By Light We Knew Our Names

by Anne Valente

  Ben took a breath. His hands moved, opened a blank document instead.

  He missed her. Beyond strands of genes or color or cells, he missed her, the imprint of her shape beside his, the tangerine smell of her hair, the way her hands sometimes rested absently against Maple’s curls while Maple watched television on the couch, while Grace read a book. He missed her as Maple did, separate hurt, but in the end no different at all. Grace had been theirs, was now in some state of becoming, unfurling to not theirs, not anymore, all the things love became when heat paled to ash.

  Ben stared at the screen, as white and unbroken as the life Grace imagined ahead.

  YOU WERE:

  The crack of bat against ball.

  The first splash of crocus, poking through snow.

  Mine. For only a moment.

  At work, Ben threw himself into reports. He closed his office door, completed six reports in two days, trawling property values and political donations and asset wealth and corporation filings until he dropped all six reports on his boss’s desk, leaving the office relaxed for the first time in weeks. Ben drove the length of streets toward Maple’s preschool, windows down amid the noise of Friday traffic, of weekends starting early, but the breeze off the cove carried salt and sea into the car and Ben felt calm, a lulling center of grounded gravity, and he thought of Maple, that he would take her for ice cream after dinner.

  But when he pulled up to the preschool, cars filled the parking lot—far more cars than there were children in the school, and Ben noticed news vans among the cars, antennas spiraling toward the sky. He parked across the street, walked warily toward the parking lot, and noticed a throng of cameras, of people crowded around the cove. Then he noticed the fishing nets, and Miss Griffith looking on from the schoolyard, a lone pine standing, the scattered cones of preschoolers dotted around her.

  Ben saw Maple then, standing near the hem of Miss Griffith’s dress—backpack strapped to her shoulders like a turtle shell, Mason jar clutched between hands, her eyes fixed on the cove where, when Ben followed her line of sight, the pink dolphin swam in furious circles while several fishermen surrounded him in small boats, dropped nets into the water from their decks.

  “They’re trying to capture him,” Miss Griffith said, when Ben reached the schoolyard fence. “They’re trying to bring him back to sea.”

  Maple looked up at Ben, moved to his side and leaned into his pant leg. He placed his palm on her head, curls of hair atop her sullen face, and looked out toward the water where the town fishermen tried again and again to drop their nets over the baby.

  The dolphin swam in tight rings, pink skin brilliant above the cloud-darkened water. Ben knew, from a PBS special he’d once seen, that the dolphin ear hears things a human ear never would. That their range is eight times the capacity of the human auditory system, their lower jawbone a conductor of sound through the thickness of water. Ben watched the pink dolphin, frenzied circles growing tighter. The cameras, the reporters, the nets slapping the water’s surface—the sound must have been unimaginable beneath the cove, echoed and magnified by the incomparable silence of the sea.

  Maple’s fingers pressed into Ben’s leg, and he looked down to where she clutched his calf with one hand, the Mason jar with the other. They watched the nets descend, again and again until at last they landed upon the dolphin, compressed to near-stasis in whirlwind circling, and enclosed him in a webbed pocket. Maple turned away as the dolphin thrashed against the roped lattice, as the fishermen pulled the bundle close to the dock, securing the nets against wooden pillars until morning, when daylight would provide safer transfer. The dolphin pushed against the surface and then finally sank down into the net, submerged somewhere below the dock, pink skin glowing in the sky’s darkening light.

  The crowd began to disperse, and as Ben belted Maple into the backseat he thought of the dolphin, cowering crimson beneath the docks, alone in the water, at least until morning. The town’s sentiment was right, if not the act. If only such things could be forced. Beyond the cove lay a wide, blackened expanse of unsounded ocean, a mother dolphin Ben doubted fishermen could intuit or trace. Albino babies were born from pigmented mothers all the time. There would be no pink beacon, no coral glow beneath the water, no trail of eerie light, submerged borealis streaking the ocean floor. Ben keyed the ignition, pulled away from the school. He knew they would never find her.

  At home, Maple hopped up the stairs while Ben set to making dinner. Something familiar, something Maple loved, to cheer her, to leave room for ice cream. But when the eggs and waffles were made—breakfast for dinner, a surefire win—Ben called up the stairs to his daughter, and on the third summon she still didn’t answer.

  Ben skipped the stairs, two at a time, and moved down the hallway to Maple’s room, empty. He searched the bath-room, the office, his bedroom, the closets. Then he stopped, turned back to her room, and looked past her bed to the floor near her nightstand, where Harriet’s Mason jar stood alone on the carpet, just beyond the dust ruffle of Maple’s bed.

  Ben crouched on hands and knees, lifted the dust ruffle and peeked beneath the box springs. Maple lay there on her belly, cheek smushed against the floor.

  “Harriet’s sick.” She turned her head away from him. “There’s not enough sun. She’s lost her yellow.”

  Ben looked back at the Mason jar, abandoned and empty. Then he compressed himself as thin as he could and crawled beneath the bed to lay flat beside his daughter.

  He said nothing, just lay there next to her, watched her back rise and fall, steady wave of lungs. There was something calming in it, the simple fact of breathing, and he reached out his hand, held his daughter’s in his.

  “There might still be hope for Harriet.”

  Maple puffed air into her cheeks, didn’t respond.

  “Honey, maybe Harriet just needs to be outside. Maybe some sunshine will bring back her color.”

  Maple turned her head toward him, curls rustling against the box springs.

  “Why did they trap the dolphin?”

  Ben knew she’d heard Miss Griffith say why. He repeated the reason anyway. Maple’s face crumpled into a pucker, and she pulled her hand away.

  “But why do they need to trap him?”

  Her voice was loud, then her features softened and she scooted away.

  “Why doesn’t the mama just come back and find him?” she whispered, and Ben’s breath caught in his throat, simple act turned intolerable, some malfunction splintered from helix, their coded strands unraveling.

  “Sometimes, the mothers, they—” He started, then stopped.

  MOTHERS:

  Abandon their children.

  Leave their babies vulnerable.

  Don’t come back to find them. In coves, under beds.

  Ben lay silent. There was nothing else to say.

  “Maybe she lost her way, too,” he said. An allotted honesty, the only one there was.

  Maple lay there, quiet. A dust bunny floated toward her hair.

  Ben felt the hardwood floor below him, pushing hard against his chest. He let himself lay still, alongside his daughter there beneath the bed, two boats in separate harbors. Then he moved toward Maple and clasped her shoulder, and when she didn’t resist, he drew her gently along the floor until they both emerged from the dust ruffle.

  Ben pulled his daughter into his lap, and they sat there against the bed, near the foot of Maple’s nightstand, the jar empty beside them. Then Ben led her downstairs for dinner, for waffles and later for ice cream, and when he tucked her into bed he placed the Mason jar in the flower box outside Maple’s window, for Harriet to soak in what light the pale moon could shed.

  Ben awoke to the dim shade of a darkened bedroom, curtains not yet bright with the first hues of dawn. He headed downstairs anyway, brewed coffee, turned on the early morning news. The forecast, a day of sunshine. A good day to take Maple to the park, just enough wind for kites.

  Ben turned from the coffee pot mid-pour when he heard
mention of the pink dolphin. Newscasters, not yet on-site, reported that fishermen would transport the netted dolphin to the sea, sometime late morning, for safe release back to the ocean. Ben set his mug down. He glanced up the stairs toward Maple’s bedroom. He knew, somewhere in the casing of his chest, that this was borne of good intention. But as he watched footage of the dolphin onscreen, swimming those furious pink circles before the nets descended, the core beneath the casing burned, some molten-hot hub inside a dull, rounded ache.

  Ben grabbed a kitchen knife, pulled on his jacket, ran up the stairs to Maple’s door.

  “Wake up, sweetheart.” Ben shook the shape beneath the rumpled sheets. “We’re taking a little trip.”

  Maple stirred, rubbed her eyes.

  “Can we take Harriet?”

  In the car, as they pulled away from the driveway, headlights slicing into a day too new for sun, Ben turned on the radio, kept an ear to the news. Maple sat in her car seat, gazing out the side window, Harriet’s jar rolling over the nightgown on her lap. Ben glanced at his daughter in the rearview every so often, considered the hazards of this plan. Dolphin freed by single father! Daughter taken by Child Services! Ben imagined the headlines, looked away, drove steadily toward to the cove.

  But when they pulled into the preschool lot, there was nothing but calm, just the quiet lapping of water beside the seawall, and the slow marbling of sky as dawn approached, staining its path lilac. Ben unbuckled Maple from the backseat, then led her by the hand out to the edge of the dock. He knelt down near the nets, while Maple stood behind him watching, holding Harriet in her hands. The water rippled black in the absence of light, but as Ben watched, a pale shadow began to surface. Maple leaned in and watched as the dolphin slowly floated to the rough edges of the net, pink nose poking from the water, as if welcoming their presence. Ben knelt down, held his hand against the surface of the water. The dolphin pushed his nose against Ben’s hand, rubber skin through roughened mesh. And as the dolphin sank again, Ben clasped his hand through the netting and held it, pulled the knife from his pocket with the other.

  He told Maple to stand back. He clutched the knife and dragged it across the netting, at first tenderly, then more forcefully as the knife sawed through fiber after fiber until the strands began to unravel and break. The dolphin rose up again, coral shadow emerging from the deepest end of his allotted space, stayed close to the surface, curious. Ben sawed a small hole in the netting, then larger and larger as the binding tore and uncoiled, until at last a full-scale slit lined the net, a tear large enough for escape.

  Ben sat back on his knees, held the knife limp against the dock. Maple peered at the water over his shoulder, and as they both watched, the dolphin hesitated, nosing the new opening. Then he pushed through the hole and disappeared.

  They sat silent, breathing, an undulation matching the waves, the only living sound between sky and sea. Clouds stretched in wisps overhead, tinged golden, edges lined in lucent, growing light.

  “Where did he go?” Maple asked, holding the Mason jar against her nightgown.

  Ben watched the water for some spout or surfacing, without an answer. Beyond knives, netting cut, beyond the simple act of freeing, Ben knew he hadn’t considered what next, what then for this dolphin, what if he simply swam around the cove, as he had been for days, to be captured once more by clueless fishermen by the time night fell again.

  But then a gust of water burst forth, a flash of coral fin carved the surface near the mouth of the cove. The mouth led to the sound, and the sound led to the sea. The pink dolphin appeared to be headed that way, as if the harm of net was all the cove would be now, safe harbor no longer safe.

  Maple watched the dolphin move away, eyes brimming beneath the first streaks of light. Then, before Ben could catch her by her nightgown’s hem, she took off running down the dock, along the edge of the seawall.

  Ben ran after her, ready to stop her, until he saw her holding out the Mason jar, held high above her as she ran, held out toward the sea. Ben slowed and let her go, kept a close distance in case she tripped or fell, but hung back, let her run. Ben watched as her short legs carried her to the edge of the seawall, where the mouth met the sound, where she crouched down and peered into the water. The dolphin had gone back under but Maple watched the surface, waves catching the first glints of dawn, until the coral skin reappeared.

  The pink dolphin idled in the water, there by the edge of the seawall, appeared to be regarding Maple. As Ben watched, his daughter looked from the dolphin to her hands, then unscrewed the lid of Harriet’s jar and emptied the empty contents into the water.

  Ben’s breath formed a knot inside his throat, a failure of coded function. The dolphin lifted his head to Maple, and Ben watched the pink blaze brilliant beneath the sun’s first rays, some stretch of DNA burned as scarlet as his own, as his daughter held out her hands.

  Ben stood still. You are, he thought. YOU ARE: —but nothing followed, nothing readily came. There was nothing but her. Nothing but what she was, no similes, no guess-work, no approximations. There was only his daughter, code stamped indelibly, within every strand of cells.

  Maple screwed the lid on the Mason jar, turned away from the water, came and stood next to Ben. “What if he doesn’t know where to go?”

  “He’ll find a way.”

  “Harriet will do better outside.” Maple looked out toward the sound, set the Mason jar on the concrete. “In case she decides to come back.”

  Ben thought of Grace then, a disembodied thought, her location, her whereabouts as unimaginable as ghosts. He felt his daughter’s hair, solid substance of her curls. He knew they should leave, head home and away from this place, before camera crews, fishermen, crowds reappeared. But he felt himself grounded in the breaking light alongside his daughter, no past and no prospect, only this, only theirs. Maple reached up her hand, slid her palm into his as the dolphin hesitated near the seawall then ducked quietly beneath the surface, disappearing into the sea.

  UNTIL OUR SHADOWS CLAIM US

  The first night he took one of us, the Challenger disintegrated over the Atlantic Ocean. We’d watched that day from our second-grade classroom at Rosewood Elementary, from the huddled space of the magic carpet where Mrs. Levy read to us during storytime, where she pulled the television close to the carpet’s edge and dimmed the lights, like the movies, the launch as magic as the storybooks. We watched for all of them, especially for the teacher up there in space, and when the shuttle exploded only seventy-three seconds into flight, when Mrs. Levy held a hand to her mouth and shut off the television, we knew only that something had gone wrong, that the light bursting onscreen was not the same heart-fluttered spark of fireworks, the only other flare we knew.

  At home, our parents watched the coverage. We watched with them, over TV dinners, over glasses of milk. We knew something terrible had happened, though we weren’t sure what, and we felt sad and somehow empty until our parents tucked us into bed, into blankets soft and warm, and then we were safe again until we woke and heard other news while our parents poured our cereal and listened, a disaster of another kind, a tragedy far closer to home.

  Craig Davenport, who’d sat next to us on the magic carpet, who’d played hopscotch and kickball on the playground with us, who at lunch had traded his juice box for our fruit snacks—gone, taken in the night from his own bedroom, the window still open when his parents came to wake him and found an empty bed.

  There were speculations, notice of a vehicle, a number to call if any information was found. There were our parents, holding us close, dropping us off at the doors to school, watching us walk inside.

  But we knew, as sure as we knew the shape of the letters that spelled our names, that at last he’d come for us, that what we’d done had brought all of this on.

  We’d conjured him on the playground, bright blue October, our sweaters soft as fleece, a down barrier between our skin and the cold metal of rungs and bars. We crowded inside the rocket, tall structure pai
nted the colors of our American flag, its diameter large enough to encase all of us, all clustered around a discarded piece of mirror that Tom Davies found in the wood chips nestling the swing set. Tom looked at each of us, fear scratched into the soft creases of his face, and told us of the Rosewood Phantom, the first time we’d heard the name, the first time the words stained the ridges of our tongues.

  Tom told us Rosewood had a killer, many years ago, a man who stole the town’s children one by one, any child who dared to step outside after nightfall, and at times even children tucked soundly in their beds. Tom told us the towns-people finally caught him, tortured him, wrapped him in a winding sheet; then they buried him alive beneath the hills of Stillwater Park, a death as terrible as all those parents’ grief.

  Tom paused, shifted his gaze around the perimeter of the rocket, said the story never ended there. He told us the Rosewood Phantom would appear if we said his name three times into a mirror, even into a broken shard neglected among wood chips. He said the Phantom would manifest in rags, bloodied remnants of the winding sheet, to take the souls of more children, to exact revenge on our town. When Rachel Vasquez said That’s a lie, that sounds just like Bloody Mary, a game her sister played that never worked, Tom glared across all of us, told us he’d tried summoning the Rosewood Phantom once with his babysitter, in the bathroom of his basement. He said they’d never even made it to three, that upon the second summon the mirror began to shake, an eerie wobbling that forced the babysitter to turn on the lights, to make him promise he’d never tell his parents. Weeks later, when Tom lost a tooth and spat red into the bathroom sink, he left a dark stain across the porcelain, a stain that all his mother’s scrubbing never lightened, a harrowing reminder of the Phantom’s blood-stained rags.