Dead in the Water

by Nancy Holder

  Then I got knocked up. He totally freaked. Wanted me to have an abortion. No way. No way on earth; and I finally realized he didn’t love me, not the way I loved him, or he’d be jazzed. I was so mad. I was so hurt. I had given up…I knew I had given up something for him. And I was just a piece of tail to him.

  I think he was hoping I’d move out, but I kept hoping he’d fall in love with me. He started drinking, and going out, and then he didn’t come home until morning, still drunk.

  “Don’t stare at me with those eyes!” he would scream at me, and then he began to knock me around.

  You’d think I’d tell him to fuck off and leave, but where could I go? I didn’t even know where I was. Or who I was. And I had this despair inside me. This overwhelming sorrow, that grew stronger and stronger the angrier Bobby got with me. The more he regretted being with me.

  Fish out of water, I told myself. That was what I was. A misfit. A freak. I deserved his fists, cuz I was such a drag. I was a burden. I was useless. It made sense that he lost his patience with me.

  I was going down, really drowning. I started wandering down on the beach, staggering around for hours on end. My legs hurt worse and worse; I didn’t know why, but I thought it had something to do with the baby. Just wandering up and down, all day, falling into the sand over and over, crying. People thought I’d gone out of my mind.

  And then one day I found a knife on the beach. It was stuck in the sand and the sun caught it just so, danced off it. I pulled it out and stared at it, with tears running down my cheeks. My eyes burned in the bright light; they always hurt when I cry.

  I thought, I’ll just kill the fucker. I’ll fucking kill him.

  We went to a surfing tournament, and he did things like imitate the way I walked and squeeze my tits in front of the other couples, and all I could do was stare at him with tears running down my cheeks. Some of the other surfer chicks came over to me while he was in the waves and said, “Christ, Annie (everyone calls me Annie), why the hell do you put up with that crap?”

  I couldn’t talk, which was just as well. I had nothing to say.

  Bobby won the tournament. There was a lot of partying to celebrate. He won some money, too. He drank more and more, and then he fucked me, hard, and I was scared about the baby. That it might get hurt. I thought of it, swimming around in its peaceful ocean, not knowing how ugly the world is. The sea, the sea, the beautiful, cowabunga sea, and it was going to have to come out and walk on the land with the two of us.

  What if Bobby hit the baby?

  I had packed the knife in my suitcase. I had pretended not to notice when I slipped it under the beach towels, as if it were some kind of accident; it was like someone was talking to me in my head: Do it, do it, do it. I thought about how I must have had a mother, and a father, and maybe brothers or sisters; how something really awful must have happened, since I didn’t remember them. I dreamed sometimes that my father raped me, or my brother, or my mother abused me. But none of that felt right.

  But then again, nothing in my life felt particularly right. Anyway, Bobby got drunk. He sat facing me in our motel room with a bottle of Jack Daniels in his lap, and a strange smile on his face, and for some reason I was more afraid than I’d ever been before. Something was in the air, something sharp and dangerous and slashing. The air was too cold, and inside the sound of the surf, I thought I heard

  singing: Whales gray and kind; or dark-nosed dolphins; or

  people; or

  one person, one very special man.

  Bobby said, “Whatcha looking at, you retard?” I shrank from him. I thought about the knife. My heart pounded. My body was dry as dust, and my skin prickled. My legs ached.

  Jesus, they ached.

  “I’m going out.” He lurched to his feet. “And when I get back, Annie, you better be gone.”

  I stared at him. His face changed. He swore at me, came at me, hit me. Sliced my cheek open. “Goddamnit, I don’t want that kid!” he shouted, and slugged me in the stomach. “I want you gone!”

  I doubled over, my hands over my head. I wanted to ask, Did you never love me? Isn’t there something about me worth caring about and sacrificing for?

  Did I mention before that Bobby was only seventeen?

  My legs couldn’t hold me up, and I collapsed. He turned his back and walked out. My heart dissolved inside my body and I breathed out, in, long and slow, like it was new to me. I felt as if I were floating, looking down through water at what was happening. For a second, I thought I was going to rise up out of the motel room and fly over the ocean. I thought I was fucking dying.

  I was so scared, I ran after him. I know, it’s hard to believe: Here he had just beat me up and I was chasing him for more.

  But I took the knife.

  The waves were racing up the cliff near the motel, just soaring like a typhoon or a tidal wave or something. I had never seen surf like that, and it was violent and terrifying, but somehow it was wonderful, too. The moon was out and I let out a sob, almost a noise, as I looked up at it. The knife was too long to put in my purse, or a pocket; I had to carry it at my side. There was no hiding it.

  I had the strongest compulsion to cut my legs; or maybe it was to cut one of them off. Like they were growths, and something wrong. Like they didn’t belong to me, the way I didn’t belong to anybody.

  The baby. I could never let him hurt the baby.

  But I added that in later; I remembered thinking that later. I was running after him, not from him.

  The waves crashed on top of the cliff and they roared like sea monsters. Even at a distance, spray slapped my face. It was the end of the world, I thought, mine and everybody’s. It was all over.

  I ran toward it. I ran as fast as I could, even though white-hot pains shot up my legs and into my heart. Throbbed in my throat. Scalding, blinding pain coursed right through me and grew as I got nearer and nearer.

  And then I saw Bobby, standing on the edge of the cliff with his arms outstretched, laughing. His head thrown back, wild and free, his hair streaming behind him like a tail; he was brown and handsome, and even then, I wanted him.

  He shouted something, like a dare. He laughed again and began to sing, but I couldn’t make out the tune. The waves crashed over him and he staggered backward.

  I came closer. The water pelted me like stones. Angry ocean, I thought. Angry at him, angry at me.

  Another wave dropped over him. I couldn’t see him. I kept running. And I thought, Oh, God, when I reach him, I’m going to stick this knife into him.

  I ran. I ran hard. I was going to do it. I would do it.

  Another wave. He turned around and saw me. The laughter died. He screamed at me, “Freak! You fucking freak!”

  And I was going to do it. I was going to really do it.

  And then I heard the singing:

  Beloved, beloved,

  most treasured.

  The littlest princess,

  the littlest mermaid,

  the joy of the seas,

  the father’s lost darling.

  I heard it. I know I heard it. I heard it.

  And the wave took him, just reached out with a watery embrace and yanked him off that cliff and pulled him into the water and

  your voice moved the world and you screamed.

  No, that’s what you think when you’re crazy. That’s what you dreamed.

  You pushed him. You know you did, and they knew it, but your lawyers were cagey and got you off as a nutcase. With your scratchy, pathetic voice, and those sad, kick-me eyes, the jury pitied you and let you off, into a barred, safe place full of therapy sessions and medication. The baby was a miscarriage. You were knocked out when they took it, but they promised you it was for the best and looked away when they said it.

  Years of medication. And talking, talking, with a new voice. But there was a man in that wave, a powerful man with streaming gray hair and a long gray beard and a crown. There was a man, and he grabbed Bobby.

  You stupid lying
bitch. There was no man. There was not.

  I’m better now. I don’t need this shit. I’m better now, and I don’t, won’t, hear that singing anymore.

  This, my life, once upon a time

  no, goddamnit, no.

  And now I’ll wad these pages up and stick them in that goddamned Scotch bottle, and no one will ever find them cuz they’ll sink like a stone.

  Like a dead man.

  Like Bobby—never found his body. Shed it. Found a new woman to live inside, hermit crab.

  And I don’t know why I’m writing this, except I feel so sick inside; I feel like I can’t breathe and I’m drying up. Shriveling into nothingness, and I really wish someone would really help me. Because I am a crazy bitch, and no one on this earth wants me.

  And now I’m standing on the cliff where I pushed Bobby, and throwing this bottle out to sea, cuz I can’t get that damned singing out of my head. I hear it all the time, and it makes me dream. I hate dreaming. I know what the world is: hard, and mean, and ugly. You’re a hungry puppy and it’s the boot connecting with your stomach.

  And the hunger’s for something you can’t name, anyway.

  And the name of the tune is:

  For a day and an hour, the bottle bobs upon the waters. Then it sinks down slowly, slowly, like a pearl in liquid gold, drifting into the outstretched grasp of the Sea King. He cracks it open like an oyster, extracting the morsel within. Reads quickly, as the ink begins to run.

  Then he flashes to the surface and screams for his daughter. But she is already walking away.

  Tears course down his cheeks, and while it is true that merfolk cannot cry, the laws of fatherhood transcend the laws of nature.

  In the ocean blue, home of the little mermaid, sea fantasy and sea dream; aqua, purple, pacific, and serene.

  “This, for a boy?” he wails to the cliffs, the waves. “This, for lust?”

  And he dives back into the depths, back to his throne and his six beautiful, naked daughters and their sunken Grecian temples, and pulverizes with his fists the bones of the boy who ruined his daughter and drove her mad; pounds the bones, and no heart! No soul!

  Pounds the bones, and the ashes

  of the beauty of the sea.

  I hear the mermaids singing, each to each,

  I do not think that they will sing to me.

  —T. S. Eliot

  Cafe Endless: Spring Rain

  It was spring in Yoyogi Park, and not a rain, exactly. Cool mist floated in the air, drawn to the heat of the thousand milling bodies, clinging to all the things that lived: girl groups dressed in black lace and garters, thirty young boys dressed up as James Dean, pompadours and chains and black leather jackets. The perennial hippies in black velvet hats and tie-dyed dusters. Ointen Rose, the most popular Sunday street band in Harajuku, their pride and joy a black bass player who was actually quite good.

  It would have been perfect day to go to the Empress’s iris garden in the Meiji Shrine complex. If you stood still long enough and stared across the fish pond in a tranquil state, you could see Her Majesty’s spirit shimmering in the mist that was not mist but gentle spring rain. But Satoshi’s charge for the day was Buchner-san, the American agent for Nippon Kokusai Sangyo, and she had asked to be shown the famous street-dancing kids of Harajuku.

  She had made the request boldly, knowing it wasn’t the polite Japanese thing to do. That was no problem; no one in Ni-Koku-Sangyo expected Buchner-san to act Japanese, and they would never have hired her if she had. She was their American, their contact with the States, and they wanted her as bold and brassy and utterly unsubtle as she was.

  “These are great! This is great!” she kept exclaiming as they traversed the closed-off boulevard. As they did each Sunday, the groups had set up as far apart as possible, which was not very far at all; and the din was so great that you couldn’t hear the generators that powered their electric guitars. Satoshi had never heard the generators.

  The fan clubs of the more popular groups invented gestures and little dances to accompany the songs of their heroes, and as they shouted and pointed and shoo-whopped, Buchner-san shouted in his ear, “It’s like Rocky Horror! Do you know about Rocky Horror?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said politely. With the arrogance of her countrymen, which he found so charming, she always assumed his ignorance. That there was a fundamental lack in his country. In fact, he had seen the original stage play in London, and had owned a bootleg laser disc before Americans could even purchase laser disc players. “It is very interesting.”

  “I love Tim Curry.” She flashed a smile at him. He was getting tired, but would never let her know. All the English, all her talking and questions. Her energetic curiosity. Not that he was complaining; he was happy to show her this amazing Tokyo phenomenon, and pleased if she enjoyed their Sunday afternoon together. He was Ni-Koku-Sangyo’s representative today, and entertaining her was his responsibility. Satoshi was a Japanese man, and fulfilling responsibilities with good effort gave him a sense of pride and accomplishment.

  After a while he steered her to the food booths and bought her some doughy snacks of octopus meat and a beer. When she discovered what she was eating, she laughed and said “I’m eating octopus balls!” and Satoshi laughed back, although other Americans had made the same joke. He didn’t mind. He never found their humor offensive or insulting, as some of his colleagues did. Americans to him were like puppies, eager, alert, bounding and fun. Although not to be dismissed as unintelligent or lacking in shrewdness. They were tough businessmen. Business people.

  “Do you believe in ghosts, Buchner-san?” he asked her after they finished their snack.

  “Hmm. Do I believe in ghosts.” She looked at him askance. “Why do you ask?”

  “If you look across the iris garden at the Meiji Shrine, you can see a ghost.”

  “If you’re Japanese.” She grinned at him. “I’m afraid I’m far too earthbound for that, Nagai-san.”

  “No. Anyone can see it. Because it’s there. No special abilities—or genetic traits—are required.”

  “Then let’s go see it.”

  He inclined his head. “Unfortunately, it is now closed. But you must come back if you hare free time before you go. Tell the taxi Meiji-jingu.”

  “And the subway stop?”

  How he admired these American women! “Meiji-jingu-mae.”

  “Got it.” She was writing it down. Abruptly she frowned and looked up. “God, it’s raining harder.”

  Perhaps that was her way of hinting that she would like to go, and not an indirect rebuke that he had not thought to warn her that it might rain, or to bring umbrellas. Or neither; Americans didn’t think like that. It might simply be a comment about the weather.

  “Shall I take you to Roppongi? The Hard Rock Cafe is there.” She had made mention to Satoshi’s boss, Iwasawa-san, that she would like to buy a Tokyo Hard Rock Cafe T-shirt for her nephew. Although she was almost forty, she was not married. Iwasawa privately called her “Big Mama”. Satoshi thought that was hilarious.

  “Oh, the Hard Rock! That’d be great. I want to buy my nephew a souvenir.” Obviously she had forgotten she’d told Iwasawa. A Japanese would not have. He—she—would have taken it for granted that the request had been made, and now was about to be fulfilled. And a small notch on the chart of indebtedness was now made in favor of Ni-Koku-Sangyo, to be paid at the proper time.

  They walked back down the boulevard, taking one last look at the bands. The rain was falling not harder, but more like gentle rain now, than mist. Perhaps the Harajuku kids would have to shut down; all that electricity could not be safe.

  He began to hail a cab, but she asked to take the subway “if it’s not too much trouble”. Then she would know how to come back if she had time to “visit his ghost”. He acquiesced, content to do as she wished, although he was a little disappointed. While with her he was on his expense account, and he far preferred cabs to crowded subways.

  He showed her how to walk to the st
ation, pointing out landmarks, and explained how to buy a ticket. In Japan there was no stigma attached to ignorance, only to not trying one’s best. They went to the trains and he explained how she could tell she was boarding the correct one. With a sense of fearless joy she absorbed all he said. He was very sorry she would not meet Tsukinosuke.

  But of course, she would have quite happily informed him that she didn’t believe in vampires, either.

  The ride was not long but it was crowded. He could remember a time years ago when Japanese people stared at Americans and Japanese men groped American women on the trains as everyone stood netted together like fish. Now it was Tokyo, London, New York, the three big cities of the world, and such days of primitive behavior were over.

  As they ascended the Roppongi station, the rain was falling like the strands of spider webs catching dew. Satoshi’s chest tightened. He took measured steps as they turned the corner past the big coffee house, Almond, pretending he was scanning for umbrellas.

  Resourceful Roppongi merchants kept supplies of cheap umbrellas on hand for sudden thundershowers.

  People hurried into Almond, jamming the pink-and-white foyer and cramming into booths for hot coffee and pastries. Hordes of young Japanese girls, giggling and beautifully dressed. No other women on earth dressed with as much fashion and taste as Tokyoites. Although Satoshi was almost thirty, he was not married, either. He imagined his reasons were more compelling than Buchner-san’s.

  As they passed the windows resplendent with bright pink booths, he had to force himself not to look to the right and up to the leaded-glass windows on the third floor of the building. Still, he saw in his mind their exquisite, ancient beauty and his heart began to pound, much as he imagined Buchner-san’s heart would if she saw the Empress’s ghost. The throbbing travelled through his veins and arteries to his groin, a journey often taken in this vicinity.