Carry Me Like Water

by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

  It’s a strange thing to be writing down, but I’m very certain I felt his voice inside me. It’s something beyond words. Sometimes, the simplest physical facts become impossible to describe. I felt the sickness of his body—it was as real as my skin. I started to turn around. I wanted to comfort him. I wanted to confess my shame. I wanted him to be my priest. “Just go. Don’t look back. You’re the one—I’m sure of it.” His words were in my mind, not on his lips—but it was his voice, his voice, though I’m not at all sure it was a voice at all. But the words were there. I ran out of the room as fast as I could.

  As I drove to Palo Alto to meet Helen, I tried to shake his words from my mind. I felt violated—his words in my body. As I drank coffee with her in the sun, I felt the fear lifting. She looked radiant sitting there, and I was in awe of her. She was so perfect. She’s the most beautiful pregnant woman I’ve ever seen. She took everything away like magic. I laughed at myself. I knew what I had experienced in Salvador’s room had not been real. I was so relieved to think I had imagined it all.

  But it was real. Something is happening. Someone is trying to speak to me, but I don’t understand the language it speaks. When Helen placed my hand on her belly to feel the baby kick, I knew something was wrong. Someone was talking to me. I started to shake, and only the fact that Eddie called Helen to the kitchen saved me from looking like an idiot. I got up to use the bathroom, my knees almost buckling. My heart was pounding, and I could see Helen’s baby while I was sitting down in the bathroom. He was strong and perfect, but he was surrounded by a sea of total quiet. The silence covered him like a funeral pall. It was like living in a coffin. And yet the baby was breathing and there was light everywhere, and there was no mourning. I don’t know yet what that silence meant, but it was so real and overwhelming that I expected to be deaf when I walked back into the dining room. When Eddie asked me if I was all right, I wanted to weep at the sound of his voice. I’d never realized what a kind voice he had. And that same feeling came over me on the way home. I felt that silence again. I wondered if real speech could reach anyone as deeply as I was being reached at that moment. But I don’t speak that language. I don’t know what’s happening. I wish I knew what was happening.

  Elizabeth shut her journal, turned off the light, and stared out her window at the sky. She tried to remember the last time she had looked out into the night. She tried to imagine the stars. What she hated about living in San Francisco was the fact of too many lights. The night was never dark in the city—she could never see the stars. She walked around her living room. She realized how much of the room she could see with the light that poured in from the window. She felt as if the full moon were in the room. “Maybe I’m going crazy,” she thought. “It’s the goddamned cigarettes. I never should have quit. I haven’t got it in me.” It comforted her to think that all these strange occurrences were due to the fact that she’d quit smoking. Cause and effect, something she could measure. She walked to the kitchen, poured herself a glass of wine, and sat in the moonlight. Sometime after she finished drinking her wine, she fell into a deep sleep. She woke up lying on the floor trying to shake off her dream, but on her way to work she remembered it. She was a little girl, and her mother was far away from her, and the maid who cared for her as a child was singing a song in her ear. It was a strange dream with no meaning, but something about it made her feel peaceful and happy. She had not thought of that maid in a long time. She had been from Mexico—must have been from Mexico since she spoke no English. She always smelled of soap and lilac, and she could have sworn that her smell was in the room when she woke from the dream. And then she remembered she’d smelled that same odor in Salvador’s room. She was sure of it.

  When she arrived at St. Mary’s, Lizzie began her morning rounds. She slowly worked her way to Salvador’s room. When she arrived at the door to room 709, she hesitated before entering. When she walked through the door, the room was empty. She stood in the room, almost numb, and sat down on the bed Salvador had occupied the day before. One of the patients who was taking a stroll on the floor called out to her. “You OK, Lizzie?”

  She looked up and smiled weakly at the man who was standing at the door. “Just tired, Charlie,” she said.

  “You been out with that man again?”

  She smiled and forced herself to rise from the bed. “Charlie,” she asked, “you know anything about the guy they brought in yesterday?”

  “Good-lookin’ Latino guy?”

  She nodded.

  “He bought the farm.” He looked for a moment as if he might cry, then smirked at her. “He’s pickin’ tomatoes on that farm of his.”

  Lizzie showed no expression at all, then smiled. “You’ll never be anything more than an Iowa farm boy, Charlie.”

  “It’s not such a bad thing to be.”

  “No, it isn’t.” She combed his hair with her fingers. This good man—he will die, too, she thought. If he can keep himself from crying—then I can, too. “It’s pretty quiet around here. Let me wash your hair.”

  “Only if you promise to dye it red.”

  “I’d advise against red,” she laughed. “I tried it once and it attracted nothing but perverts.”

  “Dye it, dye it!” he screamed. “Please dye it!”

  Around ten o’clock Lizzie took her break and called Marsha, who worked the graveyard shift. She knew she wouldn’t have gone to bed yet. If anyone knew anything about Salvador, it would be her. She made everything on the ward her business—it was her biggest flaw as a nurse, but it was also her virtue. She heard Marsha’s raspy voice on the other end of the telephone.

  “How’s the single life?”

  “Lizzie! Haven’t seen you in ten million years. Haven’t seen anybody, really. You on break?”

  “Yeah, and dying for a cigarette.”

  “You’ll get through.”

  “Yeah,” Lizzie nodded, then fell silent. She was trying to think of how to phrase her question. She felt stupid, inadequate. She thought of hanging up the receiver. She heard Marsha’s voice step into an awkward silence:

  “You calling me about the guy in room 709?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Well, I’m sure you didn’t call me to find out about the single life. Besides, he told me you’d call. The guy’s psychic—or was psychic. And don’t lecture me. I know you don’t believe in all that stuff, but I do. Still, it’s pretty weird. He said he’d done his duty—that his life wasn’t a complete waste. He went into the night calm and peaceful like, Lizzie, you know?”

  “‘Went into the night?’ Is that your new expression for dying?”

  “What do you think of it?”

  “I hate it. It sounds like a bad line in a poem. Why don’t you just say he died?”

  “I’m sick and tired of the word ‘died.’ I hate that word, Lizzie.”

  “I know,” she whispered.

  They were both silent for a moment.

  “What did he mean by having done his duty?”

  “He didn’t say, Lizzie, I was in the room when he stopped breathing. For some reason I just knew he was going to die even though he didn’t appear to be as sick as some of the other guys. It’s strange. How do we know these things? Anyway, you know how I am—if they’re dying, I hang around, especially if there’s no family. I hate when they die alone. Promise me you won’t let me die alone, Elizabeth.”

  “Don’t be silly, Marsha, the whole world will be there.”

  “Just make sure my ex-husband is far, far away.”

  “I won’t let him near—I swear I won’t. But tell me the truth—you’d be hurt if he didn’t show, wouldn’t you?”

  Marsha laughed, then abruptly stopped, “Oh, Lizzie, we’ve been doing this for too long. Some days I just can’t take it anymore. This guy, he, well, this Salvador—he got to me. There was something about him. Scary—but not scary. Anyway, he mentioned you. He said something about a gift, how he’d given you a gift. He said he would have known you anywhere
. I don’t know what the hell he was talking about.”

  Elizabeth was quiet on her end of the phone.

  “Lizzie?”

  “He said I had a gift. I didn’t know what he was talking about either.”

  “And he didn’t say anything else?”

  “No. Nothing. He said I had a gift. I made some dumb joke, changed his IV bag, and left. This morning, I walk into his room and he’s gone. End of story.” Elizabeth paused. “Did he say anything else?”

  “He said he’d only used the gift to get what he wanted. He said you wouldn’t do that. And he told me his last name—he said you’d want to know.”

  “Why would I want to know?”

  “He said it was important. Aguila. His last name was Aguila. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “It means eagle. Is that all he said?”

  “Yeah, that’s all.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “What’s this about, Lizzie?”

  “I wish I knew.”

  “Well, you want to know something really weird? When I was doing his charts, and the paperwork, I noticed his birthday. Lizzie, you and he have the same birthday. Same day, same year. What do you make of that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Well, there’s several hundred of us—maybe a thousand of us—bom on that day in that year. So what?”

  “Yeah you’re probably right. Still it’s pretty strange, huh?”

  “Yeah, pretty strange.”

  When Lizzie arrived home after work, she had a message from her lover on her answering machine. As she heard his voice on the tape, she felt as if she had swallowed a rock that had settle permanently in her stomach. She wanted to rid herself of the foreign object in her body. He was too desperately in love with sex, but not quite as in love with anything or anyone else. She had given him a book for his birthday. He later confessed to her that he never read books: “I don’t even read magazines.” She wanted him to disappear. She popped her knuckles. “I am so sick and tired of men with bigger penises than brains, bigger penises than hearts. And why is it always our job to end it? Jesus Horatio Christ.” She picked up the receiver and dialed his number. He wasn’t home, so she spoke into his machine. “Listen, Conrad, I can’t—can’t go out with you tonight—” She paused. “As a matter of fact, I can’t go out tomorrow night either.” She paused again and took a deep breath. “Look, I just got to do this, I just got to. You know something, Conrad, I think it’s time to call it a day. I know you think we’ve just started exploring the possibilities between us, but I really can’t go out with you anymore. Last night, the fat lady sang. I’ll send you a year’s supply of condoms as a consolation prize. Don’t call, Conrad. Please don’t call. I’m changing my number.”

  As soon as she put down the receiver, she felt herself filling up with a sense of regret as if she were an empty jug being filled up with toxic waste. She was ashamed of herself. She burst into tears. “Why the hell am I crying?—I can’t bear this man, can’t bear myself when I’m with him.” She should have had the guts to speak to Conrad directly. She felt guilty, felt that she’d exposed herself to what she really was: a spineless bitch. She laughed to herself. “Ahhh, the guilt, Lizzie, Maybe Salvador was right—maybe I am Catholic.” She laughed and bit her thumbnail. She laughed again, then picked up the phone. She dialed Conrad’s number, and spoke into the machine again. “Listen, Conrad, I just did a really shitty thing. It isn’t that I’m changing my mind or anything like that. I really meant what I said, but I should have had the decency to talk to you in person—not on a stupid machine. Damnit. Listen, I’m not really changing my number. Call me. We’ll talk.” She felt better about herself as she hung up the phone. “You’re not a bad woman, Lizzie, you’re really not. Repeat that a hundred times.”

  She fought the urge to run to the corner store to buy a pack of cigarettes. The worst thing about living in the Mission District was that there was a Mom and Pop grocery store on every block—and damnit, they all sold cigarettes. “Damnit,” she kept repeating, “damnit, damnit, damnit.” She walked around her apartment as if she were lost, as if she had never seen the space where she lived. She kept hearing Salvador’s voice in her head. She wanted to scream, turn herself upside down and shake herself until his voice emptied out of her. But somehow the scream was caught between her lungs and her throat. She couldn’t rub away the pain in the back of her head. She walked into the bathroom, turned on the faucet in the bathtub, and kept her hand beneath the running water until she felt it growing warmer and warmer. When it was hot, she placed the rubber plug in the drain and slowly started taking off her clothes. She felt odd and numb, and as she stripped off her underwear, she became excited and afraid. She looked at the hot, clean water in her tub, and wondered what it would be like to drown and enter into that dark and unknown kingdom of the dead. Perhaps death was simply a word that stood for a place that was too beautiful and too perfect, and therefore unimaginable in the small and cynical minds of the living. Perhaps death was nothingness, but why was nothingness something to be afraid of? She hesitated. If she stepped into the clean and hot and seductive water, she knew she would not rise out of it the same woman; she would be different forever; she would never see the same things because something would change, something more essential than the color of her eyes or skin, more essential than her sex. Everything, everything would be different, and she could not stop it, and she knew she had lost control of everything in her life. She was trembling like the first time a man had touched her breast, afraid and yet wanting, wanting to be touched everywhere and wanting to touch back. She could hardly wait for her body to lose itself in the hot water because she needed to feel surrounded by it so desperately—to be protected. From what, she wondered. From whom?

  She moved toward the water. As soon as she immersed herself she felt as if she were floating out of herself. Her eyes closed, and when she opened them she found herself floating in the air, looking down at her body in the bathtub. She was weightless; was free of her history, had no anxieties about her future with or without men; she had become an intimate part of the air and the light and the steam. She felt as if she had become a pure and simple prayer, so pure and so simple that she had actually regained her original innocence. She stared at her body in the bathtub. How strange it was to be outside of it, to see it, watch it, examine it. She floated down toward that strange and foreign and abused and hated body lying in a bathtub. That’s me, she thought, then laughed and floated away from the motionless shell that always had to be cleaned because it was always getting dirty in the world. She was indifferent toward that material thing—neither attracted to it nor repelled by it. It was nothing more than a wordless stone, a monument to a dead, nameless stranger. She willed herself to float over her apartment and found she was free to move anywhere by simply manipulating her mind—though she was not sure she had a mind. She was no longer ruled by the physical world, by the rules that governed it. She was free of the poverty of her body. When she thought right, she moved right; when she thought left, she moved left; she thought “out the window” and found herself floating into the night. “I am going into the night and I am not afraid. I am beyond all fear. I have become the night itself.” She thought of Conrad and found herself moving toward his apartment. The trip took no more than a few seconds, and entering his apartment, she immediately sensed where he was. She discovered he wasn’t alone. She did not recognize the woman who was making love to him. She watched them and smiled. She felt no anger, no sense of betrayal. She watched them enjoy each other, the two bodies rubbing against each other, the searching hands, their skin moist with sweat. She laughed and half-expected the couple making love on the bed to hear her, but her voice was beyond their hearing. What a strange thing to have a body, she thought, what a strange thing to need one. After this, would she want one?

  As she watched the pair of lovers on the bed, her thoughts left them. They were entitled to their privacy—they co
uld keep it, she thought. She thought of Salvador caking her palm: “Check the records—Mission Dolores. You know …” As soon as she thought the words, she was out of the room floating toward the mission. The rectory was closed. Everything was dark. She would have to wait until tomorrow—and then she laughed at herself, realizing the boundaries, the rules, the way she did everything had changed. She could do anything she wanted. A locked door could not keep her out. “How to find the records? What kind of records?” Miraculously, she found dozens of old leather books neatly lined up on a bookshelf. Each book was labeled with a year. She had no body, no hands, no fingers. She half-remembered a dream where she could not touch because she had no hands—touch whom? Had it been a dream? She focused on the books. How could she look through the books? She concentrated on the book labeled with the year of her birth. The book came down from the shelf and opened because she willed it to open; the pages turned because she willed them to turn. The names of the baptized, the godparents, the parents were all listed. If she had been born on August 10, 1955, then she could have been baptized anytime after that. She looked not for her own name, but for Salvador’s, as if her own name did not matter. She found it easily. Everything was so easy. The body meant work. Now she was free of it. Jesus Salvador Aguila was listed as having been baptized on August 22. His date of birth was listed as August 10. She stared at the next entry: Maria de Lourdes Aguila, also baptized on August 22, date of birth also August 10. The parents were not listed for either child, but the name of the godparents appeared: Juan and Gloria Silva. There were no other baptisms recorded on that date. She thought of Salvador as he touched her palm. She remembered how familiar his hand had felt, and she suddenly became acutely aware that she had no palm, no body. She wanted, inexplicably, to clothe herself in her own skin again.