Either the Beginning or the End of the World

by Terry Farish

  “Just some red berries,” my mother had called.

  I don’t pay attention. I’m counting days till this is over like soldiers in war. Tomorrow is a vacation day, and then I’m free to go to Luke’s. I plotted it out. Work. Overnight with Rosa, I tell them. Tomorrow Luke and I will have all night. I dream, what if we could actually get in Luke’s car and drive south, keep driving south till we come to Savannah. And have jam on toast in the mornings.

  I see red berries on a snow-covered drooping branch. They hang heavy with winter wear. Pilot races up the riverbank, down to the river the length of the beach. It is low tide. Herring gulls hang out on the pier, raucous, waiting for a human and a little trash. Pilot on their trail. She chases them from pier to beach, running and running. But something ominous is happening on this sunny winter afternoon where the sun has begun to warm long-frozen edges of the river.

  Although the Piscataqua is a fast-moving river, sometimes in a winter so bone-aching cold, room-sized ice chunks break off from the coves and wedge in the curves of the river. These floes are a big problem for fishermen, who have to avoid slamming their boats into any that break away and scream out to sea with the current. What if a rescue bird dog like Pilot, the tracking instinct deep in her blood, discovers she could track the birds farther out on the river than she has been able to track them all her life? Her temptation.

  But a dog, my father had always said, is no match for this river.

  Now I look out. My fist is full of drooping branches bearing thin, red berries. There is my dog, her right forepaw lifted, tail straight out, absolutely still. She is already out on a frozen chunk of the river as she holds this pose. From her stance I know, even from my distance, she trembles with focus and unbearable excitement.

  When she bolts from her alert, the ice could move out and be taken by the rushing water. She would be swept into the current of the river at a temperature too cold to survive.

  I race through the woods, along the cyclone fence, toward the river with the I-95 traffic flying overhead on the Piscataqua River Bridge to the beach and mudflats turned to ice where the gulls taunt my dog. They pose at the end of the pier and then all lift their wings and descend on a morsel I don’t see on the ice.

  Here is my mother, in her white coat and black hair, grasping winter greens for the shrine, but her eyes are on my dog. Pilot turns toward the gulls. From a statue, she transforms into a bird dog in flight on the trail of the screeching gulls. I hear the sound of the ice. It groans under Pilot as she grips for her footing, slipping, scrambling. I scream at her, “Come! Come now!”

  This happens in seconds—something extraordinary. Something I don’t think to do. My only thought, I am on the edge of the river, about to go out on the ice—on water! The thing I am most afraid of. I am driven by the picture of Pilot swept away in the current under the massive bridge and out to sea.

  I take a step on the ice toward my dog. But my mother puts out her hand. “Wait,” she calls.

  “I can’t,” I scream. “She’ll die.”

  But my mother too is transformed. She is composed, like Yiey. Like Luke. I hear the ice crack. She moves toward the steel framework of the pier. Now, at low tide, a person can walk halfway out the long pilings. She begins to walk through mudflats and then into the water. I see her slip. She grabs the metal frame for support. “Where are you going?” I shout. She can barely walk on the flat living-room floor. Pilot barks at the gulls. At the end, at what used to be a loading pier, hanging at an angle as if barely connected after all these years, is a ladder. She lifts her arms high, grabs ahold of the ladder, disengages it from what held it dangling over the water and half-formed ice. Then she turns back, dragging the ladder.

  She is coming through the frozen mud and muck, breaking through ice. This is a woman who lies on her back and moans. I am awed. On the beach we drop the ladder, then push it slowly out onto the ice. She is clever to know what my father has said about a rescue on ice—you have to distribute your weight over as much space as you can.

  “Now,” she says. “On your belly.” She places her hands on her own belly, and I believe she would have gone herself if it weren’t for the baby. The ladder reaches almost to Pilot, who is frantic. I get down on all fours, then crawl out on the ladder until I am on my belly. I hear the ice crack. Just ahead a fissure shifts, opening under Pilot’s weight. I am terrified. My mother holds the bottom of the ladder and in that way holds me.

  “This way, Pilot,” I call. Keep the panic from your voice. “Come, girl.” My body is numb against the ice. My ice could break off, too, and become a floe. But my mother holds me. Just as I can almost touch her paw, Pilot gets her footing. I need her to jump. She’s just three feet past me. Her haunches grip the ice.

  Moving as gently as possible, I pull my scarf over my head, tie the tails in a knot. “Mom, push, one more foot.” Pilot is crying as space grows between us.

  My mother slides the ladder. I’m one foot closer. I toss the scarf, aiming to wrap it around her head and neck. She ducks, slipping on the ice, and I miss. Again.

  Finally the ring of the scarf wraps around her neck. I pull. She leans down into the scarf. Her paws scramble, and then she leaps like a horse from the moving floe onto my peninsula of ice. It holds. We don’t crash into the river. I wrap the scarf tight around her and hold her to my chest on the ladder. My mother pulls us back to the beach. Gingerly, we crawl the length of the ladder back to the sand.

  I unknot the wet scarf from my dog. My mother takes off her white coat she always wears.

  “You don’t even like her,” I say.

  She is on the ground with Pilot. Her boots are ruined. Her coat is ruined. She places her muddy white coat on Pilot and wraps her body around my dog’s shivering body.

  “You do,” she says. “I saved her for you.”

  HEARTBEAT

  We make it home, my mother, Pilot, and I, smeared in seawater and mud, dragging red berries for Yiey so she can fix up the shrine.

  The next morning my grandmother puts a bowl of rice with fish sauce in my hands. She gives me a fork. The peppers in the fish sauce make my nose flare. I bring the fork to my mouth. I taste this bite. I swallow.

  “You eat this all the time when you are small,” my grandmother says about the rice and pepper sauce.

  They gave my mother a new appointment today, because they want to watch her. So this afternoon I will take my mother to the doctor. This morning, my grandmother and mother talk about disgusting things, cervixes dilating, constipation, Cesarean sections.

  “It won’t take long, will it?” I say. “I need to hurry.”

  “You said you would stay with me,” she says.

  “I am,” I whine. “Aren’t I here?” But I study her. I look at her wide eyes and wonder, ever since we collected the red berries.

  - - -

  At the doctor’s office, I go in with my mother. If she tells the doctor that the baby is a ghost or any crazy Cambodian thing, I can try to bring it back to science, a subject I’m good at. What is real? What is happening? That is what I will tell the doctor.

  I also want to hear what the doctor says. Dr. Sharma is dark-skinned, maybe from India or Nepal. No, she says she is from Bhutan. She wears two dozen or more bangles around her wrist.

  My mother says to her, “This is my daughter, Sophea.” A new tone is in her voice, the way she says my name. I have not heard this tone.

  Dr. Sharma shakes my hand. “So tall. And now you will have a brother.” She confuses me. Is she talking to me, the fisherman’s kid? I’m lost in this body I’m in.

  My mother lies on the examination table, and now I want to leave since this seems very personal, to see my mother’s round, brown belly exposed. The doctor’s fingertips work their way across it like my mother’s belly is a map to a blind person and the doctor is searching. Dr. Sharma moves her stethoscope across silvery striations in my mother’s belly for a long time. What is wrong? Why do her fingers keep searching? Is the heartbeat missin
g?

  Oh my god, was my mother right about spirits taking the baby? I back away. I don’t want to see my mother’s face when Dr. Sharma tells her. I am pressed up to the door, and my heart is racing. I want to throw her clothes at her and say, “Now, Mom. Let’s go,” so we don’t have to hear the words.

  Dr. Sharma’s bracelets chime. She straightens. “Yes, yes, he is dropping. Do not forget to take the iron. Iron prevents a woman from becoming anemic. Keep your blood strong for this big boy.”

  This big boy. He’s not stillborn?

  The relief washes through me as I stand still by the door and my mother pulls down her shirt, fumbles her way into her boots. I have become too close to these people. My heart is racing from worrying about the fingertips traveling up and down the silver rivers. Any day, they will leave! Baby, grandmother, all. And I will be as if I never existed because I’ve let my existence get wrapped up in theirs.

  SECRETS THAT MUST BE TOLD

  Back home, my mother is explaining how a girl can get pregnant. She says, “It can happen if moonlight crosses the water.”

  “Ohhhhhh,” Yiey says. Now we understand the power of Bong Proh. The light path of the moon. My grandmother does not find this amusing because she knows more about the Bong guy. Once she said he won’t give the baby money, but still my mother needed to leave.

  I turn to go. I’ve done what I said I would do for my mother.

  My mother says, “I am still worried for this baby. Don’t make the ancestors mad at me. I have such bad karma. I’m so scared for this boy.”

  “You’re scared for this baby because of ancestors?” I say. I hope my voice shows the contempt and anger I want to feel. I hope it hurts her. At the same time I think about the chant Yiey said while she composed the shrine. I asked her to translate. She said, Whatever I do, to that I will fall heir. Karma. “The monks chant it,” she had said.

  “Each one is connected, person to person, ancestor to us,” my mother says.

  She tries to sit with her belly to one side. “From the time I was small, I’ve had very bad karma. And then the ghosts came for you. That’s why I’m a bad mother. I bring bad luck for my child. That’s why Johnny has to raise you.”

  I don’t understand. I can’t grasp what she’s saying. I don’t want to. I’m done.

  “Because of what you did?” I am putting on my coat.

  She nods.

  “And now they want this baby boy. I have very bad karma.” That’s all she can tell me.

  “What’d you do to cause bad karma?” I say. “You don’t make any sense.”

  “She beg her brother,” Yiey says, “She beg him all the time. She say, ‘My stomach hurt. Please, Rithy.’”

  “The boy who got the crickets?” I say.

  “I don’t know,” my mother mumbles.

  Yiey says, “Srey Pov, she is three years younger than her brother.”

  “That is why you have bad karma?” I pull my cap low, bracing to open the door.

  She points at the baby inside her. “Him, too. What will protect this baby? There’s not only a river but an ocean to take him.” She doesn’t want to talk anymore. She goes to the kitchen and puts the kettle on.

  If I stay I will only start picking for a fight.

  I can’t bear myself. I hate that I care that the doctor kept listening for the baby’s heartbeat. I hate that I care that it might be dead.

  My biggest fear: I’ll come home one day to this house and they’ll all be gone. Not a trace.

  So I hate them. All over again. Still. But I haven’t left yet.

  Then my grandmother tells me, “They beat my son for stealing cricket. They put bag on Rithy head and tie him to the mango tree until he stop breathing. They say, no one touch this person. He selfish. All food is for Angkar—government. They tell us, Angkar look after you, brother, sister, mother, father. But we starve.”

  I stand motionless.

  She has terrified me. I have her blood. I have the little boy’s blood. Each one is connected person to person, ancestor to us.

  “I don’t want you for ancestors. I don’t want that story.” I have stopped shouting like them, but I have that story. It flashes bright, like a monk in his saffron-colored robe in New Hampshire snow. The thin legs of the boy. The mango tree that would have no fruit.

  “You let them put a bag on his head?” I say to my grandmother. “He was your son.”

  “Rithy was five years old,” my mother says. This is the first time she has said his name. “They said that if anyone touched him, if anyone cried, they would get the bag, too. They kill you if you cry.”

  I absorb her words. I think of a five-year-old boy, little legs running, very good at hunting crickets. Starving children pouncing on the knot of crickets in his scarf. He fed his little sister, Srey Pov.

  If Rithy was five, Srey Pov, little sister, my mother, would have been two years old.

  LOST

  I’m not late when I arrive at work. This doesn’t take the scowl from Vincent’s lips.

  The day is slightly longer. I carry with me the image of my mother’s body warming Pilot in the thawing earth. The story of Rithy curls in my stomach.

  Vincent’s on special drinks, I’m on the register. He keeps up a banter between orders.

  “Got held up in traffic on the 95 bridge. Till five o’clock.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was at Kittery Trading Post . . .”

  “Tell me what happened on the bridge?” I touch his sleeve. I think of the helicopters.

  “Some kind of accident. I was back a ways.”

  “Was somebody hurt?”

  I hear them, the helicopters plying the river.

  People stand in line, and I try to hear them. But I’m on the bridge in my imagination. The river below would be shimmering. I’ve seen the drop to the river. It is forever, the distance down, what do you think about as you spin? Do you open your arms and fly?

  “But then we got going again,” Vincent says. “Who knows what happened? Sometimes traffic stops cold, backs up a mile, and you never know why.”

  I stop listening to Vincent and come back into this space, become aware of customers, with their pained looks. A text comes through. I sneak a glance at my phone. It’s Luke, asking when I’ll come. I freeze. Shut my eyes. He’s waiting for me. Everything’s okay.

  “Hop to it. I know you can do it.” Vincent’s on the warpath, marching up and down from the bins to the drive-up. “Don’t have my ears on. You gotta yell.”

  Pilot’s in the car. I brought her so I can leave. Right from here. I have everything.

  “Hi, what can I get for you?” I do have my earpiece on, and I return to the steady, rushed, insistent voices that come through the ears at the drive-up. “Medium dark roast caramel swirl. Anything else?”

  “Hand that latte to the nice lady in the blue shirt,” from Vincent. “What can I get for you guys?”

  “Gonna need you longer tonight,” he says to me while he prepares the next lattes. “We got to mop behind the coolers, and it’s not going to happen with this rush till we close.”

  “Vincent.” I shake my head. The line is out the door. A woman keeps repeating her order in my ear. “Sausage and egg no cheese croissant and an iced latte.” “I can’t!” I say. The woman in my ear says, “Why not?”

  Vincent says, “Won’t take long.”

  I’m numb with anger.

  On break I go to Pilot in the car, sleeping with my backpack. I have slipped out repeatedly and covered her with two old blankets, but she thinks she’s being punished. Pilot cries, she is so happy I came back. I start the engine to get some heat in the truck, and she slides her nose through my bent arm and cries. It’s too cold.

  I text Luke. 10.

  I look up at the orange donut sign. It seems to radiate.

  My eyes fill with fat globs of tears. I smear them away with the blanket. Pilot climbs in my lap. I tell her, “You’re a Georgia girl, you shouldn’t have to be this co
ld.” We look at the orange light. I ask her, “Who is this Rithy boy? Who is this Srey Pov?” They are telling folk stories. And I don’t want to go home.

  Maybe it’s time for Luke and me. Maybe I need to go.

  I call my father’s number while I fix my ponytail and my cap. I need to get back.

  “Dad,” I say.

  “Sofie,” he says.

  “Is this you?” I say.

  “All that’s left,” he says. “Bruiser of a day.”

  I shut my eyes. I miss him so much. I want to tell him, slowly, I am going to Luke’s tonight, remember Luke who crewed for you? He is too far away to stop me. I just want to tell him, like I used to tell him everything. So it’s not a secret. I want to tell him I know the story I don’t want to know.

  Instead, I talk about food.

  “What do you eat? Do you miss my chowder?”

  “You bet. Look, I got to get going. Can I call you in the morning?”

  “What did you eat tonight?”

  “This woman next door fried us chicken.”

  From Chincoteague, a man shouts, a dog barks. “Have to go,” my father says.

  “Dad,” I say. “Why do you call me the rabbit in the moon?”

  “Something your mother used to say,” he says. “Something about Buddha. Maybe good luck. We take every drop of luck we can get.”

  “I thought you told me that.”

  “In the morning,” he says.

  I keep the phone to my ear for a little longer. Just the phone.

  The orange light shines down like the moon. And I remember the Cambodian lullaby I made up, “My family rides in the curve of the moon.”

  I sneak Pilot in the back door of the store and warm her. I give her my boot.

  MARCH 1

  I wake in Luke’s bed. I hear birds as loud as bells. Luke is asleep.

  I know this in the dark. I look out the window of the cabin and see an enormous full moon. I rise and feel the chill of the room. It’s winter, and I realize there are no birds. The birds are in my mind.