Wash

by Margaret Wrinkle

  Thompson’s enthusiasm was almost contagious. He’d found a ramshackle house on a nearby island called Nags Head and he was moving out there. All he needed was a brand new negro to take with him. One with no ties yet to anyone or anything. He said Mena sounded perfect. Of course, neither of us knew at the time that she was pregnant with Wash or that it would take me nineteen years to get them back.

  Thompson

  All I wanted was to be left alone and Mena looked like she knew how to do that. I had my boys carry us to this island the following week. Showed them the house I’d bought for nickels. They were horrified. Called it a rickety shack and stood around in my sandy yard fussing about my living out here by myself.

  They took so strongly after my wife’s mother, there was not a trace of me in either of them. Both of them so blond and clean featured, they looked almost girlish. Campbell leaning tall and thin and hesitant towards his younger brother Eli who took the lead in everything whether he knew how to manage it or not.

  I worked hard to give those boys and their sister a good life but I never expected they’d always want more. More money coming in so they could buy fancier things, trying to act like they’re not living in the middle of godforsaken nowhere. I wanted to tell them we’re not in England, for God’s sake. We’re in the New World. Why would you want to go back to all that old rigamarole?

  But I guess it’s whatever you don’t know and haven’t had that pulls on you. I’d walked the halls of Parliament and known all those people. Same warts and gas underneath those fancy clothes, and even the powerful are weak to someone. To be fair, I’d spent my time chasing those same things but I was finished with it while my boys were just getting started.

  As I walked them down to my crooked little dock, I remember wishing I could find a way to like them more. Never suspected I’d be so glad to see those two climb back in my boat and go. Said I didn’t want to see them or anyone else from my place except for every three months to drop off my staples and send my man Paymore when they couldn’t make it.

  This house had just what I needed. Two rooms, each one backed up to the big central fireplace. Good broad windows with shutters that closed tight. A porch looking out over the sound in the distance, a kitchen attached to the side, and a loft upstairs for Mena. Plenty of room up there and it stayed warm next to the chimney. Row of small windows ran under the eaves and two at each end swung open for a cross breeze and some light.

  The whole house was sheltered even as it had a long view. It sat in a dip at the top of a small hill. High enough to dodge rising water but squat enough to duck the wind. Wind coming off that water could tear the hair right from your head.

  Thickets of wax myrtles growing close kept us pretty well hidden. A wide meadow full of rusty gold grass fell away towards the sound shimmering behind a row of pines. Huckleberries roped with vines made another dense thicket all the way to the road which was deep sand and slow going. Bad road, tangled woods, and two big dogs made sure no one snuck up on us.

  Good people out here but kind of woolly. No real pirates left but it was a pretty rough crew. We came from all walks of life and we pretty much left each other be. My boys tried to turn up their noses, but to me it was a relief. I’ve always liked all kinds and my wife did too. A bit of an adventurer she was. Could talk to a post. She would have enjoyed this place. Should have come here sooner. Brought her with me. Might have saved her from the fever.

  The land and the weather out here made good levelers. Didn’t matter what you came in with. All that mattered was what you could do with what you had. There was some filching going on, drawing the ships onto the rocks to gut them for whatever they carried. But I kept my back turned. Did not get involved.

  They were roughnecks but they had some ethics. Watched me nod just as normal as anything when we rode past each other and pretty soon, their scrawny wives started bringing me pails of blueberries. I nodded to thank them and sent Mena over there every now and then with a bird slung over her shoulder.

  I taught her the island but soon found she knew more than me. She was good about melting into the woods. Got so she could scare me half to death, stepping out only when I rode right up on her. My horse shied every time.

  I taught her how to speak enough English to be useful and how to use my gun in case anything happened to me. My boys would’ve dragged me home and locked me up for sure if they’d known. But Mena wasn’t going anywhere. She kept her eyes on the water, but I could tell she knew that pulling something with me wouldn’t carry her back as far as she wanted to go.

  She had it all right with me. Some work cooking and cleaning but not too much. I tended to wear my clothes until they stood up on their own and I was a threat to cook a little myself and check on the garden too. She was spared the heavy chores since I had our staples dropped off every few months. Candles, preserves, soap and jars of smoked meat. She had wood to gather but the storms did most of it for her and gathering gave her a reason to go to the beach. Not bad. Not bad at all.

  I had Mena on a task system and she kept her own clock as soon as she had her chores done. She rose in the dark so she could make it to the ocean and back before breakfast. But I started waking earlier and earlier myself as the days lengthened. I sometimes made a dawn ride. One loop around our end of the island and through the dunes. My old gelding seemed to like the change of pace and it sure beat lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. Aging angered me to the point that I was drawn into an endless fight against it. Trick was to keep moving so I added a swim whenever I could manage.

  On my early rides, I sometimes came across Mena hovering at the water’s edge with her eyes locked on the horizon and her long dark dress growing darker from where she kept stepping into the surf. She looked to me almost like a setter on point, pulled towards whatever it was she saw out there.

  That first time I saw her in the water, I watched to make sure she was staying in the shallows, then I rode on. But when I came to the house after putting my horse away and found her fixing my breakfast with her dress wet up to her waist, I started to worry she would drown. I tried forbidding the ocean but soon found I had no leverage I was willing to use so I just fretted.

  Then one day I was up first. It was a hot calm morning with no waves. One big sheet of water glowing glassy pink and so still that I stepped right in. Softest water I ever felt. I must have lost track of time because Mena was coming through the dunes, headed for the water just as I was stepping out of it. Made me glad I had kept my drawers on. Gladder still that I was finally finished with all that business.

  But something about that morning made me realize I was tired of worrying Mena might drown. I decided to teach her to swim, just like I’d taught Eli and Campbell. First, how to float so she wouldn’t panic from sinking. I stood facing her then lay back in the water, lifting my eyes to the sky, breathing shallowly and letting water fill my ears. Then I stood up and gestured for her to do the same.

  It took her a minute. She kept kneeling in the water instead of lying back and I kept telling her no. Stay stiff like a plank. Then she’d nod and do the same thing. I turned her facing out to sea, laid one palm on the small of her back and used the other on her forehead, telling her to lean back but lie flat.

  “Don’t crouch and quit kneeling, dammit.”

  Soon as she did like I’d told her, I saw why she’d been working so hard not to. Soon as she lay back, soon as her dark billowy dress lay drenched against her front, I saw her belly for the first time. It reared up so round, I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it before. She was good and pregnant. Five months by my best guess. My mouth dropped open as she lay there floating in my palm but she kept her eyes on the clouds. Wouldn’t look at me but she started breathing shallow just like I’d showed her. When I took my hand away, she floated on her own.

  As I stood beside her, watching that soft pink water lapping close around her swelling belly, all I could think was time is strange and there’s no escaping it ever. I felt that door I work so hard to ke
ep bolted shut swing wide open and I was furious all over again at Sissy for refusing to let me teach our boy to swim.

  After I lost my wife, it took me five years to go to the quarters when it should have taken me forever. Sissy somehow managed to make it seem like she was choosing me when nothing was further from the truth. But her husband was already dead and she needed gold pieces as much as anyone. Soon enough there was a son. And from his very beginning, my third boy looked and acted so much like me that my chest caved in to lay eyes on him.

  But I tried to leave him to Sissy. Thought it would be easier on everybody. The only thing I insisted on was that he learn to swim. That big lake wrapped so close around my place seemed to be asking for trouble. But Sissy said she didn’t want that water touching even his feet and she pitched such a fit when I sent for him that I let it go.

  So when this third boy of mine, the only one who actually resembled me, when he ventured too far afield on the day he turned fifteen, and when those hooligans from the next county over called him a runaway and chased him with dogs into deep water on the far side of my lake, when he went in over his head rather than let them catch him, it did not take him long to drown. The biggest dog kept after him so he was still kicking and thrashing as the water came warm and maybe even welcome into his lungs.

  Those damn crackers dropped him at the back of my barn like they were throwing something away. I stood over his body laid out in my last stall for the longest time. Everything about him was me. Back when I was young and strong and thought I knew. All of it covered in a golden cast.

  There was not much else of Sissy to be found in his face, no matter how hard she’d worked to keep him from me. And it was his resemblance to me that did him in. It was his looking like me, talking like me and acting like me that had set my neighbors so firmly against him.

  When I knelt next to his body, I had to grab fistfuls of yellow straw to keep myself from running my fingers along all the echoes. Brows and jawline, shoulders and elbows, even forearms and hands. Somehow I knew Sissy would not want me touching our boy. Not even now.

  I tried to wrap his body so she would never know about that last dog but I was too late. She’d caught word and pounded on the stall door, saying let me see, he is mine, let me see, over and over until she was screaming and the horses were with her in her panic. I lifted the latch before too much of a crowd could gather.

  I could not bear to watch her running her fingers over our boy’s face then trying to mend the gashes in his forearm so I turned and left. Made sure she had what she needed for the funeral and worked to put it out of my mind. I buried my third son deep and then hunted a rock heavy enough to hold him down.

  One morning, I had myself convinced Mena had run because I could not find her anywhere. Rode up and down the beach until I saw her folded dress nestled under some sea oats. After I reined in my gelding to look, I found her face breaking the wide smooth sweep of the water’s surface. She floated right outside the waves, rising and falling on the incoming swells, drifting along the shoreline with the current. I had to watch for a while to make sure it was her and not a piece of driftwood. Every now and then, she’d break her float, twisting to burrow down into the water like it was a blanket.

  My horse shifted his weight and snorted. Chewed the bit and tossed his head, trying to jerk his mouth free, so I loosed the reins and let him walk on out. I’d have stayed awhile longer but the morning was too soft to fight him. He veered away from the beach and headed back through the dunes towards the house.

  Mena was always where I needed her to be so I let her have the water. The fact that I could deny her wasn’t enough for me to do it. I did tell her later to be careful about who saw her out there. That some folks might think she was a witch to be so easy with it. She looked at me nodding then went her own way just like always.

  Her belly swelled all summer while she swam and worked and swam. She kept going in even as the water started to cool because Wash was big inside her. There was a long late summer that year and the water coming up around her belly seemed to be the only thing that gave her relief. So Wash knew the movement of water before he was ever born. That and the rip and crash of the waves too.

  I thought about having Paymore carry our midwife Lucy out here to bring Wash into the world. After all, Wash and Mena were my money to Richardson and I could not afford to lose either of them. But Mena shook her head no. Said she didn’t want strangers close while she was down. Besides, it’s not like I had one foot in the grave. I was still a good enough shot and if I couldn’t pour hot water over some meal then God help me.

  Wash kept us waiting well into November. He was late being born, as if he didn’t want to come. Or maybe he was storing up. I watched Mena good but she slipped through my fingers. Shut her loft door right in my face and didn’t open it till well after I heard him yelling. By the time I climbed the stairs, she had him settled in her lap, sitting close to the warm chimney. She tipped one shoulder back so I could see him good. He was fat and healthy with big eyes shining bright in his dark square face. Sized me up as solemn as a judge before turning back to her.

  I left them to it and we stayed lucky that winter. Wash was a good baby and quiet but he’d look right through you from day one. Made you want to hear what he had to say well before he had any words. Sissy would say he’s been here before and I’d believe her.

  He didn’t start to really fret till late spring but he sure made up for lost time. Enough of his coughing wail and I’d jerk my head towards the beach, telling Mena to take him and she did.

  Soon as the water started warming, she went right in. Kept him tied tight to her, either facing her chest or else looking out over her shoulder from his place on her back. Often water was the only thing to soothe him. Seemed like no time at all before she was taking him deeper into the waves. Cupping her hand over his face and ducking into the curl but always bringing him up before he had a chance to panic.

  I watched her lay those memories into that boy. Pale green light arching around him, a roaring going down into his bones and water pouring. He was quiet like her but I saw that slow smile break across his face as those white patterns of foam slid down his skinny sides. Pretty soon, he could swim on his own and hold his breath for a long time too. Worrying her and me both until he’d pop back up with a small round stone in his hand, beaming.

  Wash

  My mamma kept pulling me into deeper water, telling me it was safer there, but it was a long time before I’d believe her. Used to be, I’d stay right at the edge thinking I knew best. But that shorebreak knocked me round till I learned to take her word for it.

  She’d watch me come staggering out and tilt her head, with one side of her mouth crooking down, trying not to smile. She was saying you can let me tell you or you can find out for yourself, either way. I’d lie down beside her till the sky stopped spinning. Enough of that and I’d head straight for the deep where she liked to stay.

  We’d bob out there, watching the backs of the waves rise up as they rolled away from us to crash on the sand. She showed me the foam pulling into new shapes. Said that’s what happens in ceremony. All that swirling, that’s what spirit feels like when it gets to moving. Even in this quiet water out here, it’s rising and falling like breathing. You feel it tugging on you? That’s how spirit moves, once you learn to listen. And you can drown on dry land just as easy as you can drown in this ocean, so pay attention.

  She made altars all over that island. The first one I barely remember. It was in a real hidden place where palmetto leaves brushed my face when I stepped through and saw two mud people, all worn down. Ancestors. They was us and we’ll be them was what she said as she sprinkled water and some ash then knelt there talking to em for a long time.

  I was still small when we went one day and found em broke in half, kicked in the dust. She wrapped the broken pieces in a white cloth and took em to the water. Held em under till they melted, then rinsed the cloth out good. Looked out over the waves like she was s
aying go on home. Maybe it’s safer there.

  After that, she always made her altars look like an accident. Just some junk so nobody else saw it for what it was. She made one in our loft but she left it real makeshift in case Thompson ever climbed up there. Just a small pile of stones laying on a bed of pine straw in the far corner.

  And she made offerings too. Long curved seedpods for the life they carried. A faded turtle shell for patience laid inside the pale curved rib of a fox. A few scattered shark teeth sharp enough to cut. Wild pink roses from the bush beside the front porch steps just because she liked the smell.

  She’d take each treasure and breathe on it, or else rub it against her throat or inside her elbow, then lay it down on the pine straw. Whenever it started to feel crowded, she’d nod at me to pick a few to take and bury at the foot of our favorite trees. Sometimes she’d take a pocketful of petals down to the beach and wade in the water to scatter em till they drifted in a bigger and bigger circle.

  She’d talk about it some but told me watch out for words, no matter what tongue. Said she didn’t get time to learn everything for sure so she just tried to see with her heart.

  Make some place to kneel and leave your offerings. It keeps you thankful.Take your journeys in the spirit world first. Be sure you go all the way there and back in spirit before you even step out your own door. It’s easier for God to keep an eye on you, knowing what you have in mind. And make your piece. Keep that talisman strong and wear it till it’s done. Then lay it somewhere safe but not till after you make your next one.

  She made my pieces for me when I was little, chewing a small patch of leather till it was soft enough while she gathered what she knew I needed, then stitching everything up tight inside. She’d wear it awhile before she strung it round my neck or else my waist. She never even told me what was in there.

  Then one day it was time for me to make my own. She sent me to find my treasures. Told me bring back only what I needed the most, but I was about to turn seven so I came back with a shirttail full. Laid everything out, all proud. Then I looked up to see her holding my next piece of leather so small in her palm. I had so much too much, it hurt my throat.