hold of her as a friend dwindled.

Braille and Fanny were the best of friends. When I introduced them to each other they hit it off immediately. I don’t really know why they gravitated toward one another, seeing as how they were complete opposites.

Fanny was crude and Braille was not.

Braille’s real name was Sara, but her little sister was blind and Braille used to sit in on the Braille Sessions, so the name just sort of stuck. She was the only once of us that had a nickname and there was some unspoken rule that we were going to keep it that way -- she was going to be the only one special enough to be given a secret name.

Braille was mixed. Her father was black and her mother was white. It caused quite an uproar and half the town spoke of what a disgrace it was. A white woman and a black man were not supposed to bed with one another, and they most definitely were not supposed to have children. But Braille’s mother had gone off and bedded with a black man anyway and she had told the town that if they disapproved then they could shove a stick up their butts, because she was going to continue to bed with him and if they didn’t believe her then they were more than welcome to come and watch.

People excepted their intertwining after that. The fact that they were bedding and the fact that they were getting married grew on everyone. Eventually Braille’s father became one of the most popular men in the community. He was sophisticated and educated and witty. I often wished that if I knew who my father was he would be like Mr. Fairfield, Braille’s father.

Braille was beautiful, in a way that none of us were. She had very thick and curly brown hair that had many different shades of black and red and brown in it. Her eyes were shaped like almonds and were such a light green you almost mistook them for yellow. Her skin reminded me of the blush that my mother would brush onto her cheeks. Or like the milk we would twirl our cinnamon sticks in, kind of like the after color.

Braille didn’t talk much about her mother. She once told us it was because her mother had an even louder mouth than Fanny and Davie and Louie put together, and we all knew that was pretty loud.

We often heard musings about her younger sister and father, though.

I had known Braille since I was five and I had not once been to her home. She lived on the third floor of an overcrowded apartment building. It was light brown and in the heart of downtown. Flower boxes sat outside the windows and welcome mats were all around the ground, waiting for someone to wipe their feet on them. You often caught a glimpse inside of someone’s home, because they pulled their blinds and opened the windows. You could hear children laughing and electric fans breezing back and forth and back and forth, as if on repeat.

Braille preferred not to talk unless she felt the need to say something. She was constantly thinking and got herself hurt a lot. She liked climbing on top of the shore beds, and trying to catch the sharp clams. This usually ended up with her slicing some part of her body open and all of us rushing her to the closest house, where someone’s mother would pore rum on the wound and tell her to stop getting herself into such a fuss.

There was this one time where we were supposed to be sleeping, but we had snuck out of the house and made our way to the beach. All of us were walking, but Braille was running at full speed. She’d tripped and sliced the bottom of her foot open. We’d carried her back home, shoved her through the bathroom window, clamped our hands over her mouth and poured alcohol on the bottom of her foot. We’d done it for two months, as to make sure her foot didn’t get infected or anything. It heeled and people often asked how she had gotten the scar on the bottom of her foot.

Oh, it was simply a slip of the foot. Y’know, the usual daytime spill in the middle of the road.

Each of us had our own personalities and that was what kept us so strong. We didn’t have to worry about someone stealing one of our own personal quirks or being blamed for stealing that other ones style.

We were an odd mix, but we fit together like a puzzle piece.

Only, something happened our fifteenth summer. It was almost like someone else had taken over everyone else’s bodies and I was rushing to keep up. I’d been wary of trying and doing everything they tried and did, but I had, because I wanted to keep up with them -- I wanted to be accepted by my friends.

It took me a while to realize things were never going to be the same, but it took me too long to realize things were going to end up so tragically.