The Salt God's Daughter

by Ilie Ruby

  As ever, my own heartbeat. And now his.

  My knees buckled. Graham reached out and steadied me. I motioned with my chin for him to look at the trees. He said he didn’t see anything. But I saw the leaves parting. The bougainvillea revealed something I had forgotten about all these years, that iridescent pale blue sheen, the petals held in the white cast of mourning.

  The wolf cries of the Santa Anas raced across the canyons and passes and dissolved into the skies. Petals fell like confetti through the wind, their edges torn. I shook off his hand and folded my arms, showing him I could stand alone. After all these years.

  Leaves quivered in the breeze like ceremonial ribbons as I smoothed my jean miniskirt. As I knelt to untie my old blue high-top sneakers, my purple feather earrings brushed my neck. I’d kept the earrings all these years, never knowing why. Graham took the bottle of tequila from my basket and gathered the bouquet of red roses we’d bought at a small flower stand on Second Street. They had been wrapped in pink paper, which Graham tore off and shoved into a plastic bag. I was amazed at his attunement to the details of my recollection, even if my own memory had faded over time.

  Whatever was here, I was ready to claim it. To stand up and say, Here I am.

  And, What more do you want from me?

  Catching my breath, I pressed my fists against my chest to steady my heartbeat. The grass was thick. The sky was too thin in patches. Graham remained quiet. I looked around. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by memory. “Let’s go home,” I said, wishing I were back in my bed and that I could curl up and shut my eyes.

  Graham’s eyes held mine. “You have to be sure.”

  “I need a minute.” I walked away. I glanced up at the leaves, at the place where I had gone all those years ago when I had left my body.

  Up there in the canopy, I imagined the air was cool and all the sounds blended together, no one louder than the other, everything swirling into a murmuring hum. I closed my eyes to remember what I had come for. Memory met flesh. Birdsong. Bicycle tires crushing, leaves rustling. Insects with pulsing wings, tucked within the bark of trees, the sound and wind all greased by my blood, the marrying thread.

  The events of my past could be rewritten. Who’d ever heard of such a thing? He wanted me to be whole, to give me back what I had lost. “Because it still follows you, that night. Only you can walk it down,” he’d said. “It chases you like an animal in your dreams.” That was exactly what it did.

  I wanted to take the chance, knowing that it might be helpful. That the body might be able to do something about the mind’s unrelenting jaws, locked on this night.

  That girl. She was with me. Here, now. The girl who was tricked. The girl who hadn’t known. That burning orchard. That girl with wings. The one who was left.

  Everywhere, there was curling smoke.

  I shivered, folding my arms. Suddenly, in my mind I was falling, my hands tunneling moonlight.

  Carefully unfolding the white blanket, I let my hair fall across my eyes. When I shook out the blanket, it billowed up so that a square of light fell over the grass. Graham knelt at one corner, his large hands spreading it out flat until it was smooth. He put the bottle of tequila near the edge of the blanket. Then he stretched out, hands clasped behind his head, starting up at me. Weaving through my memory, I pictured myself as I was back then, a fresh spray of freckles across my nose, my long hair tangled across a white blanket, streaked with summer sunlight.

  I kept my shirt on and tossed my jean skirt in the grass.

  I stood there in my underwear, as pale as moonstone. My top fluttered up around my bare stomach. I touched the peace sign charm on my old necklace. I knelt on the blanket. I wanted to feel the wind on my face, the sweet breeze. Then I lay next to Graham, my eyes holding his. I moved closer, my stomach pressed to his. “It’s okay. It’s just me,” he whispered, his warm mouth on my skin, connecting me somehow to myself. Looking up, I searched beyond the flower petals for the night stars. Graham reached over and handed me the bottle of tequila. He told me to try and relax. I told him I didn’t want alcohol this time—I wanted to be aware, conscious. My eyes teared. I passed the bottle back to him, and he drank and then replaced the cap and set it aside. I tried to relax as the sky weighted deep blue stones on my shoulders. I imagined having left my body, and now looking down as if from the sky, at my body and Graham’s splayed on a white blanket.

  “Say when,” he said.

  The liquor spilled from his lips, trickling down his chin and onto my chest. I reached up and wiped his face clean with my hand. Graham reached for my arm, and, lifting my hand to his mouth, he began kissing me. He continued, kissing my shoulder and the inside curve of my arm. Then he moved to the other side and held my other hand. He did the same thing, caressing my fingers and my palm, pushing my hair back from my neck, leaving kisses behind the ears. My body shivered from head to toe. I stared at the bouquet of roses he’d set in the grass.

  He let me lie on top of him for a good long while, almost an hour, allowing me to meld into him, drowning in the musky scent of his warm body.

  “It happened right after my first period,” I whispered, noticing how his gaze remained steady.

  “You’re safe. Just go at your own pace,” he said.

  I would decide what happened this time, and I knew I could say anything to him, that he would not judge me, or think me horrid, or stupid, or naive. Or wrong. Graham kissed my neck, starting to move his hands across my stomach. His breath grew heavy.

  “Stop,” I said.

  He pulled away, and sat up. He understood.

  I reached for him, clasping my hands around his neck, pulling him down over me. He began kissing me, moving his lips across my neck, burying his face in my hair. My eyes trailed up the line of tree bark, up to leaves and the scarlet hues streaked across the sky. I heard the whisper of branches, imagining the tree of lost virginities, my own name carved into its thick bark, its leaves rippling blue-white in the sky, like tongues or flames.

  “Graham,” I said. “Graham, look at me.”

  “I’m looking,” he whispered, not taking his eyes off me. I imagined the red tinge of his eyes, the ink spot approaching in the calm clear water.

  I imagined a table underwater, covered by white linens and set with silver bowls filled with chocolate ice cream and freshly washed strawberries.

  When we made love, I imagined flight.

  Gazing up at the sheet-metal moon, I took it all back, everything I had left.

  I WRAPPED MY arms around myself. For a little while, I cried. I hadn’t imagined I would need to, but I did.

  I lay in his arms, watching those memories now whipping across the air—That, How could you.

  That, Why did you go there to begin with.

  That, Will you ever recover.

  That, Let me kill him for you.

  As we gathered our things to leave, I picked up one of the roses.

  That night, I burned it on the beach.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ON THE NIGHT of the Blood Moon in October, leaves fell under a sheet-metal sky. The deer were ready and fattened for the hunt, fed by the Santa Anas heat. They kicked up ash as they disappeared beyond the cement walls, parting the tall grasses.

  Smoke crept up from the bluer than blue. The ocean swelled. The sea winds pushed enormous waves toward the shore. The Santa Anas rushed down from the mountains toward the sea to meet them. When the two winds met, they created havoc. I had been watching from my porch and was sent running to the bathroom, spilling myself out over the rim.

  My hair curled up around my face. My mouth tasted bitter. I wiped my face with my sleeve. I hadn’t slept. I needed something to eat, consumed by the thought of bread. My Naida, who was hungry already. She got me up in the middle of the night in the heat, looking for bread.

  I vomited again in the bathtub, struggling for air. The weight of my body was enormous. Grasping the side of the counter, I pulled myself up. My reflection in the mirror looked faded. The
purple welts under each of my eyes had deepened.

  Graham hadn’t returned since the Bougainvillea Castle in August. But I had other things to think about now. Dolly pounded on the bathroom door. She’d let herself into my apartment with her key.

  “Moose! Let me in!”

  She had come to check on me—she hadn’t heard from me in weeks. She’d tried calling Dr. B., who’d left on a trip to Greece. Mrs. Green was visiting her son in Chicago. Mr. Takahashi had knocked gently and then gone back to his apartment.

  I crawled to the door, reached up, and turned the knob. She knelt by my side, and she put her hand on my forehead. “Do you think you have a fever?”

  I hadn’t told her what had happened at the Bougainvillea Castle two months before. How I hadn’t had my period since.

  “I’m pregnant,” I breathed.

  She nodded. “We need to get you a test,” she said, running cool water across the washcloth. My sister smoothed my hair as I crouched once more against the cold basin, my hands pressed like paws on the cold tiles. She held my hair back, and then I fell across her lap. She rocked me there, sitting on the bathroom floor. Just like she had done once before, all those years ago.

  IT WAS CONFIRMED. We stared at the blue line creeping across the tiny white rectangle in the pregnancy wand.

  “I told you,” I said.

  “Moose. We’ll figure this out together,” Dolly said. That night she tucked me into bed. Then she went to sleep on the couch. Dolly left with a promise to return that next weekend and told me to think about what I wanted to do, even though we both knew there was nothing to think about. When Graham knocked on my door a few nights later, I didn’t run to open it. I sat on the couch and stared at it defiantly. This is what it was to feel emptied of everything, I thought. You wouldn’t care. Nothing could touch you. The world could be careening out of its orbit and you’d sit here, letting it take you.

  This was a night that was not the full moon. I watched the doorknob turning, the fingernail of light scraping my reflection.

  I could press on as long as I did the opposite of what I actually felt. This would be my compass. I got up and opened the door.

  He smiled at me with surprise. He could tell something was different. I could see the effects of his fatigue pulling at the corners of his eyes. His wrists looked wrong, bony and large. His fingers too heavy as he pushed the door shut.

  “You don’t look like yourself. What’s going on?” he asked, putting his bag down. He was earnest. That’s what I noticed when he reached for my hand. That’s what I’d seen from the start. “I’ve been working. I came as soon as I could,” he said. “Can I make you smile? At all? For a second? Just a minute? A half of a second?” Then he pulled back.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, putting his bag down. He tried pulling me down on the kitchen floor, wanting to wrestle. I leaned back against the counter, my hands covering my stomach. Why was he so childlike now? I slinked down and pushed my back up against the wall.

  “I’m eight weeks pregnant,” I said. I pulled up my shirt, revealing my swollen belly. “Yes. It’s yours.”

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he crawled toward me and pressed his ear to my abdomen. He smiled, his pale cheek against my tummy. I half wondered if he was going to ask me what I was going to do, or even how this had happened, but he didn’t. My loyalty had never been in question. Not once.

  Later, I tossed off the covers and slipped out of bed. Pushing open the sliding glass door to the porch, I wanted to see the wetsuit. I touched the sleeve. It was thicker than I had thought, lined with heavy fur. Then I heard something. He was calling my name in his sleep. I ran back inside. Kneeling beside him, I put my hand on his forehead. His eyes fluttered open. I leaned over him, my hair falling across his chest. “Where did you come from? Where do you go? Why me?”

  He murmured something. I leaned in. “I could really love you.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  “Ruthie, I dreamed about you before I met you,” he whispered.

  I touched his cheek, noticing the moistness of his skin, then the bruises on his neck that he’d never explain. I wanted to know his people, to see that he existed beyond our relationship. He caressed my face, moving his thumb around my lips, circling lightly, trying to spin this all into love. It was a beautiful gesture, meant to make me feel delicate. But I would no longer accept tenderness in place of permanence, in place of honesty. This was too high a price to pay. I knew the green waterhorse was shifting his weight under the Teutonic plates. I imagined I could feel its drumming pulse underneath my feet.

  He was gentler with me now because he realized he loved me. Or perhaps it was because I was carrying his child. Deciding both could be true, I slipped into the bed and pulled the covers up over my face. He pulled me toward him, my body fitting against his. I turned my back against his chest. I didn’t want to fit.

  “I’m glad,” he whispered against the back of my neck. “You want to know. I am.”

  “Are we going to raise this child together?” I turned toward him.

  His gaze fell. “You know I can’t.”

  I didn’t need him to hold me, for him to tell me that he’d always be there for me. That we’d always be friends. When his eyes met mine, I knew it was over even though I still felt something. I knew then that I always would. I had to send him away. He got up and started to get dressed.

  The earth was cracking open. I held my stomach, watching him. Where was my sister? I wanted my sister, who’d been by my side forever.

  This was not what I had imagined. Whatever life he was leading surely couldn’t be more important than the life we had created. Did he care? The realization that I was following in my mother’s footsteps, that I was going to do this alone, hit me like a wall of flames. I’d been waiting a lifetime for my child, never thinking that history would repeat in this way.

  By myself. Become a mother. What if I would be like my mother? What if I could not stay with my child?

  “You’ll be a wonderful mother,” he said, picking up his wetsuit.

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” I whispered. He nodded and said he understood. It was an old story.

  Standing in the doorway, he raked his fingers through his hair, watching me. “Some day, you’ll meet someone who will love you like I can’t. You deserve better,” he said. I nodded.

  What I knew: We didn’t want to be fighting. Neither of us was good at it. We both wanted to make peace. We craved it, that old stillness, all that time we’d sit on the beach in the sunlight and imagine the future. We didn’t want the shadows that filled our eyes when we looked at each other, reminding us of the distance that had always been there, of what we had not buried, of the chasm that we had not successfully crossed. We didn’t want our words to sound like thunderclouds. We knew we were not unsinkable. We didn’t want this moment, or the necessary ending that it meant. We didn’t want to have failed.

  “I will come back. It’s my responsibility.”

  “Come back because you love me. Not because you have to.” I stood in front of him, my hands pressed to my swollen breasts. I had never felt more vulnerable in my life.

  “Ruthie, you’re more than this,” he said.

  “Aren’t you?” I said, but I didn’t know that. Each time I opened my mouth I imagined birds sweeping by and catching my words. There were birds flocking between us now, a whole cavern of them, darting this way and that, curving and swooping. I understood what my mother wanted me to know, that we were different.

  I bucked up. I threw my shoulders back. I had never abandoned anything in my life. Not a person. Not a single moment.

  This feeling was familiar. I hadn’t felt anything like this since she’d died. I missed her. I wondered if I was ready to go on without Graham, knowing I had no choice. I had never wanted to let anyone go. But I would never wait for him again.

  Graham put his hands on my shoulders. “I know you’ll protect my child, Ruthie.”
>
  My throat tightened. “Never come back. If you leave, you can never come back.”

  “Ruthie,” he said, his voice thin, “I shouldn’t have come. It’s better if I go. You’ll see.”

  He pushed open the sliding glass door and grabbed his knapsack and wetsuit from the chair. When he came back he took out two objects: a small white dagger, its bone handle carved in the shape of a horse, its mane encircling it. Then he took out an old bible with a black leather cover. “These are mine. I keep them with me for protection, but I want you to have them now.” I followed him into my bedroom. He lifted the mattress and pushed the dagger and the bible back to the farthest point underneath. “Keep these here. They’ll protect you when you sleep. And our child. Will you promise me that?”

  I could hear the Sisters barking.

  He sighed, his eyes holding mine.

  “These will protect you both. Will you promise me you’ll keep them here under the bed?”

  “I don’t make promises,” I said. That was my new truth.

  He lingered in the doorway. “I don’t imagine I’ll get over you.”

  The fact that he didn’t want to disappoint me made it that much harder. I told him goodbye.

  All was quiet. Things were returning to their rightful places, reversing the mistakes of that first Blue Moon. I had been one of the in-betweeners that night, one who’d been trapped. I had become confused, thinking I’d been found. But people like me, like my mother, too, who couldn’t read maps, who made up her map as she went along, would forget the signs and symbols she’d already found. The problem was forgetfulness. Time and time again.

  Time could fool you; it could soften the sharp corners of a thing. You might see this as a change in the thing itself. You might think that a soft corner on a piece of sea glass meant that the glass didn’t have the potential to break. But glass would always contain within it the capacity to cut you, no matter how it appeared. The same road would always lead you back to the place you once knew, back to the place where you were your most raw, unbridled self, back to the place where you were mostly animal.