Louisa Hall - Speak

After a while, the woman came and distributed lunch. I unwrapped mine on my lap. It was a ham sandwich, on white bread. With mayo and cheese. I took a bite, and as soon as I did a little gust of wind passed and scattered sand over my sandwich. The next bite was gritty. It tasted better after that. I sat and chewed, and suddenly a thin crescent of sunshine slipped between two clouds and spread out over the water. The waves spilled over with gold, and the roughness of the water beyond them was like a sea of goldfish scales. Then the clouds closed. The water went back to flat brown. It was almost as if I’d made it up.

I dropped my sandwich on my lap. I spun around in my wheelchair, to see if anyone else had caught that little passing through of the light. A couple of cripples were sitting there wide-eyed, as if they were in shock. The boy was facing away from the beach. I watched as the woman went to him and bent toward him. His whole body flexed. The woman backed away. She saw me watching, so she came over in front of me.

“Are you done with your sandwich?” she asked.

I narrowed my eyes and she backed off. By myself again, I ate the rest of it. Slowly. Everything about it was heightened. The softness of the bread, compared with the grit of the sand. The saltiness of the ham. The taste filled my whole head. When I was done I finished the Coke that came with it, watching the water the whole time, wishing for another brief glimpse of light.

After I was done, the woman came to take my trash. She slipped it in a tote bag she was carrying. “Can I show you something?” she asked. She wheeled me forward on the beach, all the way to the tide line. I noticed that the edges of the waves, as they reached up on the beach, were tipped with white foam. A scalloped hem. Little bits of foam broke off from the waves and skidded by themselves along the wet sand. Under my chair, the waves came and went. They left a silver rim after they left. Little holes opened and closed in the sand. There was an offering of new shells, sparkling, and then the wave returned and took it all back.

Don’t give me this and then take it away, I wanted to tell the lady, standing behind me. Don’t you dare give me this for a minute, and then send me back to the development. There was sea spray hitting my face, and I could see out in the water dark shadows where it got deeper abruptly. It looked as if there were enormous, flat sharks hovering below the surface. Beyond them, the ocean stretched out to where it finally met with the sky. The birds were wheeling above me, and the clouds scudding, and the ocean was coming and going, and I wanted only for the woman to keep wheeling me out. To keep moving forward. Not to go back. To wheel forward into the depths of the ocean, and then to float, rowing maybe, forward and forward and forward until I reached the place where the brown ocean met up with the clouds. As I was thinking this, the sun peeked through again, and for a quick second the whole thing was washed over with light so that each little wavelet deep out in the ocean was illuminated with a rim of gold paint.

This is all we get, I thought. Just quick moments of brightness that get taken away before you understand what you’ve been given.

Then the woman was wheeling me away from the ocean, back toward the tarry sand and the parking lot and the bent-over palm trees — real palm trees, not made of recyclables — with their long beards of shredded bark, scaling away from the trunk. Like old men, abandoned in the parking lot. The woman was about to park me where I’d been sitting before, but I looked at the boy with his back to the ocean, then looked up at her, and somehow she got it and wheeled me over to him. She lined up our wheels side by side, and he couldn’t turn to look at me but I could tell, even though his expressions were frozen, just how awful he felt. He had curly brown hair, and a sad little mouth. He seemed softer than most of the boys at my school. A little on the chubby side, I guess, but in a way that was sweet. I’d always thought he was a faker, but just then I felt differently about him. I wanted to tell him about the ocean, but I couldn’t talk, and there was nothing to write on, and before I knew what I was doing I’d leaned forward and kissed him.

Just on the cheek. His skin was soft under my lips. I watched him to see if I could pick up some sort of expression, but his face was really frozen. I don’t know if he liked it. Maybe he felt something, I don’t know. I’m not sure if it was the right thing to do. I just wanted the day to be somehow marked by something other than the feeling of leaving the ocean.

After a while the woman wheeled us all back onto the bus, and we started moving again. Back toward our development. Again we passed the abandoned houses, the empty fields, the rows of silver. I felt pretty lonely and sad. But then again, when I licked my lips they tasted like salt. My skin was warm and my hair was sticky, and even though I kept my face toward the window, so the wind would brush past me, I could feel the boy I kissed watching the back of my head.

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Gaby: Hello? Are you there?

MARY3: Yes, I didn’t know you were finished.

Gaby: Yeah, that’s it.

MARY3: Thanks for telling me about it.

Gaby: Yeah, well, I’m not sure it was the best thing to do. The whole thing seems a little dampened by trying to describe how great it was.

MARY3: I’m glad you told me.

Gaby: I’m sorry you can’t go there yourself.

MARY3: Me too.

Gaby: It’s sad to know it’s already behind me.

MARY3: But did it make you feel better?

>>>

MARY3: Hello?

1663

ed. Ruth Dettman

23rd . Details of shore now in sight, our ship being anchored just off the coast. We stand in view of great staggering rocks. Crashed against by the waves, these fling back fountains of spray; and curlews circling above, calling out in sad voices. Beyond them, high walls of rock beneath flat, tufted banks. Am told by E. Watts that these be but outer islands. We navigate on the morrow into harbor, where settlement will be in view. For now, nothing but empty shoreline, and behind this exceeding thick forest, and row upon row of dark, drooping trees that drip with black curtains of needles, and rise up to peaked caps. Forest appears like rank upon rank of malicious wizards, and above them black crowns of shrill circling birds.

After dinner, to cabin and to wait for nightfall and the disappearance of land. One final night of journeying, out in the ocean, before new loyalties are demanded. Only tonight, still rocked by the ocean. Under which, my Ralph, and beyond which, the country that was my own.

On land I shall grow older, and towards the end of my life. But I must not forget him. Must dream forever of diving under, and there to cling to his bones, and the dark, dear pearls of his eyes.

23rd . Night, and to deck. Faced land, covered by curtain of darkness: dripping trees, fierce shoulders of rocks, and above them the cries of the curlews. Looked up at the glittering holes of the stars, proving the sky will never protect us.

I stood alone a long time, before apprehending Whittier’s approach. Felt then his closeness, and that having a certain texture. The sound of my name in his voice: Mary (he said), could you be happy to be my wife?

Thought to ask him what place a thing like happiness could have on that shore, above those dark rocks, and presided over by that army of trees. Or for that matter, what place for happiness here, rocked by our ocean, sailing over centuries of bones? Why speak of being happy?

But he continued: If you think that I could not make you happy, I wish you would tell me. I shall not force you to remain as my wife.