“Look, it’s—Jeez.” I dropped my head in my hands and groaned.
“You are coming?”
I rolled onto my knees and—clumsily—stood. “Yeah. I’m coming.”
We leapt from rock to rock, landing at last by the base of the sweetgum tree, already pretty high above the water. Sanna didn’t stop to look up. I, on the other hand, grabbed hold of the trunk of the sweetgum to steady my legs. Smirking, the boys stood in a loosely slip-stitched line, edging aside to let us pass.
“It would,” I moaned, my face to the bark, “have to be that high.”
One brown leg already on the first branch and the other on its way to a board nailed into the trunk as a step, Farsanna bowed her head down towards me. “Perhaps I should have let you proceed first?”
“No.” I’d only begun the climb up, and the ground was already starting into a spin. “No, it’s okay.”
When she reached the branch—a good twenty, maybe thirty feet up it seemed at the time—from which the boys snagged and mounted the rope swing, Farsanna waited for me to catch up. I did not look down.
I clutched the trunk with both arms. “So you came to America for this?”
She smiled—that smile with the splash in it—and for a moment I forgot I was standing more than two stories above the earth in a tree with a rope as my only means of escape. And then before I forgot to forget, I looked down and saw faces fixed on our branch: Emerson and Jimbo and L. J. and Welp. There they stood, all in a line, all on firm earth, all of them laughing at us—no, not quite. Not Jimbo.
Jimbo stood, I recall, a little off to the side, his hands on his hips.
Mort Beckwith was next in line for the rope. He stood, one hand on the branch above him, the other reaching far out to snatch the rope on its return. Rope in hand and resting on his gut, he turned to Farsanna.
“Reckon you think we’re gonna just move out of the way for you, do you?” He threw back his shoulders, sucked in his gut, and held his free arm well out to his side as if the swell of its muscles wouldn’t allow it closer. I had an image suddenly of Mort as a tank, a circle on top of his flat, crew-cut head opening and closing with a metallic clang.
Farsanna’s spine stiffened, I could see from behind. But if she said anything, I couldn’t hear it.
“You know,” Mort told her, moving a step closer, “I’ve eaten meals bigger’n you.”
Her whole body, not just her eyes, turned toward him slowly. “In Sri Lanka are trained elephants more clever than you.”
Some boys at the base of the tree snickered.
Mort Beckwith did not.
I could not watch. Could not look down. I turned my face back into bark.
Someone was yelling below. And only then did it hit me that the Blue Hole was silent. Silent, except for one voice. Jimbo was calling to us—saying what, I couldn’t tell, like my hearing had shut down when my heart rate took off.
“Wha—?” I tried to shout back, but stopped. Even projecting my voice threatened to throw me off balance. I clung to the tree.
Mort was looking at the new girl. “Ol’ Jimbo there says you can’t swim too good, huh?” He toyed with the rope. “Girl, you either got yourself a good-sized chaw of brave, or you ain’t just real bright.”
Sanna held out a hand.
Looking suddenly confused, Mort held out his own hand.
She shook her head. “Please, I would like the rope.”
“Let go too shallow,” he went on, embarrassed, “and you’ll put your feet out your ears.”
She waited.
Mort curled up one side of a lip at her—it wasn’t exactly a smile. “You’re gonna jump anyhow, ain’t you, just any old way come into your head.”
Again, Sanna held out her hand. As Mort gave her the rope, she let go of the branch above her head to grasp the rope with both hands.
Mort Beckwith arrested her swing by grabbing her arm, nearly throwing himself off the branch. “Listen. I’m tellin’ you, don’t be droppin’ any later than ’at finger of rock if you like walkin’ on legs.”
She nodded again, and this time he let go her arm and she threw her whole self into the air.
I turned my face from the bark to see her fly into red, the last of the sun just spilling off the rim of our world. It will be dark in just moments, I recall thinking as I watched Farsanna clutching the rope above her dark head, her hair all in place.
And then her hands were slipping, the pull of her body at war with her grip. Down several feet her hands slid, her body stiff as a pillar, arcing out over the Hole. Then her hands reached a knot in the rope and for a moment retained their grip.
And then I saw that she was trying now too hard to hang on. The instinct not to lose her hold had rattled her concentration of when to let go. She swung out over—far out over the finger of rock.
From the height of her swing, her toes pointed nearly to the tops of the trees that skirted the pond. And then she was falling back down.
From where I stood clutching the sweetgum trunk, I could see that her release was not perfectly at the finger. Farsanna had dropped way too close in to the shallow.
And then there were splashes, one after the other, one just below me.
I’ll never know, I don’t reckon, if Mort fell like he claimed or jumped off that branch. I did know, even with my eyes closed, that Jimbo and Emerson both dove in from the shore.
When Sanna emerged, she was already walking up toward the bank, her shoulders breaking above the water before anyone was within yards from her fall. Maybe it was her being so short and so little that saved her. Maybe it was just her being her.
Em was the first to think to hand her the tissue of towel as she calmly climbed up the bank. She seated herself on a rock, her back and legs a right angle.
Tentatively, Emerson squatted beside her. He lay one hand on her shoulder and leaned in to speak in her ear. She turned her head toward him—maybe she smiled—and he sat down beside her.
Which was when I went limp. In the midst of watching, I’d failed to catch the rope on its return. This I knew was the cardinal rule of the rope swing: You must catch the rope. And I didn’t.
My cousin was the first to break the Blue Hole’s silence. “Hey, Turtle,” L. J. called up to me. “Make the family proud.” And then he saw—like everyone else then—what I’d neglected to do, and he sneered.
He did, though, break off a long branch of a dogwood tree, then stand on the bank and swat at the rope until at last one of the boys who stepped past me in the sweetgum could finally snag it.
My legs gone to rubber and useless, I straddled the branch and eased myself out. Someone placed the rope in my hands. Perhaps someone else gave me a push.
The rope burn I gave myself that day stayed with me for at least a week—maybe two. I slid down the rope inch by inch as it—and me with it—ticked back and forth, back and forth. And not until the rope nearly stilled and my feet nearly touched the water’s surface did I finally let go.
I swam underwater nearly the entire way to shore, and when my face broke the surface, Emerson hurled my towel at me.
Welp kicked a rock out near me, into the Hole.
Jimbo, at least, was waiting to shake my hand. “You’re a brave one, Turtle.” And then he drew my head close to his mouth. I felt his breath on my ear. “My first time looked a little like that.” And then came a kiss—only a brush of a kiss on the top of my head. But it left me unsteady.
“I hereby herewith heretofore proclaim this Ladies’ Night. Dr Pepper’s on the house,” I heard Jimbo announce—from several feet away now. “That’s Steinberger’s house.”
_________
Like the fall of a theater curtain on the last act, dusk dropped onto the Blue Hole. Pink smudges still glowed from behind the circle of trees at the rim, but in our
hollow of earth, darkness came early. That evening, darkness came like a friend, warm and humid and close, wrapping my chilled skin like a blanket, with little weavings of light where the fireflies were venturing out. The deep woods were damp from a hard rain the midnight before, and I could smell the chestnuts and hemlock and soil.
I found myself thinking of the book Emerson had left open at the breakfast table a couple of mornings before. I’d caught only a couple of lines of what he’d highlighted before he’d caught me reading and scooped it up in Sports Illustrated. But the ones I did see stuck with me: “All will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” Stuck with me, let me be clear, because it was completely and hugely ridiculous, and when I’d asked Emerson about it, he’d mumbled about its being a fourteenth-century Julian of somewhere I didn’t catch, and then he stalked off.
“Fourteenth?” I yelled after him. “Dang, Em, you’re just falling farther and farther backwards.”
That evening, though, at the Blue Hole, the scents of the pines rising around me, the crickets commencing their gig, the boulders beneath me as familiar and firm as old friends, it occurred to me suddenly that if—not that it really could be, but if—this could ever be true—All will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing shall be well—then, well, here was the place.
Emerson and Jimbo sat on either side of the new girl, all three of them watching the next swings off the rope and laughing. Bo turned to motion me over, and I came. Maybe because I was cold from my drop in the Hole and needed to feel warm skin beside me. Maybe because Sanna and Em turned and motioned me over too. Maybe because it suddenly seemed all clear to me, all good. Just as Farsanna had made us speak about our futures, somehow we would all make something fine and noble and good of ourselves. I could see that just then. The future suddenly rose up before me as clearly and strong as the hemlocks rising up from the base of the Hole. Maybe hurt couldn’t find its way to us here.
The pink smudges washing to gray, the last of our light to climb out, helped us keep time. And clearly, it was time to go.
The last I saw of Mort Beckwith that day was his struggling up the opposite bank, where other swimmers were gathering their things and beginning the trek up the path. Bobby Welpler came alongside him, for no reason I could imagine. Welp stood with his back to the water, and to us on the far side of the Hole, so I couldn’t see his face. Mort Beckwith, though, shook his head and nodded, shook his head again, and then turned and looked straight at me—I was sure it was me. Then one of the girls who’d been sunning herself on that side of the Hole slipped her arm around Mort—what little of his girth she could cover. He smirked down at her, and when she lifted her face up to him, I saw she was Neesa. The two of them turned from Welp toward the path.
I spun around for Emerson, to see if he’d seen. But he and the rest of our crew had already started the trek toward the path.
Only Sanna hung back to be sure I was coming. “You are not hurt?” she wanted to know.
“Naw. You? Shoot, you had me scared stiff.”
She held up her palms to show ropeburn.
I held up mine.
She cringed. “You please will forgive me, Shelby? It is my fault, no?”
“No,” I laughed. “Hey … um … Sanna.”
“Yes?”
“You know … you can call me Turtle.”
Single tree trunks were now only barely distinct from the mass, the deep woods. Jimbo paused at the bottom of the footpath. “Hustle up your shell there, Turtle. Hey … you two lovely ladies all right?”
Sanna only nodded at him, while I said we were fine. Even then, though, I knew he was not waiting to hear my answer, but was watching the new girl begin her climb up. Even then when Sanna nodded but did not answer him, I saw that she’d had to think about not speaking, had to concentrate on moving up away from him, hand over foot over hand up the path.
I saw Emerson watching her, saw her smile back at him. Saw her keep her distance from him, too. And I saw that in the fifteen feet between them—a distance which all day I’d taken as a positive kind of nothing—lay the early spinnings of a thread connecting them, the three of them bound together in their careful distance apart.
Me? I tried not to watch. Tried to tread water above the loneliness that broke over me in a wave.
13 Sri Lankan Sambol and Ice Cream
Like it or not, I was on my way the next day to Farsanna’s rectangle of house to sleep over.
I rummaged through my T-shirt drawer for some appropriate thing to sleep in at a Muslim house. Or a family whose parents’ parents had practiced Islam, at least. And from what I could see of Mr. Moulavi’s boulder of a back there through the plate glass, visible clear out to the road after dark, he must be still hanging by one hand onto something religious. Seemed to me nobody prayed with their face to the floor just to sniff out the carpet.
My cousin dropped by in the midst of my search.
“You know they don’t drink alcohol,” L. J. said, as he approached my room.
“Who?”
“Muslims.”
“Oh, that. Yeah, well, neither do you Baptists. But that’s why you always take two Baptists fishing, right? You take one, he’ll drink all your beer.”
“No, I mean Muslims really don’t imbibe. Not just talk about not.”
“I’m underage anyhow. Remember?”
“Nevertheless.”
“What?”
“Read me your T-shirts, Turtle.”
“Captain Jack’s Beachfront Bar,” I said. “Myrtle Beach Grand Strand Cocktail Hour, Press the Flesh Spring Fling … Fine, you made your point. I’ll take the football jersey.”
Though maybe, I thought as I packed, it didn’t matter all that much, not really. If I couldn’t cover up clear down to my wrists—and I knew I couldn’t, not in this heat—maybe there was no sense in trying not to offend. And besides, if Mr. Moulavi allowed his daughter the kind of freedoms he did, what could they expect of some tomboy American girl who’d stumbled into a friendship with her?
I watched L. J. leave the room and looked down at Big Dog, who stood next to me. “What if,” I said to the dog, “she wants to talk about … them. Either of them.” I sighed.
The Big Dog whined in female solidarity—or maybe she was begging for barbecue scraps.
“Either of whom?” It was Emerson, standing there at my door.
“You weren’t supposed to be listening.”
“I live here. Remember?”
“So that’s why the sink’s always gunked up with shaving cream?”
“So what are you gonna do if she wants to talk men?”
“That’d be fine. I just don’t want to talk about boys. Not any boys I know anyhow.”
“Think she’ll make you her confidante?” He leaned against my doorframe and crossed his arms.
He looked so sad and vulnerable just then, I wanted to hug him. But I didn’t.
“She’s not … Farsanna’s not a gabber, Em. Maybe that’s why I can put up with her. I s’pose she’ll talk if she wants to.”
“You’re not gonna ask questions?”
“Not a chance.”
“How come?”
“’Cause I don’t want to know.”
“Why?”
I zipped closed the athletic bag I used as an overnight case. Then turned and patted his cheek. “Why do you think? If she was partial to either one of you over the other, I’d have to hate her forever.”
Em patted my hand patting his cheek. “You know …”
“Know what?”
“You’re not bad, Turtle.”
“As girls go.”
“Or even in general.”
“Nicest thing you ever said to me.”
“Yeah, well. Don’t l
et it go to your head.”
Jimbo, Em, and I worked together all day mowing lawns and trimming garden beds, mostly with their usual good cheer spiked with peanuts in Coke, but now and then in a silence that was brittle and sharp as old tin. Em and Jimbo together dropped me in front of the Moulavi house. Because I’d insisted I needed the wind in my face and the Big Dog beside me—which was not true in the least—the boys shared the cab. I knew they needed to talk, and I knew I’d rather not ride with Bo just then. I wanted to punish him—though he didn’t seem to be suffering without me like somebody deprived.
Those two didn’t speak a single skinny word to each other the entire trip out to the far end of the Ridge. Emerson pulled into the Moulavis’ drive.
I readjusted the Big Dog’s collar and put my face up to the open cab window. “I wonder what’s for dinner?”
“Man cannot live on key lime alone, you know, Turtle,” Jimbo assured me. “Hard-boiled octopus’ll do you good.”
“Thanks. Y’all on your way to the Hole?”
“No,” they both said without checking to look at the other.
“No? It’s hot as blazes today—like that’s a change. I’d sure go if I didn’t have a dinner date.”
They both looked at me, and not at each other. Then both turned to watch the front door.
I tried again. “Game on tonight?”
Em shook his head. “Nope.”
They both kept their eyes on the front door.
“Well,” I said brightly, “I reckon I’ll run their dinner late if I sit here any longer.”
Scowling, Emerson crossed his arms like a barricade over his chest, like he had to hold something in. “You ladies have a nice time.”
Jimbo leaned forward, squinting at the house. “Tell her howdy.” He nodded towards the driver’s seat. “From both of us.”
“Yep.” I threw my legs over the side. “See both of y’all tomorrow.”
I don’t know much about what I ate that night, but I do remember fumbling for my water between each bite, and not asking to know what I was eating, or where it swam or crawled or slithered in life. The curry alone would be with me for days. There were white fleshy chunks that must have been some sort of seafood, and white rice, and chilies—and Farsanna mentioned the coconut milk.
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