The Salt God's Daughter (28 page)

I'd let her swim as long as I could hold on to her, doing the breaststroke kick, pulling Naida with me as though already rescuing her from drowning. She'd kick me and slip out of my arms, paddling away from me as quickly as she could, and by the time I'd be able to retrieve her and make it back to shore, we'd both be out of breath as we fell onto the beach blanket, struck by the sheer force and determination of the other.

In addition to warding off the ocean, I became attuned to the other hazards the new mothers I'd meet would talk about. These included but were not limited to: PVC in yellow plastic ducks; acid rain; the deterioration of the ozone layer and the resulting engulfment of the earth in flames; the destruction of the rain forest and the depletion of oxygen; lightning; hormones in milk that would make a child mature too soon; fire; the emotions of animals before slaughter and the resulting release of the stress hormone cortisol, which remained in the meat; Naida falling in love too young; Naida never falling in love; love; the traveling swarm of killer bees; pesticides; the past; the future; and of course there was more. I never figured bullies into the equation, those who would torture my child for being born different.

I could protect Naida from most things in the world. But I couldn't protect her from herself. I couldn't keep her from the ocean, the sand, the Sisters, and her absent father. These were the things she wanted most. I'd developed an indefatigable grip, but nothing scared me more than the idea of someone stealing her. I was haunted by a grocery store scene in which I'd reach for peanut butter on the shelf. When I'd turn back around, she'd be gone. I'd spin around, but all I'd see were blank stares and faces streaking by.

I hardly let her out of my sight. She defied me at every turn.

I never regretted meeting Graham. No matter how I felt, I knew he was the reason I had my daughter.

I would keep her close. Each morning I'd belt an ERGO baby carrier onto the front of my body and slip Naida inside, her
cheek on my chest. I carried her all day as if she were still a part of me for the first year and a half, even on my shifts with the new residents. I bandaged heads and fixed leaky sinks and dispensed medication, even as my shoulders ached from Naida's weight. Naida saw the world from that warm pocket for the first eighteen months of her life, and then occasionally afterward, when my fear would take over again and I'd swing her right back into the pouch at twenty-five, thirty-five, even forty pounds.

But I was no match for the ocean; Graham was right. Horrified, I watched her rushing into the waves.

There was no telling how a child would turn out, whom she would take after, what talents she'd have that you'd wished for her. At night, I'd hear the Sisters barking in a way that sounded like longing. I'd bring Naida into bed with me and fall asleep with her clutched against me. When I went out, I wore long sleeves to mask my scratched skin. It was nature against nature. Naida against me. And me against Naida and her partner, the sea.

As Naida grew, it became more apparent that she was more Graham than I had bargained for. She had his pale green eyes, his red lips, his love of the ocean, and she had secrets. Though she hit every milestone well before expected, I worried at what cost. All I wanted was for her to slow down, and then I'd remember what Dr. B. said. “Motherhood is not about mothers. The first thing nobody tells you.”

Her foot was not the only thing that was different about her.

When she was three, I took her to a mommy-and-me playgroup, and Naida, dressed in her overalls with the apple patches on the pockets, started talking about the other children and their mothers. During a blustery picnic one afternoon, she walked right up to a woman named Ronnika, who was sitting with her young son, Julio, on a plaid blanket. Naida told her that the little boy had “rocks in the blood.” Ronnika laughed at Naida and then glanced at me expectantly.

“Naida, we have to go,” I said, grabbing Naida's hand.

Ronnika's eyes grew wide. “Ruthie? What does she mean?”

“I never know with Naida. Probably nothing.”

Ronnika picked up Julio, clutching him to her chest beneath the blanket.

A week later, I received a phone call telling me that Julio had lymphocytic leukemia.

 

NO ONE COULD deny that Naida was a beautiful child, striking, with black ringlets, and dewy white skin. She had a laugh that sounded like bells and, as she grew, the stubbornness of a battleship and the ability to hyperfocus when she was interested in something.

“Mr. Taki gave me these,” she said one day, after I'd pulled a pair of cuff links out of her hands.

“No, Naida. Those belong to him. He forgets things sometimes.” I put the cuff links in my pocket.

“Grammy Diana went to heaven. He's going to see her,” she said, looking up at me, her eyes bright.

I tried not to appear alarmed. “When, honey? When is Mr. Taki going?”

“The cuff links, Mama. I put them in my pockets.”

The fact that my daughter and my late mother were now conspiring made me more than a bit apprehensive.

When Naida was learning to walk, I'd guide her up and down the burgundy-carpeted halls of the apartment building. She wore her pink ballet slippers—her shoes of choice—and banged her flat palm against the doors. Everyone would open their door and smile.

She took after Graham in other ways. She had inherited his fear of birds and his nightmares. She often woke up in the middle of the night crying because of dreams of birds crashing into windows, of owls with sour eyes perched on the tops of mailboxes, and of clicking sounds that were like the ticking of
a clock. She'd run into my bed and curl up against me, pleading with me to do something.

She came with me during the day as I did my chores and took care of the residents. At least within the protected walls of Wild Acres, she was welcome everywhere, and I think she got used to people cheering whenever she walked into the room. We spent our days playing games that I made out of my chores. Changing sheets became a dance with wind. Refilling soap containers became a race to see who could pour without spilling the magic oil. I read her fairy tales and taught her to read when she was just over a year and a half. She developed a love of books like I had. We made homemade playdough, built forts out of empty boxes, and drew pictures for hours while listening to classical music, folk ballads, Pink Floyd, and the Beatles. I tried to indulge her creativity. Some children were hitters, others carried smelly blankets, and still others picked their noses. In the scheme of things, Naida's habit of knowing things was not uncontrollable. I gently tried to distract her from it without giving it too much attention. I tried to teach her how to be tactful, how to whisper things in my ear rather than announce them to random people at the top of her lungs—at the grocery store, the Mane Attraction Hair Salon, Home Depot. But tact was not a three-year-old's first language.

Pictures were. Naida drew pictures of a giant green waterhorse the size of a house, with hooves the size of cars. She said that when it was angry it would race out of the water, and it would wait for her under our porch at night. “Oh, you mean Bob the horse? Oh, that's Bob, honey. He's just looking for fish,” I'd say, trying to still my terror. She'd stare at me, and then a smile would break across her face.

“Horses don't eat fish!”

“He'll go away once he realizes that.” She'd go back to sleep within minutes.

“She's telling you something in the only way she can. And you'd better listen,” Dolly warned.

All mothers had to deal with the yearnings of their daughters. Still, I was certain that none had a child with a magical glint in her eye, who could diagnose illness, who would rush out to the beach and shriek with delight when thunderous hooves kicked up white foam.

 

T
HE SISTERS WOKE me, frenzied.

On the night of the Beaver Moon in November, when traps would be set for the winter hunts, I ran to Naida's bedroom only to find tousled sheets, her strawberry blanket puddled on the floor. Pictures of horses filled the room, the floor, the walls. When did she draw all of these? I hadn't seen any of them before, their thick crayon marks signaling an obvious urgency. There was one drawing of Naida riding the horse on the beach, her hands grasping its long black mane. There was another, of my daughter being thrown from the horse.

Shouting her name, I ran through the hallway, down the stairs, and across the beach, kicking up sand. There she was ahead, lying in a shallow pool at the shoreline. Her hair drifted on the skin of the water, flowing like feathered strands of seaweed, and in the dark night appeared to extend the length of her body. I noticed she was holding a blue crayon. Lacy foam covered her pale cheeks. Her lips were pewter, her skin a dove gray. The Sisters drew near, their coats a pale blue under the moon, their black eyes flashing.

“Get away from her!” I screamed, as they retreated. I had to get her out of the water. I picked up her cold swollen body, noticing the bruises on her arms and the scrapes on her chin and forehead. Suddenly, I was running with her in my arms. I fell on my knees. She wasn't breathing. I screamed for someone to call 911. I began CPR on my baby, pinching her nose and covering her mouth with my own, shouting for help between breaths. Mr. Takahashi came running. Then Dr. B. Then the rest of the residents, standing in their nightgowns and robes like matchsticks in the darkness.

 

I PACED THE hallway of the hospital. Dolly handed me black coffee in a Styrofoam cup. I was barely able to recall the ambulance ride. After several hours, I tried to imagine the guardian angels from Bethesda, whose luminescent wings shielded the young girls who crossed the threshold.

Was Naida with them now? I thought of Sister Mary. She could tell me about angels.

Dolly patrolled me to make sure I ate and slept, but of course I could not do either. At night I watched Naida for any signs of movement as I sat in the worn gray hospital chair next to her bed. I picked up one of the children's books Dr. B. had left. Light scraped my eyes. Dolly had fallen asleep standing up, her back against the wall. As soon as I'd nod off, I'd wake myself up. I'd reach for Naida's face in front of me. I'd see my sister leaning against the wall, her eyes closed, her long red hair covering Dr. B.'s prayer shawl.

With the help of a respirator, Naida existed motionless in a hospital bed for four days as doctors monitored her brain's activity. They watched for swelling, examining films and conducting scans. But still there was no Naida. My baby was gone, saliva dribbling out of the corner of her mouth. I sat beside her and dabbed at her face with a cool washcloth. I spoke to her loudly, and then in whispers. Where had she gone? I couldn't
feel her. The nurses told me to go home, to take care of myself, but I could not leave her. What if the moment I left something happened?

Dolly took a photograph of us, my hand resting delicately on top of Naida's head, her dark curly hair flowing down over her shoulders. Words were too much of an effort. Pacing the halls, I spent the next several days thinking far too much about my mistakes. Dolly couldn't pull me out. She came and left quietly, handing me thermoses of Irish coffee with too much sugar and too much whiskey, trying to talk me out of my guilt for not finding Naida sooner. It was the only thing I had to hang on to, the only reason I could find to tell me why God would do this. I was an imperfect mother, but I loved her so. I needed to make sure that her heart was beating, the only language we shared now. I could hear that drumbeat. In my mind, it grew louder. I saw the rushing rivers and the trees falling off cliffs. Here, I could imagine the sand cobbled with clouds that had fallen from the sky.

Dr. B.'s hands trembled as she took the prayer shawl and stood at the foot of Naida's bed. “Pull it over her legs, Ruthie. It will help our prayers be heard,” she told me. After I smoothed it over Naida's legs, Dr. B. smiled. She kissed Naida and then she kissed me. She sat in the chair next to Naida's bed and opened the fairy tale book. I covered Naida's limp foot with my hand.

 

FLIGHT COULD BE telegraphed through water, in fleeing footsteps. The ocean had taken her and only the ocean could give her back. My little girl rested in a place between dark and light, the threshold where bones piled up in the strawberry field, all too familiar. I had to bring her back.

Standing in the water up to my knees, the hem of my nightgown swirling, I walked in seven circles, my tears dropping like stones. The doctors had sent me home to get some sleep.
But my thoughts were kindling, errant pieces of driftwood scattered across the sand. I waited, but there was nothing. As the wind kicked up the worst storm of the year, I knelt in the shallow water, the waves pushing me back, trying to force me down. In the distance, I could see the crest of a huge wave coming toward me. Then the swell crashed over me, dragging me out. Choking back water, I began to fight it.

The undertow, it was here; it caught my ankles and pulled. I felt the sputter and rush all around me, the bitter cold, a swell of iridescent hues covering my arms and legs. The incessant pounding of hooves across water.

The wild horse tugged at me. My voice pooled up under tinfoil skies. One thousand promises made to God.
If just this, then that. Then what. Then anything, everything
.

I had a sense of its relentlessness, its desire, perhaps for Naida, as if it were only doing what she wanted. I fought through it as it bucked and pushed, kicking up sand and salt water, its mane like an oil slick, like sweeps of black seaweed moving back and forth. Mist burned my eyes, taking my breath away. Each time another wave crashed over my head I managed to push myself up. I fought back, remembering Edna's words.