The Solace of Water

by Elizabeth Byler Younts

  I failed Sparrow and now I might lose my daughter for the last time.

  SPARROW

  Daddy told me once that all the water was connected in some way. But I been in this water for a good long while and I don’t see nothing that made me feel like Carver was close. Of course, all his dirt was mixed together with the other pond dirt, but I thought that maybe God would keep it safe for me somehow.

  When I knew I couldn’t find the dirt and that Carver wasn’t down here, I didn’t think I could face Mama again. We all came here to get a new start. When I drown here in this water, will they move again to get another fresh start?

  My lungs started to burn but I don’t want to get another breath. I don’t deserve air. Carver deserved air. I was all the way at the end of the pond with a fistful of pond weeds to keep me far under the water. I looked up. The sun was starting to peek out and the glow made the water shine like glass and diamonds. The world looked pretty through the veil of water, but I knew the truth. I knew the world was ugly and hateful. And I was no good in it.

  My lungs burned so bad now. I was really hurting for a breath. I looked up one more time and could see somebody up there. There were footprints on the water. Somebody was walking up there right on top of me and there was so much light shining now. It was so bright.

  Then everything went black.

  DELILAH

  The reflection of the sun’s yellow light was bright on the surface of the pond. My throat was hoarse by the time the pond went still again. I looked off into the distance and around the edges. But I don’t see nothing but Johnny’s head. How long had it been since I seen her come up? Ten minutes? An hour? A year?

  Where was my girl?

  That was who she was. She was my girl.

  But now she might be dead somewhere under all that water that now looked still and settled.

  Across the pond Johnny came out from the shore and was bent over. Was he giving up or just catching his breath?

  I pushed up to my knees to watch.

  Emma had her eyes on Johnny too. She stood. Her nightgown stuck to her skinny, bony legs. Then she looked at me and helped me up. We started running.

  Johnny got Sparrow in his arms. But she ain’t moving.

  EMMA

  I believed that a mother’s grief could make ripples on the surface of the still water or cause the sun to move. Deedee’s wailing pierced through me with that force.

  The grass around the side of the pond where Johnny was coming from was tall and carried the weight of all the water that had just fallen. The grasses had been pushed aside because of the wind and rain. Deedee fell twice as I pulled her. The temperature hadn’t cooled with the rain and a heavy mist settled around us. We ran through the vapor, were wrapped in it and ate it.

  “Johnny.” I heard my voice, but it didn’t sound like me. It sounded ragged and aged and desperate.

  “Birdie.” Deedee’s voice was rough like mine, but she used a name I’d never heard from her before. It felt like a gift to my ears.

  Johnny tried to run but he couldn’t. I heard him groaning as he carried her. His body was too spent. His arms shook. I didn’t know if he was crying. Was the exertion too much, or was his heart as pained as mine? A little blood ran from his nose.

  “Lie her down, lie her down,” Deedee said when we got close. “I got to see her.”

  He placed her in the grass. Her eyes were closed. He wept. Her head lolled to one side. He buried his head against her body. Her lips were pale and motionless. I think he was praying.

  “Oh, Birdie, don’t you be dead.” Deedee’s hands moved over Sparrow’s body. Everything was so limp. “Help me roll her on her side. She probably swallowed some water. We just got to get the water out.”

  We listened to her say this over and over—“We just got to get the water out.” Maybe twenty times. Maybe a hundred.

  Johnny pulled her body toward him and I pushed against her back. She was on her side. Deedee started to bang on her back and yell for her Birdie to breathe.

  DELILAH

  I put my hand on my Birdie’s cheek and I was reminded that we were just the same shade. She was mine.

  I couldn’t say that I knew all the things that made up a mother and daughter, but when I looked at her it was like I saw that little baby when she was first born. Like I was holding a new little brown bird with big eyes, just staring up at me like she knew I was her mama and knew what that meant.

  She finally coughed and sputtered and spit up a whole lot of water, but she came ’round. Just like all those years ago, her big brown eyes looked up and found mine. And I knew we was going to be all right.

  We all coddled her and cried and praised the Lord for a few long minutes. Then she talked. I didn’t know how much I’d missed her voice until now.

  “I saw him, Mama,” she mumbled between choking. “When I was under the water, I looked up and saw him.”

  “Who, baby? Carver?” I said, still crying.

  “No, I saw Him. Jesus. He was walking on top of the water above me and He put His hand out to me and I took it.”

  It didn’t matter if it was a dream or an illusion or Johnny’s hand—she was safe. She didn’t even understand that she’d been unconscious when she was found. But maybe that was exactly what happened and she’d seen Jesus. Maybe she’d been right and I’d been wrong all along.

  SPARROW

  Mama was different after she thought I was dead in the water. I was too. A whole lot of stuff was different.

  Everybody from church came and brought food. From our church and from Emma’s church—them sisters Joyce and Betty sat for tea with Mama even. We got more food than we know what to do with. This time the food don’t got that bitter-dead taste. They got something else that tasted real good. Daddy spent more time with me than the church folks.

  Emma helped at the house and it was nice to have her close. Mama said she ain’t worried about me running away no more, but she still sat with me a lot. She said she left me for too long already and we both just about died because of it. She made me stay in bed for two weeks straight—except to use the bathroom. Even the white doctor came out to the house. He was nice and said I would be just fine.

  Lois and Cassie, some girls from church who never talked to me, came to see me and said when I was feeling better that we should go for ice cream. Mama said I could so I told them yes.

  I had changed too. Before I just took all the bad things in my head and let them sit and spoil rotten, but now everything came up and out of me. Maybe it was ’cause I was afraid I’d go back to before when talking was too hard and I just needed to stare and walk in the woods. Or maybe it was ’cause I just needed to hear Mama’s voice and mine together in the same room that we was both alive in.

  “You mad at me for dumping Carver’s dirt into the pond?” I asked her one of the quiet days in my room.

  She lifted her eyebrow and gave me that look that only she could but then softened. She might just have been surprised at what I asked.

  “I’m not mad about it no more. Maybe a little sad.” Mama was always honest.

  “I’m sorry, Mama. I was just real mad.”

  “I know.”

  “I thought it would make you see that I needed you. I was sad as soon as I done it because it was all we got left of him.”

  “It ain’t though.” Mama put one hand on her chest and the other on mine for a few beats of my heart and then put them back on her lap.

  I was quiet for a minute and both of us were looking far away from each other.

  “I wanted to get the dirt back. I wanted to die and be reborn like what Daddy said baptism was.” Our eyes found each other’s real fast and we held on. “I know now that he didn’t mean it like I took it—my mind wasn’t working right. But I did see Jesus walking on top of that water—He saved me.”

  She took my hand in both of hers. It was warm and I felt safe. “He saved me too, baby.”

  “But what about Carver?” I leaned over and pulle
d that old river shell out of my nightstand. I touched it and thought about the Alabama River, the last place I saw Carver alive, and the reason I wanted it on his gravestone and why Mama didn’t. My skin tingled thinking on what I’d done with it once.

  “He’s in heaven, baby.” Mama’s voice was that soft kind she used to use—like the soft fuzz on caterpillars. She smiled at me and patted my arm. Her eyes were sparkling, and even though she got tears in them, I didn’t see the hate no more.

  “Are you and the little kids still going back to Montgomery with Aunty?”

  “No, Birdie.” She shook her head. “We’re staying right here.”

  “It’s still my fault about Carver though, isn’t it?”

  She looked away and through the window toward the church. I got worried at what she was thinking and what she was gonna say.

  “Not like what you’re thinkin’. This stuff is so hard, Birdie, and I done a lot of wrong. I think that I just got stuck in a bad place because I missed Carver so bad—but I’m not blaming you no more. Or myself. Or nobody.”

  “I was stuck too.” I paused for a long moment. “Are we unstuck now?”

  Mama put on her pretty smile. “I think we’re getting out of it together.”

  “Why did Carver die instead of me?” I said the words so fast because it was something I been thinking on for so long, and if I didn’t say it fast, I wasn’t sure I’d ever say it.

  “Don’t know that. We don’t get to choose. It was his time—we don’t know why. But it wasn’t your time.” Mama’s mouth trembled.

  “Carver ain’t never coming back though.” I said it and I had always known that it was impossible. I knew when someone was dead they was dead. But Mama had been bringing Carver back to life every day—every hour—since he died.

  “He ain’t but we will go to him—someday.”

  DELILAH

  The next two weeks were like a gray shadow of the months before. Like when you put your hand through water . . . Some of it goes between your fingers but your hand still gets wet. We passed through the water together—Malachi and I both was hanging on to our girl and each other.

  I let my broken heart start beating again, which hurt almost worse than when it broke. But it was time to start living on in this world. Sparrow was talking now. A lot. So much that sometimes I wanted to clip her mouth shut with a clothespin, but she made me hear my own voice answer questions I’d been asking myself but was too afraid to answer.

  “Do you think Carver was scared?” Sparrow asked me one morning when we sat on the porch and together watched the world rouse. I even let her have some coffee. She held that hot mug in her hand just like me and sat with her legs crossed just like me.

  I swallowed hard—like I got a bunch of pond scum stuck in my throat with this question.

  “I hate it, but he probably was.” I paused and felt that ache from the roots of the hair on my head to my tippy toes. I thought about his path to dying and how it might have been for Carver—but my mind didn’t stay on that bad stuff but settled on how his path of dying took him home. He was happy where he was and, even in my mourning, I was finally glad he was happy. “But he wasn’t alone.”

  “Do you think Jesus was with Carver?”

  “I do.”

  “Then why didn’t He put His hand out for him to grab—like He done me?”

  “I think He did, Birdie. But neither of them let go. He just took our boy the rest of the way with Him. All the way to heaven.”

  “So Jesus let go of me?”

  The tremble in her voice broke through my hurt and reminded me that she was just a child and had never asked for none of this. She was just that daughter of mine with the bushy hair that I couldn’t tame much, with a voice like a bird, with scars up and down her legs, and a broken heart trying to mend. To Sparrow, thinking that Jesus let go of her would mean that He didn’t want her.

  “He knew you weren’t done down here.” I squeezed her hand.

  She was quiet for a good long time, but she kept rubbing her hand over mine like she needed to feel me being there with her.

  EMMA

  After Sparrow and Deedee had rested inside for a little while, Johnny, John, and I walked with them through the woods back to their house. It didn’t seem right that we’d gone through so much that morning and then it all ended so simply. John had woken up and didn’t question anything but just became a part of our story together.

  All day I thought about how I witnessed Deedee unclench her fist filled with anger and offer an open hand to Sparrow. It worked over me like water smoothed a rock.

  The oil lamp was lit low in the living room where John sat. His Bible was open on his lap, but his head had fallen back in sleep. He looked peaceful for the first time in weeks. I watched him fight so hard for what he wanted in staying away from the drink his body loved so much. Maybe he loved me more than the drink now.

  I walked over to my husband. I had touched him often in the last weeks. More often than in the many months before. I’d held him when he shook so much I didn’t know if he would die. I had often put a hand on his shoulder when he vomited the only swallow of water in his stomach because I didn’t know what else to do. I’d washed his face from his drenching sweats. Each time he tried to catch my gaze, I looked away. I washed his hair for him and I bathed him. But in all those times I had touched him out of duty, not love.

  But tonight I wanted to touch him. I wanted to touch the face of the man who had confessed his sins to his spiritual and earthly authority and would endure a humiliating confession in front of the church in order to right things. But within that, folded neatly, I realized that regardless of his standing with the church, the state of our marriage was separate from that. It required an answer from me and not just an approval from a group of preachers or an Ordnung that we lived our life by.

  I moved his dark hair away from his chiseled forehead. The lines were deep, but his strong brow was rested and not furrowed as it had been for many weeks. His face twitched a little at my touch. It felt foreign to be gentle with him and to admit that I wanted to regain our love and all we’d lost.

  “Em?” he questioned when he opened his eyes.

  I knelt next to the chair and took his hands. He looked at me and at our hands laced together and tilted his head toward me.

  “I want us to move away.” I hadn’t known this until I said it.

  John sat up a little and let go of my hands. He closed the Bible and set it on the table next to the chair. Then he looked at me with confusion. “Vas?” He needed an explanation.

  “Remember Atlee talking about the new community starting in Kentucky?” I began to draw energy from my own words and the promise of a new beginning. “I think we should move and start fresh.”

  “It’s going to be a Mennonite community.”

  He looked at me for a long time. My hands were resting on his knees. Our gazes were locked together. This was the most intimate we had been in more than a decade. I didn’t want a repeat of the past but wanted something new with John and a chance.

  I thought about Deedee and what the move was for her and how it had been filled with such heartache as long as she held tightly to her hurts and her grief. How even in grief one could have an open eye toward what was to come and what could be and be okay with the slow and steady process of grief that made it easier to live life. To let go of fears and to give forgiveness. But it was so hard to say the words.

  “Will you forgive me?” I wasn’t sure I’d meant any other words more in my life.

  He cupped my chin and seemed too overcome to speak. He nodded. Of course he’d already told me he had that day Deedee had spilled my secret, but I needed to hear it again.

  “But,” he choked out, “I don’t deserve to ask you to forgive me.”

  “I already have.” My eyes burned with tears. “I want a new start for you, me, and Johnny.”

  He didn’t have to say much but smiled when he said yes. Then we held each other. And for the f
irst time since the loss of our child, he comforted me in my tears and I let him.

  SPARROW

  I didn’t want to break Mama and Daddy’s rules by sneaking out of the house, but I just got this feeling inside me that Johnny would be waiting for me at daybreak. It was August now and it seemed like a whole lifetime ago that I’d met him the last time. I pushed that out of my head because there had been so much confusion since then. But a lot of good stuff too.

  I’d been in bed for two weeks and my body was itching to walk outside in the woods where I found Emma and Johnny and a new life.

  I wore my new lilac dress and made sure my hair was smooth— Mama had braided it nice the night before. Would Johnny still think I was pretty? Then I wondered if he ever had or if it was just something he said to make me feel good.

  My heart started pounding and carrying on when I stepped around the creaky step and made sure the door didn’t click too loud. My little house was still dark and I would make sure to be back before they woke. I didn’t need to give heart attacks to nobody. When I got into the woods I did my best not to run like a wild girl. I walked like a nice, smart girl.

  When I saw him sitting there by our tree, my heart got all soft and gooey and I felt a smile grow on my lips. When he saw me he smiled too. He started to mark the tree like we used to do, then stood waiting for me.

  “I was hoping you’d come.” His voice got this soft, brushy feel to it. “I came last Sunday, just in case.”

  “Mama wouldn’t let me out of bed.”

  “But you’re up now.” He winked at me.

  We both looked down at our feet.

  “You want to sit down?” He pointed.

  I sat real nice like so I wouldn’t get my new dress dirty. He sat real close to me. His shoulder was touching mine and it made me feel warm all over.

  “So you’re doing—better?” His face was close to mine when he spoke.