The Mythic Dream

by Dominik Parisien

  “She’s in her crib in my room,” I answer. “Sleeping like a baby.”

  “Oh, what a relief!” says Prudencia.

  “She’s stopped crying, finally. He comforted my baby girl when I couldn’t. Same as he did for me long, long ago.”

  And just like that, Prudencia’s relief vanishes. This close to the open wall panel, I can hear her electric worry, feel the rising heat of her concern. I shouldn’t have said that last bit about him comforting my baby. I was just trying to be honest.

  Prudencia takes her time figuring out what to say to me next. “I can’t detect any RFID chips right now, Nádano. Therefore, may I have your permission to use my cameras in your bedroom? So I may see Ela for myself?”

  She has to get explicit permission from me to turn on cameras in sleeping quarters, as per NOAA privacy regulations. “Thought you’d never ask,” I reply. “And please put what you see on-screen in here, too, so I can see what you’re seeing, and we can discuss it.”

  “Okay,” she answers, clearly worried. What is there to discuss? I am sure she is wondering.

  A monitor on the wall to the left of me comes to life. I stand up and walk nearer to it. On screen appears my stark seaman’s bedroom: hard captain’s bed, bolted metal furniture, pictureless, windowless, clean. Prudencia’s wall camera pans and zooms closer to the one unusual feature in the room, the crib.

  “Don’t get any closer, please,” I say to Prudencia.

  The camera stops moving. “Why, Nádano? I can’t see Ela from this angle.”

  “Call to her, please,” I answer. “Call to her, wake her up gently, and get her to stand. You’ll understand why as soon as you see her.”

  The crib sprouts like a mushroom from the floor. It’s made mostly of antibacterial white plastic and looks like a model of a water tower. But the top half of the dome is clear.

  “May I have permission to open the crib?” Prudencia asks me, neutrally, dubiously.

  “Yes.”

  The clear dome of the crib retreats like a nictitating membrane into the bottom of the mushroom cap. “Ela,” Prudencia calls. “Ela, darling, wake up. It’s Tía Prudencia. Rise and shine, mi vida.”

  At the sound of Prudencia’s voice, I see my baby girl struggling to sit up in her crib. A blanket rises and falls. Her little hand grips the edge of the rim of her crib. And then another hand, and then she’s pulling herself up, and the blanket falls away, and she’s standing in her crib, wearing her yellow, chick-fuzzy onesie. My beautiful baby girl.

  Whose head has been replaced by a coconut.

  Dry and brown and shaggy now, my baby girl’s head. Like all coconuts, her face is composed of three dark spots. Two are for the eyes. The one for the mouth, a near-perfect O, always looks surprised, astonished, questioning.

  My baby girl turns her coconut face to the camera and tips her head to the right, like a puppy struggling to understand its master.

  “Nádano,” says Prudencia. “I . . . what is . . . Nádano . . .”

  I look into a camera. “I needed you to see her stand up and look at you. That way, you could see for yourself that she is alive. More than just alive, actually. She’s not crying anymore. You see? She’s happy again. She’s at peace, finally.”

  “I don’t understand,” says Prudencia.

  I head for the door. “We should continue this conversation in Sick Bay, Prudie. Be there in a flash. Just need to collect my beautiful baby girl.”

  El Cuento de Cómo Nádano Ended Up in the Middle of the Ocean in the First Place

  I’ve been cruising the Pacific ever since Connie asked for a separation a half year ago. “Good for both of us,” she told me, taking my hand as we sat on a San Diego park bench near the water.

  “The three of us,” I corrected. My baby girl was with the babysitter Connie’d hired so we could have this little talk on my lunch break outside of the NOAA research center where I worked. “Just say it, Connie. You’re worried I might hurt Ela.”

  “That is completely untrue,” said Connie, angry and hurt. She let me know by squeezing my hand, hard. “You adore that little girl. I know that. This is about you, Papi. This is about this.” And she thumbed the scab on my right wrist.

  I jerked my hand away.

  But Connie took it again, and I let her. Her grip had just as much love in it as it had on our first date, back in college. “Separation isn’t divorce, Nádano. I am not abandoning you. I swear it. Now,” she said, tears suddenly rising on her lids, “if you want to divorce me—”

  “No.”

  Sometimes you say a word and it has your whole soul in it.

  “Good,” she said, erasing her tears with the back of her free hand. “Okay. Good. So we try this. Yes? You’ll go to therapy. Right?” And then, suddenly mistrustful, “You’ll go for real?”

  I’ve had my BPD diagnosis since I was twelve. But I haven’t attempted suicide since my teens, so, you know, I didn’t think I needed therapy anymore. Over it, I thought. Done with that part of my life, I thought. And anyway, nothing in therapy that I haven’t heard a million times before, I thought.

  Some things, I now know, you can’t hear enough. Some things you have to hear over and over.

  Connie wasn’t supposed to notice the scab.

  An Important Aside to El Cuento de Cómo Nádano Ended Up in the Middle of the Ocean in the First Place

  We’d had a fight, Connie and I, because I didn’t want to be left alone with our beautiful baby girl, whom I love with all my heart. I was scared, for her and for me. Scared to death of fucking up. I need so much help just to not be a weirdo all the time. And now I was going to be left to care for a child?

  Connie begged me not to be so selfish for once in my life. She didn’t mean it how it sounds. Connie is a saint. She is literally the best person I have ever met. I couldn’t have created a better partner for myself if I were given a mound of clay and the breath of God.

  So I did a 180. I said yes, go, have fun, I love you. And once she left, I cut myself.

  I ran a knife over the thick-as-a-slug scar on my right wrist. I wasn’t in any danger, and neither was my baby. It was just one cut on a horizontal scar. Just the slightest, the briefest little reprimand. It barely even bled.

  And nothing bad happened. Connie got her night out. She more than deserved one. Such a good partner and mom.

  With such keen eyes. She noticed the cut and quietly, tearfully, expertly dismantled my excuses. “I can’t go on like this,” she told me. “Too much. It’s too much.”

  The next day, she met me on a park bench during my lunch break. And here we were.

  Now Back to El Cuento de Cómo Nádano Ended Up in the Middle of the Ocean in the First Place, Already in Progress

  “Therapy,” I replied to Connie. “I promise.”

  “How do I . . . ?” she started, and stopped.

  Her full, unspoken question was, “How do I know you’re not just lying to me?” She never would have said it that harshly, though. She couldn’t even finish the sentence.

  I was ready for it. I had the perfect answer, in the form of a brochure.

  She took it with an unsure smile, studied the cover page: “NOAA Mobilizes to Clean Up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” Flipping through the rest of the pamphlet, she asked, “What’s this?”

  “They’re accepting applications,” I said. “Boss says I’d be a shoo-in. It’s important work, Connie. I’ll be helping to make the world a better place.”

  “Of course cleaning the ocean’s important,” she said absently, reading fast, absorbing information as quickly as her eyes could move. “That’s not the issue. A fifteen-month tour . . .”

  “Better pay. A lot better. We could afford to send you back to school. You could work on your master’s like you’ve always wanted.”

  She looked up at me. Underneath her face, happiness and worry fought a war to control her mouth and eyes and eyebrows. “I mean, Miami’s application period must be over for the Fall—”

&
nbsp; “Remember when you graduated, how Dr. Molina said she’d love to work with you again? She adores you. She’d make an exception. She’d help you get into her program in a heartbeat.”

  Connie considered this. “I think she would . . .” she answered finally.

  “I’ll get you a nice little apartment near campus. I’ll buy your books. I’ll give you beer money so you can go party with the undergrads! I’ll—”

  “You’ll be all alone, Papi,” she interrupted. “Out at sea. No one to talk to. I can’t abandon you like that.”

  An evil part of me thought, You don’t think asking for a separation is abandoning me? That ship has sailed, sweetheart.

  But I didn’t say that. I raised Connie’s hand to my lips and kissed her knuckles and replied, “You can vid me, and text me, and send me pics of Ela. We can talk every day if you want to. If you don’t abandon me, Connie, I won’t be abandoned.”

  She dropped the pamphlet on her lap, clutched my hand with both of hers, and brought all three to her chest. “I will never abandon you, Papi.”

  “I know,” I lied. “That’s why I’m not afraid to go. And besides,” I said, mustering excitement from I don’t know where, “I won’t be alone.” I took the pamphlet off of her lap and flipped to the next-to-last page. “See here? These breachdives have some of the most advanced AIs in the world. They’re all certified therapists! I’ll be monitored twenty-four seven by a psychologist—”

  “An AI psychologist,” she added dubiously.

  “Who in turn will be monitored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It’s perfect, Connie. Everyone gets what they need.”

  Connie took the pamphlet from me, read for awhile. When she looked up at me, she frown-smiled and resisted the urge to cry. “You knew I was going to ask for a separation.”

  “I was thinking divorce,” I said truthfully.

  She nodded. “You let me say my peace. You came prepared with a plan. And you’re generously offering to send me back to school to follow my dream.” She put both her hands on my leg. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, Papi. You don’t have to be perfect. You just have to try to be good to yourself.”

  “I’ll try,” I said, and had no idea if I meant it or not. I felt myself slipping into old patterns; I needed to say something truthful, fast. “Therapy will help,” I added, which I hoped would be true.

  But I needed more honesty still. So I added, but only to myself, And if it doesn’t, I can just sail away and never come back, and maybe everyone involved will be better off.

  El Cuento de la Examinación Médico, as Performed by Prudencia, with Nádano as Nurse and Human Helper

  Sick Bay is on the opposite side of level two, through the dining area (which always feels like the loneliest place on the ship, with its antibacterial bench-table that seats sixteen), and past the galley, the food freezer, and the “honor freezer.” The honor freezer is where you put a dead body in case someone dies out here, so you don’t have to stick them in with the food. Of course, it only works if there’s another person who can pick up a corpse and put it in there. If I died, I’d just rot wherever I happened to collapse until the next port of call.

  I walk into Sick Bay and lay my baby down on the antibacterial wall-table. After I give Prudencia a minute to work and she hasn’t said anything, I ask her, “How are my baby’s vitals?”

  “All normal,” she answers, almost upset. “How can her vitals be normal, Nádano?”

  I shrug. “Because El Coco didn’t want to hurt her. The opposite. He wanted to save her.”

  “That doesn’t—” she begins, but stops herself and tries a different tack. “Grab the handheld, please. Let me get a closer look.”

  I do. I run the wireless camera close to the seam in my baby girl’s neck, zoom in on the line between skin and hairy husk. There’s a clear demarcation. The two don’t seem to be physically connected to each other at all.

  “What is holding her together?” Prudencia asks, exasperated, her speaker crackling. My baby girl turns to look at me with that permanently questioning face.

  But I’m right there to make sure my baby’s okay. “Her papi’s love for her,” I say, running the back of my fingers over my baby girl’s hairy cheeks. “Her papi adores her. Isn’t that right, baby girl? Isn’t that right?”

  Even though she’s a coconut now, it’s clear she enjoys this. She doesn’t have a mouth, but she still has a larynx. Her laugh is muffled inside her neck, but it’s real nonetheless.

  “I’m flailing,” says Prudencia. “Nothing makes sense right now. Why are you so calm?!”

  I tickle my baby’s coconut chin. She’d spent the last eight days crying so hard I thought she would kill me, but now she’s cooing like she has a pigeon in her throat. “I’ll explain it to you the same way I explained it to Connie,” I tell Prudencia.

  El Cuento de How I Told Connie el Cuento de How I Met El Coco

  Consuela Melendez, a.k.a. Connie, had an ethnography project due in ANT 253: Myths, Legends, and Superstitions. I was Ethnography A.

  This was before we were married, back when we were juniors at the University of Miami. Her major was Anthropology; I was Marine Affairs. I would have preferred Creative Writing, but I was on a state-funded scholarship for foster kids, and taxpayers wanted their money’s worth. No bullshit artsy-fartsy degree for me.

  Connie wouldn’t tell me her ethnography project’s topic until she’d sat us down at a dining hall table. “So,” she asked me, “do Cubans scare the shit out of their kids with El Coco, too? Dominicans do it all the time. My parents called him ‘El Cuco.’ I mean, seriously, I slept with the light on until I was thirteen so El Cuco wouldn’t snatch me up and take me away. What about you?”

  I blinked. A lot.

  Connie couldn’t read me, judging by the look on her face. “You’ve heard of him, right? Or her. Or it: in Brazil, Coco’s an alligator!”

  The feeling of remembering everything at once is a lot like getting nailed by a water balloon. You’re soaked through in a second, but it takes a minute to realize what’s happened, how you should feel about it. Who deserves your revenge.

  “Are you okay?” asked Connie.

  Blinking seemed to help. “Can I answer with a story?”

  “That’s perfect!” she said, then set her phone on the table and pressed “record.”

  I leaned in close, so I’d be heard above the general din of the dining hall. “Once upon a time there was a boy named Nothing. Now, that wasn’t what anyone called him—his parents had given him a perfectly boring Cuban name for everyday use—but that was his real name, because that’s how everyone treated him.

  “His papi was a cloud of fists and belt buckles and a huge flat face floating in the center. He kept a pistol in a safe that he could go get in a second if Nothing didn’t shape up quick. Powpowpow! Tres tiros and he’d make Nothing nothing.

  “His mami didn’t protect him, for he was Nothing. Nothing were his papi’s threats, according to her—that’s just how men talk. And nothing were the nightmares Nothing had, just pathetic, unmanly cries for attention. ‘Just go back to bed, Nothing,’ she said, ‘or ¡te va a visitar El Coco, que se roba las cabezas de los niños malcriados! You’ll end up with a coconut head, Nothing, and then where will you be?’

  “Nothing went back to bed as commanded. Praying wide-eyed in the darkness, he begged El Coco to give him a coconut head. What a gift! An insensate skull that hurt the fists that struck it! A skull with no tear ducts, no ears, no blood and no brain, and hardly a face to speak of! He couldn’t be punished for making the wrong face anymore.

  “Nothing couldn’t see a thing in the dark, but he felt an extra darkness fill the room. ‘Por supuesto, mi niño,’ said El Coco.

  “When Nothing awoke the next morning, it wasn’t the next morning. It was a year later. He had passed a pleasant twelve months, the best he could remember, though the details were hazy. He remembered a beautiful beach on a secluded island. From a high p
erch, he’d watched waves plashing gently on the shore, day and night. Also, he’d watched his own body run around the beach, happily unburdened of its head. His body seemed to love to run and play in the sand. Sometimes the body would stop, turn to “face” him, and then wave. He’d smile, but say nothing, for he was still Nothing. But more and more he started feeling sparks of the littlest somethings swarm his mind like fireflies. More and more he felt the urge to tell his body, ‘I want to play, too.’

  “When he finally did speak again, a year later, it was in a psychologist’s office. He did not know how he had gotten there, or that he’d been ‘missing’ all that time. His parents had been arrested; he was now a ward of the state. Judging by the psychologist’s face, his reply had nothing to do with what the psychologist had asked him.

  What Nothing had said was, ‘Thank you, Coco.’ Then, fearing El Coco might only know Spanish, he added, ‘Muchisimas gracias.’ ”

  El Cuento de How Connie Reacted to el Cuento de How I Met El Coco

  Connie came flying around the table and took my head in her arms and wept in my hair. “I didn’t know,” she said between sobs. “I’m so sorry. I am never calling you that, that lie again. Why would you do this to yourself? Not ‘nada’! Not ‘no’! You hear me? Tell me your name! Your real name!”

  “Nádano,” was all I could tell her. “That’s who I am now. That’s all the name that’s left for me.”

  El Cuento de How Prudencia Reacted to el Cuento de How I Met El Coco

  My baby reaches up from the Sick Bay table to play with my face, so I stoop lower to let her. I pretend to eat her fingers, and it’s the most fun she’s ever had in her entire life. Her neck giggles. “I summoned El Coco then,” I say, “just like I summoned him now.”

  “If this were a therapy session,” Prudencia says, even as her keel, “we could have all sorts of productive sessions discussing all the ways you’re still haunted by your parents. But this is an emergency, Nádano. We don’t have time for—”

  “Myths?” I stroke my baby’s coconut cheek. “Legends, fables, old wives’ tales? Like the tale my daughter’s become?”

  Distrust makes Prudencia’s silence palpable. Everything is suspect: me, the order of things, herself especially. “What do we do?” she asks flatly.