The Shark Curtain

by Chris Scofield

  Not that I’m going in.

  Not that I couldn’t if I wanted to.

  Some animals have super-duper hearing. So do I. I try to ignore my parents’ conversation about me. I try to pretend I don’t hear them say that I’ll need “special help” in school if things don’t change. I try not to listen when they say I should see a therapist.

  “Stop talking!” I shout, but no one notices except Lauren who yells, “You’ll get cramps!” when I stomp into the lake.

  I don’t need a therapist, or special help. All I need is to be left alone. In my own room.

  The cold water startles me at first, but I swim out quickly then turn around to face the shore, kicking my feet to keep afloat. The sun is high and hot and dries my shoulders and face instantly. Mom and Dad are back; they sit with Mrs. Wiggins on the sand, looking toward me. Lauren dances with her new pink umbrella.

  The water feels good.

  I count fifty strokes, divide it by half, swim twenty-five more, cut that in half, and break off midstroke. I was the best at long division; good at making decimals out of remainders too, even if I was sent to the office twice in May for “an overactive imagination.” The first time, I pretended everyone in my classroom was dead so I didn’t have to talk to them. And once, after lunch, I spoke to Miss Pendergrass through a milk straw because it was hard to breathe when I was locked inside Houdini’s steamer trunk. She gave me an F instead of an A on our last spelling test, when my answers were in fake hieroglyphics. I gave her a key to them, and I spelled each word correctly after class, but she still called Mom. When Jamie saw all the watery squiggles and fish shapes I used, she called them “hydro-glyphics.” Hydro means water, she told me. She also told me I was smart, probably even smarter than Miss Pendergrass.

  I love to swim.

  Maybe it doesn’t matter if I lied to everyone.

  When I pass Duck Island, the swampy nesting place Lauren and I looked at through the binoculars, I realize I’m farther out than I’ve ever been. Farther than the swim team, maybe more than halfway across the lake, and I’m tired. If Jamie were here she’d say it was okay that my body is heavy. Just float on your back for a minute. Relax. It wouldn’t matter that my feet tingle like they’re asleep, or that my arms are tingling too. The cold is in my ears and behind my eyes; it’s giving me a headache.

  Is the lake punishing me for lying about swimming? Maybe it wants to show me “who’s boss,” like Judy is always threatening to do.

  Somewhere around here are the rotted half-submerged pilings of the Floating Doughnut Shack. I wish I were eight weeks and one inch so I could start over again. I wish I could turn back time like some adventurers do in Jules Verne books.

  Suddenly I’ve forgotten how to swim.

  I roll onto my back but I can’t float forever.

  On shore, Mrs. Wiggins paces back and forth in the shallow water. She wades out a little, looks toward me, comes back in, sits down, watches some more, then paces again.

  Don’t look, I tell myself, and glance away. I don’t look at Mrs. Wiggins, or my family “rusticating” (Mom’s word for “taking a break from the suburbs”), until Lauren suddenly yells, “Misssss-usssss Wiiiiigg-uunnnssss!”

  I roll over and bob in the water. The sick old dog is headed my way, the stick in her mouth.

  “No!” I yell. “Go back! No stick, no!” But she keeps coming. Behind her, on the beach, Mom, Dad, and Lauren wave their arms over their heads. I wave back, and Mom puts her hands on her hips.

  She won’t make it; I’m out too far.

  I hold up my thumb and index finger; Mom’s the size of a circus peanut. I roll on my back again, and kick my feet. At least I think I’m kicking; it’s hard to tell when most of me is numb.

  I wish I weren’t a weirdo and a liar, and hadn’t stomped out into the lake when my parents started talking about me. Peace Lake is big; no wonder it’s where Aunt Jamie trains for the Olympic Trials. No wonder everyone clapped for the girls on my swim team. Dad says Jamie and I have the “swimming chops” in the family, but right now I don’t have any chops, and when the sun slips behind a dark cloud, and the water becomes an even colder black soup, I’m more scared than I was when Lauren slipped into the quarry pit.

  “Mrs. Wiggins?” I say out loud. When I speak the cold water spills in, filling my mouth, running down my throat, making the rest of me even colder. I try whistling but I can’t. I look for Mrs. Wiggins’s bobbing head in the dark water.

  Maybe she went back.

  Down in the meadow in a little bitty pool

  Swam three little fishies and a mama fishie too . . .

  Mom used to sing that song.

  “Mom?” I call.

  My teeth chatter. Swim back! I tell myself. You can do it! Tell them you’re a dummy and a liar and the lake wants you to apologize. Do it!

  Only I stay in place.

  Bobbing in place. I’m not going anywhere.

  Mrs. Wiggins? Where are you?

  On shore Dad wades into the water, waving at me to come in. He points to the sky at the exact moment a bright light flashes. Lightning! Is it close? I listen for thunder, and count out loud like he taught me: “One, one thousand” for every quarter-mile away. “Two, one thousand. Three, one thousand.”

  Nothing.

  “Stop!” said the mama fishie. “Or you’ll get lost!”

  “Lillleeeee!” Mom calls in a scared high-pitched voice. “Hold on! Daddy’s coming!”

  Dad runs to the pier where a rowboat is tied. I watch him jump in, pull the rope off the piling, and start rowing toward me. With one paddle. He pauses to search the bottom of the boat for the other, then looks toward me again. One boat, one oar. It’ll take awhile, but he’s coming.

  I slip under, but the cold startles me and I pop up again.

  So the three little fishies went off on a spree

  And they swam and they swam right out to the sea . . .

  I’m tired and think of my room, rearrange the books beside my bed, pull out the scrapbooks from underneath, and begin going through each page.

  Boop boop dit-tem dat-tem what-tem chu!

  Kick kick kick. I’m kicking! I feel it!

  Boop boop dit-tem dat-tem . . . kick kick . . .

  When I get home I’m adopting one of those little African kids on late-night TV, the ones with flies in their eyes.

  The sky tears open.

  Brightly lit drops of rain pop and sizzle like the bacon on the grill at Elmer’s this morning. I wish I were there right now, eating chocolate chip pancakes with Lauren. I wish I’d worn the new culottes Mom sewed for me too—bright, flowery ones that match hers and Lauren’s. I wish Mike Nelson, from Sea Hunt, would swim by in his black rubber leotard and save me.

  Boop boop, dit-tem dat-tem what-tem chu!

  What color was the ribbon Jamie made me?

  Purple. Purple?

  Am I still kicking? I don’t feel my legs anymore. They don’t tingle, they don’t anything. My arms are empty sleeves that lay limp on the surface of the lake.

  I’ve.

  Stopped.

  Moving.

  And they swam . . .

  And they swam . . .

  I slip under again. My heart is on a trampoline without a spotter.

  Is this when you say the Lord’s Prayer for real?

  Our Father . . . I can hold my breath for a while, just not as long as Theresa and Carol.

  My stomach fills with a thousand macramé knots as I slip underwater. Instantly, my lungs push against my chest. They want out, they want to swim up for air. Numbness is all I feel between the stormy surface and the sandy bottom of Peace Lake.

  “Even strong swimmers can drown,” Coach Betty told us.

  Up ahead is the shark curtain.

  “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

  “Nah,” Jesus says, looking up at me from a rusty barrel at the bottom of the lake. “Mrs. Wiggins is dying, not you.” He looks at His bare wrist. It’s half past a freckle. “She
’s almost here,” He says, then dissolves like fish flakes in the goldfish bowl back home.

  And suddenly, like the Chief Pontiac hood ornament on Dad’s car (or stories of dolphins saving children in Aunt Jamie’s favorite storybooks), Mrs. Wiggins dives for me and I’m face-to-face with her big wet head and bloodshot eyes.

  Am I dreaming? Is this really happening?

  “Grab my collar,” she says, though it’s hard to understand her with a stick in her mouth. So I do, and pressing myself against her we fly through the shark curtain, through bright stripes of stormy light and warm currents of water until we burst onto the surface of Peace Lake, spitting and coughing.

  * * *

  Once upon a time . . .

  Mrs. Wiggins saved me. I slip my hand out of her collar and we bob on top of the water. Her head is bigger than mine, and with her mouth open, her abscessed gums and rotting teeth, her cancer smell is everywhere. She trembles with cold and pain because the stick is cutting into the corners of the black lips that outline her bloody grin. Three dark teeth stand on their heads, connected to her bottom jaw by a spit-glittered thread of skin. She can’t chew anymore. She hasn’t eaten kibble in a week.

  “Give me the stick,” I say, reaching for it.

  The old dog pulls away. She’s scared; I see it in her eyes.

  “Drop the stick!” I scold, but she doesn’t and starts paddling toward shore. “Wait!” I yell, and somehow muster the strength to lunge at her. She yelps and turns around, flailing at me with her paws, scratching my face and mouth. It’s a blur of water and movement, her legs, my arms, sky, trees, Daddy’s rowboat nearing us. She thinks I’m trying to hold her down, she thinks she’s drowning.

  Then it’s over.

  I’m breathing, the sun is warm on my face, and Dad is calling “Lil-EEEE!”

  My body’s awake. I feel everything, and wave at his boat. “I’m okay!” I shout.

  It’s over.

  “Mrs. Wiggins?” My heart beats like crazy. The water is still. “Girl?” But she’s quiet and her eyes are glazed. Her mouth stands open, the bloody stick wedged in its corners. Her breath smells like roses, and I remember reading that sainted people smell like roses when they die. A small pool of blood floats between us; in its center is one of her sick teeth.

  “Take it,” she says, though it’s still hard to understand her with a stick in her mouth.

  “Don’t die,” I sob. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she says. But it’s not. Jesus said she was dying, but I killed Mrs. Wiggins. I demanded she come to Peace Lake; I swam out too far.

  She bobs a little more, and then tips to one side; the water buoys her. “I’ll take you back,” she says.

  “I’m sorry,” I repeat, draping my arms over her. With my chin in her wet thick hair, I clutch her tooth and, looking straight ahead, paddle us toward shore. Panting and crying, we pass Dad who stands up in his rowboat, staring.

  Mom and Lauren wait for us on the beach. I see them.

  “We’re going to make it!” I tell Mrs. Wiggins. “We’re almost there!” Panting. Kicking. I’m alive. “Mom!” I call. Mrs. Wiggins saved me.

  Down in the meadow in a little bitty pool

  Swam three little fishies and a mama fishie too . . .

  When I’m close enough to see Lauren point at us, I feel a whoosh of energy and know the dog’s scared brave blood is in me now. It slipped into me through one of her cuts, like in werewolf movies, making one blood where there was two; one new person: inside and out.

  Mrs. Wiggins and I chase each other around the house, both of us barking, until Mom says to stop. We run like football players, long watery strides, until we fall into the summer grass, exhausted and giggling, Mrs. Wiggins underneath me, chewing on me with her soft gentle mouth.

  A final wave pushes us onto the sandy beach, and I throw myself off the old dog and smile up at Lauren and Mom. With the sun behind their heads, their faces are dark, their bodies outlines.

  I lay there long enough to run around the house again.

  Something’s wrong. “Mom?” I finally ask. She doesn’t move except to cover her mouth with her hand.

  I hear a splash behind me. “Lily?” Dad tosses the oar on the sand, and stumbling, exhausted, wades toward Mom.

  I see them now. All of them. The rowboat floats away.

  Little waves slip under Mrs. Wiggins’s body, rushing in and out of her ears, making her lips flutter like they do when she sticks her head out the car window. I clutch her tooth in my hand.

  Lauren shakes. When she cries, “Dummy!” I get goose bumps.

  I sit up, take the stick from Mrs. Wiggins’s mouth, and throw it down the beach.

  “You killed her!” Lauren cries. The sun lights her hair like a match.

  I killed Mrs. Wiggins. I’m a liar and a killer.

  When Mom picks up Lauren, she collapses and sobs so deeply Mom’s whole body shakes. Daddy pats my sister’s back, hands her his hanky, and says, “It’s going to be all right. She was an old, sick dog. Everything’s going to be all right.”

  Mom spins around. “All right? All right? Are you kidding me?” Her nose flares (like Ferdinand the Bull) when she turns toward me and says, “I guess I was right: we can’t trust you.”

  I try to say something but I’m an eight-week-old fetus again.

  “For Christ sake, Lily, you almost drowned out there.”

  What name does Jesus use when He swears?

  Mom jiggles Lauren up and down like a baby. “If you’d come when we called—”

  “But I was too far out.”

  “That’s exactly the point . . . If you’d listened, Mrs. Wiggins wouldn’t . . .” We all look at the dog covered in sand. Mom turns away first and sets Lauren down. “Why are you doing this to us?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Easy, Kit,” Daddy mumbles.

  “I’m serious, Paul. I want to know.” She glances at her portable bar. “The doctors don’t know, her teachers don’t know, maybe she knows. Do you know, Lily? What’s wrong with you?”

  “Kit!”

  “Shut up, Paul.”

  My sister and I aren’t allowed to say “shut up.” Lauren sticks her thumb in her mouth; back home, sucking her thumb would cost her a quarter.

  Jesus stands in the bushes. Except for the white robe and fishing hat with bright-colored doohickeys all over it, He’s almost invisible in the brush and willows, like a puzzle in Jack and Jill magazine—“Find the Bunnies” in the March issue, “The Pilgrims’ Hats” in November’s.

  If I’d died, Frieda would have said He had a plan for me.

  “What happened out there?” Mom asks.

  “I . . . don’t . . . know,” I say, keeping an eye on the bushes. Tears roll down my cheeks, fat hot salty tears that make me flinch when they race across my scratched face. I feel my tail trying to get out.

  “That’s not good enough, Lily.” Mom glances at the bar again. “Don’t you see what you’re doing to this family?”

  “That’s enough, Kit.”

  I know what happened out there. I know Mrs. Wiggins saved me, not Jesus. Before Jesus evaporated like fish food, He stood up and turned away for a second. When He did I saw a Chatty Cathy pull-string peeking through the back of His robe and seams, where His plastic molds were fitted, running down the back of His arms and legs. When the water lifted His hair I saw what Mom calls root plugs, and a sliver of dark Holy Land skin peeking through the white at the back of His neck.

  He’s a doll.

  He’s a phony.

  Mrs. Wiggins saved me. I close my eyes and press myself against her. “Wiggins wiggins bo biggins,” I cry into her wet coat.

  For a minute I’m alone with her on the beach. We live here, just the two of us, and my family only visits when we send them smoke signals, which they can’t read, so they never ever visit, which is fine with us, just fine.

  “Banana-fana fo figgins . . .”

  When I open my eyes again, M
om kneels beside me. “Oh God, Lily,” she says, “I’m sorry . . . I was so scared. I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, and then the way you . . . and the . . . dog . . . The whole thing is so awful. I shouldn’t have talked to you like that, Lily. Thank God you’re all right, thank God . . .” When Mom touches my shoulder, one of her tears falls on my arm.

  In fairy tales, tears change everything.

  Lauren stands behind her, her arms crossed on her freckled chest. Her face is red and swollen from crying.

  A wave laps the back of my legs. It shifts Mrs. Wiggins a little, making my sister jump. I press a bare foot against the dog’s thick wet body so it won’t move. The cold water washes over my feet, squishing the gritty sand between my toes before it’s sucked into the lake again.

  “I hate you!” Lauren suddenly yells, and runs to the weeping willow where our parents first kissed.

  Mom rocks me, whispering what sounds like a prayer in Romanian.

  Dad sits beside us. After a minute he asks, “Would you like a drink, Kit?”

  Mom nods.

  I sneeze.

  “Bless you,” they both say.

  * * *

  Later, I sit between Mom’s long tan legs, facing the lake. Her breasts cup the back of my head, and I feel her heart pounding while she combs my hair with her fingers, checking my scalp like she checked Lauren at Crawford Quarry, the way monkeys on TV nature shows check each other for fleas. “Trauma to the head” is Mom’s biggest fear. “Something could be happening in there and we’d never know until it’s too late.”

  Dad brings the first aid kit from the car and disinfects my scratches and cuts.

  When Mom wraps the dry wool blanket around me even tighter, I realize that she’s forgiven me for killing Mrs. Wiggins.

  I can’t forgive myself though. I’ve killed my best friend. I push the sharp end of her tooth into the center of my hand, but it resists going in.

  “You okay?” Mom asks.

  Yes. No. “Yes,” I whisper.

  If Mom and I sit like this until morning, never fall asleep and never move, we could turn back time. Mrs. Wiggins wouldn’t have died, and then, even if nothing were ever right again, Mom would have loved me once, just once, as much as she loves Dad.