Lemon Reef (38 page)

I must have looked like a turtle on its back when Del arrived. She moved quickly and decisively, handing me her mouthpiece to give me air and unhooking my straps in one motion. In my haste to breathe, I forgot to purge Del's regulator, so when I breathed in, rather than air, my throat flooded with saltwater, and I started to choke. I dropped her regulator and shot out of the bus. I was craving the surface, thinking only about the cramping in my lungs, the dire airlessness seizing me. Del grabbed my ankle and yanked me back, then climbed my body and set her hands firmly on my shoulders. We twirled and rolled from facedown to belly-up while she pushed her regulator into my mouth, purged it herself, and then tightened her hold on me. I sucked in the air, felt her chest pressed against my back, her arms surrounding me. My lungs filled, the pounding in my chest softened. She hugged me from behind until I calmed down, and then she let me go.

At the surface, Del swam in close to me and removed the regulator from her mouth. “You okay?” she asked, as she inflated my BC for me.

“I am now.”

She had retrieved my tank, which she now handed to me, and then she inflated her own BC, so we could float together on our backs like otters. But with the strong current, the trek to shore was still arduous, and by the time I was in water shallow enough to stand, my legs could barely support me. I used what strength I had left to pull myself out of the water, my tank and flippers towing behind me, and then collapsed in the sand at the shoreline. Del fell onto the sand beside me and we sat there, leaning back on our arms, looking out at the ocean.

“You know,” Del's tone was both matter-of-fact and poignant, “you can't just race to the surface like that.”

“I know. I panicked.”

“Especially if you panic. You scared me, Jen.” She said this in a way I took to mean that I had her to consider in any decisions I made now. She was reminding me we belonged to each other. What happened to one, happened to both—our fates inextricably intertwined.

“I should have told you I didn't feel good. I won't dive like that again. Okay?”

She brushed the sand from her fingers and then used those same fingers to sweep the hair from my forehead.

I stared out at the ocean and felt the sadness of the best summer I'd ever had ending. “Do you think that going through hard things really makes you stronger?”

Del laughed once. “I sure hope so.”

*

“It's funny,” I said to Khila. “Everyone thought of me as the athlete. But Del was stronger than me. When she sat on me that day, I wasn't goin' nowhere.”

Khila smiled, her first real smile of the morning, and I had the impression this idea of her mother as strong and competent deeply pleased her.

We were quiet for a few moments and then I asked Khila, “Do you want to tell a story about your mom?”

Khila shook her head to say that she didn't, but she took firm hold of the small gold cross she was wearing on her neck, and I knew it was something her mother had given her.

“I'm going to take your mom's ashes to the reef. Do you want to come?”

“Yes,” she said. “I want to go with my mom.”

Gail was already suited up and sitting on the side of the boat. She waved to me and then flipped backward into the water. I caught a glimpse of the edge of her flippers as they followed her overboard.

I went next.

Under and breathing, the water was clear and cool and carrying me. I let myself sink a little, listened to the sound of my mediated breath, as I waited for Khila to join me. My eyes followed streams of bubbles upward to the surface, where shards of white light marked the barrier between water and air. Khila entered legs first, shattering that light, sending its silvery refractions to the furthest mnemic reaches.

She was beside me now, and I waved for her to follow me. The bus and the surrounding debris lay out below like ancient ruins in a field of autumn. We descended slowly, moving backward in time and space, in defiance of much of what I know to be true about the physics of being human: breath cannot be drawn underwater; life moves toward light; time passes. It occurred to me, then, that none of this has ever held true for my friends or me. We were the lost girls. At fourteen and fifteen, standing at that precipice, overlooking the feminine fate awaiting us, we stepped back, joined hands, formed a circle, and danced.

*

Lemon Reef was once broken concrete slabs and rusting carcasses. Now it presented itself as a sophisticated and nuanced orchestra of light, texture, color, movement, depth. Schools of silver darted and dangled. Lawns of sea grass sprawled, canvassing the ground like a blanket of translucent green. Khila noticed a stingray moving along the sea-grass bed. She tapped me and pointed to it. I showed her an octopus slithering along the coral hedge, its tentacles coordinated like fingers playing a piano. Iron rods jetted from porous coral banks formed around haphazardly strewn concrete masses. Living tubular branches reached hither and yon, directing traffic, breathing the water, filtering the light, tying sprawled concrete to rusting metal. Sponge beds of red, yellow, and blue lined the inner spaces of the broken windows and empty tire hulls of the VW bus toward which we slowly, deliberately made our way.

By 1999, 90 percent of Florida's reefs had lost their living coral cover, and the conditions that were killing the existing reefs made the success of artificially cultivated coral gardens, not yet firmly established, even more precarious. Lemon Reef had, against all odds, thrived. There were more varieties of fish and plants than I had remembered—life everywhere, color booming, danger lurking. It was no longer possible to swim through the VW bus covered with mollusks and urchins and anemones. The sharp-edged door frames had become nestling spots for dual-eyed cowards who crammed into corners at the first hint of invaders and watched from inside their shells. The windows and doors were masses of fiery coral, staghorn branches, and expansive elaborate fans. And within these, crabs scampered, starfish clung, and eels poked. A queen angel reigned majestic over smaller, simpler creatures. She fully expected admiration and deference.

With Khila and Gail beside me, I opened the container and placed Del's remains inside the yellow bus. It was then that I saw it hovering over us like a flying saucer. Its powerful flippers moved like wings as it swam to the surface for a quick breath then angled downward and shot through the water in our direction. It swam past us, close enough for me to feel its wake, then circled around and stilled a few feet away, level with our eyes. Its own were onyx bulbs, set deep in its head like headlights.

Overjoyed, I laughed into my regulator, signaled to Khila that everything was okay, that the turtle wasn't dangerous. She nodded as if to say she already knew that. I moved slowly toward it; it came toward me; we met somewhere in the middle. I was close enough to touch it. Then it moved closer, its beak and eyes growing huge in my mask. I lifted my chest, maneuvered onto my back; it swam over me, our bellies nearly touching. I righted myself, swam over it. Its shell was the color of fall leaves, fading easily into the background of rust and sand and sea grass surrounding us.

We tangled around each other a few more times, front to back, back to front, crossing over and around each other like a Möbius strip. I noticed the cobblestone-shaped markings on its head and the scaly texture of its flippers. It was an odd creature: old and new; a snail, a bird, a snake, a fish; graceful, yet clumsy; extremely vulnerable despite its considerable armor; ill equipped, yet prepared for anything. I fell in love with it, wanted to stay and play with it forever. But it trailed off after a final loop, ribboned once around Khila, and then swam away.

We watched it until it was no longer in sight.

Robin joined the Bold Strokes Books family this year with her debut novel
Lemon Reef
. As a psychologist who also has a law degree, Robin has worked with families experiencing domestic violence in both legal and clinical settings, and she has written numerous articles and chapters for professional books and journals on the subject. In
Lemon Reef
, Robin explores laws that may inadvertently force women to remain in violent relationships, lest they give up their children.
Lemon Reef
is also an exploration of childhood loves and losses, alternative sexualities, and the ways in which class, culture, and gender shape and sometimes limit who we are and what is possible for us.

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