Dry clothes.
The inside of the tent stank of sweat and metal. She unzipped the flaps so the wind could blow through and tossed his clothes in a filthy pile outside. He wouldn’t come back. Wouldn’t bring supplies. Wouldn’t know where to find her if he wanted to. She licked salt from a saltine to offset the bay water in her mouth. The sun dropped and the marsh grass shivered in the wind as she changed into the clothes she’d brought for her brother; unwrapped a Moon Pie, one of the last; and ate it in small bites, feeling terribly stupid at her core, because for everything she’d thought of, she’d missed the biggest threat of all.
Chapter Thirteen
Gia gathered the remaining supplies into a plastic bag and stashed them at her feet. At least he’d barely eaten. She ate a bag of Fritos, knowing this food was her last until she got out of here, which only made her hungrier, made her think of Nonna pouring manicotti batter into a crepe pan, stacking the steaming shells on a plate, filling them with cheese, rolling them up in a baking dish. Or the ravioli she’d let Gia press with a fork. She’d never taste anything exactly like that again because Nonna was gone forever.
At night, the marsh was a different place. The water was moonless, lapping quietly, kicking up with the wind. Wind in the marsh grass sounded like whispers, spooking her into believing she wasn’t alone. Things shuffled in the grass, on the shore. Please, not sand snakes, Gia prayed. Raccoons scratched outside the tent for crumbs. The tent made her feel exposed, the nylon exterior so unlike the sand, grass, and water around her. One of the poles collapsed, sagging around itself, so Gia crawled into the grass with blankets, laying one on the sand and one over herself, a barrier between her and mosquitoes lured by her body heat. She didn’t want to admit it, because it was her marsh, but she was terrified. She imagined her mother slamming cabinet doors in the kitchen, pissed that after working all day and another longer-than-expected commute home, clutching her purse the entire way, Gia couldn’t be bothered to help with dinner. Counting Gia’s punishments as she sliced onions. If she’d noticed at all.
Her father was working, which meant he didn’t know she was gone. She wished, prayed, his car could ride over water and circle the marsh, the headlights lighting up the grass where Gia hid. In her brother’s baggy clothes and blanket heap, she probably looked like washed-up beach trash. And that, Aunt Ida would say, waggling her finger over the rim of a gimlet, her hair-sprayed curls frozen in place, is what you get for running around on the water, thinking you’re more than thirteen, which you’re not, and if you spent half as much time helping your mother as you do tomboying, you wouldn’t be in this situation.
No one was coming. She was stranded. Just like Lorraine had been that night. Her throat throbbed, and she swallowed back the lump lodged there. Lorraine, like Gia, must’ve thought she’d never go home. Every minute more important than it had ever been. Each one excruciating.
The night crept on. There was too much noise. The temperature dipped, and Gia shivered, curled into a ball to trap heat, pulled the blanket over her head to ward off mosquitoes, and breathed into the blankets, warming herself. By six, the sun would be up. Her mother would twirl the kitchen phone cord around her wrist, calling her father at the station, then Lorraine. Is she with you?
Time passed. An hour. Ten minutes. She wasn’t sure. Her father patrolled the little marsh in his star-pointed hat and badge, flashing the picture of Leo and Gia in the water, her mother on the boardwalk with the frayed rope of his tattoo tied around her waist so he could find his way back to her. Sleep, he whispered. I’m watching.
Leo braided cordgrass into a rope, cut the tent into strips of fabric. We’ll make a boat and sail home.
It won’t work, Gia argued.
You wait, he said, while Lorraine ran her fingers through Gia’s hair under the blanket, the smell of her perfume a reminder of home. Gia breathed deep.
The smell of perfume changed to rain, a light pattering on the blanket. The wind kicked up, knocked the tent flat. She could drag it back to her spot in the grass, use it for cover, but she was too scared to peel back the blankets and see how dark it’d gotten, how dark it would stay for the next few hours.
See if this is useful. Uncle Frank lumbered over, offering her an old umbrella with the spokes missing. Ridiculous. She would look like a mushroom cap with that. The rain picked up, soaked through the blanket, and then stopped as the storm rolled to another part of the bay. In the distance, Pop Pop played his accordion, singing off-key in Italian, the old songs that Gia remembered only the feeling of, while Aunt Diane picked flowers off her housedress and left them in a circle at Gia’s head, pressed her finger to her lips. Shhh.
A boat chugged on the water, slowly, so slowly Gia almost didn’t hear it. Her breathing stopped. Cold rushed in as Gia jumped up. Darkness in every direction was disorienting, but she’d flag down the boat, and it would take her home. She’d be back before anyone suspected she’d been anywhere other than Lorraine’s all day. She held her hand out in front of her face, wiggled her fingers while her eyes adjusted to the dark. Where was the light on the water? But there wasn’t any. Was she dreaming? No, there was a boat, a big one, cutting a slow line between the marsh and the dark. Shadows moved on board, silent. A cigarette glowed bright orange, dulled, flared.
Morse code. Her father crouched beside her, one hand on his holster as the other pulled Gia down slowly. H-I-D-E.
The engine cut out. The boat bobbed. There was a flurry on deck. Three men, arms flashing, working on something like when her father and Uncle Frank pulled in a big catch, thrashing and slippery, desperate for water. Only nothing moved here, just grunts and soft swearing as the men hoisted it to the railing, heaved it overboard. It plunked into the water and sank slowly.
“Good riddance.” The cigarette flared again. Their breathing was loud. One spit over the side of the boat.
The saltines she’d eaten rushed up her throat. It had been a person. A dead one. Sinking to the bottom in tarps. The boat drifted. The three men looked out at the marsh.
She reached for her father’s hand, praying he’d pick them off like bottles on a fence, then yank her up by the arm when it was time to go, holding her hand the whole way, but there was only sand. Please, she prayed, imagining herself wrapped in plastic, dropped from the boat.
One nudged the other, whispering. They’d seen the tent. It was too close to the water. The boat gassed, changed direction, coasted closer. A flashlight swept the grass. Gia squeezed her eyes shut, hollowed her breath. There wasn’t room for her heart or bones or blood anymore, just fear. The flashlight lingered on the collapsed tent, the pile of clothes, like someone had left in a hurry, not like a girl was hiding in the marsh.
Her breath through the blanket made her think of breathing through a tarp, of the face inside. She wanted it off her head. Not yet. Not till the boat went away.
“Junkies,” someone said. “Kids.”
But there were fresh tracks. Girl-size feet in the sand, unless the wind and rain had blurred them, unless her marsh had kept her safe. The flashlight beam swept again, and Gia willed herself still, hoping none of her showed through the grass. Mosquitoes circled overhead, excited by fear, humming loudly, too loudly, as they lowered and stabbed through the blanket, drank blood through straws.
Now she knew what her father had meant about other threats on the water.
He was right. He’d always been right. The lump in her throat hammered. Leave, she prayed.
The boat was closer to shore now, as close as it could get without bottoming out. Something splashed. Legs trudged through water. Someone kicked around in the sand, shook the tent. A zipper. Pissing into the weeds.
Gia did not breathe, didn’t trust herself not to scream. Didn’t trust herself, her brother, her cousins, anyone. Not these men. There was nothing that wouldn’t betray her. Desperately wishing she could crawl down a hermit crab hole, wash out unseen like a seashell or a piece of trash. Instead, they circled her now—Uncle Frank, Aunt Id
a, her mother, her father, Leo, Ray, Tommy, Lorraine—rolled the soaked blankets around her tightly, twisted the ends into knots, and stuffed the insides with stones that pressed the air from Gia’s lungs, turning the world a directionless black. The men would hoist her into the water, where the stones would sink her until there was no more Gia. How could she be over when she hadn’t really started yet? There would be no more tomorrow or yesterday. It would not matter that she’d once hunted chemicals or loved swimming. She would never be anything when she grew up. Uncle Frank tied scraps of rope around the blanket. They cut into her neck, her stomach. Nonna urged them to make it tighter. Leo lit a cigarette. Laughed. We should all go this way, Aunt Diane mused. Same as Lou. Why is she any better?
She’d always thought if she was good, did the right thing—maybe not always, but most of the time—was good to her parents, didn’t steal, did her homework, worked honestly, and took care of her animals, life would promise good things back. But it wasn’t true. It didn’t matter. It just didn’t. Because life picked. The world picked. Nature picked which sparrows fell from trees and which did not. It had nothing to do with how good one was over another. And she deserved this. Everything. For failing Lorraine; her brother, even if he was beyond saving; her parents. For believing Ray. She should have paid attention in church, gone to confession, and counted Hail Marys as penance. She thought of her father’s tattoo again: the frayed rope. An anchor held nothing it wasn’t tied to. It sank. Even if she was completely still, a raccoon could rattle grass, draw the flashlight. She wondered if her father would give her a funeral or if he’d hold that back like he’d threatened Leo, if her mother would pack up the macramé owl in Gia’s room and tear down the World’s Fair poster, toss Gia’s seashells and pebbles into the trash, failing to see the curve in one that made it look like a galaxy or the cut of another that looked like a dolphin. Just junk, all of it, all of Gia’s wasted hours.
There were stars on the other side of this blanket. Ursa Major and Orion’s Belt, but she couldn’t remember any others. How quickly we forget the world we knew.
The weeds rustled, but she wasn’t afraid anymore. Fear had run out of her in rivers that sank, Gia imagined, trickling through the sand in imperfect lines, some absorbing into the roots, others washing toward the bay, until she was a castaway shell, its inhabitant long gone. Just carbon.
“Nothing doing,” he called back to the boat.
Water sloshed. The motor started. They were leaving. Gia’s eyes were wide under the blanket. Her breath came out in quick spurts as she kicked the blankets away.
You see? her father whispered, his starched uniform close to her nose. This is why. Not because you’re a girl. He pointed to where they’d been, where the boat had bobbed and, somewhere, the body still was. She prayed it wouldn’t float up. She imagined jeans, a sweater, sneakers, and socks soaking up the water as her father rubbed mud over her face until she was only eyes peering through the grass. I see, she said, tears prickling, rolling the mud away in rivers. I see.
The sky gradually lightened, exposing her further. In the early light, another boat darted across the water in the distance, slowed to a stop, worked a trap. A bayman, pulling a trap from the water, forcing Gia to look away because she did not want to see what was on the other end of that line.
Gia crawled out of the grass, afraid to call out in case he heard her. In case he didn’t. What could she be after the life had leached out of her? After she’d said goodbye to her own self? She could scream, piercing the sky and startling the fisherman, who’d drop his trap and watch her from the boat in his yellows, still as anyone could be in a boat.
But she crawled back into the marsh grass instead, back to the wet blankets, then thought better of it and pulled a handful of spartina to brush away her footprints in the sand. She would leave everything exactly as it had been in case they came back. Not that it mattered. There wouldn’t be another boat except garbage barges and people like last night. But she couldn’t trust anyone. Not even the bayman. She watched as he motored off, oblivious to the girl on the island, a shadow in the marsh grass.
That night, she decided she would swim. She ate the last of the Moon Pies and Fritos. She would leave when the sun came up and walk into the water until the sandy bottom sloped away, knowing most of the bay was not deep and she could rest her toes in the mud if she needed a break. She was a good swimmer. And if she swam, it wouldn’t matter what kind of people were in the boats, good or bad, because she would get herself home. Just Gia.
It was a clear night. Manhattan made a haze over the stars, over the black, over the flaws in her plan. What if she got tired? What if it was farther than she thought? Had she ever actually swum a mile? What if the boat came back? Or a side stitch. A storm. What if, like last time, she missed the most dangerous piece? But the thoughts drifted past. There were no boats tonight, only stars, and there was nothing left to lose. It seemed fitting because maybe she’d already died. And tonight, there were no shadows of her family to guide her, just the shell of Gia.
In the morning, she lit the tent on fire and watched it burn for a while. Then she pulled the sleeve off one of Leo’s spare shirts and tied it to a water jug. Maybe it would float. Maybe not. She slipped her hand through the loop and waded out. The water was colder than she’d thought, but it would warm as she swam, as the sun came up. She would follow the buoys. The water jug banged along with the first few strokes, jarring her arms until she released it and it floated off soundlessly. The farther from shore she got, the more the waves picked up, filling her mouth with salt water every few strokes. Without the water, she was thirsty. By the time she got to the first buoy, she wasn’t any warmer. Her fingers pruned. There was too much water, and the waves picked up, bouncing the buoy, making the rope hard to catch. She’d forgotten about rip currents and undertow. The rope was covered in barnacles. They cut into her hands and feet, salt water stinging in hundreds of sharp cuts.
Put your foot down. Just put your foot down. But the ground was not where it should be. The spots she could reach suctioned at her feet, pulling her lower. She flapped wildly to free her foot, and suddenly it wasn’t mud but hands free from tarps. Bloated underwater bodies. How many were there? How many bodies? How many boats? Pulling at her legs.
There was too much water in every direction. She could swim back, but she’d burned the tent. A plume of smoke curled into the sky, laughing at her in the distance. She’d never make it to the next buoy. Not if she couldn’t breathe. And how many were there after that? Too many. She was cold and tired, floating in Leo’s clothes, the most alone in the world she’d ever been. It was hard to believe she’d ever had a family or a name, had ever had dreams that woke her up at night. There was only a gray sky and gray water, one reflecting the other, and she just wanted it to be over.
She floated on her back, staring at the sky as waves carried her in any direction, praying only that those hands couldn’t reach her if she floated on the surface. That she wouldn’t get sucked into the undertow of a garbage barge, or that if she did, it would be fast. Stupid girl, she thought. Stupid, stupid girl.
The sun was hidden behind the clouds. It would be nice to feel the sun on her skin one more time, to close her eyes and blink back the colors it made inside her eyelids, her own private show to drift away to. It was just starting to roll out when she heard a motor cut out and an oar drop into the water. She should right herself. Swim off. But it was over. She was on to another unknown fate, and the best she could do was stay numb about it.
The boat was watching her, maybe to make sure she was real, that she wasn’t a trap. It was a bayman.
“I don’t want no trouble,” he said, as kind as he was threatening.
Gia nodded. She couldn’t speak. She’d used up all her words and just wanted to be home in her bed, inhaling the clean smell of her sheets, to hear her mother making breakfast downstairs, if those memories were even real. She would help with dinner and never complain about it again. She would clean o
ut the bunny hutch without being told. She would wear dresses and stop asking about the boat. He lifted her in and put his rubber coat around her. It was warm from his skin, like her mother’s hug would be when Gia finally came home. The worry in her voice enough to make Gia sorry for every terrible thing she’d ever said or thought about Agnes.
“Where to?”
She pointed. A sack at her feet slithered with whatever was inside. The boat smelled like fish scales and metal. Gia breathed through her mouth to keep it away, pointing when it was time to turn beneath his yellow jacket, feeling as exposed as an egg fallen from a nest, yolk spilling on the sidewalk.
The boat slowed at an empty dock. He helped her step up, holding the dock to steady the boat. She gave him back the yellow jacket. His face was a blur. She hadn’t asked his name. He hadn’t asked hers. Two nobodies.
The boat bobbed in the water. He pushed off the dock and headed back for the bay. She stared after it, then at the parakeets on the line, wishing they’d drop like the sparrows had just so they would shut up, as quiet and dead as she felt inside, breathing through a plastic sheet.
The muscles in her body found the right streets. She paused outside her house, staring at the weather-beaten shingles. They’d been white once, but now they were stained with rainwater, a discolored set of greens, grays, and browns. The gutters rusted. The tree branch her brother had lopped off had a haphazard look to it, like everything else about their house, where things were fixed with duct tape and stains were lazily dabbed at with soda water on a washcloth. Nothing was ever replaced. Nothing was ever made new. The rabbit hutch leaned a little to one side, the wooden legs unevenly cut, slapped together. The lawn grew in patches, flooded too many times to grow in properly despite her father flinging grass seed. It was ugly.
A Frenzy of Sparks: A Novel Page 18
