The Sea of Light (29 page)

Are you black enough!

Are you black enough!

Are you black enough for me!

“Hey Babe,” yells Jeff. “Are
you
black enough?”

Emma smacks his arm gently.

“Shut up, asshole,” Mike mutters.

I decide to ignore them all. Which is difficult, with Mike complaining about his shoulders—and it’s serious, but predictable, really, because he should have redshirted until his arms and back had at least come all the way back to strength—but I still feel like snapping at him: Oh, be quiet you whining little white boy, everybody’s shoulders always hurt in this game so just shut up and deal; I could tell you some things about pain.

“Something special tonight,” he winks, “for dessert.” He goes to the refrigerator and pulls out a little jar, uncaps it, shakes things into his palm. “Here, Babe. Take one.”

“One what?”

“One little piece of bliss. A few hours of sex and fearlessness, guaranteed. The thinking man’s drug of choice.”

A few hours. I figure he’s got practice in the morning, too, and wouldn’t sabotage himself; and it’s not exactly the first pill I’ve popped, so
I shrug and swallow it with water.

He takes one too, then shuffles over to Jeff and Emma and hands a couple out. Emma oohs and aahs about it, saying how much she loves this stuff and how rare it is to get any these days, and wherever did he find it?

Under a rock, Ems, snorts Jeff. And she slaps his arm again, saying Je-EFF, shut UP.

Mike tells me half an hour, max, you’ll know when it hits, then we’ll have some fun. I toss some empties and cassettes aside, and settle into a recliner. I can hear, but don’t listen to, him and Jeff and Emma chattering away against the busy, flashing background of MTV.

After a while they get quieter.

I watch dull reflections of television images on the ceiling, dancing. Then my eyes travel down along the wall, catch the direct glow of a lamp, and something buzzes through me like shock. When I open my eyes again, everything is brighter—shot through and tinged with a quivering halo of light.

Someone giggles.

I ask may I make a phone call. Sure, Mike says, go ahead. There’s a hush to the bright air—lights and colors enhanced, sound muted. Quietly, quietly, I move into the kitchen. Then I dial a number and break out in nauseous sweat, and fear slams me right flat down on the floor, phone cord wrapped around me, words frozen inside.

“Hello,” says a voice.

“Hi,” I hear, “can I speak to Ellie?”

“Ellie’s sleeping. But I’ll take a message.”

“Oh,” I whisper. “Never mind.”

Someone leans over, casting a shadow. I hand the phone away and he hangs it up, then stretches out right next to me on the kitchen floor.

“Oh, no.”

“No what, Babe?”

“I’m afraid.”

It is oozing out of me, through every pore. As if the fear became a solid tangible poisonous thing inside, and then something pierced it, melted it, so that now it’s gushing out in wave after wave from my skin.

“Hey,” he says gently. “Just chill.”

“It’s Angelita.”

“Who?”

“No one,” I tell him, “never mind.”

Then the nausea fades. I can feel the sweat on me chill, and dry—just like that; and, just like that, open my eyes wider to see the light still there, lifting and surrounding everything, but glowing now, less sharply, without the hot bright edge of fear. Mike sits up. His hand crushes kitchen floor crumbs, and they’re beautiful, just beautiful. I gaze up into his face. A youthful, common, friendly face, smoothed and informed by the light.

“Mike, you’re an angel.”

“Wow.” He chuckles, happy.

“You know, you’re full of love. And so is Angelita.”

“What’s that, Babe?”

“Wind,” I say. “A storm.”

“Ah. You know, Babe, I could make you happy.”

“Um. I don’t think so.”

“I could hold you in my arms. It’d be nice, naked.”

I reach for his hand and he gives it openly. Open Hand Boy, I think. Remembering. But it took pills for him to be this way; he isn’t really Kenny.

He caresses my thumb, my palm. Gently, full of love. “We could be tight, Babe—we could, you know, be lovers—”

“No, Mike, that’s not what I want. It isn’t your fault, okay? I just don’t want to be with you. I mean, we can’t fuck any more.”

“Why not?”

“Because, I really don’t like it.”

“Oh, wow,” he says. His face is open, hurt. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You are, like, my angel. I can’t explain. But I want to thank you. You’ve been really good to me.”

“I have?”

“Sure. And also—look, don’t take this the wrong way—”

“Yeah?”

“You need and deserve new friends.”

In the living room, someone snorts. MTV flashes on, off. In between the lyrics, which are rushing by my ears now and make no sense at all, I hear kissing sounds and giggles.

I move to a vertical position, tread lightly, very lightly, through the gentle glow that is soft and almost soundless. My coat and boots and bag are stashed away under a bunch of other things; I search the mound to find them, feeling how special, how fully textured and pleasurable, each object is within my hand. I fade down, and up. Sitting. Standing.

“Hey,” says Emma, “don’t go. It’s cold out there.”

Jeff laughs. “Babe’s darker than you, Em, don’t worry. Night is night. She will fade right in.”

I squish my feet around in socks and boots. Pleasure. Warm, sweatless glow. Push an arm into my coat. Another. Muted sound of buttons. I clench a fist. Fit on gloves. Swing my strong arms. Loving. Strong. Fearless. And, for a moment, feel awash with pity. I’d really like to help them.

“Jeff.”

He glances over the back of the couch,

“See a doctor, Jeff. You’re in desperate need of help. I am not kidding. Seek immediate medical attention for your hatred and your fear.”

He chuckles in a way that is surprised, but also somehow unperturbed. “Screw you, Babe.”

“No, no, I don’t think so. Even that wouldn’t cure you.”

“Yeah.” Emma grinds her teeth. Smiles. “She’s right, you know.”

I step out into the hall, down some stairs, floating. There is snow on the ground. Halfway home, I roll in it. Not too hot, not too cold.

Angelita, I say, who are you. Teach me things.

But the light is all outside me and, after a while, starts to recede. I sing softly as it goes, try to hurry back before I feel it leave completely, get into my room and turn on a lamp just in
time. Then I make myself some tea. I feel a headache rise, and pound.

*

The next morning, my limbs are like rusted metal wedges in the water. Really, my heart is in it. But the rest of me malfunctions.

No one says anything. At least, not at first. For that, I am grateful.

After practice, I crawl out of the pool last and limp past Etta and Brenna Allen with a kickboard, hoping for more mercy.

“Uh-uh,” says Etta. “Where you going, white girl?”

“Shut up,” I snap. “Just cut it out with that white girl shit, okay?”

She frowns. “Someone’s going to spank you, kid, sooner or later. But I don’t have the time.”

At the locker room door I am confronted by lady Coach. She crosses her arms, looking exhausted and deadly serious, blocking the way. When she speaks, her voice is firm and quiet.

“Whatever it is, cut it out.”

I refuse to meet her eyes.

“Whatever you took. However you got it.”

“Yeah.” I nod, feeling fried. “Okay, Bren, I will. I mean, I already have.”

Back in my room I get the first big engulfing wave of panic: the meet is next weekend, I am fucking up school big-time, and Ellie’s nowhere around. I stare at the phone and tell it, Fuck you. Fuck you, I won’t call. I will get through it all myself, understand? I am strong enough now. I am well enough. I can get through some homework and a busy swimming meet on my own, thanks; I can do fine, just fine, without you.

Broken Down

(
ELLIE
)

It seems that our Coach has decided to teach me my new events the hard way. I basically just hate her now, more than anything or anyone.

The distance workouts are murderous. Half the time I walk around feeling like I’m crippled. The rest of the time I am convinced that I ought to check into a hospital emergency room and get them to x-ray my shoulders.

My insides are in rotten shape, too, from cranial to cardiac region. I’m kept pretty busy attempting to hide the truth about Captain Hammerhead’s pathetic psychological and emotional state from my pigheaded team mates. So that I’m learning, with every miserable minute of workout, locker room, and the rest of life—if you can call it a life—all there is to learn about pain.

Pain hurts. But that’s the good news.

The bad news consists of everything else.

“Hmmm.” Jean dumps a grocery bag into my arms. “Sounds like love to me.”

Who asked you? I say.

She tells me I am awfully touchy these days. Moody. And rude. I take things inside, spill them on the kitchen counter without apologizing.

“Ellie, let’s talk.”

I ignore her, head upstairs. And run into Nan, who looks steamed-fresh perky, wet-haired, towel-wrapped, whistling on her way down from the shower. She flicks sliding wire-rims back up her nose and winks.

“Hey. I like your new girlfriend.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“What? What did you say?”

I lose it. Totally. Standing on the stairs screaming like a maniac about how much I hate everything—their false and insensitive assumptions, and this stingy, mediocre place, and Brenna Allen, and swimming, and love, and fear, and life itself.

Wow!
Jean yells from the kitchen.
Better call an ambulance!

I push past Nan, get to my room and smash the door shut behind. Then I let it happen—what I’ve been wanting and dreading all along: the crumple, the fall. But the mattress is comforting somehow, between me and the floor, and I feel my cheeks sink into pillows that will absorb every tear. Because here, all alone, I can cry.

*

Dinner was the last straw. Perfect punctuation to what has so far been a perfectly miserable autumn.

But the truth is that it started before then, started when I recognized the sway of things.

That’s what I began to call it, anyway—silently, almost without knowing it: this feeling I get
toward the end of my main set each morning workout—usually during the third to the last repeat, so no matter how bad it is I know there’s plenty more to go. When I start to believe that things just cannot continue like this—my arms turn to lead in the water, shoulders protest that they are all used up, and the right side of my neck feels as if someone’s been banging on it with a nightstick. When I’m wrapped inside this pitiless wet blanket of sorrow, and hurting, and rage, I can’t fight the slowing down any more, I know my splits have deteriorated and my stroke is falling entirely apart. But at the same time the pain changes, reveals a different piece of itself. Becomes buoyant somehow, and rhythmic. So that I just keep moving—slowly, futilely, but forward. And that, that is the sway.

Later, after the last repeat, after swimming down, after shower and hair-dryer and powdered skin and dry clothes, there’s the walk upstairs, during which I notice that I am still in its grip. Moving in the rhythm of the rhythmic part of pain. And there’s this blurry halo over everything: eyesight a little hazy, sounds ringing as if they’re too far off, sense of touch gone slightly numb. But somehow the organism still works, moving me forward, a kind of coordination in the motion of each bludgeoned muscle.

It’s like being encapsulated in something. Insular. Remote. Inside a stream of aching, and sadness, and loss, that no one else can really touch or understand. But you’re traveling ahead despite yourself—you don’t even know why. Everything visible and invisible just more or less conspires to make you proceed. Like what it must be when you’re dying.

*

I recognized it, this sway of things, some time toward the end of our third week in the water. That’s when Brenna Allen pulled me aside and said to bear with it, for a while I was just going to have to do these punishing sets of nothing but distance, distance, but it would make me strong in the end. I smiled and said fine. But I said it like a robot, and could tell that she knew what I really felt inside.
A little whirlpool now,
she said gently.
Next week we’ll get you a massage. Good work, Ellie. She
was looking pretty beat herself, a lot older, kind of tired and thin. Not that I gave a damn.

That’s when Babe started waiting around for me after morning workouts, too. She was looking better and better all the time—starting to take on the shape of a real bona fide national-class act now: slimmer, ruddy-skinned, bright-eyed, muscular—while I kept getting weaker, paler, less significant. Like something you’d find squirming under a rock.

*

You’re pretty buddy-buddy with Delgado these days,
Karen Potalia said in the free weights room that week.
Why don’t you ask her if it’s true?

If what is true? I grunted.

We finished one set of push-ups and took a long rest, cheating.

“That she died on her way to the hospital and, you know, came back to life. It’s what
I
heard, anyway. They gave her one of those electric shocks or something—you know? Like the bride of Frankenstein. I mean, God, have you seen all those scars?
Barf.”