The Sea of Light (53 page)

“Yo, Babe. Way to go.”

She wipes her cheeks awkwardly. Saying, Thanks. He bends down to kiss her. For a moment I see their faces together: the dark, dark hair and eyes, olive brown skin, West African nose and lips. A beautiful woman. Beautiful boy. Both so obviously part of something that is the same in living flesh and blood, both so beautiful; for a second, surprising me, tears come to my eyes again—tears of a poignant wish, almost envy, as I think: God, she is so lucky, so lucky to have a brother! And Jack’s close to her in age. They have opportunity to share a lot, joke around with each other. If Oskar had lived, for instance, he’d be more than forty now—more like a father than a brother. But, if Oskar had lived, if any of the kids had lived, my own existence might not have seemed such an imperative to Lottie, or to Zischa; and I would not be here now crying, wishing, wanting, loving.

I close my eyes for just a second again, blink the tears away.

Say a silent little prayer inside—for Oskar, and for Zischa’s girls, for the lives they started but never really had. And at the end of the prayer I say:

Thank you Lottie. Thank you Zischa. Thank you for making me necessary. Thank you for choosing me over death. Thank you, my mother and my father, thank you for giving me life.

I open my eyes. Babe tugs on the ear of the beautiful boy.

“Jack, this is Ellie Marks.”

“Hi.” Then he glances at me sideways, a little wary, cocks his head at Babe. “Is she the one?”

Babe nods.

“Oh.” He shoves both hands in his pockets and shrugs. “Well, I don’t know. She doesn’t look like a dyke.”

“Jack!”

“No, I mean—Christ, I meant it as a
compliment,
for God’s sake—I mean, no offense, okay? but you look all right. I mean, you know, normal. Even, like, sort of pretty—you know, in this Jewish way, I mean—”

“Shut
up
!”
Babe hisses, but she’s laughing.

I grin up at him. “A little prejudiced, are we?”

“No way! My girlfriend’s part Jewish.”

I pat a bare space of bench. “I mean about the gay stuff. Sit down, Jack. You’re working too hard.”

He does. Now I’m sandwiched: a Delgado on my right, a Delgado on my left.

“So,” he whispers glumly, “so my sister’s queer. So what.”

Babe reaches across me to punch his arm. He winces. I push her fist aside.

“Yeah,” I say, “so what.”

“So. I met you. So what do I do now?”

“Hang out, Jack. Come visit this summer. You’ll get to know me.”

“Yeah? And then what?”

“Then things get real.”

He stares down at damp floor tiles, mutters something I don’t quite hear. At which point Coach stalks up.

“You must be Jack. I’m Brenna Allen.”

He looks up suddenly, gulps some kind of fear or surprise away. Then starts to say something, but doesn’t. I see Coach Allen wink at him. He hangs his head. It’s clear they are conspirators of a sort, clear they share some secret; but whatever it is, I will not know. And Babe, blowing her nose into the towel, misses it all.

Bren extends her hand. Jack grips it.

“Nice to meet you. So glad you could make it. But this is an all-women’s team, Jack, in the middle of competition. Now get back where you belong.”

“Okay.”

“You can see your sister later.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he stammers, and stands, ruffling Babe’s hair.

“Jack, cut it
out.”

He grins obnoxiously. Cuffs me on the shoulder. “See you, Ellie. Hope you practice safer sex.”

Babe aims a kick at his shin that misses. Then he’s gone, waving, climbing back into the spectator stands. Babe blushes. She squeezes my hand apologetically.

“Um, there you go, Ellie—your first Delgado. And, believe me, he’s a lot better than the rest.”

“No,” I tell her, feeling bruised, and mad, but somehow oddly happy, “my second Delgado. My second.”

Knowing, without having to say it, that my first one was the best by far.

Telling myself to stay calm, and patient. The worst, the initial contact, is definitely over. And no one who looks so much like her can be all that bad.

Anyway, I have other work to do here.

Finals

(
BABE
)

At night, she sets the alarm clock Bren gave her. Lays out what suits and caps and goggles she’ll wear tomorrow—for warm-up, and then for her qualifying heat. Lays out her favorite towel. Her favorite sweats. Her favorite skin cream, and shampoo. Very serious. Very focused. But she’s still too pale and thin, still coughs once in a while; sometimes, in practice, will stop in the middle of a set and just cling to the side of the pool, she is so tired. I don’t say much. Watching her, my heart aches.

For the most part, though, she seems pretty calm. The only hint of nerves is that she’s silent—a rarity—except for clearing the throat, and an occasional question, in monotone:

Should I put out another suit?

For the final, she means.

I tell her whatever makes her comfortable. That I myself always save that for the time after qualifying, because it is less confusing to deal with two sets of things than with three or four.

Yes, she nods, seriously. Usually, she says, she feels that way herself. She calls it the What-I-Deliver-I-Promise School of Modern Swimming Technique. Both of us laugh.

But she thinks that, tonight, she will lay out her stuff for the final. She did that once, long ago, and it worked—well, kind of. She doesn’t want to get into it now. But it was a special day, back then; one she’d always remember.

Then she changes the subject. Asks am I worried much about the 200 now, or the relays? Or is it the 100 alone?

My Leviathan? I say.

She smiles.

I tell her I’m always worried. Some people are like that—bundle of nerves; it’s the way they compete. Must be, like, all that fast-twitch fiber. But the 100, for whatever reason, gives me more nervous shakes than anything else; even though the 200 leaves you comatose, and so much rides on how well you do in the relays. The 100 is the thorn in my side, the pain in my ass.

Because it’s your race, she says.

I tell her Sure, maybe.

No, she insists, it
is
your race.
Your
race. Whatever we do that is hardest for us, is the thing we put our most into. Whatever we put our most into, like our time, and sweat, and blood, well, that is the thing we make our own. Because after a while, it smells like us. It tastes like us. After a while, it calls out our name.

When she talks like that, a part of me thinks it’s just bullshit but another part of me falls more in love. I hold her for a while, remembering she promised to do that for me after the 100; but
my
race is over for now, and I don’t feel so needy. I wrap both aching arms around her, rest my face against her neck. She usually makes a big deal about how good this feels. Tonight, though, she just sighs, and is silent.

After a while, I feel her sleep.

I turn off the lamp.

It’s not the dark that scares me any more. Darkness never did. What scares me is its end, the morning it always brings, harsh bright light in which you choose between the struggle and the giving up, in which you can’t help but see yourself too clearly, in which the truth about what you’re made of and how you’ll use that cannot be hidden.

Calmate,
I say. My father’s Spanish words, from long ago.

Tita comes to me. There is fire in my hands.

I use it, now, for the first time ever—careful to do it correctly: not for my own benefit, but for her whom I love. Quietly, place the tips of my fingers at her different points of light. Silently sing the magic. Into her heart, and lungs, and belly. Into her head, and arms, and legs. Into the dark secret part of her. Until, sleeping, she shudders, and gasps; unconsciously sweats, coughing out globs of poison. Then her breaths come deep and calm. And I sleep, too.

*

I sleep, and sleep. I sleep through the alarm of Bren’s traveling clock. Wake up to the day, a soft gray one outside, spring rain pattering through the window and a dull, gentle light through crooked blinds. I gasp, stare at the time. Soft old ticking. It is late morning, Ellie gone. I sit up in a burst of self-horror. Her qualifying heat will be over by now; I’ve missed it.

Rapid moving. But moving smacks me right between the eyes with reality. Reality of my body—saying,
Delgado, you can’t really move so fast or so well any more, or I’ll hurt you pretty bad.
I have to slow down. My head pounds with yesterday’s effort, groin and belly ache with each stretch. Thighs are sore. Knees, ankles, feel crippled. Arms and even the backs of my wrists hurt, curved inward against the invisible water; my neck and my shoulders are on fire. I sit there on the bed half naked, and start to cry.

Oh God, I say, Ellie, Ellie, I’m sorry. So sorry.

Standing, I pull shit out of a suitcase before realizing it’s the wrong one. I dump all of her stuff on the unmade bed, reach for my own suitcase and pour everything out of it too.

Then I stop, suddenly feeling very, very pissed. Because why didn’t she wake me? She knows I wanted to be there for her, too; that I wanted to see her swim.

I glance over at the armchair by a bed table. Two of her suits are gone, but not the ones she’d meant to take. The third one she’d laid out especially for her qualifying heat is still there; only the warm-up suit and the suit she’d planned to use for the final tonight—like there was really going to
be
a final for her tonight—are gone.

I splash water on my face, throw on some clothes and head out, passing a couple of swimmers from some other team in the hall.

“Hey,” says one, “nice race yesterday.”

I turn blindly. “Look, I’m, um, late for a heat. Are there cabs around?”

“Sure. Ask at the desk.”

As I run for the staircase—don’t want to risk waiting for the elevator—I hear it echo behind me, bewildered: But it’s four hundred IM this morning. You’re not even seeded for that, are you?

*

When I get there, the place looks bizarre for a minute. I realize I’ve never entered one of these natatorium complexes as a spectator before. The lights always seemed so glaringly, inhumanely bright to me. Now, stumbling through the tiers of stands, they seem just right, illuminating the pool without too much reflection, making things seem colorful and clean and appetizing instead of wet and frightening and clammy. The stands themselves seem shabby, a little beaten, definitely smaller. Always, they loomed enormously around me, screaming judgment from every tier; now they are sparsely populated, the few people seated here and there merely observing, gently and with interest, with knowledge and with dignity—different from the yahoos who usually spectate at most college team sports—and they don’t seem threatening at all. Even the pool looks smaller, plenty smaller than it does when you’re gazing down its barrel-end from the knife edge of a starting block. Just a contained rectangle, after all, marked off by floating pieces of plastic in tight-linked rows, a basin filled with cleansing chemicals, and with water.

Etta notices me first, waves and smiles.

“Get enough sleep, girl?”

“I guess.”

“Then how come you look demented?”

“Etta, where’s Ellie? How come nobody woke me?”

“Ellie’s fine. Coach’s orders, doll—if you could sleep late, you were supposed to.”

Brenna Allen doesn’t turn around to see me. A few of the team members do, and wave me over, and someone pokes Ellie on the shoulder. She is sitting there with a towel around her upper body, sweatpants soaking through. When she sees me she stands, and grins.

“Hey.”

“God, baby! I am so sorry! Why the hell didn’t you wake me up?”

She coughs, clears her throat. “Babe, listen—I qualified.”

“Go on!”

“Can you believe it? I mean, I didn’t really think I could.”

I start to cry, suddenly, effortlessly. “Oh, Ellie, that’s great.”

“Yeah. I qualified last, absolutely last, by a long shot, believe me—I mean, we’re talking major seconds, and I’m stuck in eight tonight—but, you know, I felt an enormous great big shitload better than I thought I would. So I just went for it.”

I am sniffling again, feeling pretty mad, broken somehow, tired; but at the same time so happy for her, and relieved, and unexpectedly sorry for myself, because I wasn’t there to see it.

“I wish I’d been here, Ellie. I feel so bad.”

“Don’t.” She shakes her head, suddenly very serious. “You know, maybe I wanted to do this alone. I don’t know. I thought about waking you up this morning—I really did, Babe—but you were sleeping so well, and I just thought, what is the point? I mean, she’s not going to qualify
for
you, you know—”

“But still—”

“Still nothing. I figured
this
would be my final, Babe—this qualifying heat. So I wore the other suit—you know. But now I’ve got to do it again tonight—God, I don’t even believe it, during the backstroke I really just thought I was going to die—”

“But you did it, baby. I’m so proud of you!”

“Yeah. I am too.”

So is everybody else. People are rubbing her back and her shoulders, pounding her chest, telling her to relax so they can massage her temples, stretch out her arms, get her another towel. You’d think she had set a new record, from the stink they are making. I just beam. You can tell, from her reaction, that she’s not used to the attention at all. Good, I think, let everyone else touch her—it’s good for her.