Turtle Island Dreaming

by Tom Crockett

  “I don’t want to live again,” Marina explained. “I was no good at it.”

  “Good at it,” the woman repeated, nodding her head.

  “Do you understand? I wanted to die. I ended my own life. It was my choice. I was not good at being alive. I wanted death.” Marina repeated herself, saying the same thing several different ways in an effort to make the angel or woman, or whatever she was, understand. “Now I just want to move on, to see what comes next. Do you understand?”

  “Move on.” She nodded her head. “Yes, heal to move on.”

  Well, Marina thought, I can understand that. If I have to heal to move on to the next level or place then that is what I will do. “How do I heal?” she asked. “Can you help me?”

  “Maybe?” Again Marina could not tell if it was meant to sound like a question. Then she added, “I don’t know.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re here for?”

  “Maybe?” the woman answered and again it sounded like a question. She was smiling, though, and did not seem to have been bothered by the question.

  “Then will you help me?” Marina asked softly.

  “Maybe?” she answered brightly, but then for a moment she looked troubled.

  “What is it?” Marina asked. “Have I said something wrong? Don’t you want to help me?”

  “It is . . . hard,” the woman answered haltingly. “I don’t know the . . . ,” she faltered again, as if searching for a word, “the way you speak, your . . . your . . .”

  “Language?” Marina completed the sentence.

  “Lang-uage.” This was another of the words that seemed to please the woman. She said it softly several times, as if laying claim to it. “Yes, language.”

  “No,” Marina interrupted, “you speak my language very well.” The woman laughed at this, and her laughter made Marina’s eyes tear.

  “Not this lang-uage,” she said through her laughter. She drew the word language out as she had done with the words angel and reincarnation and touched Marina’s lips with her fingertips. “This language,” she said as she touched Marina’s chest over her heart.

  There was a moment of silence between them, then the woman stood up. “Wait,” Marina said. “What should I do?” The woman seemed to ponder this question for a moment, then she dropped to her knees in the sand beside Marina.

  “Decide,” she said, and this time it did not sound like a question. She held each of her hands palm up as though there might be something in them. “Angel?” As she said this she lifted her left hand and cocked her head to the left gesturing out to the ocean. “Turtle?” She posited this word as though it and not devil or demon were the common antonyms for the word angel. At the same time she lifted her right hand and cocked her head to the right, gesturing in the direction she had identified with the life current. “Angel? Turtle?” She repeated the choices and the gestures that went with them, then she laughed, stood quickly and was gone.

  “Wait,” Marina called out again, but this time there was no answer. Decide, she thought, decide what? What did it mean to decide? But even as she turned the question over in her mind she knew what it meant. She didn’t understand all of it, but somehow she was being asked to decide whether she would do what it would take to move on with this experience. While she was not certain that this place was death, it was clearly not life. Perhaps this was a way station, a step in the process of transition from life to death. Well, she thought, let me get on with it. I’m ready.

  * * *

  The sun woke her in the morning. She felt it on her face. As far as she could tell nothing had changed. She had not moved. She still felt nothing below her neck. She still heard the waves rolling ashore along the beach on either side of her. She smelled the salt air, and she was thirsty.

  Almost as soon as she was aware of her thirst, the old woman, the old turtle woman was there beside her with water in a scalloped shell. Marina drank, in sips, most of the water from the shell. She looked up at the old woman. The eyes, the mouth, the shape of her face were identical to the young woman she had spoken to, more alike than even a mother and daughter could be.

  “I am ready,” she said quietly. “I have decided.” The old woman cocked her head in that peculiar way that Marina recognized from the day before, but showed no sign of understanding her. “I am ready,” Marina tried to explain. “You know, angel . . . turtle,” Marina repeated what the young woman had said, but the old woman still looked puzzled. “You remember,” Marina pleaded. “Last night, you said that I needed to decide. Didn’t you? Wasn’t that you?” Again the old woman just looked confused, as if she wanted to understand Marina but couldn’t.

  She stood up and turned her back to Marina. The turtle tattoo was still there. It was beautiful, fascinating in its detail, intricate and precise. But Marina was confused. Why couldn’t the old woman understand her when the younger version of what Marina was certain was the same woman, could? Had she dreamed the conversation in the dark? Could she trust any of her senses?

  The old woman walked up the beach, out of Marina’s range of vision and for a few moments Marina was alone again. Then the woman was bending over her, lifting and folding Marina’s arms across her chest. Next she felt her head and shoulders being lifted. The old woman lifted her by the shoulders and began dragging her backward. Marina saw again the burned and sun-scarred condition of her own skin. She saw the tracks in the sand made by her limp legs.

  As she was pulled backward her view of the beach expanded. A wide white band of sand extended as far as she could see in either direction. The waves rolled ashore powerfully, but seemed to break further out, their force blunted by some sandbar or reef. A barrier of palms and other trees began just beyond the dune line and quickly became a dark tangle of undergrowth.

  When the old woman stopped dragging her and laid her down, she was next to a shallow trench in the shade of a particularly full palm tree. The trench was about six feet long and two feet wide scooped out of the sand to about eighteen inches deep. Beside the trench was a pile of wet seaweed. The thick, broad fronds appeared to be coated in a slick, almost slimy, translucent film. As Marina watched, the woman layered the seaweed in an overlapping pattern to cover the bottom and sides of the trench. She did this carefully and it took time to complete. Marina found herself mesmerized by the simple repetitive activity.

  She had almost drifted off to sleep when she felt herself being lifted off the ground. When she opened her eyes, the old woman, who was easily a foot shorter than Marina, had lifted her up as if she were a baby. She was limp in the woman’s arms and felt herself being lowered into the trench. Once down, the old woman pulled and tugged Marina into place. She straightened Marina’s arms and legs, pulled back her hair, and pushed sand beneath the seaweed layer to form a support for her head and neck.

  “What is this?” Marina asked. “What are you doing?” The old woman smiled at her but said nothing. Instead she began layering the remaining seaweed strips over Marina. She molded them carefully around Marina’s feet, calves, and thighs. She covered her belly and breasts, wrapped her arms and shoulders, and ended by wrapping her throat carefully. Marina felt none of this, but watched it with an eerie detachment, as though this was someone else’s body that must be causing someone else, somewhere, excruciating pain. While the old woman wrapped, she sang. Her voice was pretty and melodic, but Marina could not make out any words.

  When she finished her wrapping, she stood up and walked into the forest. Within a few feet she was outside of Marina’s view and Marina felt, once again, alone. She wondered if this seaweed wrap was to help her heal. The old woman had laid several strips across Marina’s forehead and cheeks, and it did feel cool on her face.

  After only a few minutes, the old woman returned carrying an armful of flowers. They were tiny coral red and pink orchids. She had never seen such small orchids in such intense colors. The old woman knelt beside Marina and let the flowers fall into the trench. There were not enough blossoms to cover Marina’s body
, but the woman arranged and distributed them evenly. The scent of them was honey-sweet but also sharp, with a hint of citrus and cloves. The odor filled Marina and she closed her eyes just to concentrate on it.

  When she opened her eyes again, her feet were gone—covered in sand—and her legs were fast disappearing.

  “What are you doing?” Marina cried. “No! Stop! Please stop.” The woman was methodically but rapidly pushing sand down into the trench to cover her. Marina suddenly thought of flowers at funerals. She thought of Chechyna. She thought of wanting to die, but she was already dead so how could she die again?

  “Wait,” she called out. “I did choose. I want to heal and move on. You said I had to decide. I have. I have decided.” The old woman ignored her. She sang to herself and pushed sand into the trench to cover Marina’s torso. “I don’t want this, please don’t.” She was crying now as the old woman pushed sand in around her neck and head. Despite the futility of it Marina found herself taking deep breaths, as though this would give her some protection from being buried alive. As the sand came close around her face she closed her eyes, waiting for the dark, waiting for the smothering weight of sand.

  But it never came. When she opened her eyes again, the old woman was smoothing the sand over her. She had pushed and packed the sand around Marina’s head, right up to her face, but no further. She brushed the sand off of Marina’s face and patted her head. Then she drew handfuls of gray and black powder from another pouch and sprinkled it over Marina. The powder was lighter than sand and some of it blew into Marina’s face. Ash. She could taste burnt ash. What bizarre burial ritual was this? she wondered. The ash marked the mound that covered Marina. The old woman inspected her work, nodded her head in approval, and left.

  Several times during the day the old woman returned with a basket of tightly woven grasses. She poured fresh water from the basket over Marina’s buried body. Though she could not feel it, she knew the cool water must be trickling down between the folds of her seaweed wrapping, keeping her skin moist and cool. She also helped Marina drink water from the scalloped shell. Never a lot, but always enough to keep her mouth and throat cool and moist.

  She did not speak again to the old woman. She had not decided if this old woman was her savior or her tormentor. With all this careful watering, she wondered if something was supposed to grow from her grave. Or was her skin supposed to just decay beneath the earth and slip from her bones? Would she be free, then? Free to move on to some other place, some other level?

  With the night, a woman came out of the sea. It was clearly the younger version of the strange turtle woman, for even in silhouette against the moonlight, her youthful figure stood out. She stood up with the waves making foam about her ankles and stretched her arms up to the night sky. She dropped her head back, and Marina could not tell if she was stretching or worshipping the moon or simply studying the sky. Turtle Woman, Marina thought. She had no other name to use for the young woman. I will call you Turtle Woman.

  “Why are you here?” It was the Turtle Woman. She had slipped silently up the beach while Marina was studying the stars. Why am I here? Marina thought. Wasn’t that the same question she had asked the night before? I’m here because I’m dead! She wanted to shout this. She thought it. But she remembered how difficult it was to explain dead to the woman, and, besides, she wanted to talk to someone. She decided to try a different approach.

  “I’m here to heal,” she said. She didn’t really understand what she was saying. She did not know how she could both be dead and need to heal at the same time. It seemed pointless, but it was the language the Turtle Woman had used, and Marina thought it might be what she wanted to hear.

  “Dying . . . healing.” The woman stood over her, her legs on either side of the shallow grave Marina was buried in. She held up both of her hands as she had the night before, miming a kind of scale. “Dying?” She bounced one hand as though judging the weight of something resting in her palm. “Healing?” She bounced the other hand. “You are still choosing, yes?”

  “No,” Marina said. But it was true that she had made no conscious decision to heal. She had not really chosen anything. She could not choose something she did not believe in. “Well, yes,” Marina admitted softly. “It’s just that I don’t understand this, any of this. I just wanted to die.”

  “Then get up. There is the current.” She gestured at the ocean. “Go to it. Continue dying. Or . . .” she paused, put her hands on her hips, “. . . come again to the living.”

  “I told you I was no good at living.” Her voice was angry now, with traces of desperation. “I just want to die.” The Turtle Woman gestured with both hands toward the ocean, but said nothing. “I can’t move, damn it. If I could, I would. I died once. I can do it again.” Marina was actually not sure she believed this, but frustration was building within her. “Why can’t I move? If I’m dead why am I crippled?”

  “Are you crippled?” the Turtle Woman asked.

  “Would I be lying here, buried like this, if I had a choice?”

  “But you chose not to be with the living.”

  “This is not how it’s supposed to be,” Marina snapped. She strained her body, willing it to move with all the muscles in her face. She felt her eyes bulge with the pressure she was creating, but nothing moved. It was like trying to lift an object securely bolted to the ground. She fought the sand, the dead weight of her body, gravity itself, until she had nothing left to fight with. “I can’t . . . ,” Marina fumbled. “Please. Take me to the current. Let me move on.” Her voice was weak, defeated. She never liked asking people for things. It made her feel diminished.

  “I cannot,” the Turtle Woman said. She sat lightly in the sand beside Marina. The moonlight reflecting off the water and the white sand created just enough of a glow for Marina to see the Turtle Woman’s face. It was a beautiful face, dark but radiant. She had a young girl’s mouth, full and quick to smile. There were no lines in her face yet, but her eyes seemed still to belong to the older woman. They were a mother’s eyes. “I can help you to walk, but the path you must choose. . . .” She did not finish the sentence. She did not need to. Marina knew the Turtle Woman was telling her the truth. It did not please her to know she still had choices to make. Choices were what death was to have resolved.

  “Who are you?” Marina asked gently. Then, without waiting for an answer, she added, “I mean, are you an angel or a spirit? What are you?” The Turtle Woman seemed to be considering her question. She looked as though she would speak several times, then didn’t. She looked out at the ocean. Marina had the impression that she was searching for words.

  “I am like you,” the Turtle Woman began hesitantly. “Now I am woman. There . . .” she gestured up to the night sky, “I am mother.” She pointed out to the ocean. “Then I am . . . tur-tle.” She said turtle slowly, breaking it up into two distinct syllables, as if she found it both amusing and fascinating to associate herself with this word. “Here,” she touched Marina’s forehead, “I am angel.” She looked at Marina closely, as if to see whether she understood. “Many things. One thing.” She seemed pleased with her own explanation.

  “You come from my head,” Marina asked, “don’t you?”

  The Turtle Woman wrinkled her forehead, thought for a moment, then answered. “Yes,” she announced, pleased with herself. She touched her fingertips to the point between her breasts where her heart beat. “I come from your head.” As she said this she touched Marina’s forehead again. Then she put her hand on the sand that covered Marina’s chest. “You come from your head.”

  “I mean,” Marina struggled to explain, “that this is all a fantasy, a dream. Isn’t it? Even though it seems like a long time, it’s probably only taking seconds, right? Somewhere my body is drowning right now. I’m unconscious and this is my last dream. Right?”

  The Turtle Woman seemed to contemplate Marina’s perception for a long time. In the silence, Marina thought about what she had just expressed. Like the moment w
hen one becomes aware of being in a dream, Marina half expected to have her surroundings begin to fade, to be snapped back to her drowning body. But nothing changed. Her surroundings, if anything, seemed more real. Minutes seemed to go by as neither of the two women spoke. Then the Turtle Woman patted the sand firmly.

  “This is a real place,” she said in a quiet but serious voice. “This is also a dreaming place. Maybe you are dreaming me. Maybe I am dreaming you. Maybe Turtle Island is dreaming us both. Turtle Island is a mother. Maybe we are daughters in her dream.” Marina’s head began to swim.

  Can I stand this? Marina asked herself. Can something be both a dream and real?

  “What is a photographer?” the Turtle Woman asked. She said the word again, playing with it as, Marina noticed, she did with all the words that seemed new to her.

  “A photographer makes pictures,” Marina answered, though she knew as she said it that it was not a satisfactory answer.

  “Draws pictures?”

  “Not really drawing.”

  “But pictures?” She leaned and turned slightly touching her own back where the turtle-shell tattoo covered it. The colors were brighter than Marina had remembered from when she had seen it before.

  “Yes, pictures,” Marina said, “but not with ink, not drawing.”

  “How, then?”

  “With light,” Marina answered, though she did not really know how to explain this simply. “I catch reflections of light to make pictures.”

  “Hmmm.” The Turtle Woman nodded her head. Somehow she seemed to find a connection, some way in which this could make sense to her. “How?” she asked. She leaned in close to Marina, expectant and curious. Marina was not sure where to begin.

  “Film,” she started to explain. “Something sensitive to light.”

  “Like skin,” the Turtle Woman interrupted. Marina thought about this for a moment.

  “Yes,” she admitted, “like skin.” Skin was a surface that reacted to light. It changed color, darkened, with exposure to light. “Like skin, but more complicated.”