Water Steps (7 page)

W
hen I came back that evening and saw the two of them still sitting at the table, I figured Mem and her sister had worked out a little truce over their knitting. But their battle resumed when Aunt Rosien left. They'd been talking about recipes when they walked out of the kitchen. Then I heard Aunt Rosien say, “Well, you know, Itha, it's a duty, not a vacation attraction. You can't just come up here to enjoy yourself for a while, then leave.”

“I'm well aware of my duties, Rosien.”

I tried to keep cleaning up the kitchen, but the anger in Mem's voice froze me still. Besides, Mem spoke true. A Sierra Club president back home, she
planted trees every month instead of once a year, and there's no one who lived farther from the ocean who did more to preserve it. She even took trips to Washington to lobby the government guys to save the critters of the deep. Mem did a lot for the earth, but Rosien didn't seem convinced.

“Really now, is that why you're up here lounging about in this house while I'm down doing my duty?”

What kind of duty? Did they have some endangered species in the lake I didn't know about? A sand turtle with nowhere to lay eggs or a type of fish dying of paint poisoning?

Mem turned and headed back up the steps, saying, “I have a job of my own to do. And there's more than one kind of duty, sister. More than one.”

She came into the kitchen with her head hanging low, so I made a big show of clanking the tea pot as I washed it so she'd think I'd made too much noise to hear them fight. Knowing the duty she'd just referred to included me, I realized I took her away from whatever cause Rosien wanted her to fight for.

Mem came to join me. We finished the dishes in silence, then she pulled her downy hair out of the bun on top of her head, saying, “I think this old mane could use a bit of brushing. What do you say?”

I'd say I loved to brush Mem's hair. She had the only true gray hair I'd ever seen on a person's head. Not white gray like that of a grandma, but the rich gray of a black-footed mare. Down to the backs of her knees, Mem had hair long enough to hide me when she brushed it forward and let me sit on her lap.

We'd spooked Pep that way many a time. Mem would hide me away, then keep combing. Pep would come into the room for a good night's rest. I'd pop out, shouting, “Wooo!”

One time, I scared him as he walked in to watch a movie and it rained popcorn. “Aye, you little banshee. I'll have that howl of yours.” He chased me around the bed three times before he caught me and tickled me until I nearly wet the bed.

And you could say I had memories in that hair of Mem's—all the times I sat on the high bed behind her vanity bench to brush it. We'd talk and laugh until my arm got tired, then she'd pull the hair over her shoulder and finish the job while I played with her hair combs or made chains of her bobby pins.

But that night, it flowed like cement over her shoulders, keeping a wall between us. She sighed, but said nothing as I started to brush. Tall enough now, I stood behind her and brushed out the long strands.
Kippers snuck down below to play with the tips.

Mem kept silent, so I grabbed a chunk of her hair and pretended to rat it out a little. “What a beautiful tail. Our little gray mare is bound to win the show.” Usually that gave her a laugh, but this time she barely hummed.

I didn't feel much happier. Sad because Aunt Rosien made Mem sad, but also guilty for listening in on what they said. And a little angry, too. Why did Mem have to hide her childhood from me when we could've shared stories like the one Rosien had told me over tea?

“Mem,” I started.

“Aye?” Mem sounded distant, even drifty.

“What's wrong with telling me about those critters you rescued?”

Mem looked at me in the mirror, her eyes all flash and wonder. “And just where do you think I rescued them? That otter with a crushed foot and the eel with the fish hook in its eye?”

I blinked, my own eye stinging. In a flash, I could see Mem, her skirts tied in knots over her knees, wading into the water to help an otter trapped in the rocks, the poor thing letting out high-pitched squeals, splashing in the water to get free. Felt the water splatter me. Wiped the idea of it off me in a hurry.

Mem turned to take my hands and steady them. “Most days, you couldn't catch me out of the water, Kyna. My childhood's filled with water. You want to hear stories about water?”

I pulled away, shaking my head.

She brought me back into a silky hair hug. “That's what I thought.”

What an idiot. All this time, I thought Mem and Pep had been keeping secrets, but as always, they only wanted to protect me. To save me from my own stupid fears. Why did I still have to be so afraid of water? Why couldn't I just dissolve it down to nothing and live like everybody else? Mem could tell me all about her life on the Irish coast. We could swim together. Laugh as we splashed in the water.

Just thinking about it brought a burst of memory laughter into my head.
I could feel the sun on my face, see beads of water flying in the air, hear a child laughing. Was it me? Did I see a beach and a woman half-turned, splashing in a bright white suit with berry red dots?

Who was that lady? It couldn't have been Mem, she didn't own a berry dot suit. I hadn't gone near water since, since . . . when I thought of that awful day on the boat, I realized just who it could be. Mom. I'd remembered my mom. Just a smiling woman in
a picture to me on most days. I closed my eyes to hold onto the feeling of her. Then I remembered the photograph of my mom and me sitting on a dock, me in a frilly pink suit and purple floaters on my arms, her in a sail white suit with little red dots.

Mem tapped my nose. “A memory got you?”

I smiled, feeling the warmth of it just flowing through me like hot milk on a cold night. “Yeah.”

“Well, there's proof water can be a good thing. In my childhood and yours.” She gave me a squeeze.

Maybe so. But my memories of life with my first family are just flashes, broken pieces of sound and half pictures. I didn't have any real good memories of water. Just that one awful memory. I had to hold my breath to keep it away.

Mem tapped me with the brush. “No falling down on the job there, lass. Get to brushing. This hair won't let go of its tangles without a fight.”

“Yes, ma'am.” I saluted, knowing Mem tried to distract me. And I needed it or I'd sink back into the dark memory of a watery world with no air.

So I set to brushing and forcing myself to think of other things. But my mind had fallen into a bit of a rut. I went from one bad memory to another, recalling Aunt Rosien storming off down the steps leading to the lake.

Had my mind spinning with the worry of why she might be mad at Mem.

“Why was Aunt Rosien so mad when she left?”

Mem closed her eyes and relaxed her shoulders—a sign she meant to keep Rosien's anger from settling inside her. “Sometimes sisters see things a bit different. Rosien sees her duty to the lake.”

So it was something to do with saving the lake or the critters that lived there. “She's a conservationist?”

Mem laughed. “I'd say she is. I do my bit when I can, but I see my greatest duty as being a mother to you.”

Why did keeping the lake clean and safe have to be so important that a person couldn't have a family, too? Maybe Rosien just took it all a little too seriously. And that's what made her a “package.” After all, she was a lady who thought it was wrong to pick leaves. But it still didn't feel right, so I asked, “Aunt Rosien thinks you should be saving the lake instead of raising me?”

Mem pulled me into her lap to give me a neck nuzzle, which made me laugh. “Well bosch on her if she can't see all I've gained in raising you, my sweet.”

“Like what?” I asked, seeing us in the mirror. Mem's hair flowed over the both of us like strands of kelp, her eyes shone so dark and round, mine all blue and spinky.

“Like a darn good hair brusher for one thing.” She rubbed my head with the brush.

I laughed. “No, really.”

Squeezing me, she said, “Selfish as I am, it's the growing that means the most to me, really.”

“That I get taller?” I teased.

She spun me over in her lap to tickle me. “That you get stronger and smarter and prettier every day!” I squirmed and laughed and she gave me nose kisses until I believed every word and went to bed happy.

W
hen the snap of the screen door woke me up, I figured Mem and Pep were headed for their nightly swim. Walking toward the front of the house, I could hear their laughter as they ran down the steps that lead to the shore. Made me think of their first night swim together in that cove near Dublin. Seemed so unfair that they loved something I feared so much. That made their nightly swim as private and unreachable as the memory I could never share. I stood in an empty house afraid to go near the water, knowing Mem and Pep laughed and splashed and jumped from the rocks like a couple of first graders.

Loneliness opened up inside me like a yawn. If I ever hoped to swallow that terrible feeling, I had to force myself to go near the water. Get inside it even.

Doing nothing meant standing alone in an empty house. Avoiding other kids who might ask me to swim. Never going to birthday parties during pool season. Turning into a loony if someone even mentioned something that might make me think of going under water. Like the Halloween party last year.

Bobby Clarkson came up with the stupid idea of bobbing for apples. He kept saying, “See it's easy. Look.” He plunged his head in. My lungs shrank up and my muscles went as hard as one of those apples as I closed my eyes and prayed he'd come up. He threw his head back, flinging water everywhere. It splashed me and felt like hot sparks against my skin. I brushed it off and screamed as I ran for the door.

Then came the waves of laughter, all the kids in my class shouting and taunting, “Kyna's afraid of water! Water baby!”

I ran straight down the hall and right out the front door. I didn't even stop to catch my breath until I'd run the six blocks home. And as soon as the ache in my lungs stopped, I charged up to the top
floor of our house and hid under my own bed. So much for fourth grade. I never wanted to go back.

Mem and Pep went to the school and talked to Mrs. Morton, who had the brilliant idea of telling my whole class how my family died. Every kid wrote me a letter to apologize. In the lunch line, Bobby Clarkson gave me his P.S. saying, “Too bad your parents are dead,” like it was nothing worse than losing a library book. I hate that kid.

And I hate always having to be scared. Afraid of a flushing toilet. Or a bubbling fountain in a park. Or of going with my own family to a stupid farmers' market just because it's cozied up to a stupid lake. The more I thought about it, the madder I got. Mad enough to pound rocks into dust.

Water wouldn't chase me out of my own life anymore. I'd chase it. Push it back. Watch it dry up in the sun. Yeah, I'd face that stupid lake.

Stepping outside, I stood on the porch, Kippers winding his way between my legs. Felt the moistness of the night air on the wood of the railing. Didn't let it bother me, just walked down to the wispy grass.

Standing there, I listened to the water. Heard Mem whisper in my ear, “Just think of it as a nice, smooth swing rocking in the wind—
up, then back,
up, then back
. Nothing to fear. You always know it's coming.”

Up, then back, up, then back.
I imagined myself on our patio swing back home, Mem beside me, her arm over my shoulder, keeping me safe.

Inching my way to the top of the first step, I wished the railing came into our yard. I grabbed the rail as I eased my foot onto the next step. Then a wild wave froze me halfway between steps as it crashed into the rocks below. I imagined Mem saying, “Just the swing getting a little riled.” But I hated the lurching twist of a swing pushed too hard.

Taking a deep breath, I reminded myself that the water couldn't reach me that high up on the shore. Put both feet firm on the ground. I closed my eyes and stood there without prickling up. My skin felt calm. My muscles felt loose. I could even breathe like normal. Felt a hint of good seeping into me.

Then the air changed a little, got a bit thicker, even wetter. A bit spooked, I opened my eyes to see Mem and Pep standing on the steps below me, staring. Their eyes looked gray and glassy in the moonlight.

“Kyna?” Mem asked as if to say, “Where are you headed?”

“I, I . . .” I couldn't tell them about my little private water war. Giving away the secret would mean they'd force me to keep my word. They'd never let me back out. Pointing to a tree, I said, “I just wanted to know if you'd buy me some night film. I'm going to take a picture of an owl in flight.”

“Are you, now?” Pep asked, looking like he only half-believed me.

It would make a pretty good picture, but film had nothing to do with why they'd found me there.

As they walked toward me, ignoring just where they'd found me, they stood on either side of me, so we could all go into the house together. Mem said, “Sounds like a plan to me. Maybe you could capture a shot of one of those great horned owls. I love them.”

“Have wingspans the length of a kayak, they do.” Pep said, heading to the stove.

“Can eat a skunk, those owlies can,” Mem said.

“Must give them powerfully bad breath,” Pep added.

We laughed, then shared a cup of cocoa before bed, dropping a marshmallow down for Kippers to bat about. I could tell by the way they brushed my hand, looked at me over their steamy cups, and tucked me into bed for a little too long that Mem and Pep knew just what a big water step I'd taken
that night. Their pride made me feel hot cocoa warm all over. I fell asleep believing I might even be able to take the next step.