by Rhonda Riley
I tried to turn my heart to the living, to the place I was, but putting seed in land not owned by me or my family seemed alien. The sandy, gray-white soil looked like dirty beach sand, not fit for growing anything. It smelled like dust. Yet weeds and trees and wildflowers grew along the roads. When we drove into town, we passed dense, impenetrable woods and fields of corn, peas, and peppers. Such new combinations of seemingly poor soil and happy flora puzzled me. Everywhere I went, I picked up the dirt, examining it for clues. Bringing anything out of such soil would require a whole new language on my part. I imagined that there must be something richer and darker under the gray sand, or some trick the farmers all knew. Trick or no trick, what I had always been able to do well now seemed inaccessible. Still, I searched the yard around our house for the best spot to plant my fall garden.
Meanwhile, with my hands and a good part of my days literally empty, I found myself turning again to Momma’s revelation. I circled the question of how could she have kept such a secret from me for so long. Often a second, unbidden, question followed: How could I? My daughters did not know their father’s origin. A dark, tender anxiety filled me.
One Saturday morning, I found Sarah sleeping next to a family portrait she’d drawn, a stair-step line of bright dresses and toothy smiles. Her nightmares were rare now and she could go to sleep without a light on, but she still slept with her art supplies and drew each night. In this newest drawing, I counted six of us girls and assumed she’d included Jennie. Since our move, the bloodiness had disappeared from her drawings, but so had Jennie, though Lil sometimes appeared outlined in ways that suggested a shadowy figure behind her. I was relieved to see Jennie whole and smiling among us. But I wondered why Sarah had left her father out. Then I saw penciled in below the two largest figures “Momma” and “Daddy.”
My gasp must have awakened her, for she stretched, then sat up to peer over at the portrait. Pointing to the tallest figure, she said, “This one is Daddy when he used to be a girl.” She regarded my startled face, then made a face at her drawing. “Should he have brown hair?”
I hadn’t heard Adam in the hall, but there he was, listening. He came over, searched her blankets, and held up the orange crayon. “This is what I remember having, Sarah. Orange hair, like yours and Momma’s, when I was a girl.”
“I remember, too, Daddy.” She nodded solemnly at him. “I like your hair now. I like you being a boy.” She took his hand. “Can I have oatmeal this morning with syrup?”
They both looked at me.
“Sure, oatmeal.” I felt dizzy as she rushed past me down the hall.
All children, when they are very young, confuse the male and female. Joe’s son had once asked me if I’d liked fishing when I was a boy. But Sarah was seven years old now, past the age for such confusions. She was correct, not confused.
In ways I could not pinpoint, she’d always seemed the one most like Adam, or rather Addie. She often seemed to know things she had no discernible way of knowing.
One evening, not long after we saw Sarah’s drawing, I asked Adam if he had ever told the girls—particularly Sarah—anything about himself and Addie. Adam had just returned from his shower. “No, I haven’t tried to explain anything to them.” He shrugged. “I can’t answer your questions. How would I answer theirs?”
He stepped into his boxers and climbed into bed with me.
“What should we tell them?” I asked.
“You could tell them about finding me, since you remember it better than me. And I guess I could tell them something about becoming who I am now. But not everything.”
“What did you do with Roy Hope in that hotel for two weeks?”
“Everything a body can do to know another body.” We both thought about that a moment.
“No.” I laughed. “You wouldn’t want to tell them about that. But what should we tell them and when?”
“Not now. They’re all too young. And they should all be told at the same time so they have company. You would be the best judge of when. When do you think Momma should have told you about your father?”
I had no answer.
Adam’s hair had grown out quickly, covering the scar on his head. The wound on his chest provided the smile for the happy face Sarah drew on him with a permanent marker. Each night, as he undressed, I saw that the circle and two dots had grown fainter, nearly vanishing, until she redrew them and the process began again.
While I puzzled over the soil and flat pastures, Adam was buoyant. He threw himself at Florida as if it was the Second Coming and redemption was at hand. For him, it was a kind of redemption, and his contagious enthusiasm pulled us all in. Even Gracie, who had begun dating, willingly joined in on her father’s explorations of Florida.
Adam studied Florida as he had my body when we first met. His interest quickly shifted from tourist attractions to geography and state parks. He familiarized himself with the local bookstores and libraries. On Saturday nights, he scattered the dining room and bedroom with books, maps, and pamphlets, covering every surface as he planned the next day’s outing. Somewhere, he found a huge geographical map of Florida and taped it to the dining-room wall. A changing constellation of bright red destination tacks dotted it. “Karst,” he said to me one night as he read at the dining-room table. He repeated the new word happily, savoring it. “Karst. That’s the name for this place. Limestone and water. That’s why the land feels so different here.”
With luck, he could be finished at the Warrens’ by ten on Sunday mornings and we would take off for a day’s excursion as soon as he walked in the door.
“Beats church,” Rosie said one Sunday morning as she helped me pack our picnic lunch.
“But won’t we go to hell for missing church and going off to do other stuff?” Sarah asked as she poured more cereal into her bowl. She was very interested in rules and the consequences of their violation.
“Not if we sing hymns while we’re on our way to the parks. That makes it the Church of Florida,” Rosie retorted.
“The Church of Florida” sounded good to all of us. So, on the way to beaches, caves, springs, parks, swamps, rivers—anywhere we could get to and back home in one day—we sang our way through every hymn we knew and saved our souls. We collected Steinhatchee scallops, canoed the Sewanee, and fished at Cedar Key. All the girls learned to snorkel. Adam and Rosie even learned to scuba-dive. Late Sunday nights, we drove home, the girls asleep around us, Adam and I alone in the lights of the dashboard.
Cool water obsessed us those first long, hot months. There were the dark, tannin-stained rivers and cold, crystal-clear rivers, their waters originating in swamps or from deep underground. Unlike the rivers of the Appalachian Mountains, these brooked no boulders, few rocks, no white-water rapids, no muddied rust-colored rise of spring thaw. Florida’s rivers were at peace with gravity, sliding along its belly instead of tumbling down into its embrace.
One river in particular excited Adam, the Santa Fe. The first Sunday after school let out for the summer, we drove out to O’Leno State Park and cooled ourselves in orange-brown water near the swimming dock. Then Adam announced that he had a surprise for all of us and led us down the trail that paralleled the bank.
When we reached an observation deck, he laughed and, holding his arms out, proudly announced, “A trickster river.”
Below us, the now-black river disappeared into the ground. Heat-stunned, the six of us watched a log crowded with three large turtles pivot in a slow, broad circle on the river surface. The river turned unnaturally and vanished, swallowed by the earth. Above the vortex, the air hung still and peculiarly leaden, almost reverent.
“It’s like a big toilet!” Sarah said in a hushed voice.
“Not quite. It resurfaces about two miles from here.” Adam pointed to our right.
“Must be some surprised fish and gators popping up there,” Rosie observed.
We continued on the path and circled the river’s end. Returning to our car, we crossed a swampy area of blac
k soil almost impassable for the clusters of cypress knees. The ground rustled with tiny dark toads that hopped away from our feet, clearing a path for us.
The disappearing river unnerved me. Rivers are supposed to lead us to the sea, not underground. I preferred the spring-fed rivers and pools to the blind waters of the dark rivers. We visited all of the area springs—Blue, Poe, Ichetucknee, Ginnie, Devil’s, Fanning—their cold waters so clear we could see the white sandy bottom. At Poe Springs, I stood, chin-deep in the chilling water, and edged along the spring’s lip, knowing from the intensity and purity of the blue generally where the drop-off would be but unable to be certain because of the glare of the sun and the water’s distortion. Then, suddenly, there was no toehold, and I trod, suspended, almost breathless, above the bottomless place where the water comes out, thousands of gallons per second. That first glance down past my own feet into the dark turquoise mouth of the earth echoed the moment I saw the pulse in Jennie’s neck stop, and the first time I saw death on my mother’s face. I had stepped off the edge of the earth, over an abyss that could have drowned me, yet I continued to breathe.
Adam wanted me to learn to snorkel. But every time I put my face in the water, I fought an instinctive panic. Unable to convince my body that I could breathe with my face underwater, I heaved and sucked air until I hyperventilated. Though I was a good enough swimmer and eventually learned to relax and enjoy snorkeling, the fear of having my face underwater never left me completely. Adam saw my panic, but he persisted, asking me to learn to scuba-dive and go cave-exploring with him. I could use Rosie’s equipment and everything would be fine, he kept telling me, but I refused each time. Going underground seemed too much for him to ask of me. When Adam and Rosie disappeared into the blue, the river and earth gulping them, I turned down the other girls’ invitations to play or swim. I sat on the shore, within sight of the guide rope tied to the roots on the bank, checking to see if it had been pulled taut, a sign that they were lost, blinded by kicked-up silt, or hurt and using the rope to find their way back.
At times, I felt left out, unable to share Adam’s love of this new place. I would have been jealous, but his enthusiasm for Florida was paralleled by his renewed desire for me at night. The jarring, fierce quality of grief lost its grip on our intimacy. The returning tenderness made it easier for me to forgive Florida its flat unfamiliarity, its alien, sandy soil, its odd weeds and grasses, and its endless wet heat.
The days thickened into full summer heat, and the rain came daily. Suddenly the girls were home all day and we were trapped inside by the oppressive heat and rain. The rain began in July and did not stop. Thunder rattled our little wood-frame house that stood like a lightning rod in the flat pasture. North Carolina had its summer storms, but they were a whisper to the shout and sudden fury of the Florida storms. Thick, heavy drops spat down from the sky onto hot sand. Everything sizzled, then steamed. We draped damp laundry over doors and chairs, anywhere we could fit it. The floors and beds were gritty with sand tracked in on wet shoes and boots.
The newspaper featured pictures of sandbagged houses and the top of a child’s swing set half-visible in a flooded backyard. I found little consolation in knowing the weather that summer was not the norm and I was not alone in my amazement under such a relentless sky.
In early September, soon after the girls had started school, Adam had a rare weekday afternoon off and asked me to join him on a trip to the springs. We left a note for the girls, in case they got home from school before we returned.
We drove out near High Springs and down a sandy road. Then we parked beside another car in a clearing. A mother and two small children picnicking on a blanket nodded their hellos. The children’s wet hair clung to their heads. Otherwise, we were alone. There were no paved roads near the Devil’s Springs then, no concession stands or bathrooms, just a path, woods, and the water.
I followed Adam to the back of the truck to help unload his diving gear. I didn’t see a snorkel, but there were two scuba tanks.
“Where is my snorkel?” I asked, my hands on my hips.
He picked up the tanks. “It’s not much different from snorkeling. And I know you listened to everything I taught Rosie. Come on.” He strode off toward the water, tanks and belts in hand.
“Only in the shallow parts,” I warned, as I followed him with the masks and fins.
Adam shot me one quick glance, but no response, as he plunged into the chest-deep water.
“Only in the places where I would snorkel. Nothing deep,” I added.
He stopped rinsing the tanks and stepped over to the bank where I sat. He touched my cheek very softly, his cool, wet fingers sliding up to my temple. “Only the shallow? But you like it deep.” He grinned.
I rolled my eyes at him but returned his smile. “Not in the water.”
I slipped into the cold water next to him and let him hoist the tank onto my back. He showed me how to breathe, how to check the air, and how to share one mouthpiece if one of us ran out of air or got into trouble, repeating the lessons he’d given Rosie. The gear felt awkward, and heavier than I would have thought.
Scuba-diving in the chest-high river was pleasant. I had to admit Adam was right. Except for the change in buoyancy with the tank, it wasn’t all that different from snorkeling. Sunlight still warmed my back and shimmered silver-blue through the water. As I gazed down at the grasses, I knew I could surface in seconds. I was happy diving a few feet under to get a closer look at a rock or log, pleased with myself for having made my compromise with Adam’s enthusiasm for the river. Adam dived lower, glided along the bottom, and circled the small lagoon that surrounded the cobalt mouth of the spring.
When he surfaced and removed his tank and flippers, I assumed he was ready to go home, and began to take mine off, too. He held up his hand. “No, don’t. Not yet. I’m just going to the car.”
He came back with a light and a thick coil of rope. He had bought a new underwater flashlight recently. Seeing the expensive, shiny new light in his hand reminded me of how comparatively well off we’d been since selling that little corner of the farm before we left Clarion. But I was glad he had the new light. The old one had been secondhand and rusty. I hated to think of him suddenly without light, deep underground.
I leaned on the bank, watching him work his feet back into the flippers. I’d taken my tank off. It lay sleeping on the bank. I was done, I could relax. Adam smiled his happiest, most seductive smile as he adjusted his tank and checked the light. Sunshine streamed down through the trees, speckling the water.
He tied the rope to a tall, thick cypress knee, picked up my tank, and walked out into the water—I thought to rinse it. Instead he turned, holding it up toward me. “You just hold on to me. I’ll do the work.”
“Oh, no.” Panic tightened my chest. “You go on. I’ll wait here.” I was ashamed of my fear, even with him, and tried to keep my voice casual. But I had shrunk back, certain that he heard the unsteady jerk of my diaphragm in my words.
“It is no different from doing it right here. All you have to do is hold on to me and breathe.”
Tree roots and limestone dug into my back. I pressed my hands into the gritty, slick sand on either side of me.
“It is so beautiful, Evelyn. I just want to show you what I see when I’m down there.” He looked straight at me, not smiling anymore but waiting, holding one hand out.
I shook my head again. I wanted to say yes, yes for him, but my fear held like iron.
Adam spoke softly, his face resolved and patient. “I want to show you what I see. I want you to feel what I feel. Come on. For me.”
I curled my hands, digging my fingertips into the bank behind me. Suddenly I remembered how he had done the same, the nights after Jennie and Momma, when he lay under me, arms outstretched, shaking his head but letting me take him all the same. Letting me have him. I had felt the dense coil of pain in him then. But in the end he came with me.
I owed him the same.
I let go of
the bank and took his hand. Without a word, he helped me into my tank and fastened the weight belt around my waist. We moved carefully and slowly. He adjusted my mask, smoothed my hair, and pulled me close. “Just relax. I have you. Hold on. Keep a good grip on my belt and swim behind me. Keep your head down behind my tank while we’re in the current. Once we’re in the first room and get out of the current, move your fins as little as possible.”
I nodded, but my heart pounded, and my skin felt numb and hard. Then we went under, into the silence of water and my staccato breathing.
Over the brilliant mouth of the spring, he handed me the light. He gave a few powerful kicks and we entered the current of the spring. Like a strong, silent wind, it pressed at the top of my head. I kicked hard and could feel Adam using his hands to pull us into the mouth of the cave. The rough rope coiling out from his belt slid against my hip. Beyond our feet was the silver surface of the air. I tightened my grip on his belt. Then there was darkness, and I closed my eyes.
The walls of the spring mouth scraped my arm and the top of my tank. In jerks, Adam pulled us in, gripping the walls of the opening and pulling us down. Down, down, down. I tried to make myself as light and small as I could, forced myself to think of nothing but my breath, my hands on his belt, and my kicking legs.