Chapter 31

How long does it take us to surface from the night of water? It was a long way down. It is a long way back.

In the ocean, I see faces in the red creatures that surround me. Human faces. Mostly children's faces.

Once upon a time there was a little girl.

Once upon a time there was a little boy.

I hear the whisper of thank you, thank you in my ears. You saved us.

They swim away into the dark one by one. Unwrapping themselves from my arms and hands and legs. Until there is only one creature left with me. The one wrapped around my chest. The one with its bell-shaped head pressed against my neck, beating like a heart against my heart. The mother. I am still breathing as she swims me. She will not let me go. She alone is helping me to breathe through this dark night of water. Maybe she alone always was.

A light above us now, creating a brighter pool of blue. And I know this is the night lifting, I know this is the bright dawn we're swimming to, she and I. Are you swimming me or am I swimming you, Mother? Does it matter? There is the sun above us. The sun she was always afraid of and then I was always afraid of. Though not anymore. They told us it was our enemy, can you believe it?

She swims us toward the light.

I'm lying on the shore. Sand on my back. White waves crashing over me. She hasn't left me yet. She's lying there too, right by my side, though she'll have to go soon. I don't need her to breathe for us anymore. And she can't breathe out here. She has to go back to the water. But I don't want her to go. We lie side by side in the light she hated. All her life.

But I loved you, Sunshine.

"I love you," I say to her. Beating like a heart against my heart.

Tentacles around my neck turn to white arms. The red head becoming a face I know so well. That smiles at me now.

"I'm sorry, Mother," I say to the face. Tears of salt spill from my eyes.

They spill from her eyes too. I'm sorry, they say, even though she does not speak, cannot speak. I hear the words in my heart. I hear them all through me like waves.

She kisses my forehead.

And then a light fills me. A warmth. A remembering that branches.

Of you and me, Mother.

Of you and me, Sunshine. Of us. Standing in an orchard. A sea of trees and September light. You're handing me an apple you picked yourself. For you, Mother, you say. You say it matches my Chanel lipstick, my best red. And your face is so full of sunshine. No shadows yet. You reach out to hand it to me. And I'm afraid of how beautiful you are. How much I love you. How I won't be able to protect you from this place. From me. My places that I go. One is locked away in the closet. Cracked and turned to the wall, but one day you'll find it. You'll stand in front of its shining face, not knowing why I turned it away. That I'm only protecting you from myself. The things I can't change. The things I wish I could. I'll try to stop it in my clumsy ways that are out of love, that won't work. But my places will soon be your places. And everything will shatter like glass. Terribly. Both broken for years. I'm in a blackness that knows no end even among the palm trees and the light that melts me like a witch. My smile is a ghost. My heart is in a beige guest room on the other side of the continent, on an island by a slushy river, covered in bandages. Years later, I'm turning circles in arrivals at the San Diego airport. September sun streaming into the windows. The board says your flight's landed and I have no idea. No idea how I'm going to do this. If I even should. Should I save you from me? Keep you miles away in that awful woman's moldering apartment? But I hate to think of you in that beige prison. Don't know what's better in the end: me or the beige prison. Also I miss you. Now I see you at the top of the escalator making your slow way down. Some predator is talking to you—they'll do that for the rest of your young life. You're looking at me. When I see your face, I'm so happy, and then I feel such pain. How much you've grown. How many years. I'm back in the orchard, afraid all over again. How beautiful you are. How much I love you. That I can't protect you from my terrible places that I still go, can't help but go because no one protected me, no one saved me, no one ever held out their hand and walked me away. But I'm trying to save you, Sunshine. I'm trying in my broken way. I'm holding out my arms. I'm taking the apple you're handing me. I'm looking into your eyes and saying it's the most perfect thing. Even though you're not hearing me. You're already skipping away. Still I call after. I love you.

A warming of the light all around us. I feel it, just as I feel Mother's voice all around me. Telling me its last story. The story of her and me and a piece of glass. The glass is gone at last. Shattered and returned to sand. I close my eyes in the warmth of it. And my throat opens like a rose.

I love you too.

And the kiss is over. She's gone from me. Nothing but air on my skin. When I open my eyes, she's water. White foaming waves lapping against the shore, against my breathing body. The sun on my face. And my heart beating all by itself.