An Ordinary Drowning, Book One of The Mermaid's Pendant (36 page)

Together,
she and John maneuvered down the hidden path to Playa Tamarindo where her cache
of clothes, jewelry, and books remained untouched by the rapacious waves. She
stripped John’s t-shirt off after exposing her things, flinging the scrap away
from her and into the waves where the current caught it and sent it south
before it grew waterlogged and disappeared. He watched as she waded into the
saltwater of the Luís Peña Canal until it covered her head. He waited without
taking his eyes from the spot where she’d gone under. When she emerged, the sun
glistening on water droplets in the stubble on her scalp, he let out his
breath.

Tamarind
stood for a moment on the empty beach among the litter of shells and seaweed,
plucking something invisible from the air around her as she murmured. Within
moments, the water on her had disappeared. She seemed scarcely to notice the
pile of silky underwear lying like treasure near her clothes and grabbed the
first one that her hand touched. After she’d stepped into these, she remained
bent over while she pulled on a clean t-shirt and shorts. She knelt down and
picked through the jewelry pile until she found a pendant on a gold chain. She
stripped the pendant from the chain and dumped it onto the rocks without a
second glance. The chain lay curled on her palm like a tiny glittering serpent.

“Can I
have my Goddess?” She held out her hand to John, who searched in his pocket for
the small figure.

“I’ve
just been keeping Her safe for you.”

Tamarind
accepted the gleaming figure. Grasping it around its belly, she threaded the
chain through a small loop on the Goddess’s head. She raised it up to her neck,
but before she could fumble with the clasp, John had stepped behind her.
Brushing his fingertips across the back of her neck, he took the chain from her
fingers and latched the clasp for her.

She
smoothed the figure between her breasts. “Thanks.”

Tamarind
tossed the clothes and books into a small travel bag that Valerie had given her
for their trips to San Juan. The last item she packed was a small hand mirror.
This she lifted to her eyes, before twisting and turning as she struggled to
see more of herself in the mirror than was possible. While they lingered on
Playa Tamarindo, the sun climbed to its apex and the day grew warm. As they
walked back up the hidden path toward Ana’s house, sweat glistened on John’s
shoulders and trickled down his spine. Tamarind watched it run toward the
waistband of his shorts until she realized sweat also wet her shoulder blades
and the hollow between her breasts. In wonder, she touched the moisture on her
chest and tasted it. It tasted like the ocean.

They
returned to the Jeep and drove down 251 to Dewey. For the first time since he’d
driven Zoë around Culebra, John paid attention to the landscape beyond the
road. As with Mount Resaca, trees and shrubs had been yanked up and raw wounds
in the earth gaped. At the airport, all of the light planes were overturned and
scattered, like so many pieces upended from a giant chessboard after a bitter
loss. In place of the scrappy small houses clinging to the slope leading to
town, there was nothing more than scattered debris, resembling an abandoned
fairground for an army of careless giants. Here and there he could make out
sheets of metal roofing, wooden planks, doors, piles of clothes, odds and ends
of home life: pictures, a mattress, a broken chair. But mostly what he saw was
unrecognizable, twisted and thrown in meaningless clumps and individual pieces
as far as the eye could see.

Dewey
had also been transformed. Marilyn had ripped off sheets of plywood and smashed
store windows, broken light poles trailed wires like spilled entrails, and
paper and glass carpeted the ground. Waves from the harbor had surged over the
shore, canal, and docks, before reaching hungrily along Dewey’s streets. Where
they had passed, a salt residue rimed the pavement and glittered in the sun.

John
drove slowly, the Jeep’s tires crunching over the fragments of humanity and
nature mingled on the pavement, pulverizing the smallest.

“There’s
Valerie.” Tamarind pointed as they neared La Virgen del Mar.

Valerie
stood with Sister Maria Margarita on the steps of the church, her hands
covering her mouth. The nun’s hands rested on her hips and her lips were pursed
as she surveyed the houses and shops around them. When her gaze crossed over
the Jeep, they widened and she stared at them.

She put
her hand on Valerie’s arm. “My friend, look, there is John and Tamarind whom
you worried so much about.”

Valerie
looked where Sister Maria Margarita pointed and screamed a little. “John!
Tamarind!”

She came
to the Jeep, picking her way through the debris so quickly she was like a
bananaquit fluttering. When she got to the driver’s side, they saw the puffy
grooves under her gray eyes and her uncombed hair. John recognized her shirt
from yesterday.

“John!
Tamarind! You’re safe! Thank God!” She leaned as far into the Jeep as she
could, wrapping her arm around John’s neck. Then she pulled away and looked at
Tamarind. “Oh, my God. What happened to your hair?”

Tamarind
blinked and touched her head. “I–”

“We
survived a bit more than a hurricane. We’ll tell you about it later.” John
looked at Valerie, who gazed back at him for a long moment and then nodded. “Is
everyone okay?”

“So far
as we know. Only old Captain Joe hasn’t radioed in yet, but he’s a salty dog so
we hope for the best. The power’s out, but the Dockside has a generator so we
can get some hot food once in a while until the power’s restored on the island.
If you two are hungry now, Sister’s got a kerosene stove and has soup in the
sanctuary.”

“We are.”
John looked around for a place to park. “Just let me park your Jeep over there
where the mess is only a couple feet high first. I don’t suppose you could find
me a t-shirt someplace, or a blanket?”

Valerie’s
gaze dropped to his bare chest and she saw the slash there, dark and wicked.
She inhaled sharply. “Sister’s got some blankets and a first aid kit, too.”

“Thanks.”

“I’ll
see you two inside then.” Valerie looked at each of them in turn and then
returned to the church.

After
John parked and they’d scrabbled through the uneven litter to the church’s
steps, they heard voices and laughter. A moment later, a mewling threaded its
way among the chatter. Just inside the church’s doorway a group gathered,
oblivious to the destruction only a few feet away. Tamarind recognized Jaime,
the father-to-be from yesterday. Tucked between his left arm and his chest, he
held a blanketed bundle that appeared to have a coconut wedged into one end of
it. When she and John drew near, she saw that instead of a coconut, the furry
brown sphere had a small mouth and cloudy blue eyes that studied the sky above
its father intently. Jaime held his baby.

He
turned at their footsteps. “
Madre de Dios
.
Qué pasó?
”

All of
the people around them stopped chatting and looked at John and Tamarind, who
stood just outside the church’s entrance. Their eyes, so lively only moments
before, lost their dark luster and their faces closed in on them as anemone
tentacles close around prey. A few of them stepped back, and ducking their
heads, turned away. The ones that remained shifted closer together and watched
John and Tamarind, their lips pursed and their arms around each other’s waist.
Tamarind’s hand flew to her scalp before she realized what she was doing. She
let it brush the prickly soft hairs at the top of its arc and then it fell back
to her side.

John
wrapped an arm across her shoulders. “When
una mujer del mar
casts off
her tail, she cuts her hair to show that she has left the sea forever.”

“
Es
la verdad
?” Jaime looked at her.

Tamarind
nodded.

“So it’s
done then, young one?” The scent of cloves parted the watchers and Ana leaned
against a pew, her legs crossed at the ankles and a hand-rolled cigarette
gripped in her left hand. Blood spattered the front of her blouse and the
bird’s nest of white hair around her face lay matted against her forehead.

“Yes.”
Tamarind turned to look at Ana and her chin lifted a little. She touched the
Goddess at her breast without knowing that she did so.

Ana
nodded and dropped the cigarette onto the tiled floor where she ground it with
her toe. She walked over to them and stopped. Without looking at John, she
brought her hand to the Goddess, holding it up and away from Tamarind’s chest
so that the sunlight shone on the moonstone.

“She’s a
powerful one, this one is.” She spoke so softly that only Tamarind heard her
words.

Without
warning, a laughing gull dropped from overhead and swooped alongside Tamarind,
nipping at her chest. The delicate chain snapped and the bird continued flying
through the open doorway into the sanctuary with the Goddess dangling from its
beak. Tamarind cried out, lifting her hand at the same time. John lurched
toward the bird as soon as his mind processed what had happened, but the bird
escaped his reach. It flew on, flapping strongly as it navigated around the
inside of the church; first, it sped toward the altar and then veered to the
right as Sister Maria Margarita appeared in its path. It zoomed in a low curve
toward the side of the sanctuary and continued on around the far side to come full
circle at the altar. People crouching in the pews ducked their heads.

Tamarind
kept her gaze on the gull and the Goddess in its mouth. John stood nearby, his
attention also focused on the mad flight of the bird. Dark, steady energy
crackled in the air between them. While they watched, the laughing gull’s wings
flapped a little less strongly and its height wavered. Again, it circled the
sanctuary in its desperate flight. As it came around toward them, Tamarind held
out her hand once more. The bird shied from her hand and wobbled toward the
middle of the church where Valerie stood. It tried to veer away from her, but
as it tipped, the Goddess slipped from its beak. She caught the figure before
it fell to the floor.

The
laughing gull swung back toward the open doorway, its wings flapping unevenly.
As it passed over Tamarind and Ana, it let out a cry like an apology and then
it had gone through the dark frame of the door into the brilliant sunshine
where the air currents lifted it up as easily as if it were ash from a bonfire.

“I think
this is yours.” Valerie walked from the sanctuary to where Tamarind stood. She
lifted the gold chain up and studied the break. “It looks like the clasp gave
way. I can fix it easily.”

Tamarind
nodded her head once and Valerie closed her hand around the Goddess.

“She’ll
be ready in time for your wedding, and I’d like to give you two gold bands to
exchange that I picked up in San Juan.” Valerie looked at John, who blinked.
After a moment, he grinned. He looked at Tamarind, clasping her hand in his.

“Perfect.”

“Great!
Sister!” Valerie turned around and called back up the center aisle to the nun,
who stood in front of a table at the front of the church with a huge aluminum
soup pot on it. “Go find Father! We’re going to have a wedding while we wait
for the clean-up crews from the mainland!”

***

They got
married on Playa Flamenco as the sun melted orange into the waves. Tree
branches and bits of thorny acacia and cactus scrub had been cleared away and
the white sand had been raked until it was smooth. Citronella stakes burned in
a semi-circle around the wedding party and their flames danced in the growing
dusk. John wore a pair of jeans and a t-shirt; Tamarind wore a blue batik dress
purchased from the Mermaid’s Purse that afternoon and the repaired chain from
which the Goddess hung, mysterious and radiant. Julie, the owner of the
Mermaid’s Purse, presented her with a fringed black shawl decorated with huge
flamboyan
flowers that Tamarind draped over her head like a
mantilla
. They stood
before the priest barefoot, their hands clasped.

During
the brief ceremony in which they promised to honor each other before God and to
love without end, Valerie and Sister Maria Margarita stood on either side of
John and Tamarind with the gold bands that Valerie had given them. Chris,
Pablo, and Teresa, John’s closest friends on the island, sat on woven blankets
behind them. Twenty feet away to the west, Ana squatted alone on the beach and
smoked a clove cigarette. Her green peasant skirt puffed around her spindly
legs and her white hair tangled in the breeze. If anyone had glanced at her,
they might have seen her lips moving as the priest spoke.

Afterwards,
the sun dissolved into the water, leaving behind a rich red afterglow in the
deepening blue of the horizon. Stars spread north and west in the wake of the
advancing night, their tiny white lights revealed against the darker
background. Ana unfurled herself and came over to Tamarind, who stood apart
from John and the priest while they talked. She carried a small wooden box in
her hands.

“I
haven’t given you my gift yet, young one.”

Tamarind
dug her toes into the sand; the warm grains yielded to her nervous prodding and
covered her feet almost to the ankles.

“Ana,
you don’t have to give me anything. Without you, I wouldn’t have any legs.”