1528 Chapter
The skin of the water flattens as if something is below the surface. I ignore the thick heat of the evening air to make up a different story about what is about to happen. I imagine that underneath is one of the grey giants that come up our river on the coldest of winter days. They live in water but taste more animal than fish. They are gentle and easy to catch. They eat only plants.
But they are never here in the summer. I grab for the boy to pull us both onto the land, but before I can stop him, he has seen the fish satchel and belly flops into the river and reaches. A surge moves towards him, against the current, as his fingers close one by one over the trailing strap. A swirl of water lifts the leather into the air. My mouth is too dry to shout. The boy turns to look at me, his hand still wrapped in the strap.
Behind him, the satchel is pulled under the water. I throw myself towards his feet as he is yanked along behind it. The wave breaks into the air and scatters in all directions. Within it, I see a scaled head. Yellow teeth lift and drop, and I hear the crack of the boy's shoulder leaving its home. I grab a foot, set my feet into the bottom, and pull.
I'm screaming now. "Let go, let go." I hope he can, but I think his hand is caught in the strap. I hope. And I pull. His body is rolled to one side and the other, up and down. My feet scrabble into the sand, but are pulled forward. His loose hand flails into the air unable to reach his own knife, and I make a choice. I let go and leap, unsheathing my knife. I press it into his hand and fall back. He is pulled into the deeper water, and I see him take a large breath before he disappears. I hold my own breath with his.
The water recomposes itself. A skimmer with red smoke in the black of its wings hovers over the site and flicks away. A kingfisher screeches from bank to bank. My lungs complain. My eyes won't blink. My body forces a breath, and as I gasp, the water lifts. He is here, swimming towards me, using only one arm. I wade out and pull him to shore. I don't stop until I have him up the bank.
1858 Chapter The baby graves are shaped like loaves of bread, only bigger. The one next to the sparkleberry bush is the oldest. But I'm the oldest live one. I dig around a little the way Papa's dog used to when he looked for hoppy toads. I lift up my dress and sit down and the bare dirt cools my bottom. This baby wasn't born here like the rest of us. It was born on the pole barge that brought Mother and Papa here all the way from the ocean, and then died right away, right here, when our house was still trees in the forest. Papa said it was too tiny. Mother hates those pole boats. She sometimes says she hates the whole river. She says it took her away from everything. That she wrapped this baby in her last silk dress because she wouldn't need it anymore. That once she and her sister went to a dance where there were candles put in all the trees, and they looked like stars in the branches. Her voice sounds far away when she talks like this, and it makes me pinch Sister or take her dollie.
"Are you done? What are you doing on that grave? Stop daydreaming and come take care of your sister."
Mother grabs me again. She's always grabbing me. My shoulder pulls apart some as she twists my arm. She lets go and straightens the tucks on my sleeve.
"Here, let me brush you off." Her hands aren't too hard on my thighs, and she smoothes my skirt back into place. "Take your sister down to the river and wait for your father."
Mother pushes me towards the yard. I look back, and she's kneeling by the grave of the baby before this one, the one that messed the house with its runny poop. It screamed all one night until it stopped. I'm sorry that her babies died. I am, I've told Jesus this, but Mother and Papa needed to come here. I needed to be born here by the river. This is my place. I know everything about it - like where to find clams, how not to reach under logs unless you look first, and that the glittery sand at the bottom is farther away than I can swim.
1918 Chapter
I smile, and the smile is connected to my hips, and all of a sudden I know things about my body. I want to dance with the boy. I turn to him.
He pushes the sleeves of his shirt up past his elbows, hangs his hands loose at his side, and his feet stomp out the music. He dances that up and down way that my father's people do. I hold my arms out, curve my hand as if it held a fan spread open, and make slow, swinging circles with him in the center. The skirt of my dress brushes against him. His feet go still, and I feel like summer heat, like cane syrup, like velvet.
He steps close. He's going to touch me, but I don't know where. My body wants him to press against me. I think of how, in the night, I'd roll over in my cot and bunch the sheets between my legs and just hold them there, tight, and hope the other girls didn't hear my gasps. Purple hibiscus blooms drop out of my crown and fall against my neck and belly. I catch one and put it behind my ear. I close my eyes. I feel a hand on one shoulder and fingers wrap through mine.
1932 Chapter
Manatees taught me how to swim. Everyone should have such good teachers. Our bodies aren't dissimilar - round, thick, no legs. They have a paddled tail, but my arms are longer and flexible. Every year, they, even the babies, swim from the ocean and up the rivers using just the bulk of their bodies. It was reasonable that I, with my body, should learn to, at the very least, float in an eddy.
The manatees aren't here in the summer. Right now they're in the Atlantic Ocean eating kelp and scaring fishermen as they snort to the surface, fishermen who will report that they saw a mermaid. But still, I lie on my back in the water, drop deep into the river, and pretend that I'm resting beside them. White sand puffs into the current wherever I touch the bottom. The eel grass slides into my hair, wraps under my arms, and tickles along my back and into the curves and folds of my body. The trees that hand over the river are a shimmer above me.
If I would ever let my breath go, I could stay here forever. But I don't. I never do. The reasons not to change, but today it's because I want a drink. My lungs ache in a final way. I race to the surface and gasp for air.
1996 Chapter
"Ma'am, did you ever marry?"
"What. Aren't you listening? But I did sort of go out with a man once. But no one knew. It would have been trouble if they did."
"I don't understand." The historical society lady fiddles with her necklace and a small cross flips out from under her linen shell.
"It was about a year after my mother died. I was riding on one of the glass-bottom boats, resting my arms from a day of throwing pots, breathing in the smell of the water, and ignoring the tourists packed around me. We were right over what they called the Turtle Meadows when one of the boats from Paradise Park came alongside."
"Paradise Park?"
"Don't tell me you don't know about Paradise Park? Has it been that long ago? It was the same as Silver Springs, owned by the same men, but for the Coloreds. It was like a line was drawn in the water and each side reflected the other - same boat, same fish underneath, same number of screeching kids leaning over the sides, but all white in one boat and all Negros in the other. So anyway, the boats passed each other with not five feet between them, and I saw her. I watched how people moved around her and listened to her and clapped her on the shoulder, and I knew they thought she was a man. I smiled at her in a way that she knew I knew she wasn't and that I liked her."
The historical society lady just isn't writing anymore. Well, you can't push people beyond what they can handle. But I'm going to make her listen.
"Turns out she started passing during the Depression to get work and just kept at it. I think she was more man than anything, no matter what her outside parts looked like. She'd taught herself about engines, and ended up a boat mechanic for both the Parks. After that boat ride, she took up lingering behind my studio. I'd come out and sit on a bench to get some air, and she'd lean against the palm tree beside it and wipe her hands on a cloth while we spoke about simple things. She smelled like the oil Negro men wore in their hair then. Now we weren't each other's big loves, but we had some good times. We'd get dressed to the nines and go dancing in clubs like the Manhattan Casino in St. Pete. Once we saw Sarah Vaughn there. I'd just brush my hair big and keep my mouth shut and people wouldn't ask too many questions. It was dangerous and fun. If I had thought better about it, I'd have realized it was more dangerous for her, but it was like we were in a bubble. When the Civil Rights movement came to Ocala, she left me."
"Oh, yes, the Civil Rights Movement. Our society is very interested in that." The lady has her pen ready to go.
"She said it was too risky. She'd joined up with the Hunt and Fishing Club. That was the only way Blacks, that was the polite word now, could own guns. But this Club didn't hunt anything much, except white men, I guess. They'd guard outside churches where racial activists were speaking. You know how everyone knows most everything around here, or at least they used to, so people knew they were there, waiting, and none of those packs of yahoos ever tried to go directly up against them. So she never had to shoot anyone that anyone knows about. The only time I'd see her was when she'd come up the back way to my house after a night of sitting in trees waiting for someone to try something. One morning she said she wouldn't be back. She was right about it getting too dangerous, but I think she was also just ashamed to be a black man dating a white woman. Well, that might not have been all of it. I'm dying after all, I should serve up some truth. She might also have known about the photographer."
2007 Chapter
The plastic rattle of the wind chimes is always my first warning. I lift my elbows off the counter, tug the I-Phone ear buds out and down into my bra, and reach for the Windex. The door opens wider, and the outside air ruffles the plush of dangling alligators. The breeze is colder since I clocked in this morning. The tourists will be surly, like it's my fault. I stop spraying the counter since it's not that bitch from the new management team checking on me. It's a customer. She's going to talk to me.
"Merry Christmas. Or should I say Christmas Eve eve?" Her earrings are tinseled triangles of green with lights that flash. They match the broach on her sweatshirt.
"Aren't those earrings cute." The sarcasm doesn't leak into my voice, and the customer comes closer, still smiling. She's really happy. I should smile back at her. The latest required reading, full-of-crap employee manual says I should. In thirty years here I've seen a lot of manuals.
"Do you have frogs?"
I should walk her over there. I should hand her one or two. I work on the smile. I nod in the direction of the display and feel the edges of my mouth stretch.
She touches all the frogs. Frogs fishing, book-holding frog teachers in pink bonnets, a molded circlet of lily pads, each supporting a frog, each frog acting out a different emotion - the whole display pretty much creeps me the fuck out, especially the jump-for-joy frog. She has a wide open mouth with human teeth inside. I have nightmares where my grandfather, father, and I, all of us, in the night, are gigging frogs. My father gets the jump-for-joy frog right through her green and red plaid dress. The customer picks up a frog eating a fly. The rock it's glued to has "ENJOY" scrawled across it.
10,000 Years Ago
The dragonflies arrive like bright warriors. Wings twist and dart through the mosquitoes, jaws snap. The survivors scatter, and the saber-toothed cat can open her eyes again. The dragonflies ride the exhalation of her breath and weave a barrier. They fly at all angles, back and forth, across the cat's face. In her eyes, they are only streaks of darker black that disappear in and out of view as if they owned not just all three dimensions, but the forth as well. The cat's lungs stop and start, gust and wheeze. The mosquito swarm regathers, unable to resist the cat's blood and breath. Many die in the careening frenzy of dragonflies.
The cat feels all the strength of her life leaving and once again scents the tang of her sister, the must of her mother. She sighs one long waft of air and is spent. There is no more breath, and the mosquitoes swirl away into the dark. The living veil of dragonflies billows out after them. A rising moon fills the iridescent blurs of the cat's eyes.
Remarkable, Sandra. Very, very fine!
Posted by: Kelly Cherry | July 28, 2009 at 09:34 PM
I can barely breathe. From the beginning passage to the funny store scene....I loved reading every word. Each painted pictures in my heart cavity up through my mind. The water has skin? And that's just the beginning! Oh, my, you are brilliant.
Posted by: Madeline | August 25, 2009 at 06:52 PM