Four Times Blessed, page 15
“Oh, well, it seemed like you were.”
“Maybe I would, ask me and see.”
I smile but he can’t see that. Plus I’m numb so it probably looks weird.
“All we really need to do is distract it, anyways,” he says.
“And how do you distract the ocean?” I give the water a little pat now, and the surface drags my hand.
“Hmm.” I wonder if he’s thinking or just busy breathing like he is. I feel my heart beating against the hard float, and his pounding fast on my back. Which is warmer. Achy and warmer.
“I think you had the distraction part pretty well covered.”
“Hm?” He never makes any sense, but I don’t care.
“You had your head all stuck down in there. Now, don’t get all upset, I think you have a lovely head.”
“Oh. Thank you.”
“Sure thing. Now, like I was saying, you had your very lovely head down in the water, so all I had to do was sneak behind it with my knife. I hope you don’t mind.”
“That’s ok,” I say, being that I don’t get it yet again.
I guess Lium’s feet can touch the bottom because we seem to stick where we are, no longer rolling with the uncrested waves.
He turns us and hauls me along backwards. I look out at the perfectly curved horizon. As soon as my own feet catch the sand I trip into the pushy white water.
The offending wave pulls away, and my top half slips into the air. It becomes extra heavy, I notice as I sink. Lium’s arms lift me back up so easily. Then I’m on his shoulder. Then he drops and I land on him. He holds me as if it’s the most pleasant thing.
“Thanks,” I try to say, but my face is numb. I rest a frozen arm over it and somehow my limp body shakes.
“No problem,” Lium pants.
We lay there catching our breaths, the water lapping at our feet.
Someone runs up from above our heads.
“Crusa! Honey! What are you doing swimming at this hour! It’s freezing in there,” my zizi starts out yelling but by the time she’s standing there on my hair and peering at me over her stomach, she’s calmed down to a normal voice. She does it so precisely that it reaches my ears at the same volume from start to finish. She’s amazing.
“My girl, I honestly don’t know what to do with you. Stop laying on the ground. You’ll catch your death.”
Then she’s all over me, rubbing my hands with her hot dry ones and wiping my face, hooking me under the armpits while Lium pushes my bottom up. I whip around and can tell he’s laughing, he’s just too tired to make a sound.
My zizi, meanwhile, hauls me half over her shoulder. My eyes slip from her to the boy still in the sand, back and forth and in between. By the time we get to the seawall, he’s surrounded by my uncles and boy cousins, but he’s still watching us as if fascinated, so I give him a short floppy wave and a smile.
Then my zizi grabs that wrist, too, and stuffs me through the wall. But Lium’s always at the ready, it seems, so I catch his wide, slack answer. It warms me, in the same spots the salt water burned me. I stop thinking about that and go back to the warming.
The whole way through the woods, my zizi goes on and on about the horrible things that have happened to people she knows that have swum in the ocean at night. She must really be mad because she pulls out the story about Mary Grace’s brother Storrs who went out one night and a few days later three pieces of him washed up near Falmouth. What happened to the other pieces, nobody knows for sure, but one of the found pieces contained his lungs so at least they know he’s dead.
My other aunts hover, but she supports all my weight. I hang there as she walks and the rest of the ladies blot me with towels from all sides.
They agree with everything my zizi says, and sweet ancestors, so do I. She has every right to be mad, just like she says. What I just did was really stupid. I say all this and groan through the redoubled shivering that’s racking my bones so hard they’re falling apart at the joints.
“Hush dear, you poor thing. Come on. We’ll get you warm.”
Apparently, when they told my zizi about Eleni and my search party, she panicked. That sent some of my uncles scrambling, to the beach first, then, directed by whoever was left there, out onto the boats to find us. I learn this along with Cassie and Eleni, already wrapped head to toe, as our aunts strip my sopping clothes and bundle me in winter blankets that smell of dusty planks and must. Cassie gets excused first, then Eleni has to go to her house so she gets to leave. Then it’s just me with my zizi. She wraps up my head tightly.
“Crusa, you were there the whole time. How could you let that happen?”
“I don’t know,” is my pathetic answer.
“You worried me. Do you know what could have happened? You are very, very lucky.”
I can’t argue.
“Crusa, you’re my child. I depend on you to look after your cousins. Do you understand that? I want to trust you, out of all of them I thought I never had to worry about you. I knew you would be sensible, that you could take care of things. But this was not smart. Is that what they were teaching you in the Coast Guard? Is it? I hope not. I honestly don’t know what to do with you. I feel like I don’t know you. So careless,” she shakes her head.
Throat hot and thick with shame, I can’t answer. She sees the tears rolling down my face, and says goodnight, I love you, I’ll see you in the morning after I’ve thought about what I did. I shuffle across the hall to my bed, and do a face-plant.
After a while of that, I slide my legs out from the mass of blankets in order to dip my feet into the basin of steaming water she left me. It feels really nice to have blood in my toes again.
Eleni slips in and stands in front of my window. I guess she never went home.
“I’m glad we’re all ok,” she says.
“Me, too.”
Eleni comes over and hugs me. I tell her to sit. She rests her head on my shoulder, and I pet her hair, so soft, raven black. I offer her some foot-space in the basin.
“Me, three.” I start when Cassie emerges cat-like from the little door in my wall. She stands and brushes herself off. I tell her to sit, but she prefers to pad about the room. She seems alright. Having her there is soothing.
Eleni and I lay back, our toes warm, feet and arms and bodies tangled under the accumulation of blankets. I don’t particularly register her touch as other, so falling asleep like this isn’t hard. I think my mind has a special area it uses just for my cousin, taking her body for part of itself. It’s like a phantom limb, only opposite. A phantom cousin. Color-coded diagrams of the nervous system dance in my head.
“Hey! Crusa!”
I’m just leaving the house to get to the lab, and I’m late. I’ve got my high heels hanging off of my fingers and my badges stuck somehow in my bun. I’m startled by whoever is calling my name because Jesus Christ what kind of decent person yells like that at four forty-nine in the morning!?
My textbooks slip from the crook of my elbow, and when I jump out of the way so they don’t crush my toes, congratulating myself on my good reaction time if nothing else, my stuffed backpack that’s only slung on one shoulder and apparently not zipped all the way, spews my other books into the dewy grass.
I stand there, and just take a moment.
Then I spit my hair out of my mouth and fall to my knees. Because there’s just no graceful way to get on the ground in a pencil skirt. At least not without hiking it up to your waist. Which I can’t do because I’m in the middle of the green and that would be inappropriate. Unfortunately.
Philbert the cow moos at me and chomps some grass.
“Hey. Crusa,” he says. Lium, not the cow. He, the man, bends down and picks up all my books and my slate and my precious, worn handbook. I grab my chalk and give him a nod. He graciously hooks the back of my belt and lifts us all up. I told her I was right, when last night I said to Eleni that he was just as strong as his huge brother.
“Out for a morning stroll?” I ask politely.
“Sort of. I came up to check on you, you know, after last night.”
“Oh. Why?” I twist my hair up again.
“You almost drowned.”
“Oh. Yes, well…I didn’t. And neither did you.”
“No.”
“So.”
He squints at me.
“I mean, yay for us and all, and I know I’m kind of a mess,” I motion around myself. “It’s not because of last night, though. I’m kind of just always a little bit disastrous in the morning. First I overslept and then I couldn’t find my shoes, my hair’s gone insane…and then you came up the road out of nowhere,” I raise my eyebrows asking him to explain the necessity of that, “and I got scared and I dropped all my stuff.”
He reaches out and pats me on the shoulder.
I think Philbert is jealous because he wanders over and tries to take my spot without me noticing. Great, now I’ll smell like barnyard all day. Just in case anyone there didn’t know that I was the native.
Lium laughs and scratches the stupid cow under the chin. I scowl and hide behind him to repack my bag in peace. Lium mumbles something into the cow’s ear. Philbert honks. Lium chuckles again. I raise an eyebrow.
The boy turns to me and scoops up my hand.
“So, my intrepid sailor, where are we going?”
“I was going to the base.”
“So let’s go.”
I try to think of an excuse for him to leave, but it’s really early. I shake my head. Ok, then.
Walking with Lium is surprisingly pleasant. We talk on and off. I make a few comments just to entertain him. He plays along, so it’s pretty fun. A few times he’s quiet, and I find him enjoying the scenery. I do love it, too. The ground that rocks like the sea, the summer canopy, heaps of it, and heady, unapologetically green. Tucking you in, close and safe.
I don’t always love walking to the base, so I thank Lium, in my head, for being distracting.
We reach the place where the trees meet the airfield in no time at all. We say our goodbyes and he puts the backpack on my shoulders and I turn to go.
“Crusa?”
“Yes, Lium?”
He’s standing there in the trees like he’s one of them. Most people if they come up here stay a few feet in so the base cameras won’t get a clear shot. I’m not sure what I should think of Lium’s form of camouflage.
“Crusa.” His eyes sweep over me, up and down, and up. “You swim like a fish.”
“Oh, yeah, well, Coast Guard.” I wave at myself, then wave at him and turn around.
“Crusa?”
“What, Lium? I’m sorry but I’m going to be late.”
He comes out into the open grass, one stride, two strides, before I crash into him and push him back.
“What are you doing?!” I glance over my shoulder, poised for a siren or something worse.
He looks at me, startled.
“I’m sorry, what were you saying?” I prompt, deciding the hand-me-down security equipment is broken again. Thank our lucky stars.
He licks his lips, “Last night. Did you really…need…to do that?”
“What?”
“Jump in the water like that. It really disturbed me. Being your guard, and all.”
Christ, why does he have to be so sweet? And so obsessed with his dumb job? I close my eyes, “Umm…” I think about it. They were in danger, my cousins, after all. And well, Coast Guard, I guess.
“Yes.”
That’s not the answer he wanted. I wait for him to regroup.
He puts a palm against my jaw and lifts my face. I feel I’m being examined. I don’t particularly like that.
“You should let me in on the plan next time.”
“It wasn’t a plan.”
“Obviously.”
So obnoxious. “You want to do more of that?” I ask dubiously.
“Are you kidding?” he grips my arms and rattles them. “I love that sort of thing. I was made for it. What do you think I’ve been doing with Hale all these years?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, that’s what I’ve been doing.”
“Oh. You know we almost drowned to death.”
“Yes,” he nods several times. Ok, then…
“I guess so...” I don’t know, I feel like I should be able to list a bunch of reasons why this is a bad idea. But like I said, it’s early. And I’ve only had one cup of tea.
“Great, then. Next time you want to do something dangerous, you call me first. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did. Plus, I’m your guard, remember? You die and I don’t have a job.”
“Ok.” We’ll see how it goes, I decide. Lium grins and fidgets.
“I’m not going to do anything like that right now.”
“Good.”
“I'm just going to work.”
“Very good.”
Apparently, he’s planning on just standing here while I do that.
Well, he can suit himself.
As one last check before I go, I pinch his chin. I glare at him but he seems calm enough. Huh. I’ve never met anyone who actually likes to do dangerous, insane things. So much that he’d do them on purpose. They had their share at the academy but they never lasted long.
But now I guess I know why this boy’s happy with following me around. Honestly, though, if Cassie and Eleni want to try drowning themselves again I say let them. They get one rescue from me. One. I’m done. Retired.
I almost had a heart attack.
Lium and I carry on like this, with nothing but the tiniest of variations, for days and days on end. And even though I haven’t done anything the least bit exciting during this time, unless you count homework as such, which, for me, sometimes happens when either the accumulation or impossibility of it gives me a panic attack, Lium still comes to find me, every morning. And walks me home, every evening. Sits there with my family while I serve dinner and do lab work, doesn’t leave until I go up to bed. Doesn’t even complain when I haul him and all my stuff down to the electric lights when I can’t take the lanterns anymore.
I keep expecting him to get bored and wander off, which would be fine because there is zero actual threat and also he’s kind of distracting, what with the chatting and the constant checking on where I am that makes me paranoid about getting up to stretch and doing anything but sitting with the proper posture Ms. Tiffany required of me. But my zizi feeds him well and he can fall asleep anywhere, and I do try hard to be polite as he is doing us a favor, plus, he’s good company so I don’t fuss about it.
And it’s good for me to remember my posture.
“Oh, hi you guys. You coming in for supper?”
“Yup,”
“Yeah, hi babe. Philbert.”
I hold the door for the boys and they lean in for kisses as they pass. I go borrow two rocks from the porch and put them against the doors so we can get a breeze going inside.
“Oh, good. I was just going to do that,” my zizi says. She pokes some more at the channel changer.
“Zizi, what are you doing?”
“I’m putting on the news, sweetheart.”
“What did you do to it? Why is the menu not in English?”
“I don’t know, dear, that’s what I’m trying to fix.”
“What language is that?”
“Mm, I think it’s Arabic or something.”
“I don’t think it’s Arabic.”
“Honestly, dear, I think it’s Arabic.”
“It’s not Arabic. I studied Arabic. It’s not Arabic.”
“Can you read it?”
“No.”
“Well, then.”
“Zizi, give me that thing, will you? You’re going to drop the barnacles.”
“No, no, I’ve got them. Unless you want to serve them for me.”
“Zizi, don’t push that. Hit the green one.”
“Just leave it to me, Crusa, I know what to do.”
“No you don’t, Zizi!”
“Honey. I’ve been working this tv since before you were born. I’ve put on the evening news since I was younger than you. I know how to work this tv.”
“It’s acting like it can’t connect to the satellite.”
“I forget what this button’s for. Maybe it’s the one.”
It’s not. She forgot about that one for a good reason, she surmises. In the end, I have to run down to the basement to shut down the generator, sit around in the dark with a bunch of stored food and musty garden tools for it to cool, pour in fresh oil, and restart the whole thing. Then, back upstairs, which is so humid it makes me want to go back into the basement, my zizi hits a string of buttons that she says she can’t remember what they were and the newscast comes on.
She turns it halfway down and I shake my head and help her finish throwing the salad together, even though people have already eaten the rest of the food. We made the salad so we’ll serve the salad, she says. My aunts all assure us they wanted something green.
After a supper of salad and a little pasta with squash and cheese, and a handful or so of the corkscrew barnacles, not at all in that order, my zizi hunts down every single empty shell while people stand around with cups of tea and milk, so it’s easier to jump out of the way when she comes close. Nose down and hunched shoulders bulldozing.
“So, Hale. Do you know if my cousin and your brother are a couple?”
“Who?” Hale, slouched and hulking against a wall, responds. I’m impressed Eleni got him to respond at all, actually. She really does have a talent. Fearless, too. Even with his gruff tone that would make me stop dead in my tracks, she is unperturbed.
“I keep trying to figure it out, but neither of them have talked to me about it, so I don’t know if that means they’re both just talking about it only to each other, which would mean they are, or if they’re not talking about it at all to anybody, which could go either way, really. I just think they seem guilty, which is why it’s so annoying that I can’t tell if they are or aren’t a couple. What do you think? Have they told you anything?”
“Eleni!”
“What?” She turns to me and pouts her pink lips. “How do I know what in God’s name you two’ve been off doing down at the docks? If you told me, then I wouldn’t have to ask people, you know.” She whips back to Hale, who I imagine is trying to figure out if he can still keep pretending he doesn’t know who his brother and I are. It doesn’t look good.
