Water Steps

by A. LaFaye

  He kicked a tree. “I don’t think that.” Picking at the bark, he said, “I saw that silkie, Kyna. I really did.”

  His sadness seeped inside me and felt familiar. The kids at school made me feel that way all the time. What with my aversion to anything watery and a bobbing-for-apples mishap that I’m too ashamed to even think about, I knew the soul-squashing feeling of having kids tease you. I had to help Tylo prove to his brothers that he had seen something in that lake. Maybe not a silkie, but something. So I said, “I could take the picture if we get the film.”

  “Maybe I could sell a comic book. I have a few double copies I could part with. Do you like Spiderman?”

  He followed me into the woods and we made plans to buy the film and take pictures of silkies or flopping fish or whatever showed up.

  TEA

  I came home to find my Aunt Rosien sitting at our kitchen table, petting Kippers and sipping tea. “Afternoon to ya.” She held her cup up to me, her hair as red and curly as Mem’s was gray and straight. Didn’t look like Mem’s sister to me.

  “Afternoon.” I stood by the door, waiting to see what she’d do.

  “Your pep’s on the horn with his editor and Itha’s getting all that paint off her hands. Stuff’s toxic, you know. Kills the fish when they dump the cans in the water. Hate the stuff, myself.”

  “Mem wouldn’t dump it in the water.” Mem mixed her own paints to use as many natural things as she could.

  “Right.” She sighed. Great, I’d annoyed her already. I figured I’d be better off leaving her alone, so I turned to go.

  “What you got there?” She pointed at my hand.

  I twirled the leaf I held. “Just something I picked with a friend.”

  “If you were a fish, how’d you feel if I pulled off a scale?”

  “What?”

  “Same thing as taking a leaf, you know? It’s a living thing, that tree. You couldn’t wait until the leaf fell?”

  Pep’s comment about Aunt Rosien being an Earth Mother popped into my head. And she was really protective of her “child,” all right. I thought Mem and Pep were nature nuts. If so, then Aunt Rosien had to be a nature freak. I’d heard of people getting mad when you nailed a sign to a tree. And I do, too. Nails poison trees when they rust, but a leaf? Every tree has thousands. Like they’d miss one. But I bet a fish has that many scales, too. Would it hurt when you took one off? Like having your hair pulled out? I shuddered to think about it.

  “What are you telling her?” Mem asked as she came in just in time to see me shudder. She rubbed my back.

  “Fish are dying from paint cans thrown in the water and trees don’t appreciate it when you pluck off their leaves.” Rosien took a sip. An honest one, that aunt of mine. Maybe she would tell me true stories about Mem.

  “Lovely. Nice to meet you too, Auntie.” Mem went to the stove for a cup of her own. “Don’t mind her, Kyna. She’d tell the sun it shined too hot on turtles. Gave them tough skin.”

  They both laughed. Rosien nodded. “Aye, I did say that when I was a girl.”

  Seeing her laugh made me imagine she’d opened a small door. I might be able to sneak through if I was careful. Maybe even learn what kind of things Mem said when she was little.

  Sitting down, I prepared for a trade—a story for a story. I’d tell her about me, then maybe she’d tell me about Mem. “When we lived in an apartment, the landlord knocked a bird nest out of the air conditioner unit by our balcony. So Pep and I made a tree out of a coat rack and fabric-covered coat hangers for leaves and left all of the fixings for a new nest.”

  Rosien leaned over the table to have a close listen in. “Did it work?”

  “Yep, four babies.” I held up my fingers. “One of them had three brown spots on its head when it flew away. We had a pep bird with three spots on its head the very next year.” Those little birdie families made it easier to wait to move back into my grandma’s house. After the sea took my family, I had to live in a foster home for the six months it took Mem and Pep to get licensed as foster parents. Then came the long, drawn-out wait for the adoption to become final. With no will, it took nearly two years for the courts to decide Gram’s little house could belong to Mem and Pep until I was old enough to claim it. After all, no one else could. Gram’s only brother died in the Vietnam War, and she didn’t have any other children besides my dad. And Mom was an orphan like me. At least I had Mem and Pep, and now an aunt. Even one as grouchy as Aunt Rosien was a good thing.

  “Glory to the stars,” Aunt Rosien smiled and patted her knee. “Now that’s a fine story.” She looked at Mem who came to the table with her tea.

  “And it’s true,” Mem said, smiling.

  “Even better.”

  I smiled to see that Aunt Rosien salted her tea like Mem and Pep did.

  Stirring a little sugar into my cup, I asked, “So, did Mem rescue any animals?”

  Rosien’s face stretched into a smile of surprise. “Now how’d you know she did that?”

  An animal shows up in our yard and Mem finds it a home whether it has wings, fur, or scales. She even found a home for a blind, albino squirrel. With a record like that, she would’ve had to start young.

  Mem blew on her tea, saying, “She doesn’t need to hear any of that.”

  “Oh?” Rosien asked, then nudged me saying, “Your mem would’ve started her own zoo for all the critters she dragged in—otters, seagulls, even brought home a three-legged turtle.”

  I laughed, imagining Mem, all pigtails and pretty dresses, dragging home one animal after another. Leave it to Mem to be bringing home sea critters. I bet she combed every beach, the way she loved the water.

  “Aye, our Mem thought Itha wanted a wee baby to care for, so she had our brother, Shannon.”

  “A boy named Shannon?” I had an uncle?

  “Wasn’t no name for a girl till you Yanks started messing with it.”

  Felt like I should apologize, but I said, “Where’s Shannon now?”

  “Ireland,” Mem jumped in, all smiles. “Lad’s studying to be an oceanographer.”

  “Cool . . .” Wow an uncle too? Man, I might even have a couple cousins, but they probably love the water like the rest of the clan.

  Rosien grumbled into her tea, but Mem quickly said, “And what I’d like Rosien to tell us is how she made that jumper she’s wearing.” Mem gave it a tug. A mossy green, it hung low at the cuffs and had a loose weave that made it “drape,” as Mem called it. What I’d like to know is why anyone would want a jumper that looked like drapes? It’s not like you’d hang it in a window, right?

  Besides, I wanted to know more about Mem’s family, not how to knit. But Mem brought out the yarn and the two of them set to clicking their needles and chattering in Irish, laughing and teasing until I felt about as useful as a toe next to a thumb. Right about then, I decided it would be good to try my hand at mapping a few of the trails through the woods around the house. If I did a good enough job, made my own signs to mark the trails, maybe even cleared a trail or two of my own, I might just be able to finish that Get With the Land project after all.

  But I didn’t get much further than a few squiggly lines, because I kept thinking about little girl Mem traipsing home with her wee found pets. Why couldn’t she share her true stories with me? Just ‘cause it’s true doesn’t mean a real story could hurt me. Could it?

  HAIR

  When I came back that evening and saw the two of them still sitting at the table, I figured Mem and her sister had worked out a little truce over their knitting. But their battle resumed when Aunt Rosien left. They’d been talking about recipes when they walked out of the kitchen. Then I heard Aunt Rosien say, “Well, you know, Itha, it’s a duty, not a vacation attraction. You can’t just come up here to enjoy yourself for a while, then leave.”

  “I’m well aware of my duties, Rosien.”

  I tried to keep cleaning up the kitchen, but the anger in Mem’s voice froze me still. Besides, Mem spoke true. A Sierra Club presi
dent back home, she planted trees every month instead of once a year, and there’s no one who lived farther from the ocean who did more to preserve it. She even took trips to Washington to lobby the government guys to save the critters of the deep. Mem did a lot for the earth, but Rosien didn’t seem convinced.

  “Really now, is that why you’re up here lounging about in this house while I’m down doing my duty?”

  What kind of duty? Did they have some endangered species in the lake I didn’t know about? A sand turtle with nowhere to lay eggs or a type of fish dying of paint poisoning?

  Mem turned and headed back up the steps, saying, “I have a job of my own to do. And there’s more than one kind of duty, sister. More than one.”

  She came into the kitchen with her head hanging low, so I made a big show of clanking the tea pot as I washed it so she’d think I’d made too much noise to hear them fight. Knowing the duty she’d just referred to included me, I realized I took her away from whatever cause Rosien wanted her to fight for.

  Mem came to join me. We finished the dishes in silence, then she pulled her downy hair out of the bun on top of her head, saying, “I think this old mane could use a bit of brushing. What do you say?”

  I’d say I loved to brush Mem’s hair. She had the only true gray hair I’d ever seen on a person’s head. Not white gray like that of a grandma, but the rich gray of a black-footed mare. Down to the backs of her knees, Mem had hair long enough to hide me when she brushed it forward and let me sit on her lap.

  We’d spooked Pep that way many a time. Mem would hide me away, then keep combing. Pep would come into the room for a good night’s rest. I’d pop out, shouting, “Wooo!”

  One time, I scared him as he walked in to watch a movie and it rained popcorn. “Aye, you little banshee. I’ll have that howl of yours.” He chased me around the bed three times before he caught me and tickled me until I nearly wet the bed.

  And you could say I had memories in that hair of Mem’s—all the times I sat on the high bed behind her vanity bench to brush it. We’d talk and laugh until my arm got tired, then she’d pull the hair over her shoulder and finish the job while I played with her hair combs or made chains of her bobby pins.

  But that night, it flowed like cement over her shoulders, keeping a wall between us. She sighed, but said nothing as I started to brush. Tall enough now, I stood behind her and brushed out the long strands. Kippers snuck down below to play with the tips.

  Mem kept silent, so I grabbed a chunk of her hair and pretended to rat it out a little. “What a beautiful tail. Our little gray mare is bound to win the show.” Usually that gave her a laugh, but this time she barely hummed.

  I didn’t feel much happier. Sad because Aunt Rosien made Mem sad, but also guilty for listening in on what they said. And a little angry, too. Why did Mem have to hide her childhood from me when we could’ve shared stories like the one Rosien had told me over tea?

  “Mem,” I started.

  “Aye?” Mem sounded distant, even drifty.

  “What’s wrong with telling me about those critters you rescued?”

  Mem looked at me in the mirror, her eyes all flash and wonder. “And just where do you think I rescued them? That otter with a crushed foot and the eel with the fish hook in its eye?”

  I blinked, my own eye stinging. In a flash, I could see Mem, her skirts tied in knots over her knees, wading into the water to help an otter trapped in the rocks, the poor thing letting out high-pitched squeals, splashing in the water to get free. Felt the water splatter me. Wiped the idea of it off me in a hurry.

  Mem turned to take my hands and steady them. “Most days, you couldn’t catch me out of the water, Kyna. My childhood’s filled with water. You want to hear stories about water?”

  I pulled away, shaking my head.

  She brought me back into a silky hair hug. “That’s what I thought.”

  What an idiot. All this time, I thought Mem and Pep had been keeping secrets, but as always, they only wanted to protect me. To save me from my own stupid fears. Why did I still have to be so afraid of water? Why couldn’t I just dissolve it down to nothing and live like everybody else? Mem could tell me all about her life on the Irish coast. We could swim together. Laugh as we splashed in the water.

  Just thinking about it brought a burst of memory laughter into my head. I could feel the sun on my face, see beads of water flying in the air, hear a child laughing. Was it me? Did I see a beach and a woman half-turned, splashing in a bright white suit with berry red dots?

  Who was that lady? It couldn’t have been Mem, she didn’t own a berry dot suit. I hadn’t gone near water since, since . . . when I thought of that awful day on the boat, I realized just who it could be. Mom. I’d remembered my mom. Just a smiling woman in a picture to me on most days. I closed my eyes to hold onto the feeling of her. Then I remembered the photograph of my mom and me sitting on a dock, me in a frilly pink suit and purple floaters on my arms, her in a sail white suit with little red dots.

  Mem tapped my nose. “A memory got you?”

  I smiled, feeling the warmth of it just flowing through me like hot milk on a cold night. “Yeah.”

  “Well, there’s proof water can be a good thing. In my childhood and yours.” She gave me a squeeze.

  Maybe so. But my memories of life with my first family are just flashes, broken pieces of sound and half pictures. I didn’t have any real good memories of water. Just that one awful memory. I had to hold my breath to keep it away.

  Mem tapped me with the brush. “No falling down on the job there, lass. Get to brushing. This hair won’t let go of its tangles without a fight.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I saluted, knowing Mem tried to distract me. And I needed it or I’d sink back into the dark memory of a watery world with no air.

  So I set to brushing and forcing myself to think of other things. But my mind had fallen into a bit of a rut. I went from one bad memory to another, recalling Aunt Rosien storming off down the steps leading to the lake.

  Had my mind spinning with the worry of why she might be mad at Mem.

  “Why was Aunt Rosien so mad when she left?”

  Mem closed her eyes and relaxed her shoulders—a sign she meant to keep Rosien’s anger from settling inside her. “Sometimes sisters see things a bit different. Rosien sees her duty to the lake.”

  So it was something to do with saving the lake or the critters that lived there. “She’s a conservationist?”

  Mem laughed. “I’d say she is. I do my bit when I can, but I see my greatest duty as being a mother to you.”

  Why did keeping the lake clean and safe have to be so important that a person couldn’t have a family, too? Maybe Rosien just took it all a little too seriously. And that’s what made her a “package.” After all, she was a lady who thought it was wrong to pick leaves. But it still didn’t feel right, so I asked, “Aunt Rosien thinks you should be saving the lake instead of raising me?”

  Mem pulled me into her lap to give me a neck nuzzle, which made me laugh. “Well bosch on her if she can’t see all I’ve gained in raising you, my sweet.”

  “Like what?” I asked, seeing us in the mirror. Mem’s hair flowed over the both of us like strands of kelp, her eyes shone so dark and round, mine all blue and spinky.

  “Like a darn good hair brusher for one thing.” She rubbed my head with the brush.

  I laughed. “No, really.”

  Squeezing me, she said, “Selfish as I am, it’s the growing that means the most to me, really.”

  “That I get taller?” I teased.

  She spun me over in her lap to tickle me. “That you get stronger and smarter and prettier every day!” I squirmed and laughed and she gave me nose kisses until I believed every word and went to bed happy.

  WAVES

  When the snap of the screen door woke me up, I figured Mem and Pep were headed for their nightly swim. Walking toward the front of the house, I could hear their laughter as they ran down the steps that lead to
the shore. Made me think of their first night swim together in that cove near Dublin. Seemed so unfair that they loved something I feared so much. That made their nightly swim as private and unreachable as the memory I could never share. I stood in an empty house afraid to go near the water, knowing Mem and Pep laughed and splashed and jumped from the rocks like a couple of first graders.

  Loneliness opened up inside me like a yawn. If I ever hoped to swallow that terrible feeling, I had to force myself to go near the water. Get inside it even.

  Doing nothing meant standing alone in an empty house. Avoiding other kids who might ask me to swim. Never going to birthday parties during pool season. Turning into a loony if someone even mentioned something that might make me think of going under water. Like the Halloween party last year.

  Bobby Clarkson came up with the stupid idea of bobbing for apples. He kept saying, “See it’s easy. Look.” He plunged his head in. My lungs shrank up and my muscles went as hard as one of those apples as I closed my eyes and prayed he’d come up. He threw his head back, flinging water everywhere. It splashed me and felt like hot sparks against my skin. I brushed it off and screamed as I ran for the door.

  Then came the waves of laughter, all the kids in my class shouting and taunting, “Kyna’s afraid of water! Water baby!”

  I ran straight down the hall and right out the front door. I didn’t even stop to catch my breath until I’d run the six blocks home. And as soon as the ache in my lungs stopped, I charged up to the top floor of our house and hid under my own bed. So much for fourth grade. I never wanted to go back.

  Mem and Pep went to the school and talked to Mrs. Morton, who had the brilliant idea of telling my whole class how my family died. Every kid wrote me a letter to apologize. In the lunch line, Bobby Clarkson gave me his P.S. saying, “Too bad your parents are dead,” like it was nothing worse than losing a library book. I hate that kid.

  And I hate always having to be scared. Afraid of a flushing toilet. Or a bubbling fountain in a park. Or of going with my own family to a stupid farmers’ market just because it’s cozied up to a stupid lake. The more I thought about it, the madder I got. Mad enough to pound rocks into dust.