by Ilie Ruby
That’s when the bathroom door sprung open. The principal was staring at me, her white-blond wedge frizzled around her large tortoiseshell glasses. I could see Irene’s face behind her in the hallway. “Irene, you were right. Thank you for letting me know. Naida, we need to evacuate. Do you have a ride home?”
I pushed through the heavy metal doors of the school and flew outside. The Wizard ignited my muscles. Sirens in the distance. Fire in my lungs. My jean skirt puckered as I ran, my black knee-high boots pulling at my calves. My yellow T-shirt became soaked under my armpits. My backpack slapped my back. I thought of my father, waiting for me in the ocean.
“Hey, Frog Witch! You’re going to burn! Stop, Frog Witch!” I outran my bullies, sliding down a grassy mud hill behind a stranger’s house.
When my bullies moved on to their next escapade, all jacked up on the excitement of a natural disaster, I cut around the corner and made my way toward my house through the back of Maiden’s Cross Village. In the alley, I caught my breath, black soot drifting all around me. I wiped my face and noticed the black streaks on my hands. I whipped around at the sudden noise behind me.
Julio leapt out from behind the Dumpster. “Caught you, Frog Witch!”
He pushed me down onto the asphalt, his sweaty blond hair thick as straw as he hovered. Pain shot through my neck as he pinned my shoulders with his knees. I tried to kick him. I screamed, but no sound came out, my voice trapped by quiet stones. With his right hand, he leaned down close to my face.
I spat at the wind, the scent of the sweat and fire thickened with sea air snaking across my face, soaking my clothing.
When he pulled up my skirt, he laughed at my day-of-the-week underwear. I was wearing Thursday. It was a Friday. That morning, I hadn’t been able to find Friday.
He smirked. “Wrong day, Frog Witch.”
“Get off me,” I breathed. That just made him angrier.
His breath reeked of pot as he peered into my eyes. His red football jersey stunk of body odor. Number 29. He was number 29.
I had begun to conjure my father like my mother told me she used to do. I pictured smoke snaking across the water. I shook my head no, my fingers clawing at the ground.
Let me go before you do something you’ll regret, I imagined myself saying, something threatening and wise, something that warned him of the future. But my words became like birds above me.
“Let me go,” I said. “I won’t tell anyone.” There it was. A cloud above him.
“Show me your frog foot.”
I tried to kick him, but he dug his knee into my thigh. Sweating, he pulled my boot off, then wrestled off my blue argyle sock. He grabbed my ankle, illuminating my bare foot against the orange sky. Julio’s mouth twisted into a smile, satisfied, as if he had gotten to the root of things or had discovered a hidden treasure. A foot. There it was.
“You are part frog,” he gasped, a twisted smile on his face. He would suffer for this. His name would be burned in the karmic dictionary under the word “asshole.” “Amazing. I actually didn’t believe it. Damn right you are a freak.” I kneed him, and he started to cough. I rolled away and got up on my knees.
The salty breeze flooded the air, replacing the scent of ash and fire. Julio looked up, coughing uncontrollably. Papers spilled from his backpack and flitted in the wind. “What the hell? What did you do, Frog Witch?” Through my tears I saw him running down the alley, trying to catch the papers caught in the trees. “I’ll get you. Freak!” he shouted. I kicked off my other boot and started to run. Julio chased me down the street as the orange sky followed. I ran around to the front of the Sands Restaurant and pounded on the windows.
Why was everybody gone?
I grabbed the metal rungs of the fire escape and scissored my legs, crawling up the metal grate, and Julio jumped up after me. I knew he was afraid of heights. I’d seen him refusing to climb the knotted rope swing in gym class, all his friends around, jeering at him. He’d looked so defeated that day, I’d actually felt sorry for him. I wouldn’t feel sorry for him anymore.
When I looked down, he had talked himself into crawling up the ladder after me, looking at me like I was crazy. At the top, I stepped out onto the slick roof. When I jumped off, I always imagined it could be like landing on ice, only worse, perhaps like cement. Now I had no choice.
It would be the end. I would go bravely. Not like a coward. I would fight, making people proud of me.
I knew the pattern of the rocks, every crag and every cave. Lifting my chin, I held my face to the orange sky. I straightened my arms out at my sides, my palms turned up as if this would lift me. Sweat poured down the sides of my face. I heard Julio call, “Crazy bitch.” But it didn’t matter. Now there was nothing but flight. I could fall straight up into the sky and disappear into the stars, becoming one with them, all caught by the single thread of memory of our beginnings, which was wound through every cell. The waves below were streaked with yellow, reflections of the dirty air. I closed my eyes. There was only the sound of my heartbeat. I drew in my breath, my body wrapped up in the warm wind. No more Frog Witch. No more holding my breath. No more anything that remotely resembled a stalled life. A life spent waiting and trying to hide. My feet pushed off the gritty roof, my body arcing across the glowing water.
Flight.
The dark skin of the waves burned my fingertips.
IN THE BEGINNING, the Wizard made water, not light. The fish came first, then the animals, then came those flesh-covered machines known as human beings. In the beginning, human beings believed they were free. There was a plan for everything. Somebody always knew how to get from A to B. Why, then, should existing be so difficult? Perhaps we’d begin to devolve into animals. Dr. B. said it was because we could pull fistfuls of light in our hands, but that we shouldn’t think of it like that—we should just be human.
Water.
I landed in a pearly sea. Splashing into a soft cushion of seaweed, I was far enough out from the rocks. The energy of the sea. Huge. Whalelike waves came in from the atmosphere, tripped up by a magnetic wire gone awry out there, from the silent astral avalanche. Swimming a great distance under the water, farther than I ever had before, I rose up out of it to take a breath. The sea appeared as if on fire, reflecting the sky. Ignited by the emotion of the hunt and the need for my father, I swam faster, letting the waves pull me farther out.
I felt grateful to the Wizard for my body, for once. I had left the old Naida behind. Good riddance, I thought. Goodbye to all the pain of my old Frog Witch self.
When I surfaced, at least fifty yards away, I saw all the hotel windows in stacked rows across the distance. I dipped down and spun around.
Something brushed my foot. I kicked it away. I wanted to keep swimming. The waves pulled me toward deeper waters. The enormous strength of the undertow caught my ankles, the wild horse that had almost drowned me years ago. Now it wanted to play. I began to kick at it, my legs like tiny sticks in its huge jaws. I struggled to right myself. But nothing could rein it in.
Where was my father?
Just then a pair of gold-flecked eyes appeared beneath the water.
A sea lion thrust up through the waves, then disappeared. I dipped down, caught sight of a tunnel made of seaweed, a string of tiny bubbles strung through it like a necklace. Then long black spiraling strands of hair swirled through the water. I had to come up for a breath. The more I kicked in the other direction, the more it pulled me. I was fighting with myself, panicked, wanting to go back.
Where was my father?
I shouted into the distance, my words snuffed out by the crashing waves. I told my father that he’d lied. I screamed that he’d left me. “Where are you?” I called across the hazy sky, my voice dissolving like the sea mist over the rocks. As many obscenities as I hurled into that water, only silence flew back at me with its oily flustered wings, stinging my eyes with salt.
I finally reached the shore a half mile from my house.
Dragging myself onto the be
ach, I glanced back at the burning sea, all lit up with reflections. I wanted to reach out and push it back, back across the bike path. Back through time. Back through my own decision to be born. Everyone was right. My father was not coming to save me.
When I reached the salmon arch of Wild Acres, the bougainvillea blossoms were rising, billowing over the sliver of moon that appeared too early in the late-afternoon sky and that I knew had conspired with the vines to draw me back onto land.
MY MOTHER STOOD on the porch next to Dr. B. and Aunt Dolly, calling to me as I realized there was no hiding. They would be angry at my unexplained absence, especially with all the panic of the fires. The deep orange sky cast long dark shadows over the sand. My black hair soaking down my back, I looked at my legs, moonstone blue in the now dimming light.
“What happened, child? Those fires won’t come all the way here,” Dr. B. said, putting her arm around me. She ushered me into the lobby as if to give my mother a little cooling-off period, or perhaps to give one to me.
“Why are they so mean to me?” I asked.
Dr. B. reached out, her fingers brushing my cheek. “Who’s mean?”
“Everyone,” I said.
“Surely not everyone. You’re very loved. You’re a wonderful girl.”
“No one at school wants to be friends with the Frog Witch.”
She waved me toward the green microsuede couch and offered me a box of tissues as I told her what had happened.
“You know who you remind me of?”
Tick Tock chattered, jumping between perches in his cage. “A lady who was an outlaw,” I said. She nodded, and told me my grandmother had been caught in an elevator that was stuck between two floors.
“Things won’t always be that way. One day you’ll grow up and you won’t even remember.” I hadn’t told her about Julio’s attack. Only about the teasing. “This will get better. You can’t see that now because you haven’t been down that road. But we’ve all been the subject of gossip at some point in our lives.”
“My foot. It’s the whole problem,” I said.
“You know what, honey? I think if God had wanted feet to be perfect, she wouldn’t have invented high-heeled shoes.” She raised an eyebrow. I offered her the only smile I could, a half-crooked poor attempt, only because she didn’t deserve to worry. “I just hate being different.”
She shook her head. “You come from a long line of exceptional women. Different in other ways. Your grandmother, for instance. That lovely woman watched the moon like it was the rising sun, like it could begin and end all things.”
“What about my mother?”
“What about her?”
“You said a long line of women. You were including my mother and my aunt.”
She nodded. “That’s right. Now your mother.”
“There’s nothing wrong with her,” I said.
Dr. B. smiled and glanced at the ground. “Everybody’s got something. Your mother would be the first one to tell you she isn’t perfect.”
“But that’s what makes her so normal. Besides, she has no secrets.”
“How would you know that?”
She was right. How would I know if my mother had secrets?
She told me my mother had had her own struggles. By that I assumed she was talking about my father. And I knew how my grandmother had raised my mother and my aunt. I knew it wasn’t easy. “You know, sometimes people don’t even know they have secrets. At least yours is out there for all to see. You know exactly what it is. And I reckon that one day, you won’t even think about it anymore. One day, it’ll seem so normal to you that it’ll be like anything else you get used to, like the color of your eyes. But by then, you’ll have other things to worry about.”
I glanced at her. “What other things?”
She shrugged. “Life. Your job. Your family. Maybe a husband. Children—they’re worth it if you choose.”
Why was she talking about all these unreal things when my real life was so messed up and misunderstood? I couldn’t see my own path ahead of me. How could she?
“I don’t want to get married. Ever,” I said, surprising myself. No one in my family had ever talked against marriage. But no one had talked for it, either. My mother never mentioned it, in fact, which had never seemed strange to me, but now suddenly did. I knew all my mother’s stories about my father.
“What’s so bad about marriage?” she asked, folding her arms.
“I’ve just never seen it. Anywhere but on television.”
Dr. B. laughed and said she hadn’t thought about that before. She said that when she was a little girl, she didn’t know any adults who weren’t married. “I think it’s high time you got to know your grandmother a little bit better. The only way you’ll know her is to read her own words. Has your mother ever shown you the almanacs?”
I said no.
“There’s a box marked ‘Diana’ in the storage room. You’ll have to rummage around a bit in there. It’s been years since your mother looked at it, and I’ve had movers going in and out of there since. But I know it’s there. I don’t want you in there by yourself, though. You come and get me tomorrow, and I’ll help you find that box.” She reached out, lifting my chin. “My door is always open to you, Naida. You don’t ever have to even knock. I’m always here.”
She gave me a hug, and I felt the strength of her arms and the smell of the freshly starched fabric of her faded yellow dress. Then she stared at me and smiled.
“You don’t have to get married,” she whispered.
“Didn’t my mother ever want to?”
She shook her head no. “Did you hear her say that?”
“No, but I just thought.”
“Well, you never can tell what people wish for, can you? Wishes change. You’ll see that one day. Right now all you want is to blend in. One day, you’ll want to stand out. That’s the trouble with life, you know. Hard to get the right wishes matched with the right part of your life.”
I stood up to leave and crossed the small room toward the door.
“Naida?” Dr. B. asked.
“Yes?” I said, turning around to face her. I almost backed away farther from the intensity of her stare.
“Do you have a good mother?” she asked.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“That’s important to know,” she said.
MY MOTHER STOOD in the living room, her keys clenched in her hand. The new pink silk pillows scattered across the brown couch shimmered in the late-afternoon haze. Her eyes were rimmed with blue eyeliner, and her freckled skin was slick with patches of powdery blush. I hated to be the cause of her worry.
“Naida, I left work and drove to school to pick you up. The secretary said you left an hour ago. I’ve been worried sick, driving around looking for you. Where have you been? Have you been crying? And of course you’re soaking wet.”
I glanced at the television. The weatherman was reporting the fires, showing the map of Southern California. “The smoke. Made my eyes water a little,” I said. “So the fires are over?”
“Dying down. At least they’re under control now. There’s been a lot of damage out there. But we’re safe, thankfully. I wish those poor people the best.”
No one was safe, fires or not. “I’m going to get into the tub,” I told her, escaping into the bathroom. I peeled off my clothes and ran the water as hot as I could stand it, letting the memories of Julio circle the drain and disappear.
Later that night, my mother flicked on the lights in my bedroom. She sat down at the foot of my bed, demoralized. “Why? That’s all I want to know. Don’t you know how dangerous this is? Swimming at all times of day and night. And on a day like today. What if something happened to you out there?”
Something is happening to me out there, I wanted to say. Something has been happening to me for my entire life. My promise to stop made her sigh with relief. I rubbed my eyes, which were still burning. My body ached from Julio’s attack, and I had bruises on my shoulders, my arms,
and my thigh where he’d pressed his knees.
I had stayed in the water too long.
I had been designated as Other, destined for a place no one could reach or measure or contain. If I had any doubts that I was meant to be here, they’d been confirmed now. My father hadn’t come to find me. But I wasn’t convinced that he wouldn’t. Maybe I just hadn’t been looking at the right time. It was all timing, as Dr. B. said. Sometimes your life had to catch up with your wishes. I knew the ocean was still inside me, thundering in my ears, causing my hair to become tangled like the girl’s in that painting of the naiad. I was certain my mother didn’t understand me. Why did she have to argue with me all the time about the ocean? Didn’t she know that the ocean was saving my life?
That night, I dreamed I was running through the hallways at school. The bell rang. I counted my breaths, as my mother had taught me. I raced past the hall monitor, the teachers, but they didn’t see me. I knew I was invisible. I could hear laughter as I ran. Then I was running across the skin of the ocean, my steps leaving ripples like huge heavy raindrops. I felt something hit the back of my leg.
When I reached for it, my hand was wet, slick with oil. Black. When I opened my fist, a bird’s wing became a dagger in my hand. It had a horse’s mane carved into it. It glowed bone white in the moonlight.
Chapter Twenty-six
WHEN YOU ARE lost at sea for any period that is longer than a short while, you will start to find the strangest things familiar. Aching for home, you will find similarities in remote things. Giant cliffs and craggy rocks will resemble sea lions rising up out of the water. A patch of rippling, reflected sky will become the window you used to look out when you woke up to your first backyard. Birdsongs will overlap with human voices and become indistinguishable. You will imagine yourself back home during your loneliest sleepless nights. If you are far from the Orkney Islands of Scotland, your home, on the longest day of the year, you will read a book outside at midnight, holding a flashlight, as you think of your friends enjoying a nightless night. You may even imagine seeing the aurora borealis—the northern lights—in the far-off sky. If you are a fisherman who has been at sea for long periods of time, you’ll be so drawn to the colored lights on the THUMS Islands off the coast of Long Beach that you may even come ashore, thinking you’re home.