The Girl of the Sea of Cortez: A Novel

by Peter Benchley

  What Jobim did not know, and what Miranda could not bring herself to tell him, was that by taking Paloma to sea he was taking her forever away from her mother, depriving Miranda of the solace that a daughter was supposed to supply to a woman. He was condemning Miranda to a daily loneliness that would sadden her for the rest of her life, for by the time of Jobim’s death, Paloma’s independence had been so firmly established that Miranda could not have changed it even if she had tried. Not only did Paloma relish her way of life, but now she felt an obligation to her father to live as he had guided her to. She saw her life as having no limits. Perhaps the limits were there, and if so, someday she would confront them. But not yet.

  Paloma recognized, however, that she had responsibilities to her mother, one of which contributed to her decision to return home in the middle of the afternoon. It was important that the people in her mother’s world not think that Paloma considered herself too good for everyday chores.

  “It is one thing to be quiet and alone and even a bit strange,” Viejo had said to her one day. “People will call that growing pains and let it pass. But you must not remove yourself altogether. People will not understand. They will resent you and dislike you, become your enemies, and you do not want any more enemies than necessary.”

  Paloma did not want any enemies at all. And so, every few days she returned home in time to be with her mother and help her hang out the wash or prepare the meal or clean the house. Almost as important as doing these daughter things was to be seen doing them, for then the other women would cluck and mutter that Paloma was a good girl, after all, that she was sensitive to her mother’s great loss, that she might turn out to be a source of comfort in her mother’s old age. And so on.

  It was a gesture; Paloma knew it and Miranda knew it. Miranda didn’t need help; she felt she didn’t have enough to do as it was. But neither did she need the patronizing sympathy of others. Miranda was grateful for the gesture, and for Paloma’s presence.

  When Paloma reached the dock, Miranda and the other women were washing clothes. Beside the dock was a shelf of flat rocks that led into the water. The women gathered there and soaked their clothes and pounded soap into them with stones and rinsed them. They piled the clean clothes into baskets that would be taken up the hill for a final, fresh-water rinsing.

  Paloma knelt beside Miranda and pounded clothes. No one acknowledged her arrival; the women chattered on around her. They were not ignoring her: To the contrary, they were accepting her—quietly, naturally, as if she had been there all along. It was their gesture to Miranda, for to have greeted Paloma and asked her questions would have directed attention to what was politely regarded as Paloma’s peculiarity. No other girl went out on the sea all day long and did God-knows-what.

  Sometimes Paloma felt like a person with a chronic affliction, like a spastic tic. People’s attitude seemed to be: Poor thing, she can’t help it, let’s just ignore it. It increased her sense of being alone. But in another way she was glad for the treatment, for it reinforced her feeling of being special.

  Paloma never volunteered information about what she had seen and done during the day. Most of the women would not have believed her, and that would have embarrassed Miranda. Those that did believe her would not want to hear what she had to say, for it went against all they had been taught about the sea.

  From birth, most of the children of the islands were told that the sea was hostile. The people lived from the sea, could not possibly have existed without it, and yet it was viewed not as an ally but as an adversary. The attitude made no sense to Paloma, for she had been taught exactly the opposite, and once she had asked Viejo where the hostility had come from. “It has always been,” he said with a shrug. “The sea does not give; man takes from it. Perhaps it began as a way to make man feel stronger, that he has dominion over the sea as well as over the animals.”

  “I think it’s silly,” Paloma had said.

  “It may be,” Viejo had nodded. “But it is the way things are.”

  To the women who washed and cooked and cleaned and never went on the water, the sea was alien and dangerous, populated by creatures that were ferocious, slimy, poisonous, starved for human flesh. They were comfortable with that view of the sea, and they would not have welcomed contradictions from a young girl.

  As excited as Paloma was when she returned to the dock, as tempted to tell everyone what wonders she had encountered today, she restrained herself. She would wait to tell her mother when they were alone.

  When the washing was done, Paloma picked up the heavy basket of wet clothes and followed Miranda up the hill. With a hand pump they washed the salt off the clothes, then draped them over a line behind the house.

  They worked in silence, but it was a busy silence, for Paloma wanted very much to tell her mother about the manta ray and Miranda knew Paloma had something she wanted to say, and that she was trying to find a way to tell her.

  Paloma did not want to frighten Miranda, so she could not say how big the manta was, nor how close to it she had gotten—let alone that she had knelt on its back and been tossed off violently. And she had to reassure Miranda that no one else knew what she had been doing, that no one else would know, that it would not become a subject of public gossip. What Paloma did all day every day caused enough chatter; fooling around with a giant devilfish might get her branded as a witch. Miranda had had a husband whose reputation was as a rebel and a troublemaker. She had a son who spent all his time concocting harebrained schemes to make money—enough money to get him off the island and into a technical school in Mexico City, where the Lord alone knew what would happen to him. To add to those two a daughter who was a witch would be altogether too much for her to bear.

  By now, the sun had dropped low and had begun to turn red. A light breeze was blowing through the hanging clothes, and the tails of the shirts made soft snapping sounds. Miranda sniffed and nodded and was satisfied; it was a good breeze.

  There were three regular breezes that blew over Santa Maria Island. One was bad for drying clothes, one was fair, and one was good. The east wind was bad, because it blew across the dry, dusty eastern part of the island and carried dirt and dust with it. Clothes that had dried in an east wind felt gritty and itchy. Breezes from the west and south were fair. They came over the water. On dry days they carried a faint smell of the sea, but on humid days they were heavy with mist and salt. Clothes took forever to dry, and felt clammy.

  This was a breeze from the north. It was dry and fresh and sweet because it had traveled over the highest part of the island, where cacti and wild desert flowers grew. It was a small thing, but Miranda’s life was made of small things, good and bad, and because the breeze was good she was pleased.

  They walked inside the house and began to prepare the fire for the evening meal.

  “I saw a giant manta ray today,” Paloma said at last.

  “That’s nice,” said Miranda, without looking up from the fireplace where she was smoothing out the dead ashes before laying new wood.

  “It was wounded. I think it got fouled in a fisherman’s nets.”

  Miranda started to say “That’s nice” again, but it seemed inappropriate, so all she said was, “Oh?”

  “It didn’t move well. There were ropes hanging out of the wound. It must have been in very bad pain.”

  This time Miranda had nothing to say, so she nodded.

  “I wanted to help it, but …”

  “God will take care of it, He will decide.” Miranda spoke fast, as if spitting the words out in a rush would add emphasis, would convince Paloma not to meddle. It was like a person in an argument he knows he is losing who decides, as a last recourse, to shout.

  “Well then,” Paloma said, “he seems to want to let the manta die in agony, or get eaten by sharks.”

  “If that is His will, so be it.”

  “So be it,” Paloma repeated. She did not intend to argue with her mother. It was an argument that could have no winners, only losers.
r />   “What fairy tales are you telling now?” It was Jo’s voice, and it came from behind Paloma.

  She spun around. Jo was slouching against the doorway, a smirk on his face.

  “Nothing.” Paloma could not know how much Jo had overheard, but she did not want to discuss the manta ray with him. A big, wounded animal was something Jo could visualize in only one way: price per pound.

  “Giant devilfish, wounded and bleeding, cared for by nurse Paloma,” Jo snickered as he came into the room. “Why do you listen to this foolishness, Mama?”

  “Now, Jo …” Miranda said, and busied herself with the fireplace.

  “Sometimes I wonder if you ever leave the dock,” Jo said to Paloma. “I think maybe you sit here all day and make up tales.”

  “Think what you like,” Paloma said.

  After a moment’s pause, Jo asked, “Did you really see a big manta ray?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it didn’t attack you?”

  “No!”

  “It must have been really hurt. Devilfish are mean.”

  Paloma didn’t argue. If Jo wanted to believe that, she would not disrupt his fantasy.

  “How big was he?”

  “Big,” Paloma replied. “Bigger than this room.”

  Jo whistled. “He’d bring a fancy price.”

  “See, Mama?” Paloma said. “He hears about an injured animal, and right away he wants to kill it.”

  “Well, Paloma,” her mother said, “that is how we live.”

  “A lot you bring into the house,” Jo said. “Have you ever brought home a single fish?” He held up a finger. “One fish? Even one?”

  “I …”

  “You what? You nothing. Where was this manta ray?”

  Paloma gestured vaguely. “Out there.”

  “Out where?”

  “In the sea.”

  “I know in the sea. Where in the sea?”

  “It doesn’t matter. He’s gone.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I hurt him and he flew away.”

  “You hurt him how?”

  Paloma did not think before she spoke. “I pulled some of the ropes out of his wound and it hurt him.”

  Miranda stood up. She looked stricken. “You what?”

  Jo said, “You got that close? I don’t believe it.”

  “Don’t believe it then,” Paloma said, knowing that Jo believed every word.

  “You what?” Miranda said again.

  “Don’t worry, Mama,” Paloma said. “There wasn’t any danger.”

  “She’s right, Mama,” Jo said. “There wasn’t any danger, because it didn’t happen.”

  Miranda looked from Jo to Paloma and back again, not knowing what to believe, certain only that she had something to worry about: If Paloma had done what she said, it was right to worry about her safety; if she had not, then a mother should worry about a daughter who makes up stories.

  Sensing Miranda’s confusion, Paloma said again, “Don’t worry, Mama. The important thing is, we’re all here and we’re all safe.”

  Because Miranda wanted to believe that, she chose to, and she turned to her work.

  Jo did not mention the manta again. During supper, he spoke without bluster about the day’s fishing, about what he had caught and what he had hoped to catch, about how it was nice that the price for grouper had risen but the reason it had risen was that the fish were growing scarcer. Or perhaps they had just moved to other grounds.

  “Do you see groupers out where you go?” he asked Paloma.

  “Some.”

  “More than before, or less?”

  Paloma shrugged. “About the same.”

  “You ought to bring some home.”

  “I don’t fish.”

  “I know.” Jo paused. “Maybe someday I should come have a look where you are.”

  Paloma felt all her interior warning systems go off at once, but she forced herself to stay slouched in her chair, looking nonchalant. “Wouldn’t be worth your time. There’s not much there.”

  “What keeps you going, then?”

  “I study different things.” She glanced at Jo. “Things Papa wanted me to study.”

  Jo turned away and said, tight-lipped, “Sure.”

  After supper, Miranda washed the plates and cups, and Paloma swabbed the table with a wet rag. Jo sat and watched.

  At the end of a long silence, Jo said, “I’ve decided. I’d like you to teach me to dive.”

  “You would?” It was the first time Jo had ever asked Paloma to teach him anything. “What do you want to dive for? You said yourself it’s a waste of time.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe I’ve been wrong.”

  Paloma looked at her mother and said, “I think Jo is sick.”

  “He asks you to help him,” Miranda said sternly. “That is good. Now what do you say?”

  Paloma looked at Jo. “But you know how to dive. At least, you did once.”

  “Yeah, well.” Jo was blushing. “That didn’t work out too well.”

  Paloma knew the story—how Jobim had led Jo into diving step by step, first in knee-deep water, then in water up to Jo’s chin, then in water just over his head, then in water where the bottom was ten or fifteen feet away.

  Jo had had all the lessons, knew all the rules, had done everything his father had asked him to do—and hated every minute of it. He had felt uncomfortable, unnatural, in the water, and he felt actually threatened by deep water. But he had never dared tell his father, for Jobim’s approval was the most important thing in the world. The next most important thing was to be with Jobim, to spend his days with him, and the only way to do that was to dive. So Jo had resolved to force himself.

  One day, Jobim had taken Jo into the open sea for the first time. They went to where they could not see bottom, for Jobim wanted Jo to learn to gauge the depth by the feel of the water pressure on his body and by looking up at the surface from underwater.

  They went down the anchor line, and at about forty feet Jo was seized by a fit of claustrophobia. Where some people feel free in open water, Jo felt trapped. The water was pressing on every bit of his body, confining him, suffocating him. There was no land anywhere, not below, not on the sides, not above. Everything was blue and heavy and oppressive. He had to leave.

  He had screamed underwater and flailed with his arms and clawed his way up the anchor line. The line caught between his snorkel and his mask. Thrashing to free himself, he twisted the rubber strap even tighter around the line.

  Jobim had grabbed him, tried to subdue him, but panic made Jo even stronger than he was normally, and he kicked and punched and tore his father’s mask from his face.

  Jo might have drowned both of them if Jobim had not felt, blindly, for his son’s throat and wrapped his hand around it and squeezed until the boy lost consciousness and could be taken swiftly to the surface.

  No, recalling the story of that day, Paloma could not imagine why Jo suddenly wanted to dive again, or why suddenly he thought he could dive without panicking. But she said, “All right. If you want.”

  “Good. I want to see all the things you see. Tomorrow?”

  Paloma spoke quickly. “No, not tomorrow. I’ve got … too many things to do.” She had nothing to do, but tomorrow was too soon. She had to have time to think about what Jo could have in mind, for she could not believe that his request meant only what it said. Too many things about it were unlike him.

  “Soon, then.”

  “Yes. Soon.”

  Jo stood and yawned and said good night and walked through the front door and disappeared into the night. His room was around the corner, connected to the house but separate in that it had its own entrance from outside. That was one of the privileges a boy acquired when, at the age of fourteen, he underwent the elaborate, old-fashioned mystical ritual of becoming a man. As far as Paloma could tell, all the ritual accomplished was to give the boys privileges. It didn’t make them men; it called them men.

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bsp; Paloma and her mother shared a corner of the main room of the house. Neither of them had any privacy in their home at any time of the day or night.

  Now Paloma thought how strange it was for Jo to have asked for her help in anything. This was a significant concession: For him to acknowledge that she—a girl—might know more about something worthwhile than he did was remarkable.

  She would have to be careful with Jo, take each step cautiously and try to fit it into an overall picture.

  She was surprised to find that she truly cared about what these changes in Jo might mean, and she realized it was a reflection of her loneliness, of the quiet desperation she had felt as she paddled home from the seamount that afternoon. To get along with Jo, to establish a relationship, perhaps even to make a friend—that would be a fine thing for Paloma, who had never had a friend.

  The last time the relationship between Paloma and Jo had resembled a friendship had been when Paloma was five and Jo was four: Back then, they had played together happily. But soon Jo had found a pack of boys to run with, and Paloma had found herself either taunted or excluded, and she had begun to hate being a girl.

  Then Jobim had taken Jo away, and left Paloma to Miranda, to be raised in Miranda’s image. The two children had less and less—and finally nothing—in common.

  Then had come the break, the reversal from which Jo had not recovered, when Jobim had returned him to Miranda and had taken Paloma with him, to make her the special one.

  Still, for a long time Paloma had believed that it was bad to be a girl. For a while, she had dressed like a boy, cut her hair short like a boy’s, learned to laugh at jokes directed at her—as if laughing with the joke, saying, “Yes, isn’t it ridiculous to be a girl? Aren’t I foolish? Well, I won’t be a girl for long, and then we’ll all have a good laugh at what I used to be.”

  Jobim—as a male who had never wanted to be anything else—could not have understood the depth of the anxiety and confusion Paloma was feeling. But he knew generally what was wrong, deduced that it had to come from her being the only girl of her age on the island, and guessed that her feelings about herself and her sex were jumbled, confused.