𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆

Part 15

A House Divided

Inside you now's another,
thrashing like a fish,
swinging, fighting
for its inch already.

-- Michael Ondaatje, A House divided

You are standing on wet sand, looking into the water. It is cool and blue and big. It smells like crayfish and mud. Your mother and father are lying on towels in the sun, their calves are sandy and their shoulders are turning pink. The water rolls up toward you and washes over your feet, and you look down at them. They look very white in the water, very small. When the water pulls back out, gurgling and pulling pebbles and shells and bits of wood with it, you find your toes are half buried in thick, wet, smooth sand. It is very pretty and even. You pull your feet out and walk toward the receding wave, squeezing out water from the sand with each step, leaving small footprints behind you.

"I am going to walk to China," you say to no one in particular. You follow the wave, which rushes back around you knees. Before long the water has reached your stomach, and you pat at it with the palms of your hands. After the coolness wears off, being in water feels like being in the air, neither cool nor warm. You look behind you and see your father shifting on his towel. The next wave brings you into the water chest deep. You come to believe that you can pull the water apart, that you can make a path all the way to China if you just press hard enough against it. If you press hard enough, you will become a fish, and you will swim all the way to China.

When the undertow takes you under, it doesn't occur to you to take a breath. You believe that you can breathe underwater, that you are a mermaid, that when your head touches the sand your legs will fuse together and become a tail. You believe you are a dolphin, transfigured into a girl because your dolphin parents are king and queen of the ocean and you were stolen by a mad wizard. But under the water your lungs scream to breathe, and water does not relieve the pressure. Your head breaks the surface, but your mouth is too full of water to scream. Back under again, you try to cough the water out, but it will not move. You can see, through straining eyes, that your father is running toward you. He runs in slow motion, water splashing around him. For a moment you see the beach again, you see your mother's mouth shaped like an O. You realize that you are dying, but you are not afraid. Your father will not let you die. Fathers don't let their daughters die.

You are face down, your eyes open, seeing nothing but brownish water. You can't even see your feet anymore. The water is full of sand, like dust dancing in a beam of light. Water, air, fish, mermaids, girls. You forget the difference. You wonder what is taking your father so long to pull you out of the water, to hold you in his arms, your wet face against his neck. Your chest is aching. When your eyes see the sunlight again, you see your father's back. He is walking back to the beach slowly, leisurely, the same way he had walked along the wet sand with your hand in his that morning. His arms are moving lazily from side to side. You can't breathe, you can't stand up. And your father is leaving you here. You feel disappointed. You feel yourself loose consciousness as your body is pushed by the waves toward the shore.

You should have known better than to try to walk to China. I should have tried to fly.

***

You have just punched a boy in the face. He has fallen down in front of you, blood pouring from his nose. He looks up at you, angry and afraid. Your fist feels sore, but in a way you like. It feels as though you pushed your hand into the earth and pulled out something alive, something full of electricity, slipping and snapping. You rarely feel so powerful. You have never felt any kind of power outside of your own strange lucid dreams on a standard-issue cot shoved against a wall. It feels...very good. You find that you almost need to shut your eyes, the pleasure of it is so overwhelming.