The Rules of Inheritance

by Smith, Claire Bidwell

There are no airports on Malapascua. In fact there are not even any cars. There is hardly much of anything, really. The island is about one mile wide by two miles long. The electricity shuts off at 10:00 p.m., and there is running water for an hour only twice a day.

  There is really only one reason to go to Malapascua, and that is because it is one of a couple places in the world where you can dive with thresher sharks. I learned this two days ago, while paging through my guidebook, looking for something to do that would be worth writing about.

  The common thresher shark ranges in size from ten to twenty-five feet and has a tail shaped like a scythe, which it uses to stun its prey. A pelagic species, thresher sharks generally reside at depths too dangerous for divers to reach.

  Perfect, I thought when I read this. No matter that I haven’t been diving in years. No matter that the idea makes my chest tight, my breath short.

  According to my guidebook, Monad Shoal, off the coast of Malapascua, is one of the only places in the world where there are daily sightings of thresher sharks. The sharks convene there every morning because of their symbiotic relationship with a species of wrasse that lives in the shoal. The small fish rid them of bacteria by eating the dead skin from their bodies and the insides of their mouths.

  Diving with sharks, a creature I am deathly afraid of, seems like the perfect antidote to the raging desperation I feel inside.

  My father has been dead for exactly two months.

  YES, MALAPASCUA, I say to the cab driver, meeting his eyes in the rearview mirror.

  Why are you going there?

  I hear there’s good diving.

  The driver nods, his face serious as he contemplates my answer. A beat passes.

  Who is going with you?

  Oh, just me, I answer truthfully.

  You’re going alone?

  Yup.

  No husband?

  Nope.

  No friends?

  Nope, just me.

  I say this last sentence cheerfully, hoping to assuage any concerns the driver might have for my well-being. It doesn’t work.

  Do you know anyone on Malapascua?

  Nope.

  You’re just going alone?

  Yes.

  This is getting tiresome. And it’s also making me nervous.

  When we get to the bus station, I will help you, the driver says then.

  Um, I say hesitantly, that’s very nice, but unnecessary.

  I want to make sure that you find the right bus.

  I relent, nodding at him in the mirror. I can tell that I’m not going to win this battle.

  True to his word, he parks at the bus station and accompanies me inside. The station is hot and humid and crowded with people, all of them Filipino. As we walk through the open-air terminal people turn to stare and even point at me.

  The driver leads me to a ticket window and leans forward, speaking rapid Tagalog with the clerk. The only word I can discern is “Malapascua.” I watch the clerk make a surprised face and gesture questioningly at me. The taxi driver shrugs and repeats something.

  Back outside, clutching my ticket in one hand, my backpack in the other, I follow the taxi driver down a long line of brightly colored school buses. I have a nervous feeling in my stomach. I’ve traveled a lot in my life, but never like this. Never alone. Never so far from home.

  Each of the buses has been painted in wild streams of colors, and all of them are decorated with fringe and beads, random ornaments, and stuffed animals. We stop in front of one with the name Nikki emblazoned across the front in graffiti-style letters.

  I try to act casual as the majority of passengers on the bus stop what they are doing and watch me make my way down the row of seats. I take the first open seat I see and scrunch down a bit, hoping to look less conspicuous.

  The taxi driver stops to speak with the bus driver and then makes his way down the aisle to me.

  Okay, he says, the ride will take about eight hours. You have to travel all the way to the top of Cebu. Yours will be the last stop. Once you get there you must find a boat willing to take you to Malapascua.

  I nod. I am almost too stunned to thank him, but I finally manage to eke out a word of gratitude.

  After he is gone I settle into my seat. Even though I haven’t been in a school bus in a long time, the sticky seats and little rectangular windows are achingly familiar.

  Hardly a minute goes by before the bus rumbles to life and we maneuver slowly out of the terminal. Just before we pass through the gates of the bus station two young Filipino boys in threadbare clothes hop aboard. And then I watch, through the big rearview mirror, as the driver slips on a pair of fluorescent Ray-Bans and pops an eight-track cassette into a player positioned just above the windshield.

  Suddenly ABBA blares from tiny little speakers strategically placed all over the bus.

  You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life. See that girl, watch that scene, diggin’ the dancing queen.

  The music is so loud I can barely think, and my back is pulled flush against the seat as the bus lurches forward, gaining momentum with a fierce grinding of the gears. A warm breeze whips down through the top half of my open window and sunlight glances off the pleather seats around me. I close my eyes and lean my head back.

  I have no idea what it is I’m trying to prove to myself with this trip, but I’m about to find out.

  THE HOURS ON THE BUS pass slowly. The jungle rushes by in a blur of humid greenery, and we fly up and down hills, twisting around curves and across long stretches of unpaved road.

  The two boys who hopped on the bus as we left the station turn out to be ticket takers, and they fling themselves up and down the aisle as we hurtle along the road, collecting fare and chatting with passengers. Every once in a while I catch them looking at me, and I do my best to offer them a smile before they look away shyly.

  Most of the time I stare at the passing scenery, smoke cigarettes, and think about the last two months.

  My father died on a Tuesday night, just after seven o’clock in the evening. I was holding his hand when he took his last breath. Afterward I walked outside to the patio. The night air was warm, and I could hear kids splashing in the pool of the condominium complex.

  My father was dead.

  The whole world felt still and empty. Just like it did when my mother died. Except now I was really alone.

  I had finally broken up with Colin a week before my father died, moving all my possessions into my dad’s garage. I was now, in fact, the owner of his condo. My father left me in charge of everything, and I spent the weeks following his death making calls to Social Security and the VA, alerting them of his demise.

  I kept waiting for someone more grown up than me to appear and take over, but no one ever did, and I was left to meet with the estate lawyers and plan the memorial service by myself. Those were lonely days. I smoked a lot of cigarettes on the patio. I drove my dad’s car—a big, dumb Oldsmobile—to the beach, where I sat for long, quiet hours looking out at the water.

  I felt an emptiness spread in me from the inside out. It was as though I was an astronaut, disconnected from my ship, floating in cold blackness, my breath coming in plumes, and static the only sound.

  If grief was once like a whale, or like a knife, it became a vast nothing expanding outward from the very core of who I am.

  Since there were no adults to tell me how to do things, I did them my way.

  I blasted the Violent Femmes in the car the day I drove to pick up my father’s ashes from the funeral home.

  I hope you know that this will go down on your permanent record.

  I wore my Seven jeans and aviator sunglasses the day I met with the estate lawyers.

  I stayed up late, slept until noon, drank too much. Smoked cigarettes in the house.

  The memorial service was on a Saturday. I wore a pale blue linen dress and stood at the podium in the little room and read aloud my eulogy with a shaky voice. There were fewer than twenty people th
ere, most of them my friends.

  After that I rented an apartment in Venice Beach. I couldn’t stay in my father’s condo anymore.

  Venice was perfect, and my apartment was in an eclectic little neighborhood filled with canals that had been built in the 1920s. They were meant to replicate Venice, Italy, and for the most part they did. Ducks quacked softly at night, and on my walks to the video store I crossed over little white bridges covered in honeysuckle and bougainvillea.

  But in the past two months a heaviness has settled over me. I’d been spending my days on the couch, with the blinds pulled tight against the harsh noon sun, unable to find a reason to leave the house.

  Unable to find a reason to exist, really.

  This last week in the Philippines has startled me out of my cloud of depression though, pulling me reverently back into the world. Several days ago I stood outside an open-air market in Manila, my eyes cast up to the blue sky as REM’s “Losing My Religion” blasted through outdoor speakers.

  For the first time in a long time I found myself grateful to be alive.

  OUTSIDE THE WINDOWS of the bus the landscape is starting to change. We are nearing the coast again. When I finally look up, I realize that I am the only passenger left on the bus.

  I catch the eye of one of the ticket takers, and he takes a seat across from me.

  Where are you going?

  He asks this timidly. And then we commence a repeat of the conversation I had with the cab driver.

  Malapascua.

  Why are you going there?

  Oh, just to go.

  Who is going with you?

  Nobody, just me.

  It suddenly occurs to me that this could all be some elaborate kidnapping plot. But if it is, it’s already too late. I’m done for. In which case there’s no harm in answering truthfully.

  You are going alone?

  Yup.

  No husband?

  Nope.

  No friends?

  Nope, just me.

  Do you know anyone on Malapascua?

  I shake my head.

  You’re just going alone?

  Yes, I really am. I smile now, hoping that he’ll finally get the picture.

  But he continues. Where are you from?

  Again, I briefly consider lying, but I’m a terrible liar.

  America, I finally say hesitantly.

  Where in America?

  California.

  LA?

  Yup, LA.

  He nods then. I will help find a boat to take you to Malapascua.

  Thanks, I say.

  I’m not sure whether I feel relieved or terrified.

  Suddenly the bus rumbles off the main road and we’re flanked on both sides by dense tropical forest. Oh God, I think. Here we go. I’m definitely being kidnapped. But before I can really panic, the trees clear and the huge, gleaming ocean opens up in front of us.

  The bus chokes to a stop beneath a tree, and the driver hops off and immediately lights a cigarette. I follow the young boy across the road to a ramshackle dock surrounded by a cluster of wooden pilings. A few rickety catamarans sit in the water, and a surly looking group of men sit around a card table in the shade.

  Hey, shouts the boy, this girl wants to go to Malapascua.

  The men look up, not one of them making a move.

  Hey, he shouts again, can one of you guys take her to Malapascua?

  Finally one of the men folds his cards and pushes back his chair. He walks slowly toward us. His skin is topaz colored, and even though he’s young deep sun wrinkles are etched in his face. He looks me up and down.

  You want to go to Malapascua?

  I nod at him, tighten my grip on my backpack.

  Right now?

  That would be great, I say, trying hard to sound friendly.

  Give me ten minutes, he says.

  I nod again.

  Okay, says the ticket boy with a serious nod. Then he grins widely and trots off in the direction of the psychedelic school bus.

  I lean against a little boathouse as I wait for the next portion of my journey to begin. On the map Malapascua didn’t look too far from Cebu, but from where I stand all I can see is wide-open ocean.

  True to his word, after ten minutes the boat driver emerges from out of nowhere with another guy. I watch as they climb aboard a little catamaran that looks as though it is made of matchsticks and Kleenex.

  The boat captain flings some ropes around and pulls the sails tight. Then he motions for me to climb aboard. I pause for a moment. This is it, I think. I can either go forward or step back.

  I take his rough, weathered hand and step precariously onto the boat. The only place for me to sit is cross-legged on a small square of canvas that is stretched taut between the two hulls. With a snap of his wrist the boat driver unmoors us from the dock and in no time at all we’re skimming across the water.

  What am I doing?

  I have never been this far out in the world. My father’s condominium, his death, those sad and lonely days on the couch, all of it seems impossibly far away.

  Mom, can you see me?

  There is no answer, only the warm wind whipping down over the hull.

  After a while the captain squats down next to me.

  Hello, he says.

  Hi, I say and then we both stare out at the ocean for a beat.

  What’s your name?

  Claire. What’s yours?

  Rafael.

  Then: Do you know someone on Malapascua?

  I groan inwardly. Not this again. I answer robotically, Nope.

  Why are you going there?

  Oh, just to go. It sounds like a really beautiful place.

  Where is your husband?

  I don’t have one.

  You have a boyfriend?

  Nope.

  But you have friends with you?

  Uh-uh.

  You’re just going alone?

  I’m just going alone.

  The captain is quiet for a while, seeming to mull over my situation.

  My aunt has some huts on the beach that she rents. I will take you there.

  I realize that I haven’t even given a thought to where I might stay when I get to Malapascua. Thanks, I say genuinely.

  After what feels like hours, but is probably only forty minutes, a small mass of land finally comes into view: Malapascua. It looks bigger than I imagined, but I know from my book that you can walk from one end to the other in under an hour.