You, Me, and the Sea

by Meg Donohue

  And the cliffs. Rei was perpetually warning me to stay away from the cliffs.

  She said it again on a day that she brought me a new blue swimsuit. When I tried on the suit, her keen black eyes clouded with a faraway look.

  “Your mother loved that shade of blue,” she said. “She wore a blue scarf that was so light it seemed to float on her shoulders. Your father would laugh and ask her how it felt to have her head in the clouds.” Rei blinked. She looked down and brushed invisible lint from her overalls. “She was very beautiful.”

  She had promised to watch me swim. I ran across the bluff toward the steep path that cut down to the beach, ignoring her calls for me to be careful. When I neared the cliff, Rei’s nagging grew urgent. I spun around to confront her.

  “I’m not stupid, you know. I never go right up to the edge.”

  Half of this was a lie. I did not believe myself to be stupid, but I did go right up to the edge of the cliff. I liked the thrill of it, the way it made my fear grow so big that it shook my heart and wrenched my stomach and pounded on my ears. I bellowed out at the sea and the sea bellowed back at me, and when I stepped away from the cliff’s edge the fear would drain immediately out of me and I would feel better—exhilarated and exhausted, like I’d won something for which I’d fought hard.

  Rei pressed her lips together and gave me a look that told me she knew I was lying.

  I shrugged and turned to keep walking. “Seriously,” I said over my shoulder. “What’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal,” she answered, “is that the land at the edge of the cliff is not secure. Pieces of it fall into the sea every day. People fall into the sea.”

  This made me stop. “Who?”

  Rei made a shooing motion with her hands and didn’t respond.

  She meant my mother. I knew it like I’d always known it, like I suddenly remembered something that had been told to me long before.

  My mother had died falling from the cliff.

  This was the reason my father grew sad at night as he gazed out at the horizon—it was not the horizon he was watching, but the cliff.

  And this was the reason my brother hated the beach so much that he had never learned to swim.

  Knowing how my mother had died should have made me sad, but I felt a weight slipping off my shoulders: the weight of the unknown. For the first time, I’d found something I’d lost, and it was the most important thing of all. I understood then that I was drawn to the cliffs, and to the sea, just as my mother had been. I had always felt my father’s presence with me as I explored Horseshoe Cliff, but now I felt my mother’s spirit, too, surrounding me, emanating from the earth and the sky and the sea.

  My brother’s attacks grew fiercer around the same time that I learned how my mother had died. It was as though he sensed my new peace and it aggravated him. But understanding why my brother had never learned to swim helped me see that my brother not only avoided the ocean; he avoided the entire beach. From then on, I knew that when Bear threatened me, I could run down the path from the bluff to the sand below and he would not follow me. When I stepped onto the path down to the sea, I grew so light that I felt as though I’d sprouted wings. I was free.

  I ran from Bear to the beach many times over the following years, and each time I did I looked up at the cliff and imagined my mother standing there on the edge, watching over me, keeping me safe.

  Chapter Four

  On a Saturday morning when I was eight years old, my father announced that he needed to go to the airport. No matter how I begged, he would not bring me with him. Nor would he tell me why he had to go.

  “Take care of your sister,” my father told Bear.

  We stood on the front porch. It was still early in the morning and the sun was low enough in the sky that we had to squint at each other. It would be a rare hot day. The fog that blanketed the land at night had already burned away, and at my side, Pal swung his gaze from one of us to the next, panting.

  In response to my father’s request, Bear only grunted. His hands were shoved deep in the pockets of his jeans. He did not have a shirt on, and his wide chest was covered in swirls of brown hair that turned amber in the rising light. He was eighteen now, but it seemed to me he was the same non-child, non-adult he had forever been. He would not play with me, and he would not take care of me. He must have felt me studying him because he turned toward me, and I dropped my gaze to my feet.

  “I’m serious, Bear,” Dad said. “See that Merrow gets something to eat. I might not be back until late tonight.”

  I looked up and stared at my father. I could not remember him ever leaving us for so long a stretch of time. My father was steadfast in his routine, and he seemed as much a part of Horseshoe Cliff as the cottage, or the cliffs, or the sea. Would the whole place disappear when he drove away? It did not seem impossible.

  Tears threatened to spring to my eyes, but I held them back. I could see that Dad would not bring me with him, and if I began crying now it would only serve to stoke my brother’s disgust of me. It was the last thing I wanted to do before we were alone together.

  “‘Something to eat’?” Bear echoed. He coughed up a wad of mucus and spat it off the porch. “What do you suggest?”

  “I’ll make myself an egg,” I said quickly. “And an apple.”

  “There’s a loaf of bread in there, and peanut butter, too,” said my father. My spirits lifted. I loved peanut butter, and Dad knew it. “Don’t let Bear eat it all,” he told me. Then he looked at my brother and muttered something under his breath. My father usually had patience for Bear’s sullen moods, but lately he seemed more frustrated with my brother than usual. I thought that perhaps he was just tired. It had been another poor season for the farm. He whittled late into the night and used the money that Rei gave him when she sold his tiny houses to buy provisions from the Osha co-op. The chickens were my responsibility, and it seemed to me that their eggs were more important than ever. I took good care of them, singing to them each evening at dusk. I did not go so far as to give them names. There were nights when we ate chicken, and I did not want to connect a name to my dinner.

  As I watched my father’s truck grow small along the drive away from our home, the rumbling of the wheels along the dirt path echoed within me. I decided I would spend the day pulling weeds from the garden. This would serve the double purpose of pleasing my father and keeping me far from Bear, who was unlikely to do anything resembling work without my father’s urging.

  After weeding for most of the morning, I joined Pal in a patch of shade under the row of cypress trees that I called the Old Ladies. My skin was hot from the sun, and the cool dirt below the trees was a welcome relief. I snacked on a few of the small tomatoes I’d found while weeding. Though I craved a peanut butter sandwich, I had not seen Bear leave the house and I did not want to cross his path. I wished I’d thought to bring a book with me. I curled up beside Pal and looked at the tree’s crooked spine. My father had told me that he and my mother chose this spot for the garden because the line of cypresses protected it from the gales that blew onto the land from the ocean. I called the trees the Old Ladies because they looked like a huddle of tough old grandmothers, their green bouffants flattened into funny shapes by the wind.

  Hidden within the shadow of the Old Ladies, I soon fell asleep.

  I was not sure how much time had passed when I awakened. My stomach felt hollow with hunger; it drove me toward the house. I breathed out in relief when I saw that Bear was not in the kitchen, and quickly set to making myself a sandwich. Bear had already made a dent in the peanut butter, but there was plenty left to spread a thick layer on two slices of the brown bread that my father always purchased. I was not particularly fond of that bread, with its strange, seedy lumps and thick crust, but my father had once told me that it had been my mother’s favorite, and knowing this allowed me to take some pleasure in it. I sat down at the table and took a large bite. As I swallowed, I heard a racket coming from Bear’s bedroom. A moment
later, he threw open his door and stumbled toward me. Even if I hadn’t seen the cans of my father’s beer that littered the floor behind him, I would have recognized the smell. On my father, the odor of beer was a light presence that arrived only after sunset, but Bear smelled like he hadn’t so much drunk the beer as bathed in it.

  I felt the urge to run, but my legs would not work. I sat very still, holding the sandwich in midair, wishing myself invisible.

  Bear’s bleary gaze narrowed. He lurched toward me and swiped the sandwich from my hands.

  “Who said it was lunchtime? I’m in charge.” He kicked at the chair beside me and sat down heavily in it. Then he began to eat my sandwich.

  “Hey!” I cried. “That’s mine.”

  “No shit,” he said, and kept eating. In three bites, the sandwich was gone. He stretched his long arm to the counter and picked up the peanut butter jar. Why hadn’t I hidden it somewhere? I was full of regret as I watched my brother jam his dirty fingers into the jar and scoop out an enormous lump. He wrinkled his nose as he ate it and spoke with his mouth full.

  “I don’t know why you like this stuff.” His mouth was a dank cave of wet peanut butter. He began to clear his throat so loudly that at first, I thought he was choking, and I felt my body seize with worry for him. I put my hand on top of his, but he swatted me away.

  Then he spat a huge brown wad of phlegm into the peanut butter jar.

  A noise emerged from me, a sort of strangled howl that made Pal jump to standing from where he’d been watching us from the floor.

  “Don’t cry,” Bear warned.

  “I’m not,” I said, but of course I was. I could not believe that of the entire brand-new jar of delicious peanut butter, I would have only one small bite.

  “Stop crying!” Bear bellowed. Specks of spit and peanut butter hit my face. “Stop! Stop!” His eyes burned with rage. His hands encircled my arm, and he began twisting it.

  I wailed in pain.

  And then he was dragging me across the room. He opened the door to the linen closet, threw me in, and slammed the door. I tried the door handle and it turned in my hand, but the door would not open. I pushed my shoulder against the door and shoved as hard as I could. It did not budge.

  “Bear!” I screamed. “Let me out!”

  There was no light in the closet. The sound of my frantic breathing filled the small space.

  I screamed Bear’s name over and over again. From the kitchen, Pal scratched at the door and whimpered. There was a ribbon of light at the bottom of the door. I lay down and pressed my face against the floorboards. I could see the legs of the kitchen chair that Bear had wedged under the doorknob. Pal pushed his nose into the crack and sniffed. I could just manage to touch his nose with my finger.

  “It’s okay, Pal,” I said. “I’m okay. Don’t worry.” It was as much bravery as I could manage before crying again.

  Time passed. I didn’t know how much. My eyes grew dry. My stomach growled. My bladder began to pinch. I hopped from foot to foot and yelled for Bear, but he did not come. When I couldn’t hold my pee any longer, I pulled a towel from the shelf and crouched over it. When I was done, I rolled up the wet towel and shoved it into the corner. I was so hungry that I felt sick to my stomach. I sat on the ground and put my head on my knees. I hated the darkness, the heat of the tight space, the gaping silence beyond the door. I felt myself begin to shake, and the shaking grew until I was stomping my feet against the floor.

  I imagined revenge. My father would come home and be horrified to find me in the closet. He would hug me tightly and apologize for leaving me alone. He would cook me an enormous dinner and he wouldn’t give any of it to Bear—in fact, he’d tell Bear he would never eat again unless he started being nice to me. He would make Bear say he was sorry. I would not forgive Bear though. I would make Bear go days without food before I forgave him and allowed him to eat.

  When this fantasy faded, I was left alone again in the small closet. I closed my eyes and imagined the expanse of the ocean. I imagined the salt air filling my chest the way my father had told me it had once filled his, healing him if only for a time. I felt my mother watching me from the cliff. I saw her become a red bird that called to me in a clear song from outside the cottage.

  My head jerked from my knees at the sound, and I realized I had fallen asleep. The ribbon of light around the edge of the doorframe was gone. The inky darkness of the closet caused a new wave of panic to wash over me. What if my father didn’t return that night? Would Bear leave me to sleep in the closet? I reached to try the doorknob and gasped when the door swung open. Pal trotted over to me, shimmying and nipping nervously at my hands. Bear’s bedroom door was open, and the room was empty.

  I hurried across the kitchen and snatched two of the hard-boiled eggs from the bowl my father frequently restocked on the top shelf of the fridge. My hands were shaking. I peeled and ate the eggs so quickly that my teeth crunched against tiny pieces of shell that I couldn’t be bothered to remove. The clock above the sink revealed that it was nearly nine o’clock at night. Except for a single bite of the peanut butter sandwich that Bear had stolen from me, I had not eaten since early that morning. After I finished the eggs, I sat at the table and ate one piece of bread and then another, washing them down with a large glass of water. I wished again that I had hidden the peanut butter.

  I was still sitting at the kitchen table in a sort of daze when headlights swung through the kitchen window. I ran out to the front porch with Pal at my heels to see my father stepping out of his truck. I leaped clear over the porch steps and threw my arms around his waist. He lifted me easily off the ground and hugged me. When I opened my eyes, I saw Bear appear around the corner of the house. He glared at me and shook his head. The sight of him made me involuntarily bite down on the inside of my cheek. I whimpered from the pain and burrowed my face against my father’s neck.

  “What is it, Merrow?” he asked, running his hand down the length of my hair. “Don’t cry. I’m home now.”

  “I bit my cheek,” I said, muffled. I didn’t want to raise my head and see Bear watching me again.

  Dad stroked my hair. “Poor Merrow.” He set me down gently, peeling my arms from his neck. “Don’t you want to know why I went to the airport?” He waved his hand in the direction of the open truck door. “Come meet Amir.”

  The truck seat was too high to see what was on it, so I climbed into the cab. At first, I saw only a big blue coat, puffy and strangely shaped, and so I thought perhaps the coat was called an Amir. But then the coat moved, and the head of a boy appeared. The boy looked like one of the wood sprites in the book of fairy tales that I had borrowed several times from Little Earth before losing it. His hair was black and silky around his long face and narrow chin; his blocky ears reminded me of my father’s wood bookends. His eyes were as dark as the smudges made by rubbing burnt kindling on stone. My skin was brown from the sun, but his was browner.

  He studied me just as I studied him. His eyes were big and serious and searching. I liked him immediately. This wasn’t something that I decided, just a feeling of happiness that rose within me as I looked at him.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Who’s that?” came Bear’s voice, making me start. He stood beside my father with his arms crossed against his chest.

  “Bear, say hello to Amir. He’s going to live with us,” said my father.

  I stared at my father, surprised and excited. But when I turned back to Amir, his big eyes brimmed with quivering tears.

  “Oh no,” I whispered, leaning toward him. I’d never felt a coat like his, as thick as a new pillow below my fingers. “Don’t do that. Don’t cry. Bear won’t like it.” I used a corner of the enormous coat to wipe the boy’s eyes.

  “Amir,” my father said, “this is Merrow.”

  He stared at me and said something that sounded like “Shookdeeyah.”

  I stared right back at him. “Is that a fairy language?” I asked. “Will you teach me?”
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br />   “No, that’s Hindi, isn’t it, Amir?” my father asked, sticking his head into the cab. “Merrow, Amir’s mother’s name was Allison. She was your mother’s best friend when they were both children in New York. But Amir was born in India. He speaks Hindi, and English, too.”

  Amir was still looking at me. “I lived in an orphanage in India,” he said in a quiet but surprisingly clear voice. “When my mother adopted me, she took me to live in New York City. And now my mother has died.”

  My mouth fell open. I wondered how his mother had died, and if it had been his fault. I’d never met another child with a dead mother. And he’d been an orphan! And now he was an orphan again, I realized. I’d never met an orphan, either, but Rei had recently given me Anne of Green Gables and I’d loved it, finishing the entire book in a weekend. I thought that Anne and I would have been best friends if we’d had the chance to meet. It seemed very likely to me that Amir and I would become best friends.

  “You’re joking,” I heard Bear say to my father. “We barely have enough to feed ourselves.”

  “We have plenty,” answered Dad.

  “Plenty! We have plenty of rotten apples and chickenshit. Is that what this kid eats? Because I don’t.”

  “Bear.” My father’s voice was low but held a warning.

  Bear grabbed my arm and pulled me from the cab of the truck. “It’s my turn to see our new brother.”

  His words were so startling that I didn’t yell at the pain of being yanked from the truck. I rubbed my arm and looked up at my father. “Is Amir our new brother?”

  “Well, no, not exactly. But he’s going to live with us. I’m his guardian now. That means I’m going to take care of him the same way that I take care of you.”