The Veins of the Ocean

by Patricia Engel

  He asks me to hold my breath, to see what kind of lungs I have. Then he teaches me exhalations and ventilation patterns, what he does each time he goes spearfishing or down on Lolo’s line off the float, the way a body can fill itself with oxygen beyond the throat and lungs, down to the diaphragm, through the muscles between the ribs and chest, even into the muscles on top of your lungs and under your shoulder blades, packing and stacking the oxygen through tiny gulps, then how to do purging and cleansing breaths.

  We practice in the shallow water where he can stand and I dip my head under the surface, holding my breath, gripping Nesto’s waist for support while he watches over me counting time, tapping my shoulder at intervals so that I’ll lift a finger to signal that I’m okay.

  He teaches me how to clear my ears. Not the way you’d blow out through your nose like during the pressure change of an airplane ride, but by moving the jaw to release air through the eustachian tubes, contracting the cheeks, or moving the back of the tongue upward like a lever.

  On the surface, I feel the air move around my head, a gentle clearing of pressure, and as we go deeper, the pressure intensifies until I manage to pop out the air.

  I practice for days until Nesto says I’m ready to try it in the open water.

  I trust him, and want to try, not because he’s prepared me with a safety protocol, to prevent blacking out below and at the surface, sinking, or swallowing water; not even because I want to go deeper into the sea; but because I want to go deeper toward him.

  On Saturdays and Sundays, the waters off the coast of the Florida Keys become a liquid turnpike, filled with weekend boaters, fat-bellied fisherman down from the mainland, those who own second homes lining canals, or people with trailers parked on campgrounds.

  Nesto prefers to go out to the blue during the week or when it’s cloudy and the waterways aren’t so congested. But on this day, we decide to hitch a ride with Lolo even though he’s taking a group of scuba divers out, two married couples overloaded with expensive gear Melly convinced them to buy at Lolo’s shop.

  Nesto and I keep to ourselves at the front of the boat. He drops coconut rinds and berries into the water, ebbós to both Yemayá and Olokun of the deep, for protection once he goes under. He hands me a few berries so I can make my own offering, and rather than let them turn to mush in my hands, I toss them to the waves.

  I’ve never had trouble forcing hope, even when there was none to speak of. But faith has always seemed much more dangerous.

  I watch the Atlantic break along the side of the boat as awareness pushes through me of its dark, unknowable depths.

  I think of baby Shayna, see her small golden body fall through the air, hear her soft bones shattering as her body carves its way through the water down to the bottom of the sea.

  How is it that one baby thrown to the water was saved and the other, thrown off the bridge in the same way, died?

  Was it really a matter of winds and currents or could there have been greater forces at work?

  I wonder if it’s true when Nesto says I’ve inherited the debts for both a life saved and a life taken.

  The divers take longer to suit up. Nesto and I are already in our wetsuits, of a lesser buoyancy, so that we can sink with less added weight on our belts. I’ve got my own suit now. Lolo cut me a good deal on a secondhand one at his shop. It had a tear on the thigh but Nesto patched it with some neoprene and duct tape. They lent us low-volume masks and long-blade fins too. Nesto goes in first, and sets up the float and the rig line while Lolo and his assistant tend to the scuba divers. I jump in and meet Nesto on the line.

  We start by floating together, hands on the rig, adjusting to the dips and falls of the waves, the coolness of the water. For real divers, not just those breaking the surface like me, Nesto told me about the mammalian dive reflex—how the farther down one goes, the body enters negative buoyancy and begins to sink in free fall, swallowed by the ocean; the heart rate slows and the blood shifts from the extremities to the center of the diver’s body to feed the organs so the chest won’t collapse. The competitive divers go even deeper, submitting to a meditative and sometimes hallucinatory state as the brain slows down and the lungs compress, fighting the urge to breathe.

  Why would anyone subject him or herself to that? I once asked Nesto, but he told me that when I got a taste of the blue, I would understand.

  It’s not about the depth. He never agreed with that. It’s not about testing limits. When he was a kid, one of his friends came up from a deep dive bleeding out of his ears and throat, and another boy, trying to beat a friend’s depth, became permanently paralyzed on the right side of his face.

  You just want to go deep enough to arrive at that moment when your thoughts stop and all you feel is the water and your heartbeat, he says; you let the ocean possess you, and return to the surface connected to your instincts, enraptured by the mystery of life and of creation.

  Even with our suits on, the water is cold, but somehow feels warm, comforting. Nesto guides me through the ventilation patterns as we hang on to the rig and though we don’t say much, he nods and tells me it’s time.

  We rehearsed the steps aloud on the boat. After a succession of meditative warm-up breaths to first relax the mind, which Nesto says also burns oxygen, all our energy connected, until the final deep inhale, when I’ll pierce the membrane of the surface to go under for my downward turn, my pulling myself down the rope, which he set with a weighted plate at the five-meter mark. I have to focus on the constant clearing of my ears, or else the pressure of water that is eight hundred times denser than air will be unbearable. Before I know it, I’m down, touching the plate at the mark, and turning back up to the surface while Nesto watches me through his mask.

  Nesto moves the plate farther down at each interval as I rest on the rig, regaining my breath. But as I try again, reaching for the fifteen-meter mark, the weight of the ocean presses against my skull, the clearing of the ears is hard to maintain with each pull down the rope, and I notice, maybe for the first time, the astonishing openness of the ocean from the small space I occupy on the line, neon blue slashed with sugary sunlight.

  I see the divers float below me, their attention on schools of fish and a couple of curious stingrays flapping by. It’s an entire world, and I take it all in within a second or two before my body forces me upward, breaking out of the shell of water. I gasp for air in Nesto’s arms and he asks for the safety check to show him I’m okay and responsive.

  I understand now why he says that he and his friends took to the ocean as kids because it was the only place they could feel free. Even being limited by their breath and by their human forms wasn’t as limiting as the life that waited for them on land.

  I watch Nesto take a few dives himself, dropping under the surface so I can watch through my mask, the ease with which he moves. The conversation he seems to have with himself down there, or with those gods he says take care of him while he’s at their mercy.

  He’s told me that at around forty feet, the ocean starts to break open, and instead of pushing you back up to the surface, it pulls you into it and you sink deeper and deeper.

  When he’s back on the float, his face creased by pressure lines from his mask, he looks changed, and I wonder if I look changed too.

  We don’t say anything. He’s still catching his breath.

  I remember he once told me the secret to going deeper is you have to think of the other ocean animals as your companions; you have to believe you’re one of them while never forgetting that you are different and still need to come up for air.

  A week later, Lolo lets me join one of his weekend scuba courses. I read the book, do the swimming pool dives with the tank on my back, stuff the BC into my mouth, pass the exam, and complete the certification with some shallow dives with the dive group. Out on the boat, I struggle to get into the water, but once I’m in, with Nesto as my dive buddy, we drop
foot by foot under the surface and I watch from a seated position as the ocean lifts its curtains and its creatures come into view.

  We descend to see a purposely sunk wreck. Above us, a single loggerhead turtle pushes past, and just behind it, an enormous spotted eagle ray, with its odd face, almost like that of a dolphin, yet winged, with a whipping tail.

  I let Nesto guide me around the wreck, pointing out the eel tucked into a corner of the deck, the fat grouper passing through, while the other divers go through their own drills.

  Marine civilization surrounds us, fish I’ve only seen in aquariums or on television, sharks I’ve only heard about on the news after a splashing surfer or swimmer gets attacked.

  It’s easy to get lost in the show, to forget to look at the dive computer, to realize all of this is a kind of experiment of technology and the body. It’s all so beautiful, but the sound of the oxygen in my ears, the taste of plastic in my mouth, the bulky stream of bubbles that follows me at every turn, the clearing of the mask, the weight of the tank on my back, and the steadying of my fins are all exhausting, and somehow, confining.

  Despite our enchantment, the awareness of our invasion never dissipates. The animals try to get away from us. I understand now why Nesto prefers to rely on his lungs and not the tanks. He prefers a few minutes on his own breath as just another creature in the ocean rather than a much longer dive burdened by all that gear; he says the noise of our breathing, our bubbles, must echo like a helicopter for all the animals in the ocean.

  I can’t wait until we ascend, go back on the boat, unload our tanks, log the dive, then are free to go back in the water with nothing but our wetsuits, to push below the surface with only our breath.

  And we do.

  The other divers come up in pairs, taking their time to adjust their eyes to open sky and sun once again, but Nesto and I are lost in the water, and I now understand why he brings me out here. The voices on the boat fade behind us and for a few moments it’s only us, floating, drifting, dipping, and kicking under.

  My mask in my hand, I open my eyes wide under the water, surprised to discover it doesn’t sting at all.

  When I come back up for air, Nesto is waiting, reaching out his hand, telling me it’s time to return to the boat, but I don’t want to go.

  I want to stay out here.

  Nesto smiles, content to see I’ve been converted.

  “The best thing about her is that she’s always there, waiting for you.”

  It takes me a moment to realize he’s speaking of the ocean and not of me.

  Winter in the tropics betrays. Despite the radiant sun, a sky faintly feathered with clouds, there are days of biting cold when winds from the north bring frost, leaving nature confused, with reports of iguanas falling from trees, lizards frozen to the pavement, turtles and manatees congregating in the warmer waters around sewage plants. Farmers panic over losing their orange and pineapple harvests. We put on our warmest clothes, and at night, since the cottage isn’t meant to hold in heat, we burrow into blankets, pull out spares Mrs. Hartley left in the closet, and use the space heater she lent me from the main house. But the chill leaves us as abruptly as it arrived, and we step out of winter into a taste of summer. The sun holds strong for weeks without rain, warming the waters, and in the morning, instead of feeling our bones stiff with cold, Nesto and I wake to humidity, the pale winter sky returned to its cloudless blue.

  Nesto sleeps over most nights now, and I sleep better with him here. But I often wake up to the darkness and when my eyes adjust, I watch him, the heaviness with which he sleeps, the way he always seems to find my body, even in his unconsciousness, and curl around me. I’ve never slept like this with anyone else.

  Even when I had entire uninterrupted nights with other men, I never had this sort of closeness. I never had the same face meeting mine across the pillow morning after morning. I never had someone who didn’t tire of me, who didn’t eventually find me uninteresting. Who didn’t decide someone else was more worthy of his time.

  I always handed myself over. I let them turn my body into the thing they wanted. My mind left the scene, floating in space where they could never find me.

  I told Dr. Joe about this once. He said I was “dissociating,” imagining myself in a happier place. I told him he was wrong. There was no happier place. I was just not there.

  Sometimes I wake up and I expect Nesto to tell me today is the last day we’ll share, a switch signaling my time is up. But every morning he’s there, and at the end of the day, when it’s time to go to sleep again, he’s there too.

  I think I’m pretty good at living in the present now, when each day is just as good, or better, than the one before. But I still haven’t broken my backward gaze and sometimes, when even my own history becomes boring to me, I take on Nesto’s past. I try to picture him as the man that belongs to a tribe, not the solitary man I know.

  I think about the woman with whom he made a family. The closeness they shared. The routines. The love for their children that bonds them even now. I try to picture them in the life they had together. The home they lived in, which had belonged to her parents.

  I saw her face once, quickly, in a photo he showed me of a birthday party they’d had for his son when he turned five. She was much younger then, pretty, with long dark hair tied back with a bow, but her face was sad. He was to the side of the frame, looking serious too. Nesto later told me it was a Cuban habit not to smile for photos, a leftover Soviet trait just like the synchronized applause at government speeches. A communist thing.

  He never asks about my past. Not in the way of boyfriends or lovers or aventuras.

  “Don’t you want to know about me?” I asked him once, curious and half-insulted, but he shook his head and reached for me with his lips, and between kisses told me, “I don’t need to know about other men. For me, you were born the day I met you. Nothing before that counts.”

  “What about you? Does that mean you were born that day too?”

  He nodded.

  “And nothing before that counts?”

  He looked thoughtful, then uneasy.

  “What do you want me to say, Reina?”

  “Nothing. Don’t say anything.”

  I was relieved he listened, and I was out of my head and back in my body, feeling him above me, enjoying the pressure of his ribs against mine.

  I watch him, shrouded by the night, blueness almost like the one that swallows us when we go out into the ocean. He must feel my eyes on him because without waking, he reaches for me, pulls me to him, and I mold my body to his, kiss him until he kisses me back and I learn the lesson again that I’ve learned every night I’ve spent with him, that I will find in his body, and not in his words, the answers to all my questions.

  On a late March morning, Nesto leaves me to go to Cuba. He hasn’t been there in more than a year and wanted to go for the holidays, but didn’t have the money to pay his monthly bills and didn’t want to miss out on any jobs that might come up. Now that he has the full-time gig at the dolphinarium it’s easier, and he bought a ticket home for the weekend. I offer to drive him to the airport but he insists on taking the bus. I take him to the stop, wait with him, and watch as he pulls his backpack, full of gifts and encargos for his family—medicines, vitamins, and shampoos and soaps since they say there’s an island-wide ­shortage—over his shoulder.

  “I’ll see you soon,” he tells me the same way I’ve heard him say to his children so many times over the phone. He kisses me one last time and walks away.

  This is a good exercise, I tell myself, to remember life before Nesto. I’ve gotten too used to the way we’ve built each other into our daily routines.

  But I miss him. Nights alone, the dark hours before dawn when I sometimes turn and stir him from sleep with my lips.

  One morning I go out to the dock on my end of the Hammerhead property with my coffee and see t
he bearded man from down the canal come out on his boat. He waves to me like he usually does but this time he slows down and gets close enough to my dock to ask me, without having to shout it, if I want go out for a ride with him.

  “I have to go to work later,” I say.

  “I’ll bring you back in time. Promise.”

  He pulls the boat up to the dock and I leave my coffee mug on the floor planks before climbing into his boat with him. He gives me a hand to shake and tells me his name is Jojo, his family is descended from the original settlers of Key West, and being a genuine Conch is a thing not many people can claim.

  “How do you like living on the Hartley land?”

  “It’s not bad. You know Mrs. Hartley?”

  “She was friendly with my wife till she got sick. Then she kept away, like she was afraid of catching cancer. She sent some nice flowers for the funeral though.”

  He’s smiling but still has a sad face, kind of like that old shrink they made Carlito and me see as kids. The guy who told Mami I was considered “at-risk” and Mami kept saying, “What does that mean? At risk for what? Look at her. She’s fine.”

  “You must miss her a lot,” I tell Jojo as he pulls out of the coastal stream beyond the last row of buoys.

  “You ever lose anyone?” he asks me once we’re in the valley of open water, still desolate because it’s a weekday and the fishermen are probably starting the morning on the hump.

  “Yes.”

  “Then you know how it is. Only thing to do is take life one sunrise at a time.”

  He makes a turn, cranks the speed on the boat, and after a few minutes he points to breaks in the water line, clearly dolphin dorsals—half a dozen of them.

  “Look back there.” Jojo points, and in the boat’s wake I see another group of dolphins weave and leap over the foamy mounds.