Janita Lawrence - The Memory of Water

I saw her right away, swept a small distance way from me, struggling against some unseen thing, some watery ghost. I swam towards her with every muscle pumping and when I reached her, I went under to find what was holding her down. She was fighting hard for air and managed a lungful every now and then but her head stayed mostly underwater. I went under again and again to see what it was and I flailed around her in the hope of somehow detaching her.

Only then, when the desperation hit, did I think of calling for help. I broke the water and yelled with all my might. I screamed and shouted, but the dry world was still and quiet. Em was slowing down now, not kicking as vigorously as before.

I screamed for help again then ducked under. That time I saw her dress was caught on something: a root or branch, a sharp black arm pulling her under. I grabbed it with both hands, trying to break it, but without being able to touch the river bottom my arms were powerless. I tried to unhook Emily’s dress but she was pulling too hard in the opposite direction. I came up again, gasping for air, with not enough breath in me to yell. The only thing left to do was to push her under and at the same time, unhook her dress. She was pedalling in slow motion then, as if asleep, but when I tried to push her down, further into the water, she woke up and thrashed around, kicking me and scratching my cheek. She was almost low down enough; I could feel the material give somewhat with my right hand. I pushed her harder, deeper, and the dress was released.

A feeling, a golden feeling came over me. Emily would be okay. I brought her to the surface and looked up in triumph. A small white face stared back at me from the faraway house then disappeared into a run. That’s when I noticed that Emily wasn’t breathing. I floated her in my arms, not sure what to do, when there was a yell and a blast of water in my face.

A man I’d never seen before snatched my sister out of my arms and handed her upwards to another man standing on the bank, who laid her on the grass and began beating her chest and breathing into her small blue lips.

The man in the water was as big as a giant. He lifted me with one arm and carried me out of the water. On land, he placed his vast hand on my shoulder as we watched, then he swapped positions with the other man. On land, my heart was sprinting, my legs were riverweed. Eventually they stopped beating her and kissing her. The giant picked her up in her sticky white dress and cradled her in his arms.

I looked up at him, the man like a tree, the image forever burnt into my mind: a Monument. An animal noise made us look over to the other side of the river, where the houses were, and the white face came racing toward us. Mom. Gasping, shaking, all four of us dripped.

We waited for the screams in silence and dread.

“She saw you?” he asks. He is as grey as the room.

I nod. It has been a difficult secret to keep, and at last I am free of it.

“She could only have imagined the worst,” I say.

He sits back. “Yes,” he says, taking a while to grasp the implications.

“Dad, she left because she couldn’t live with what she saw that day. She couldn’t live with a murderer for a son.”

Dad is shaking his head again. “What a waste,” he mutters with clenched teeth, “What a goddamn shame. Why didn’t you tell us?”

“What could I say? At first I didn’t want to get into trouble, I couldn’t imagine being responsible for such a loss, such heartbreak. Then later – I felt like a murderer – I did whatever I could to pretend it never happened. She would be alive today if it weren’t for me.”

We are both crying openly now. He reaches into his top pocket for a crumpled tissue.

“I loved Emily, Dad. I loved her. I would never have hurt her.”

“Yes,” he nods, and blows his nose. “I know that. We all loved her. Perhaps too much. She made us… skinless.”

An avalanche of relief: I have confessed. I have confessed. I sob. I say that I am lost.

After a long pause, he says, “Sometimes getting lost is part of finding your way.”

When it is over we stand and call the guard. My father hugs me once more but he is shaking and it leaves me feeling empty. The cell is locked and I am on my own. It astounds me that after such a revelation the building is still standing, the cell is exactly how it was before. A shift has taken place in me; you’d expect the tornado in my head to have affected the landscape too. You’d expect roofs to be lifted, walls smashed, pets missing. But instead here I am in a little cell, looking at my hands, awaiting my fate.

The feeling comes at me full-force, with no warning tease. I stand up and my body – exhausted, bruised, dried out – is filled with hot-blooded purpose. It’s the fingertingle. The zone. The feeling that if I don’t write now, if I don’t put these words on paper then they – and I – will be lost forever. I shout for the guard and he tortures me with his lazy sway.

“Pen!” I shout, “Please! Pen and paper!”

He looks worried.

“They said you would ask for that,” he says. “I don’t know.”

“What don’t you know? You don’t need to know anything, just bring me something to write with. I will pay you! I will give you anything you want!”

“I don’t know how they knew. They told me to tell them when you were ready.”

Despite my delirious state, this sounds ominous.

“Who is ‘they’?” I ask. And then I understand.

“I’ll confess,” I promise, “I will write everything down. Whatever it takes, I will do it. Just bring the pen.”

“You are ready,” he says, and leaves.

While I wait, I think of what I am going to write. Words, before so aloof, now tumble down on me. The floodgate is opening and I brace myself. Of course, I will write about this adventure of mine. This insane, nonsensical exploit my life has become. I will write about everything that has happened to me since I became blocked a year ago, about what it has taken to unblock me. And this time, I will write the real story: I will finally write about Emily. Not in the way I used to write about other people, using and discarding them, but a different kind of writing, with truth and integrity. The confession I owe to her and the world. The unwritten, unreadable diary I carry: The Memory of Water.

But how does it end? Sitting in a cell being bathed in a glorious revelation is not satisfying enough. Besides, I am raw from the encounter with my father. I need a better ending: the story demands it. I’m going to have to wait and see; but for now, as far as I can imagine, there could be three different endings. The first one involves the protagonist being sentenced to life in jail. He is made to wear orange overalls and eat out of his hat, buying the guards Mister Delivery KFC so that he can keep his small luxuries: a pen, a book, a toothbrush. And his cappuccino machine. He would peel potatoes and lift weights and watch Days Of Our Lives during the day and scribble all night. He would write on smuggled-in paper and when that ran out, tissues, toilet paper, and chickenwinggreasy serviettes. Like Nelson Mandela. Okay, nothing like Nelson Mandela, apart from, well, illicit writing in prison. Life would be a heady mix of trying to stay alive despite the rusted jerry-built shivs, the guns, the rapists, the gold-toothed guards and the gangs. Christ, imagine the material; imagine the murderers I could meet, the things I could write about. It almost makes me want to go until reality hits and I realise that I’ll probably end up in some maximum-security inferno. I probably won’t survive the first lights-out. The second ending is a little more optimistic. My lawyer develops magical powers of persuasion overnight and somehow wins my case for me, pro-bono. I am acquitted and set free among an insane media frenzy. My back issues start selling again and so Starling & Co. decide to renew my contract, enabling me to buy back my house. I spend the days creating brilliant new novels, having long showers and eating paninis.