An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant

by Neal Reilly, LeAnn

  “What?” Tamarind found herself whispering.

  “I just ran into the stairs. Can you hold up that Goddess so we can at least make out shapes in this pitch black?”

  Tamarind grasped the Goddess by the head and dangled her at the end of her extended arm. The stairs leading up to the top of the tower came into vague outline. She swung the Goddess to the right and saw another door beneath the stairs.

  “Ah, storage. Let’s see if we can open this one, too.” John tried the door handle and the door swung open easily. “Let me hold Her.”

  He took the Goddess and waved her around the space. “As far as I can tell, there’s enough room for us to squat in here. It’ll be warmer, I think.” He took her arm and pulled her into the closet and shut the door.

  They sank down onto the concrete floor. Tamarind brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Her shoulder touched John’s arm and her flank rested against his soaking t-shirt and shorts. In the muffling darkness, their breathing rasped in unison like some monster from the fairy tales that she’d read that summer. She hummed a little and her breathing smoothed and slowed.

  John’s own breathing calmed somewhat. “I’ve missed hearing that. God, I’ve missed you.”

  Tamarind dropped her head to her knees. She tried to hold herself still, but her body shook beyond her control. Fluorescent light haloed her mind’s eye, defining the dark figure that kept bending over her.

  “I should have come for you yesterday. I’m sorry, Tamarind.” His voice fractured on the last words; they lay between them as sharp as slivered glass. “But that doesn’t help you, does it?”

  They sat there without speaking and Tamarind bit her upper lip so hard she tasted blood. Its salty, mineral taste evoked the sea so strongly that she gasped and then the saltwater washed over her face. Mucous mingled with tears and blood and for a moment she knew nothing of her surroundings. When at last the waves stopped rolling through her, she brought her hands to her cheeks and wiped beneath her nose.

  “Here.” John wiggled next to her and then handed her his wet shirt. “Wipe your face with this.”

  As she wiped her face off, they heard the howling of the wind. It sent fingers of damp air under the door to the closet as if searching for them.

  “Men killed your mother?” She could barely hear him over the wind.

  “Drug runners killed her years ago.”

  “How did they find her? Couldn’t she hide from them?”

  She felt the breath sigh from her. “Yes. We mer have cloaking spells and glamour to protect us from people. But she didn’t want to hide. Humans fascinated her. I think maybe she wanted to be human too.”

  “No wonder your father wanted to kill me.” He shifted next to her and she felt his upper arm brush her nipple. She tingled where his skin had touched hers. “You said you were almost human. Will you always have to stay close to the ocean?”

  “I only have legs until the end of the rainy season.”

  “That’s November, isn’t it?” She felt him hold his breath for her answer.

  “Yes.”

  “And then you get your mermaid’s tail back.”

  “Yes.”

  “And there’s nothing I can do to stop it, is there?”

  She hesitated.

  “What?” His voice sounded sharp. “Is there something I can do?”

  “I can keep my legs if I mate with a human.” She almost didn’t get the words out of her throat.

  “Well, then, you’re all set.” The saltwater of his voice stung the scraped hollow of her chest so that it burned.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jesus was just coming back for a little more, wasn’t he? I mean, maybe he’s a prick of the highest order who deserves to burn in hell, but he didn’t exactly imagine that you’d be willing to have sex with him, did he? After all, you’ve already had sex with him on Punta Melones.”

  “What?” The word scarcely escaped her numb lips.

  “You know I saw you. You looked right at me that night.”

  “What night?”

  “What night? You gotta be kidding me. The night you and he went dancing at Isla Encantada.”

  “I didn’t have sex with him. He clearly wanted me to, but I went back to Ana’s.” She wanted to leave this tower, plunge down Mount Resaca, and throw herself into the sea.

  “It was you. I know what I saw. I went back later to Isla Encantada looking for you and while I was out, I found your Goddess. When I picked it up, I had the strongest urge to go to Punta Melones, and there you were under Jesus. You smiled at me and I dropped her—” here he held up the Goddess, “on the beach.”

  “I didn’t make her until after you left Culebra, John. Valerie gave this moonstone to me, to give me hope that you’d come back.” Saltwater slid down her cheeks again. “It wasn’t me. It might have looked like me, but it wasn’t me. What if I had given myself to Jesus? Are you telling me that you’ve never been with a woman? Are you telling me that you and Raimunda only ever went dancing? I heard the stories, John. I know you were with her, many times since you and I met.”

  John squirmed next to her. “I—”

  “I think you saw what you wanted to see so you could leave Culebra and me. And now you believe what you want to believe so you won’t have to act. I’ve waited all summer for you. I’ve never lain with a human even though I could have, and in a few weeks, I’ll return to the sea. I won’t come back, John. I won’t come back.” Convulsions shook her breathing and she felt lightheaded in the stifling dark.

  They sat there for a long moment. The sound of John’s breathing vanished and Tamarind pulled herself away from him and balled herself around her knees. She closed her eyes and hummed, rocking and weaving an ellipse in the air above her head. If she rocked long enough, her humming would clear her thoughts and the spell she wove would take hold. She would disappear inside a cloak of darkness. And then, in a silence so complete that she’d nearly closed off all awareness of John, she heard him inhale audibly.

  “Tamarind.” He breathed her name out steadily. “Tamarind.”

  She could feel him release and expand next to her. She stopped rocking and waited. He reached for her and touched her shoulder with a fingertip as light as the brush of an angelfish. She didn’t pull away but held herself still. He brought his full hand down upon her shoulder tentatively; his palm was warm and his fingers firm. A surge of electricity, warm and dark, flowed down her arm and through her body, reaching the base of her spine and radiating through all of her limbs. Her breath grew shallow and the air in the closet grew close around them. Outside, the hurricane had arrived and the winds careened through the tower after flinging the loose entry door aside.

  “I don’t want to lose you. But I don’t deserve the gift you want to give me.”

  She leaned toward him and he moved his hand up to her shorn head. When she cried out, he bent and kissed her head, and then he kissed the top of her ears, first the left and then the right. He kissed the back of her neck, and then he traced her face with the tips of his fingers. He held her cheeks gently and waited. She lifted her arms around his neck and he kissed her mouth at last.

  He slid slow fingers over her shoulders and down her flanks and when she’d stopped trembling, he moved away from her and tugged off his shorts and sandals. And then he sat next to her. She extended her hand carefully, searching with her fingers until she felt his nearest hipbone. Moving her fingers across his abdomen, she touched the tender skin above the cut. He flinched. Murmuring, she laid her palm over it. Gradually, he relaxed and she knew the pain had faded from his awareness and the risk of renewed bleeding had gone. She raised her hand to his face; he turned, pressing his lips against her palm. By degrees he pulled her on top of him, as carefully as if she were sculpted from tissue paper, and wrapped his arms around her. He rocked her as the madness and fury descended upon the breathless world outside their tower, ripping tree and wall, shrub and roof in an ecstasy of obliteratio
n. Together they wove a spell so exquisite that the foundations of heaven might have crumbled and still they would have known only the utter stillness of their breath.

  Twenty-two

  Marilyn slowly lost strength, becoming first a tropical storm, and then a storm front, and finally dissipating out at sea, miles north and west of Culebra days later. The morning after she passed, John awoke to find Tamarind’s head resting on his shoulder, her body curled in his lap. The storage closet in the observation tower where they huddled had lightened imperceptibly. The screaming winds and gunshot spray of rain mixed with hail had vanished, leaving a profound silence. He absorbed the feel of Tamarind against his chest, her silky scalp lying against his neck, and the slight weight of her buttocks on his thighs. He wanted to sit in this place so far from people and research and proposals, until they’d put down roots and transformed into a tree like some Greek nymph.

  The reality of a full bladder, an empty stomach, an aching slash across his abdomen, and the soreness of scratches and bruises kept him from pursuing this option.

  “Hey.” He touched Tamarind’s cheek.

  She stirred and sighed. “It’s quiet.”

  “Yeah, I guess we slept through the rest of the hurricane. I think it’s still raining though.”

  She moved a little and he grunted. “Sorry.” She brushed his wound with a fingertip.

  “Oh, that’s not the problem. You just pushed against a full bladder.”

  “Ah.” She sat very still. “We can’t stay here much longer. There’s no food and I need something to wear.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “It’s just that it seems so safe here. And private.”

  John ran his free hand along her flank, around the slight curve of her hip, and down her thigh. “Yes, private is good. Perhaps we can wait a bit longer to venture out into the world.”

  ***

  Tamarind and John remained in the observation tower on Mount Resaca until the sun chased away the last of the rain later that morning and then they trudged down the road toward Playa Flamenco. John wore only his shorts and shoes; Tamarind had pulled on the remnants of his bloody t-shirt. She’d regained enough water since leaving the refuge office that she no longer looked emaciated and frail, but bruises purpled her arms and legs and angry scratches slashed her skin. A single long scratch marred her right cheek.

  All around them lay scattered thorn acacia, ripped by the roots from the ground, and broken limbs from palm and mangrove trees. The rain and wind had gouged chunks from the land, leaving it pitted and vulnerable. Overhead, sooty terns and laughing gulls dotted the clear sky and they heard birds calling as they always did, as if the world below hadn’t been devastated.

  They found Valerie’s Jeep sitting alone in the lot near the beach, thorny scrub caught under its chassis and in its rearview mirrors. A dead Puerto Rican ground dove lay on the Jeep’s hood, its neck broken and its head lying sideways. They cleared the Jeep of the brush and carcass and drove to Ana’s cinderblock house to get Tamarind’s belongings. Fragments of the chicken coop and seagull house had embedded in the branches of nearby tamarind trees and littered the ground; patches of the blue tarps that had covered them had been caught on limbs and wrapped in eddies around rocks and tree trunks.

  The plywood covering Ana’s small windows had been hurled from sight and the glass shattered, but in the corner of her house the temporary chicken roost and its occupants remained unharmed. The birds chuckled and squawked when John and Tamarind entered. Tamarind tiptoed through the debris of Ana’s home and peered into the plywood box. The chickens fluttered and complained; they had large raw-looking bald patches on their rumps and piles of feather and dung cluttered the floor. She hummed and clicked a little until the birds quieted and settled into sleep, their beaks tucked under a wing.

  Together, she and John maneuvered down the hidden path to Playa Tamarindo where her cache of clothes, jewelry, and books remained untouched by the rapacious waves. She stripped John’s t-shirt off after exposing her things, flinging the scrap away from her and into the waves where the current caught it and sent it south before it grew waterlogged and disappeared. He watched as she waded into the saltwater of the Luís Peña Canal until it covered her head. He waited without taking his eyes from the spot where she’d gone under. When she emerged, the sun glistening on water droplets in the stubble on her scalp, he let out his breath.

  Tamarind stood for a moment on the empty beach among the litter of shells and seaweed, plucking something invisible from the air around her as she murmured. Within moments, the water on her had disappeared. She seemed scarcely to notice the pile of silky underwear lying like treasure near her clothes and grabbed the first one that her hand touched. After she’d stepped into these, she remained bent over while she pulled on a clean t-shirt and shorts. She knelt down and picked through the jewelry pile until she found a pendant on a gold chain. She stripped the pendant from the chain and dumped it onto the rocks without a second glance. The chain lay curled on her palm like a tiny glittering serpent.

  “Can I have my Goddess?” She held out her hand to John, who searched in his pocket for the small figure.

  “I’ve just been keeping Her safe for you.”

  Tamarind accepted the gleaming figure. Grasping it around its belly, she threaded the chain through a small loop on the Goddess’s head. She raised it up to her neck, but before she could fumble with the clasp, John had stepped behind her. Brushing his fingertips across the back of her neck, he took the chain from her fingers and latched the clasp for her.

  She smoothed the figure between her breasts. “Thanks.”

  Tamarind tossed the clothes and books into a small travel bag that Valerie had given her for their trips to San Juan. The last item she packed was a small hand mirror. This she lifted to her eyes, before twisting and turning as she struggled to see more of herself in the mirror than was possible. While they lingered on Playa Tamarindo, the sun climbed to its apex and the day grew warm. As they walked back up the hidden path toward Ana’s house, sweat glistened on John’s shoulders and trickled down his spine. Tamarind watched it run toward the waistband of his shorts until she realized sweat also wet her shoulder blades and the hollow between her breasts. In wonder, she touched the moisture on her chest and tasted it. It tasted like the ocean.

  They returned to the Jeep and drove down 251 to Dewey. For the first time since he’d driven Zoë around Culebra, John paid attention to the landscape beyond the road. As with Mount Resaca, trees and shrubs had been yanked up and raw wounds in the earth gaped. At the airport, all of the light planes were overturned and scattered, like so many pieces upended from a giant chessboard after a bitter loss. In place of the scrappy small houses clinging to the slope leading to town, there was nothing more than scattered debris, resembling an abandoned fairground for an army of careless giants. Here and there he could make out sheets of metal roofing, wooden planks, doors, piles of clothes, odds and ends of home life: pictures, a mattress, a broken chair. But mostly what he saw was unrecognizable, twisted and thrown in meaningless clumps and individual pieces as far as the eye could see.

  Dewey had also been transformed. Marilyn had ripped off sheets of plywood and smashed store windows, broken light poles trailed wires like spilled entrails, and paper and glass carpeted the ground. Waves from the harbor had surged over the shore, canal, and docks, before reaching hungrily along Dewey’s streets. Where they had passed, a salt residue rimed the pavement and glittered in the sun.

  John drove slowly, the Jeep’s tires crunching over the fragments of humanity and nature mingled on the pavement, pulverizing the smallest.

  “There’s Valerie.” Tamarind pointed as they neared La Virgen del Mar.

  Valerie stood with Sister Maria Margarita on the steps of the church, her hands covering her mouth. The nun’s hands rested on her hips and her lips were pursed as she surveyed the houses and shops around them. When her gaze crossed over the Jeep, they widened and she stared
at them.

  She put her hand on Valerie’s arm. “My friend, look, there is John and Tamarind whom you worried so much about.”

  Valerie looked where Sister Maria Margarita pointed and screamed a little. “John! Tamarind!”

  She came to the Jeep, picking her way through the debris so quickly she was like a bananaquit fluttering. When she got to the driver’s side, they saw the puffy grooves under her gray eyes and her uncombed hair. John recognized her shirt from yesterday.

  “John! Tamarind! You’re safe! Thank God!” She leaned as far into the Jeep as she could, wrapping her arm around John’s neck. Then she pulled away and looked at Tamarind. “Oh, my God. What happened to your hair?”

  Tamarind blinked and touched her head. “I–”

  “We survived a bit more than a hurricane. We’ll tell you about it later.” John looked at Valerie, who gazed back at him for a long moment and then nodded. “Is everyone okay?”

  “So far as we know. Only old Captain Joe hasn’t radioed in yet, but he’s a salty dog so we hope for the best. The power’s out, but the Dockside has a generator so we can get some hot food once in a while until the power’s restored on the island. If you two are hungry now, Sister’s got a kerosene stove and has soup in the sanctuary.”

  “We are.” John looked around for a place to park. “Just let me park your Jeep over there where the mess is only a couple feet high first. I don’t suppose you could find me a t-shirt someplace, or a blanket?”

  Valerie’s gaze dropped to his bare chest and she saw the slash there, dark and wicked. She inhaled sharply. “Sister’s got some blankets and a first aid kit, too.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’ll see you two inside then.” Valerie looked at each of them in turn and then returned to the church.

  After John parked and they’d scrabbled through the uneven litter to the church’s steps, they heard voices and laughter. A moment later, a mewling threaded its way among the chatter. Just inside the church’s doorway a group gathered, oblivious to the destruction only a few feet away. Tamarind recognized Jaime, the father-to-be from yesterday. Tucked between his left arm and his chest, he held a blanketed bundle that appeared to have a coconut wedged into one end of it. When she and John drew near, she saw that instead of a coconut, the furry brown sphere had a small mouth and cloudy blue eyes that studied the sky above its father intently. Jaime held his baby.