from Dark Water
DISAPPEARANCE, VERSION 1: IN WHICH I’M UNDERWATER FOR 6 WEEKS
Water suits me. As I descend, Santa Monica continues living above me. I bounce off the continental shelf, creatures gather to watch a human join the ocean community, if only for a time. Together we will live for the duration of my undoing.
I have much deprogramming to do that would never be successful in daylight. Only here, in water, do essence and truth mean anything at all.
A coral forest stands tall from the sea floor. Long strands of kelp tangle in its branches. Wrap me around something; let me cling.
That feeling of scraping, of coming up against your own sea floor. Not rock bottom but sand bottom, salt bottom, marine bottom. Performances aren’t allowed down here—there’s a sign posted on the coral: NO PERFORMERS.
I hold half-written sermon notes in my hand. The only thing from the oxygen world that comes with me. By now, Mae has alerted the lifeguards. Their sunscreened torsos run the beach, leap into the tide, paddle in search of a body. They look pleasant: human seals in red swim trunks. Sirens whine, muffled by fathoms. A unit of water is called a fathom. It’s exactly what is impossible to do down here. The word, a unit of six feet, derives from an Old English term faethm, “outstretched arms.”
I’ve swam in the Pacific many times before. Even gone deep like this. When we first moved to California, Mother and I took the children to Catalina Island. Mother snapped her plastic mask over her eyes and nose and pressed until it suctioned her skin. Even after a short swim, the mask left marks. We held hands, tiptoed in, God it was cold, I yelped and she didn’t, she floated and I sank; people report of pressure hurting their ears, I’ve never known anything but pressure, maybe that’s why my ears ache.
Mother pointed to an orange garibaldi, its scales so neon it almost glowed. Fins pressed water back and forth. Anxious little fucker. Most of the other garibaldi were homogeneous and swam with their school, but this one had a bright yellow frill down its side—probably a defect—and swam alone. Loitered in a rock outcropping. Mother kept pointing, a constant stream of bubbles escaped her nose and mouth in gurgled squeals. I couldn’t breathe very well, and my hands were turning purple. Our stamina often matched each other, but if it was a question of longevity, she won. It’s sad to only define someone in relation to yourself because they never get to exist autonomously from your appraisal of them. But it’s natural. That’s how it was.
A kick of flippers sent us sputtering to the surface. In our time underneath, the sun had sunk behind the island. Even when it disappears, California’s light is best. It’s why they’ve started making films here and not anywhere else.
Wind sculpted waves into whitecaps. I struggled with the wetsuit zipper. Fingers too clumsy from cold. Here, let me do it, Mother said. Rolf and Roberta collected stones at the other end of the cove.
But this time, Mother isn’t with me. Neither is any recognizable sea life: garibaldis, seals, dolphins. Creatures I can’t name crowd around my body, something that’s happened to me my whole life. What they want is a church service. They’ve been told about a visiting preacher, a miracle worker, and have swum to see how far her mercy extends.
Not this far, I couldn’t say out loud for fear of filling my lungs with saltwater, but I tried to stare deeply into their amphibious eyes. Finally, an audience I wasn’t beholden to.
Cut off from that voice, from the ability to speak, I could hear differently. Sounds travel in waves underwater. Everyone on shore called my name. AimeeAimeeAimeeSisterMommyDaughter. I hauled myself into a coral forest, crawled between two tentacles, and slept.
Pearls vibrated inside their shells. They thought I would resurrect them, roll their clam tombstones back, but I wanted to preserve their milky centers. Wish someone, anyone, had preserved mine.
When I woke, my hair had been braided. Barnacles stuck between the plaits.
Mikaela Ryan is a writer based in Los Angeles. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from Antioch University, where she was an editor for their literary magazine, Lunch Ticket. Her book reviews have been published in Barrelhouse and Psaltary and Lyre. She is currently working on her first novel.