The Salt God's Daughter
Page 30
Yes, I loved them, imperfectly.
My girls found me near daybreak sitting in a pocket of shallow water. My body was broken, but I felt enormous strength. I had wanted to simply bask in the silvery sky, to watch the full yellow moon sink into the blue-black, and to know that I’d fought for another person, and had won. My last fight had been for love, something real, not imagined. In the end, The Wanderer, Ruth’s father, would go. The moon and its stories would fade. My girls would wake up together, and would remain together, side by side, their language one of stories. I used to tell them that nothing in life would ever be as permanent as the words on the page, certainly not the moon, which always changed, certainly not human beings, with their shifting thoughts and their swirling feelings, with their smoke signals, their stories, and their threats of silence and their secrets. Then, I knew I was wrong. I’d become recognizable. When I stopped running.
I made Ruth promise me she would be a better mother than I was. I saw that a child teaches its mother what no one else can. I think this was what we were all doing here together to begin with.
Dagmar would call this the Mother Theory of Creation.
I had given Ruth back her freedom. Devotion, she already knew. Devotion and freedom, they could coexist. But I never had to teach Ruth that. For her, that was instinct.
That morning, as I rested in the waves, I looked out at the sky. I was here, I thought. No more stories.
Like the waves, my girls came.
A girl. Just a girl. Then, another.
Acknowledgments
MY GRATITUDE FIRST to my family—to my husband and my three children, without whose love and support it simply wouldn’t have been possible to write this book.
My thanks to some extraordinary people: Caroline Leavitt, Joyce Maynard, Louisa Paushter, Marlene Lang, and a fabulous librarian called Retro Doll. For their expertise, thank you to Judi Feldman; Julie Glovin, LICSW; Jessie Pelton, MS, PA-C; and Nancy Kaplan of Temple Kerem Shalom. Lifelong friend and Belmont Shore resident Suzanne Shaheen made California feel like home all over again. To Tracy Winn, Emily Rubin, and the Concord Women Writers, all my thanks for the friendship and wisdom. For research matters related to syndactyly, thanks to Dr. Joseph Upton, Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School in Boston. I appreciate the Long Beach Fire Department, the Long Beach Marine Institute, and the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault for their research and support.
There are some decisions in life that you just know are right. Not long ago, I put this book in the hands of my talented editor, Dan Smetanka, and never looked back. My thanks to Dan and the fine folks at Soft Skull/Counterpoint Press for their enthusiasm and support of me and this book. And to Sally Wofford-Girand, as always.
Finally, thank you to my wonderful father, Raymond Ruby, for the lucky angel.
The Salt God’s Daughter copyright © 2012 Ilie Ruby
All rights reserved
under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
eISBN : 978-1-593-76490-6
Soft Skull Press
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