By Way of Water

by Charlotte Gullick

  “Please watch over my children and help them follow the Truth. We ask these things in Christ Jesus’ name. Amen.”

  Micah echoed her and then fell into his own eight-year-old prayer, his words a string of whispers. Lacee curled tighter, her copy of The Red Pony tucked into her arm. When morning light began to fill the room, she’d be reading, taking herself away with a story. Justy couldn’t see more than the lighter shade of Dale’s blond hair. Micah drifted off to sleep, and Justy tried to make her breathing like his and Lacee’s. Dale finally relaxed into the wall, her strong back curved into a soft question mark.

  Justy heard a match being struck. She sensed the presence of light as Dale cupped her free hand around the match, studying the arch of her children’s eyebrows, the planes of their features. Twice in the last year she’d done this—trying to find evidence of herself in the children’s faces. Now Dale’s hands were walking her own face, wanting to soothe the ache inside. Dale wished she’d been studied as a child, made known to the mother who had given her up for adoption.

  Justy prepared herself not to startle when Dale’s hands leaped from one child mirror to another. Justy pretended she was a stone in the Eel and that Dale’s hands were the water, gliding over her surfaces and passing on.

  A piece of wood rolled in the stove with a thump. Dale’s cool fingers found Justy’s hair, then gently brushed her eyebrows, her cheekbones, her nose, her lips. Justy took deep, even breaths and became aware again of the jerky dripping. Dale leaned back into the wall. She sat still for a moment and then went to the kitchen drawer. The white envelope was where she had left it, and she brought it to the bedroom. In the dark, she removed the pictures. She could tell two of them just by their feel: the Polaroid from Carl Walters and the wedding picture, not just because it was bigger, but because the corners were worn smooth. She held herself and Jake and thought about that day, how she’d been so nervous, how she had to borrow the dress from the school teacher she was staying with at the time. Her bare arms had seemed so naked in the fall air, but she loved how she looked. Like a young woman should, she thought.

  She shrugged her arms inside the flannel shirt she wore now, suddenly aware of the entirety of her skin under her clothes. Her adoptive mother hadn’t come, but Kyle had. He and Jake had been good that day, laughing and full of music and jokes. It seemed so long ago. And he was coming back, after seven years of anger between him and Jake—because of her. Her thoughts ran away from her and she flashed to that night, when Jake had slapped her across the face. She’d been pregnant with Justy, and Kyle, he’d had enough. He stepped in and beat Jake. Dale shivered now, confused by Kyle’s consistent warmth to her and his unpredictable coldness toward Jake. There’d been talk after Kyle left, but no one knew the truth of it except the three of them. And how could she explain to the phantom rumors that it was only violence that sent Kyle away, nothing more?

  Justy’s left foot began to itch, but she didn’t dare move, not when Dale had done this, brought out the secret pictures, not when Justy sensed her own story lurking in Dale’s thoughts. Dale forced herself away from the wedding picture, still angry with her mother for her harsh response to Jake’s Indian blood. Dale flipped through the pictures and imagined the scenes—the last picture from Carl Walters’s visit, checking on them for the mining company, Dale and the children standing on the front porch in summer clothes. Another photo taken in Los Angeles when they’d gone to Jake’s birthplace for his mother’s funeral, five years back. The picture of Jake and Kyle playing while she sang, some community barbecue eight years ago. And the picture of her baptism, right after Kyle left. She looked happiest in this one, she knew, because she was filled with confidence about her decision to lead a legal life and to use her voice only in praise of Jehovah. The legal life had been a requirement, but the choice to give up singing with Jake, that had been her own, one most people didn’t understand.

  Justy finally rubbed her feet together, pretending to roll over in her sleep. Dale sat up straight, wishing she could see herself better in her children. She sighed and put the pictures back in the envelope.

  “Jacob,” she said. Justy sensed Jake coming back, coasting downhill to save gas.

  “Jehovah,” Dale said then, and Justy was confused. She opened her eyes and saw that Dale was more ghost than mother in the dark. Her calling of His name meant Satan or his demons were close.

  “I’m asking you…to help me do the right thing.”

  Justy closed her eyes again. Dale was saying some kind of prayer, a kind Justy hadn’t heard before but a prayer all the same.

  The children waited at the bus stop, returning to school after being gone a week. The sun lingered behind them, threatening to break free of the mountains. Lacee stood where she’d stopped, reading in the cold morning air. Justy also loved when books carried her away, riveted her from the chaotic world of Jake and Dale.

  The bag lunches of celery and peanut butter and jerky waited at Lacee’s feet. Every time the children heard the sound of a car, they turned to the south, waiting for the yellow of the bus to rise out of the horizon. Their breath pooled in white clouds, and Justy pretended she was making her own fog, just like the Eel. She looked down the old road and saw the coastal fog curling over the tip of the forested mountain on the other side of the river canyon. She sniffed deep, searching for the salt smell of ocean water as she jiggled the shoe that carried the penny.

  Micah threw rocks at the back of the highway sign that said “Drive-Thru Tree Road.” The rocks hit the metal with a zing, sounding like pennies on glass. Not many tourists took the old road anymore; the freeway sped them along faster to the Tree. But every once in a while, a car stopped and the driver asked the way. The looks on the people’s faces usually matched their license plates. People from Missouri and Kansas couldn’t imagine a tree big enough to drive through. Seven miles from here, they’d have their perspective changed as soon as they drove down toward Sequoia Valley. At first nothing seemed that different, but once the road curved past Hilltop and the huge expanse of the river canyon, the trees stood so tall that tourists sometimes had accidents from looking for the tops while they were driving. Justy loved the ride to school because she got to follow the Eel and then the trees. Deep in the Drive-Thru Tree Park, the ancient chandelier redwood stood, its heart cut out so people could drive their cars through it. The limbs of these trees hung in the air like fancy lights Justy had only heard about. She knew this was where Jake had taken Dale on their first date, after dinner.

  Micah hopped in place, tired of waiting. They heard Emmet shift down and then the bus appeared. When it stopped at the sign, they each took different seats. Lacee and Justy sat near the back, Lacee returning to her book before the bus began moving. Justy took a seat on the west side, wanting to watch the Eel. Micah sat in the middle with Caleb Harris, Mamie and Jeff’s son. Caleb’s twin sister, Sky, perched right behind him, watching his every word and move, playing with the hem of her dress. Justy thought the twins looked like watered-down versions of their father, with their pale red hair and tapioca skin. The bus lurched and rolled forward, under the freeway overpass and down the old road.

  Justy alternated between watching the river and thinking of Jake and Dale. Dale waited on the couch, darning a hole in a sock stretched over a useless light bulb. She was grateful it was quiet; it gave her the time to figure out how to move in this world when it was filled with so much confusion. Jake was in the barn, a hundred yards from the house. He leaned against a sawhorse and stared at the pictures he kept tacked to the wall, putting off a visit to Gaines.

  The bus stopped at the road leading to what people called the Hermitage. The boxy blue car waited there, the woman and the boy inside. Sunshine wore a flame-orange scarf around her head, and when she leaned over to kiss the boy, Justy squinted and imagined that the woman’s head was on fire. The braided boy wore green corduroy bell-bottoms, hiking boots, a black turtleneck and a denim jacket
that had different symbols and animals embroidered on it. He carried a green woven sack, and Justy felt herself liking him already because he didn’t have one of those fancy, expensive lunch boxes with pictures of Barbie or Spiderman that she’d seen on the shelves at Safeway. The boy smiled at Emmet and walked toward Justy’s seat. She didn’t look at him but watched his mother smile up at the bus. He sat opposite Justy and she could tell he was trying to catch her gaze. But she sent her mind back to Jake and Dale.

  She peeked only once. He looked up from his book when she turned toward him. She closed her eyes but listened when he turned the pages, when he said “Sure” to Jennifer Sloan’s request to sit next to him. The bus was only half full when they reached the school, and Justy waited until the boy walked off before she moved. The few high school kids headed to the building on the right, and Justy followed the boy into Ms. Long’s first- and second-grade classroom. He had a seat two rows away from hers. His desk nametag said Ochre Raven—he must have joined the class sometime last week. After Justy sat down, Ms. Long came to her desk and kneeled. Justy blinked at her teacher, who was braiding flowers into her frizzy blond hair. She probably had a greenhouse where she grew all kinds of things.

  “It’s nice to see you, Justine.” Ms. Long smelled like the vanilla that Dale sometimes put in French-toast batter. She wore flowing black pants, a black turtleneck and brown sandals with black socks. Her pale skin glowed pink from the cold, and she sniffled. Justy lifted the lid to her desk and placed her lunch inside, seeing her pencils and an eraser exactly where she’d left them. She couldn’t tell she’d been gone a week.

  “Were you sick?” Ms. Long’s fingers played with the edge of Justy’s laminated nametag, glued to the top of the desk. The letters were simple and big and they annoyed Justy. She watched Ms. Long’s hand.

  “Is everything okay at home?” Ms. Long tucked a strand of Justy’s hair behind her left ear. She had a silver ring on each finger and a tattoo of a rose on the back of her right hand. Justy looked at her shiny white face. Even if Justy had the words to tell anyone why her quietness had become silence, Ms. Long wouldn’t be the one she told. Maybe Jehovah would be the one, and maybe He already understood. But Justy still didn’t find any sign of Him.

  The bell rang, and Ms. Long stood and went to the front of the classroom, where she sat on a white rug. She closed her eyes, and her hands rested on her folded knees, the thumb and forefinger creating a circle. Her black sweater and her chest underneath swelled with her deep breaths, and the students sat waiting. She did this each morning, and she told the students she hoped her meditations helped them focus their minds for learning. Once she’d tried to lead the class in a guided meditation, but Justy knew better. While Ms. Long used a soft voice, telling them to create a sacred space inside, Justy let her mind slip to the river and she swam it again, playing out the curves in a fast-forward version of the water until it reached the Pacific. When Ms. Long had talked about white light touching their auras, Justy had left the water for a moment to look at the teacher. Ms. Long wore a serene smile as she talked quietly to the students, and Justy had closed her eyes and her mind against her. Ms. Long didn’t even know she was doing the Devil’s work, inviting him in whenever she opened her thoughts in meditation.

  The new boy was watching Ms. Long with a smile. The teacher took a final deep breath and greeted the students with a warm hello and asked them to stand for the pledge of allegiance. Justy remained seated and was surprised to see the boy sitting also, playing with the end of his braid. Ms. Long asked Jordan Fry, Lefty’s nephew, to lead the pledge, and the class joined together to say what Justy knew was a mistake. She’d never said the pledge of allegiance nor sung the national anthem. Dale and the Witnesses had told her that to do so was to put man’s government before God’s. Justy knew Dale didn’t vote, either, but sometimes Justy got confused, since it was Dale who insisted that Jake shooting a deer when they were hungry was wrong because it was illegal.

  After the pledge, Ms. Long handed out math worksheets. Justy completed hers within a few minutes and then set her pencil down. She usually had to sit for the longest time before anyone else finished, and like always, she watched the clock to see how long it would take for the next pencil to stop. She smiled when the boy finished one minute and thirty-three seconds after she did. Both of them watched Ms. Long water the many plants in the room, humming. Justy felt Jake leave the barn and drive into town, heading toward Gaines’s place. Her eyes roamed the room and she saw hearts cut from red and pink construction paper taped to the wall next to the blackboard, which was green and didn’t make any sense. Sixteen valentines decorated the wall, shapes the children had colored or pasted other shapes onto. Justy’s and Ochre’s names were not up on the wall. Hers was missing because she didn’t participate in any of the holiday activities, and she figured he must not have been here for the Valentines Day preparations. Cards illustrating the sounds of the alphabet hung on a wire that encircled the room. Today Justy was drawn to the one with the pale-skinned woman placing a finger to her lips, demonstrating the “sh” sound.

  ***

  At lunchtime, Justy walked to the cafeteria by herself, looking for Micah or Lacee. When she entered the noisy room, she saw Micah sitting with the Harris twins, the three of them praying before they ate. Lacee sat with a group of kids around her, but she didn’t seem to notice, her nose in another book. Justy sat by herself and felt good about it. As she chewed her jerky, trying not to think about the deer and its eyes clouding away, Justy looked at the different-aged students in the room. Most of the kids ate hot lunches—meatloaf and mashed potatoes served on metal trays by skinny Sally Ferris. Justy knew if Jake would let them, they could have hot lunches, too. He refused to fill out the paperwork that Dale brought to him at the beginning of each school year, hoping he’d changed his mind. He didn’t take charity, he said, and threw the papers in the stove. Justy watched the children eating and she didn’t know how Jake thought the Colbys were any different. Every hot-lunch kid who had a dad living at home depended on the timber jobs just like Jake, and every winter, those families ran out of money, too. Jake thought the Colbys were different somehow and Justy wondered how they were, aside from being one of two families in which the mothers had decided that the children wouldn’t celebrate holidays or salute the flag.

  Ochre entered the lunchroom minutes after the other students, and came to sit opposite her. Justy became interested in the creases of her paper lunch bag and didn’t look at him. She wiggled her feet and remembered the penny in her shoe, and it made her smile, to have a secret so close. It helped her attend the comings and goings of Jake and Dale.

  Ochre pulled a sandwich from his woven bag and began to eat without looking away. She could feel his stare and finally glanced back. He had the same face as Sunshine, though his skin was fairer from less time in the sun. His stare was the same as hers, too—not smiling, not frowning. Justy pulled another piece of jerky from her bag and left the table, still chewing, happy he hadn’t said anything. She escaped the noise of the cafeteria, and instead of going to the playground like she was supposed to, she went to the library. The big dictionary on the stand waited, and she looked up Ochre’s name. She smiled when she read the definition—his name meant “yellow.”

  On the page before “Ochre” was a color illustration of the earth’s oceans, without the water. The naked planet fascinated her. Maybe people had a world of landscape inside them and maybe they carried a version of the earth. She studied the mountains, valleys and canyons of the deep oceans, sensing she had the same inside her. She walked away from the book and went to the playground, her tongue working at a piece of meat stuck in her teeth. The dictionary had said that even though the waters of the planet were divided, they were all connected. Seventy percent of the earth was covered in water—the same amount she carried in her body. Justy now felt better about the new thing that had happened inside her, how she was able to swim in and out of Jak
e’s and Dale’s worlds.

  ***

  After lunch, when the children had plowed back into the classroom with muddy feet and chilled hands, it was story time. When they took off their shoes, Justy pulled the penny out and kept it hidden in her right palm. The children gathered in a circle, and Ms. Long sat under the green blackboard. Justy sat opposite Ms. Long, and Ochre sat three students away on Justy’s left. She loved story time. Even though the tales were simple, she was still able to flow away on the words.

  While Ms. Long read a story by Dr. Seuss about a thing called a Lorax and cutting down too many trees, Justy kept looking at Ochre’s jacket. She liked the bright colors of the signs and symbols, but she worried that some of them might be Satan’s work. She wondered if it had been Sunshine’s pale hands that stitched the shapes.

  Ms. Long read on, and Justy could see that the vivid colors in the world of the book had faded into dark purples and yellows. The thing called the Lorax sat in a lonely house in a treeless landscape. Ms. Long finished the story and smiled brightly at the students. Then she said, “Now, wasn’t that lovely? And aren’t we lucky to live in among all these beautiful trees.” She sighed. “Lucky indeed.”

  The students all seemed to have the same look on their faces, except Ochre. Their daddies cut down trees, and Ms. Long had just read them a book that said that was bad. Justy looked back at Ochre and his jacket, almost too full of information to sit still. Ms. Long said, “Okay, now, my little light beings, I want us to go around the circle and each say something about nature that we like.”

  Jordan Fry was on her immediate left and he looked uncertain.