The Sea of Light (8 page)

Sacrifice. For the seven saints.

Look, Felipe. Into the life of your child. Into the heart of the candles. Into your own heart, the sacred heart of flame.

Purple-tinged fingernails trailed the powders. Feathers floated. Kneeling on the floor amid the incense and incantation, something flashed from the corners of my eyes. My daughter’s passive chest and neck and the spattered drops of sacrifice, warm tinted water, thick scarlet. Flame of life from the hearts of the candles.

Listen, Felipe, don’t be ridiculous. Calm yourself, dry your tears. Make your choice. Bring her back from the air, give the spirits something else instead.

Hold the egg, my child. No more sacrifice. The house will be wind, and you return to flesh. Eat. Eat.

The heart or the world. There is your choice. And time helps you see this. So look to the clock.

But the house, I said. The plans.

Then said nothing.

Candles burned, water from my eyes shimmered on fingertips in the flame and shadow—first a dense red, then the blank, blinding color of light. And I picked my child up in my arms, and took her home.

You may plan security, Delgado, you may strive all your life to attain it for yourself and for those you love. But try as you will, sometimes the world intervenes and strips it away. A lesson your father learned too late in life. He was ruined by fear and by plans. Arrived in Miami a broken man.

A lesson Tia Corazón never had to learn.

“Barbara.”

She’s sleeping.

Listen, Barbara: There are things in the world that we don’t know about. Spirits, demons with primitive names, hovering to invade our fondest fortresses.

Sometimes they live inside us. We call on them when we feel despair. And without even knowing it, accept them. Then feel them work among us. To heal. Or to destroy.

What do you think of that, my love? What do you think?

And you, Delgado. You. What do you think?

Nothing,
I whisper. And sleep.

Delgado

(
BABE
)

I smell chlorine and panic. Then turn the corner quickly, lope up a flight to stay there on the landing between floors telling myself quiet Delgado quiet, you are alone and safe. But somewhere doors swing open. Damp air blows right through, steps on concrete are coming up, getting closer. I sway against a wall.

“Lost?”

The face stares down, beaming, young. Team letter fitted neatly over the broad chest of the sweatjacket. He has really broad shoulders and a thick, telltale neck, a breaststroker, reminds me of Kenny so I don’t want to look at the face but do. Then it is just some other blond guy, one I’ve never seen before. My voice from the other end of the hole tumbles out like confession.

“I’m looking for Brenna Allen.”

“Third floor. Come on, I’m going up there myself.”

I follow, feeling helpless.

Feeble, Delgado, very gutless. Pussycat.

He points the way telling me around that corner and to the left, better go to the receptionist first, she’ll let them know you are here. When he turns I watch him, thinking Kenny, watch his strong back. But he pauses to face me again with a puzzled expression. I know it on others, dread it. And the question:

“I’ve seen you before, right?”

Shake my head weakly.

“I mean a couple of years ago, maybe—I know! Senior Nationals. Industry Hills.”

“Not me.”

“No? I thought—well, never mind. Forget it.” He grins again, mischievously. A spark of scrutiny there and something in me shudders hard, I am sweating everywhere inside these good clothes and will look a mess. But he just shrugs, says, “Anyway, good luck,” turns again and walks away, gym bag slung over one shoulder. For a minute I hate him and the kind friendliness of his voice, his strength, his Kenny-ness, hate the smell of the air, most of all hate the flabbiness of my own arms and thighs.

The reception desk is there around a corner at one end of the hallway they’ve carpeted, very upscale, but nothing like Southern with its big sparkling assumption of wealth. I start to talk and this friendly girly face smiles back saying Yes, may I help you?

I freeze inside the hole of me, pull the lid shut over.

“May I help you?”

Open it, Delgado. Pussycat.

I do and peek out.

“Ms. Delgado.”

Babe, I say, call me Babe.

Another face smiles back, not the Kenny boy or the May I Help You girl, but a woman. I remember her face from years ago. It was younger then, smoother. Brown hair, wide forehead. In her mid-thirties but she keeps herself in pretty good shape, must do weights a lot, the skin almost youthful, lined with something sad around the eyes.

I stand.

She is not short yet suddenly I am at least three, four inches taller and feel clumsy, gigantic, very sweaty and fat.

We shake hands. Bren Allen, she says, glad to see you again. Come on into my office, we’ll have some time to talk. So we do. The lights there are pleasant, somehow calming. She has trophy cases, bookshelves with old books, new metal filing cabinets, a computer, stacks of paper on the dark wooden desk. I step in like stepping into a cloud. For a second my eyesight goes the way it has done ever since, tunneling into the hole of me so I must shut my eyes and spin, and when I open them there is the face of this woman materializing again out of the cloud of pleasant fancy light, there is the kept-in-shape body attached to the face, and things are beginning to clarify here in the light and the calm.

We talk. The usual things. I don’t remember specifics. It isn’t too hard until she asks that question: What about the bad times, the rotten splits, and how do I feel about it? Then no more smiles from me, no more nice. I cannot answer, which is very rude but what can I do? Thinking of things you cannot tell about. Those times after the hospital when I stayed awake all night waiting for the morning alarm to buzz, triumphant because I’d lasted the black time through without sleep or nightmares but dreading the hole of the morning. Dragging my butt through another goddamned day, not concentrating. Falling asleep everywhere—on the starting block at the club for Christ’s sake, and in class—leaning against a busy hallway wall nodding out until the booksack fell from my hands and people passing by thought I was stoned. Professors trying to get my attention.

I had to drop out. Then bag it completely for a while, no more school, no more workouts either. There was this thing with people’s faces, that they seemed so far away all the time, voices too faint to hear even when they were right in your face. Disgust at the way things looked and sounded. Fear at the strangeness of it all. The mindless, motherfucking exhaustion. And whenever I shut my eyes, skin floating away on the water. Jesus, forgive me. The continual taste of blood. Forgetting how to flip turn.

Forgetting? How to flip? Shit, Delgado, you’ve been doing it since the age of six. Wrists swiping pool lights, deftly turning underwater. But there was the day it eluded me. Getting to the other end of fifty meters and forgetting what to do. See, it was like it fled my reflexes utterly—how to turn—I willed it, I swear I did, but the body I’d been left with would not respond. How do you feel about that, Delgado—huh? Well. How would you feel, lady?

But I answer Lousy—some of the truth, not all. When she says the thing about money and how it will not hurt my pride I want to say Pride? What is that? but say nothing. She needs me to give something here and now. A promise. Tell her I will try for her the way Sager said always, always to try and win no matter what, but this is no longer the Babe of old here, folks, this is the new one a.k.a. The Hole, and I can’t promise anything to any would-be coach, not yet.

In fact I’m starting to feel like I did back in high school days, a little coy, a little cagey, when all the big guns would come around personally to make recruitment pitches and have these serious talks with Mom and Dad in the living room, then take us out to dinner. The phone kept ringing so much we unplugged it. But whenever I was face to face with one of those guys and he was giving me some earnest rap about how great the University of Such-and-such was and how I would fit right in with the program and how they would tailor this and that for me, for me alone, I would do my number on them: I would smile the nice innocent jock-girl smile and pretend to not quite understand all of it, to sort of zone out. And all the time I was waiting, waiting for an offer I could not refuse. Waiting to be challenged and seduced. All the time my moron jock-girl smiling silence said to them things they never would have guessed. Like, My mother is whitebread DAR, sir, but my father’s name is Felipe Delgado, his skin gets very brown in the summer and so does mine, and he suffered a lot before coming to this country and he struggled very hard to make a go of it here—so how much of what are you planning to fork over for me, pal? because to tell you the truth they can’t pay enough to make up for how hard I have to work and how bad I have to hurt in order to do what I do—I mean, what do you think it is? like, just good genes? or the luck of the draw?—so if you believe you will convince me to endure all those stupid laps for bullshit, white boy, you can just get down on your knees right now and kiss my half-Cuban ass goodbye.

And while I thought these things and held out in polite youthful gee-whiz stupidity, each one of them began to look sort of funny to me, a little odd, vaguely ridiculous. Until Sager came along and made me the offer that was better than all the others. With his pure pale white skin that had white-blond hair across the knuckles, wispy eyebrows almost invisible over eyes that were so delicately blue, as cold as dry ice, and saw right into what I was thinking and feeling, knew immediately how bad I hated all the swimming and the water, understood that I wanted something I hadn’t even come across yet, and set himself up to keep me from whatever that was. What the pale eyes said under all his praise, his encouragement and nice talk and substantial offer, was that he was not one of these funny guys, he was not in the least bit odd or ridiculous.

Watch out, the eyes said, I can hurt you.

Yes, I told them silently, yes. But I can disappoint you, Kemo Sabe.

From the beginning, then, we were dark and light, tit and tat, underneath the mutual wanting and signed letters of agreement set toe to toe against each other, enemies in some way we didn’t even understand yet, but from the first we recognized it.

So I am thinking this sitting in the nice calm office with Brenna Allen. I’m starting to be dumb-jock silent and coy with her, too, when I look at her eyes and see nothing ridiculous there either, only a hard dark thing that is bitterly difficult but will not be my enemy. And it blows the lid right off the hole of me so that, in a moment, I stand and say too much.

“Jesus. I can’t do them any more, you know. I mean—I just—I cannot
deal.”

The sweat’s running off me like a
cold shower. Things start to get weird in my vision again and I hear a voice float along gently, from far away.

“What,” says the voice, “what can’t you do?”

“Flips.”

“Well,” it says quickly, coolly, “I guess you’ll have to do open turns then.”

And with that, she wins my heart.

*

I follow her like a big clumsy puppy dog, out of the good tranquilizing light, through other doors, down other halls toward the smell of locker rooms, past a faint hiss of steam. My insides tunnel, compress, but I keep breathing. She walks slowly alongside me. Being very polite, I think, managing not to look at the fucking freak show spectacle I am putting on. But the funny thing is that as we get closer and closer to places of danger the fear begins to ease.

Open turns? Well, of course. Back to basics!

There is to say the least a kind of humiliation in that: Babe Delgado, resorting to open turns. Still, it seems suddenly feasible—a sure way of turning around at the wall and swimming back the way you came, and I want to bless her or something for telling me how, for giving me permission.

Out on the observation deck the sick comes back when I look down. Nice new pool, each lane empty.

How many lanes, Mildred?

Eight.

And how many swimmers?

Eight.

That’s right. But how many will win?

Just one.

For a moment it is mammoth, threatening. Shut my eyes and the hole is real again, black desperate horizon, skin bleeding on water. But I lean against a wall and don’t faint, open eyes, shake my head so the nausea recedes. It is only a pool down there after all. This is only another building reeking competition and chlorine. And I’ve spent a lot of time in places like this.

She tells me the stuff about terror and puking. But I think of other things she said before in her office, team rules, her voice echoing in the background like something at the end of a tunnel—what was it?
The women on my team,
she said. Women, not girls, and it sounded very strange.

That’s when I let her win the rest of me.

I say: Okay,
Bren.
I will deal.

*

There is the thing with my dad to get through. Then I go upstairs, check to make sure he’s not still lingering anywhere in the hallway, check to see that the door to Jack’s room is closed, Roberto’s too, so no one can observe. Then I go through to my own room, quickly run a wet hand along the wall, flick on a light.

They’re screaming for me again.

Hey, Delgado!

Delgado!

I lean back against the door breathing hard and refuse to open my eyes. But only silence. I open them like slits. Shaded lamplight brightens each corner. A neatly made bed, bookshelves on either side of the bed with texts and paperbacks so neatly aligned. Each shelf top doubles as a night table. Framed posters on the wall, French impressionist art I know nothing about but once thought pretty—or maybe it was my mother who thought they were pretty, I can’t remember.