Drowning

I 've stopped shivering. The water is icy but I've finally gone numb and I'm comfortable now. I'm skirting the kelp beds about twenty yards from shore. Most people think it's still too cold to swim. But even in at the height of summer, this rocky cove on California's central coast, full of kelp and crabs and mussel beds gets few swimmers. So it's just me this afternoon.

I roll onto my back and push further out reaching wide with my arms. That's my house up there on the cliff. It's tall plate windows bounce the afternoon sun back into the sky. I look for the white oval of her face against the glass. Nope, don't see her.

"Don't go too far out." She always says that but she never checks unless her daughter is out here with me. My real mother would never have let me be out here by myself. My real mother wouldn't have taught me how to wear make-up or how to dress the way boys like either. She was strict and old-fashioned, a bookish, Baptist whose patience and coping skills were worn thin by the time I had come along; the surprise baby, arriving six years behind my closest sibling. My real mother had model's hands that were always cool and soft to the touch. Everyone said she was beautiful with her searching brown eyes and thick auburn hair. Of course I thought so too. I remember the time I told her, as we watched The Miss America Pageant, that she was prettier than all those girls sashaying across the stage in sparkling swimsuits. She let out a startled laugh and looked a little pained. Shy and reserved as she was, I imagine my proclamation though, well meant, was a little shocking. I'm pretty sure she was scandalized at the very idea of anyone imagining her on a catwalk in a swimsuit and high heels. Nope. No way my real mom would have ever let me swim out here alone. But she doesn't have a say any more. She has been replaced. The stepmother is also beautiful. She makes a big show of her good manners and femininity and spends hours grooming in front of the mirror. When we are out in the world she is constantly checking her reflection in shop windows and department store mirrors. When she notices me watching she twitters, "I know I'm so vain! I can't help myself!" She walks with her shoulders back, her big breasts thrust forward, and her eyes open extra wide. She doesn't smile. She says smiling gives you wrinkles. My twelve-year-old self cannot inwardly scoff enough at this idea. We both pretend that she is doing a good job parenting me. It's easier that way. Dad works overseas and

likes it to be peaceful when he's stateside. When he comes home, he will bring me some French perfume, and Belgian chocolate from the duty free cart on the plane. He will sit in my room and ask me how my month was. If I tell him the truth he will be sympathetic at first but by the end of the conversation, I will have been made aware that I am not giving it a chance that I am selfish and ungrateful and that I need to think of his happiness for a change.

I lower my legs and bob high on the surface to look around. There's a thin line of grey clouds curving along the horizon. A storm. Dang it! Its still pretty far out though. I don't have to go in right away. I roll over, circling my arms to balance the float, and watch the sky. I think that high, deep blue is why they invented the word azure. I have to remember it. Dad will move us again and I don't want to forget how beautiful it is. Don't take this for granted, I say to myself.

The sky in the valley was always tinged with brown from the farming and dust from the burnt roadsides and empty places. It wasn't beautiful there. Not like here. But I could see the mountains on clear days and I had friends...and Mom. It's only been a year and everything is different. Her death was a slow-motion bomb blast. We are all still flying outward. No one is left where home used to be. My sisters and brother are all grown-ups. Sandy and Cheri have gone to LA. Who knows where Steve stays. He shows up sometimes on his Harley looking scraggly and sleepless. He takes me for a ride on his bike and for chowder or tacos and then he leaves. He says he's fine but his eyes are full of something I don't understand, (like mine, except I don't know that,) and he's skinny and smells of campfires.

They all hate her, the stepmother. They blame her for mom. No one talks about it in front of me, but when it first happened everyone was too messed up to pay attention and I heard a lot of things. Then, at Christmas we were at her parent's house. After dinner, in front of all the aunts and uncles and cousins she told the story of how Dad had visited her in the hospital the Christmas before when she had her appendix out. How he had filled her room with flowers and waited for her to wake up.

"His was the first face I saw!" She'd gushed.

I was confused. Dad had moved back in with us that Christmas. He and mom had slept on the hide-a-bed in the living room so they could wake up early with me to open presents. Did my Dad sneak out in the middle of the night? I had nearly convinced myself I'd heard it wrong. But then I caught a glimpse of my sister, Sandy, across the room. Her face, flushing scarlet, held an expression I could not name. The furious clench of her jaw and the spark in her slitted eyes spoke of grief and menace in a combination that startled me.

Maybe it was too much to take in at Christmas, with all those people around. Somehow I just put it away in my mind. Dad cheated. Gross, yet apart from my life for the time being. But today, right here in the water, I shiver at the sudden shock of my understanding as the fact bursts anew over my reality like a water balloon saturating the events of the last year with awful clarity. I understand Dad's moving out and back in, Mom's barrage of questions after each of my visits with him. I understand that time, she screamed, "That Bitch tried to steal my husband!" when I unwittingly said that his neighbor with the little daughter seemed nice. Why she cut her face out of every picture in all of our photo albums. Why she sent me to my friend's across the street that night before. Why her last words were, "I hate you Frank", uttered over a long distance connection in the middle of the night to my Dad, ten thousand miles away. Why she held the rifle barrel to her heart. Why fourteen months later I am still flying backwards unable to catch the earth with me feet.

In the movies this would be part of the montage in which the main character starts to heal, alone in the sea, as the music swells. But it's not like that. I'm just swimming. There's no music. No one is watching.

A swell lifts me and I raise my head to look around. Uh oh. I'm really far out. I'm too far out. The shore is at least half a football field away. I look up at the windows. No face. I check to horizon. The storm is nearly on top of me. Crap, CRAP! Okay, I'm not going to be afraid. Not yet. Oh God, I am so far out. The swells are getting bigger and my skin begins to crawl, every pore tightening into goose flesh, I push back the urge to panic and start swimming. I've drifted out beyond the rocks. I have to get south so I can come in across the kelp beds where the bottom is sandy. I'm fighting the current, making, headway, but not enough. I take a deep breath and dive, pushing through the black water. Kelp slides along my bare legs. I'm faster down here. Up for a breath and down again. The next time I come up the sky is darker but the shoreline is closer. Down again my heart is pounding. Its-okay- its-okay-its-okay-its-okay. Up for air again. The wave crashes over me like a collapsing stone wall. I'm rolling backward along the bottom. I think my hip is hurt. I've never even seen a wave that big in this cove. My lungs are burning but I have to stay curled up and wait for the current. No one is looking for me. No one will know what happened to me. No one knows I'm drowning. Wait! Am I drowning? I could drown. I could. All I would have to do is breathe. Just once. Just like that. My movie would be over. I think about mom, Steve screaming against the bathroom door, the jagged photos. I think about how fucking angry I am that the only thing I don't understand is why she left me here, alone.

The current releases me.

Ten minutes later I make the beach. It's pouring. Blood runs down my leg from my hip. It's not bad, just messy. I blot it gently with my rain-soaked towel and pull myself up he stairs to the house. I slide the glass door open and limp inside. She pokes her head over the balcony rail to peer down at me dripping on the dining room carpet.

"You are soaking wet!" she scolds "Where's your towel?"

"It got rained on," I answer without looking up.

"Oh. Is it raining? I hadn't noticed."