by Debra Busman
And I am in the sea and there is no help.
The numb grip on my mind breaks and I am again fighting with everything I have. I am not calm. I am pissed off. Once a wave brings us close enough in that I can touch bottom I dig desperately in with my toes only to get swept back out again and again and I’m spitting and cursing and telling Leah that I’m not gonna let her go, I’m not gonna let the ocean take her away from me and then we get washed up far enough that I can stand and she is kneeling and I feel her gripping my arm and so I know she is still alive and I try to pick her up like they do on Baywatch and trot pectorally up to shore so we are finally safe but I can’t even budge her. I use all my arm and back strength and then try to lift with my legs but my body is too weak and she is not even moving and I wonder if maybe she thinks she is finally safe because she feels sand and my arm but she is not safe so I scream at her to help me. “We have to get out of here,” I yell. “You’ve got to help me. We’re not safe yet and I can’t carry you. Please, anything, just try to crawl.”
My grandmother has fallen in the hall. I know what I have to do. I’ve done it before. Put two of the tiny white nitroglycerin pills gently under her tongue, careful so she doesn’t choke. Get her to her bed. Careful. Carry, drag her if she can’t help. Take her dress off, careful so it doesn’t rip. Unsnap each one of the thirty clasps on her corset, releasing her chest, letting her breathe. Call the doctor. Call my mother. Call the ambulance if it’s bad. I spill the bottle, tiny pills scattering. Shit. I pick up two from the orange shag carpet. “Grandma, can you hear me?” I ask, turning her head, prying open her mouth, closing it gently over the two white pills. “I’m gonna get you to bed, okay?” She doesn’t move. I try and lift her. She is five foot ten, not fat but big boned, a “woman of substance.” “Thick with grief,” says my mom. I am eleven. “Grandma, can you help me get you up?”
I know what to do. I’ve done it before. Why can’t I lift her now? She is so heavy. I pull her partway up the wall, then slide down after her into a heap. I want to cry. Why am I so weak? “Grandma, can you help me? I need to get you to bed.” I’ll have to drag her.
Slowly we make it down the hall, my grandmother waking up enough to help push with her feet. “The bicycle?” she whispers. “Do the bicycle?”
“That’s right, Grandma. Just like you’re riding a bicycle, only backward. Just keep peddling. I got you, Grandma.”
We make it to her bedroom, but when I pull her top half up against the bed, her butt still on the floor, I feel her dress give way. Panicked, I want to run when I see the long tear under her armpit. But I make myself stay, get her into bed, pull off her dress, undo the corset, wipe her brow with a clean damp cloth first, check her breathing, then call the doctor, then call my mother, then wet the cloth again, then wipe up where she’s messed herself. She breathes more easy, then starts to cry.
“Oh, child, just look at me!” she says as I tuck the sheets soft around her chin. “I came here to take care of you kids. I’m supposed to be taking care of you. Oh, just look at me.”
“Shhh, Grandma. It’s okay. You take real good care of me, Grandma. I love you so much. Just rest now. Dr. Mandle will be here pretty quick. Mom’s comin’ too,” I add.
She puts her hand real gentle against my cheek, rubbing my chin with her big thumb the way she knows I like, the way that makes me feel like a cat, the way that makes me feel so good I forget to hide her dress. Then when my mom and Dr. Mandle get there of course my mom spots it right away, glaring at the tear, shaking the dress, giving me one of her you’ d better be gone looks, but Dr. Mandle is there so all she says is, “And what happened here, young lady? I swear you cannot be trusted with anything. I don’t know what I’m going to do with you. So damn careless. Always breaking things, tearing them up. I don’t know what I did to deserve a child like you.”
She leaves the room and Dr. Mandle looks up and says, “Don’t worry. She’s just upset, that’s all. You did a real good job here. Your grandma’s just fine.” But he gets to go home and I know my mistake was settling all in to my grandma’s thumb stroking my chin, making like I was a cat what could purr instead of a girl that needed to be sewing up her grandma’s dress like I knew I should.
The next wave knocks me over, but I hold onto Leah, dig my feet into the sand, refuse to let it drag her back out to sea. I grab hold of the back loop of her jeans with my right hand, put my left hand under her shoulder and pull but there is no movement and now I understand the meaning of “dead weight” but she’s not dead and I can’t go back into that sea again and I yell to her, almost sobbing I am so weak, “Crawl! Goddammit. Please crawl.” Amazingly, she raises her head and says in this calm, soft voice, “I think it might be better if I walked.” I want to laugh out loud in relief and disbelief at her actually uttering words much less suggesting walking—”Fuck, yes, please, let’s walk. Hell, let’s two-step”—but we are not safe yet and the ocean is still trying to steal her back. She raises up a little and I put her left arm around my neck and lift, hoisting her up on my right hip. I cannot feel my right side, but I look over and see my right hand snaked around her on its own, tightly gripping her waistband. Knowing if I fall now I won’t have the strength to stand again, I carefully wobble us up onto shore, toes gripping into sand, relaxing, inching forward, gripping again.
Thirty feet from the surf, still we are not safe, pinned between sea and cliff. I close my eyes and begin a slow shuffle up the beach, cursing the thunderous crashing of waves, the roar that shakes the ground we walk on, threatening my tenuous balance. Finally we reach the place where the river cuts through the cliff and we limp as far as possible up the creek bed, away from the sea. When we are finally safe I take off all our clothes, even though Leah is wanting only to curl up and be still and is irritated as a cranky child at my messing with her stuff. Finally she is naked and I hold her up against the remaining warmth of my body, her back against my chest and belly, my arms wrapped around her, facing her toward the sun. Burgundy scrapes lace across her cool, white skin, telling stories of frantic legs, forearms braced against oncoming rocks, protecting her precious, unmarked skull. I watch the purple and gray gathering of bruises as her body warms and the blood begins to flow. Soon she will spit sand, grumble at Luna, hold her exploding snow cone frozen head, double over with cramps, and finally hobble her way behind me toward the truck, holding my trembling hand and wincing over a stickery path. But for now, she is safe and all I really know and care about is the fact that
I am on the shore and she is with me
and the sun is almost warm.
III
We spend the next three days huddled in a Big Sur hotel room, clinging to each other, eating hot soup and crackers. Leah doesn’t want to go to the hospital; she just wants to get warm and dry. I can tend to her cuts. Her bruises will be bruises. Amazingly, she has taken in almost no water. Luna and I are both still spitting up the sea. She barks each time I cough, wags her tail fiercely, leads me to the corner of the bathroom floor where she has made her own little frothy pools of yellow ocean. I clean up after her, then throw up in the sink. The sign on the front door says no dogs allowed in room, but there is no way I am about to be separated from either of these two creatures I’ve just pulled from the sea.
Leah and I begin to tell the story to one another. “It was incredible,” she says. “I could see you so clearly on shore. At one point I saw this amazing tunnel of light coming from you, filled with little strands of gold and silver light. I felt like you were sending me breath, sending me a lifeline. You made me feel so strong, like I could maybe save my own life. Before that I knew I was going to die. I thought, ‘How strange. So this is how people die.’ I thought, ‘I’m probably going to die.’ Funny what a drowning mind can invent,” she says, looking away.
“I saw the cord, too,” I tell her. “And it gave me hope. Before that, I was so scared. I didn’t know what to do. I started to run down the beach for help…”
“Oh God!” She interr
upts me. “I saw you do that. I saw that very moment of panic. I saw you look down the beach and I just knew if you ran I would die. That was the only time I was really scared. That, and then the rock.” She starts to tremble. “What happened? Did I hit that rock?”
“I don’t think so,” I say. “At least not full on. I think maybe it parted the wave carrying you and Luna because I found her way on the other side from where you were.” I tell her for the tenth time how I rescued Luna. I tell her the story of David. I tell her about how her cries called my heart back into my body.
“I almost couldn’t cry out,” she tells me. “It was like I didn’t think I deserved that much attention. Like I didn’t want to be a problem. I wasn’t supposed to make noise.” She pauses. “Guess I changed that script, didn’t I?” she says, smiling. “It felt so incredible once I started hollering. I really got into it. It made me feel so powerful, even though I was crying for help. It was like I knew I had to save my own life. Like I really felt my life was worth saving.”
“You did save your own life,” I remind her. This is an argument we will have many times.
“You saved my life,” she says, snuggling in closer to me. “You pulled me from the sea.”
“A wave took you out and a wave brought us back in. And in between we got seriously fucked with.” I start coughing again, feeling like I’m going to be sick. Luna jumps on the bed and begins to bark. Leah grabs her around the neck and pulls her down, quieting her.
“Well, you still saved my life,” she says, ruffling Luna’s fur. “I would be dead if you hadn’t come in. I don’t know what else you can call that besides saving my life.”
“That’s true, it’s just not the only truth,” I tell her. I make myself sound calm but really I want to throw chairs out the window, smash lamps, run my fist through the sheetrock walls. “You were out there ninety percent of the time by yourself before I could even get to you. You did everything right. You relaxed, didn’t fight the current, swam only enough to come up for air, stayed calm. You called for help. You made the decision to live.”
“I know,” she says. “It was so incredible. I kept thinking about my mom. Ever since she killed herself, I’ve wondered if I was suicidal. Like way deep inside me. What I realized out there was that I really did want to live. It was so empowering. I feel like I really have a life now, like I really own my own life. I feel so strong.” She looks down at her scraped and bruised arm and laughs. “Yeah. Kind of sore and beat up, but still really strong.”
I feel weak. I feel sick with my weakness. Every night I drown again and again in my dreams, going under, losing my grip on Leah, letting go, losing sight of the light which means up, which means air. I scream in my sleep. “I’m not gonna let you go,” I cry, grabbing hold of her body next to me, jerking her awake.
“I’m right here, sweetie,” she says, all sleepy voiced. “I’m not going anywhere. We’re safe. We’re not in the ocean anymore. It’s okay. Let’s try and get some sleep.”
Back home it gets worse. Everybody wants to hear the story. The Great Dyke Ocean Rescue Story. Some people cry. Some clap me on the shoulder. Shake my hand. Some dissolve into their own stories of loss, of near drowning. A friend of mine who knows the story of David says, “Oh, Taylor. This is so wonderful. You’ve broken through the old pattern of not being able to save David. This time you did it! It all worked. Here you both are! I’m so happy for you.”
A friend of Leah’s says, “Hey, I heard that near-death experiences make for really hot sex.” She winks. “How ’bout it? Is that true?”
Another friend says, “Did you guys report this? Somebody should know about this. It’s just not safe out there. I can’t believe you didn’t go to the hospital. You need to tell somebody. Call the police. Something.”
“What are the police gonna do?” I ask, laughing for the first time in weeks. “Arrest the fucking ocean? That wave’s outta here. Probably in the Bahamas by now. Besides, you know I don’t talk to cops.”
I lose my construction job. The sound of power tools frightens me. My hand flies back at the icy touch of steel. I drop my skill saw off a roof when it begins to whine and vibrate before I’ve even plugged it in. No one gets hurt. But still. I try and pick up some landscaping work. The other gardeners laugh past me and my broom, my hand clippers, my old buck saw, their chain saws, electric trimmers, power blowers ripping through the air as I crouch to slowly pat down a little patch of soil.
Two weeks later my friend gives me a number to call. She’s tracked down a park ranger named Eric who is the lifeguard for the Big Sur area. Says he keeps records of drownings. Says it would be really good if I could call and give him the details. I call and agree to meet Eric down at the Point Lobos State Park. He listens carefully to the story, takes notes, frowns.
“I know that beach well,” he says. “It’s really dangerous. I wouldn’t have gone in. You guys are really lucky. There’s no way you should have survived.” I look at his smooth, tanned chest, his oily, well-defined muscles, his wetsuit, fins, surfboard, orange floaty devices. He is the only lifeguard on duty from Moro Bay down near San Luis Obispo all the way up to Sunset Beach south of Santa Cruz. A hundred and eighty miles of coast. “Mostly I just bring bodies in,” he admits. “I don’t hardly ever get to really rescue anyone.” He points out to the rough waters off Whaler’s Cove. “But I practice every day out there,” he says. “I swim two miles, paddle two more. I’m always ready. I just can’t always get there in time.”
I ask him what the hell it was that hit us, what made it go from dry sand to fifteen solid feet of water. “They call them rogue waves,” he says. “Sneaker waves. They start hundreds of miles offshore. Come in like a swell sometimes, not like a cresting wave. That’s what yours was. A swell that just kept coming. There’s no way you could have seen it coming, nothing you could have done. You guys are really lucky.”
I ask him why it was that Leah could have been floating face down and not taken water into her lungs like me and Luna. “The body is an amazing thing,” he says. “It just starts shutting down. After she hit that rock she probably started to lose consciousness. She would have stopped breathing by the time you saw her floating. So she wouldn’t have been taking in air or water.”
Eric looks down at the breakers below.
“At that point,” he continues, “you just got three or four minutes to get to the person before there’s irreparable brain damage due to lack of oxygen. Obviously you got to her in time. You guys are really lucky,” he says again. “One thing, though. You really should have taken your friend to the hospital when you got out. There’s this thing that can happen called secondary drowning. You get a person out of the water, safe on shore. They’re standing right in front of you, telling you they’re fine. You see them breathing, talking, then ten minutes later they’re dead. Drowned from the water they still had in their lungs. The salt pulls even more liquid in. Yeah, you shoulda got your friend to the hospital.”
I tell Leah what the lifeguard has said, ask her if she can remember anything else. “I remember the rock,” she says. “And then I remember you yelling at me to crawl. I guess I did lose consciousness out there. I just remember at one point that everything started looking so incredibly beautiful.” She drifts off. Returns. “The blues were amazing. Every time I got pulled under I just looked for where the blues got translucent, almost silvery white. That’s how I knew where to swim up for air. Then I remember one time when I looked and everything was this radiant indigo color that pulsated aqua. It was so beautiful, like I was wrapped up in a silver blanket, resting in this soft blue bed. I felt my mind far, far off wonder if I was maybe dying, but the thought had no emotion in it.” She turns to me, her eyes all soft, excited. “Do you think that was what it was like when my mom drowned? I always thought it must have been so horrible. Maybe it was beautiful. Maybe she saw what I saw.”
Every memory Leah has, every insight, is one of beauty, strength, hope. Her friends tell her she has never been s
o radiant. “I’m in love,” she exclaims, grabbing my arm. “Of course I’m radiant. I have my life, my very own life. The sea took me in and gave me such gifts. I am writing again. I’ve quit therapy. My heart is so open, so full. I feel so alive.”
I am not in love, although I still hold her close to me at night. My dreams are getting worse. Drowning, going under, losing my grip, flashes of David’s face rising up out of the coffin. I dream a recurring nightmare I haven’t had for years. As a child I was always an animal in my dreams. The monsters were human. In this dream I am a young cougar, sometimes a wolf. I am running in the woods, not away from anything, not toward anything, just running hard. I feel the strength of my chest, my shoulders, my legs pounding across the ground. Grass slaps against my face. My nostrils flare to take in air, to take in scent. As I’m running I become aware of a hunter, his rifle pointed at me, fixing me in its sights. I feel the red cross-marks move across my body, settling on my right shoulder. I know I am about to be shot. I think about running faster, darting away, hiding behind the trees. But I just keep running, feeling my body, feeling my strength. Then I hear an explosion and my shoulder rips open. I run a few more strides in slow motion and then crash to the ground. I feel the hot bullet splinter my bones, tear through my flesh. Night after night I fight to keep from drowning. Night after night I run through the woods, knowing I’ll be shot, keeping my stride until the bullet comes.
I am still coughing. A chest X-ray shows fluid in my lungs. The doctor gives me antibiotics. A healer friend lays her hands on me each week. “Please get the ocean out of my body,” I plead. “I feel like there are fish swimming in my lungs.” She eases the clenching in my throat, soothes the tightness around my chest. I weep when she places her hands on what she calls my heart chakra.
“I can help you with the fluid in your lungs,” she says. “And I can help with the tissue damage in your throat and bronchioles. But you are drowning in your grief. Maybe you need to cry more,” she tells me. She makes me promise her I will not take my life.