The Salt God's Daughter (3 page)

“I have a secret,” she said.

“What is it?”

“You'll have to wait. It's a surprise.”

The deeply hidden flaw about me, the one that made my mother leave me and not Dolly, had not been found. But it was irrelevant now. It stopped mattering as soon as my sister reached over and squeezed my hand. We pushed on through the rain, driving against traffic, heading for the ocean, where my mother said no one in their right mind would be going, which meant there would be a place for people like us. No, no, no, I thought.
Y
ou said we wouldn't sleep near the ocean. You promised
.
For years, I dreamed of drowning.

I dug my nails into my palms. I squeezed my eyes shut, but the sound of the ocean filled me and forced my eyes open. As she
pulled off Pacific Coast Highway and onto Ocean Boulevard, I could see the waves spilling over the Long Beach–San Pedro breakwaters, crashing against the coast. I searched for land, grateful for the oncoming curb as we neared the seaside community of Belmont Shore.

We sought refuge at the first place we saw, the Twin Palms Motel, a salmon-colored stucco building right on the sand, flooded in seawater and mud. There was a public parking lot to the right.

The sign out front swung from two thin chains. The black vinyl lettering said FREE AIR CONDITIONING.

The parking lot was a pool, with a few abandoned cars as islands. The first floor had been flooded, forcing a woman in a shiny red raincoat to the second floor to wait for help.

She stood on the balcony, trying to shut a window, the wind catching her short gray curls as she held a green plastic tarp over her head. She waved to us with her free hand. My mother rolled down her window and called out through the rain, begging her for a room.

“We've been evacuated!” the woman called back. “I'm closing up.”

“I have two hungry little girls in my car!” my mother yelled, a statement she repeated whenever she was caught speeding or we needed to be gifted food.

I looked out the window, my knees already shaking. Out of the corner of my eye I spotted something moving, something massive and brown in my peripheral vision. Then it faded. When I looked up again I saw the shadow shuffling across the parking lot. I said nothing, wondering whether I was dreaming. It appeared as a boulder near a parked car. A few seconds later it moved again, but it disappeared under a cloud. No one else saw. I'm not sure why I didn't tell my sister. She would have already been out of the car, perhaps, and a few steps ahead of me. Or maybe I just wanted it all for myself, my quiet rebellion. My silence should have never
been mistaken for compliance or naiveté. It had protected me, at least from those who threatened me. But I was more worried about my mother's rage than about something unknown, something I felt was just as scared as I was.

“Come on, then,” the woman called, her green tarp letting go like a candy wrapper in the wind. “That's no place for those girls. Get out of danger!”

As we bumped against the submerged curb in the parking spot, my mother turned off the ignition and looked over at me. “Ruthie,” she said. “I said I'd never forget you. One day you'll have a daughter of your own and you'll understand why I did all of this.”

 

MANY YEARS LATER, my mother would tell me, after her first week of sobriety, that both Dolly and I had been her first love; that a person could, in fact, have two beginnings. She told me she had doubted it was possible. You never know how little or how much time the heart will take, she said.

I would feel guilty that I'd doubted her. I'd see that perhaps she had been telling the truth about her love for me, and about the moon, too. This made me ache for her.

For years, I would keep my mother's photograph in a frame above her guitar case in my living room in Long Beach. In the photograph she is sitting on our balcony overlooking the Pacific Ocean, playing her guitar and staring up at the moon. Her Farmer's Almanac is open, one page dog-eared at her feet.

It was the only photograph I kept from my old life.

A life before my Naida.

M
Y MOTHER , DIANA , ruled the universe. Steeped in her belief that the full moons were portentous, she liked to sit on the roof of our car at a parking lot, campsite, desert, beach, or wherever we had landed, paging through her annual Farmer's Almanac for clues to our future. She said if I was very good, the full moon would protect me, too.

The small paperback with the yellow cover was a yearly calendar of the heavens, created to help farmers with weather forecasts, those who planted by the moon, and those who lived and worked by the sea. For people like us, who lived free, sometimes under trees, we, too, would do best guided by the moon's calendar, she said. May was the Planting Moon. July's Hay Moon provided extra light to bring in the crops from the fields before the fatigue of nightfall. The Harvest Moon was closest to the autumn equinox. The Hunter's Moon followed, when the fields were cleared and prey could be spotted. My mother believed this could be applied to our lives as well. In January, the Wolf Moon, also called the Hunger Moon, would lead us back to her ex-boyfriend, a farmer she said still wanted her. The Hay Moon in July could appear red and would provide
extra moonlight so we could trash-pick late into the night. The Hunter's Moon would push the sweet flesh of tiny red strawberries into our hands, as if our fingers were white petals. Each full moon had several different names, she said, depending on who named them. She'd mostly use names from the almanac, from people called the Algonquin. But there were other names, those used by the English, or from medieval times or Celtic folks, that could come in handy if she needed to adjust things to fit our lives, she said.

Night after night, my face pressed against the half-opened window of our station wagon. I listened to the warm Santa Anas howling through the canyons and passes, letting dust burn my eyes, settling on my cheeks like embers. My skin burned. Still, I forced my gaze on the full moon, daring it to tell me its stories.

“I know you're afraid of the ocean, Ruthie. The women in our family have fears when they're young. But this teaches them how to become strong. Your fears will go away in time, and you'll be just fine. Besides, we have this,” she said, holding up the almanac. “Truth in books.”

As we cased the dusty Southern California back roads in search of work, my mother's ideas formed a highly charged circuit of intersecting stories of the moon, reports on the weather, her love life of travesties, and tales of deception on
General Hospital
. I grew up figuring that relationships were always like those in the scenes I watched. Didn't people shoot those who threatened their love? Didn't rape victims fall in love with their attackers, as Laura had done with Luke? Weren't love triangles a normal part of life? Wasn't someone always faking her own death, impersonating a twin, having an affair, getting murdered with a paperweight, and then coming back years later with a secret that could ruin everyone?

I pretended to believe this was a good enough plan for us.
This was part of the deal I made with God. As long as we didn't have to sleep near the ocean, I would be okay.

Now, here we were at the Twin Palms, doing the very thing she promised not to. I didn't want to question her. One day, within the thick clusters of waxy bougainvillea, I would hear women's voices rising from the blossoms, and I'd remember.

On nights of the full moon, their chorus would wake me from sleep, wailing, weeping, speaking for me because my own voice was lost.

 

THE COAST OF Long Beach, had been flooded with animals—herons and parrots, stingrays and sharks. Marine animals, like sea turtles, liked the warm waters created by the power plant and had crowded into the harbor and the bay. Dolphins could also be seen there, jumping in the waves. A plethora of fish, sardines and white croaker, made their homes among the pilings of the pier, which had been filled in with concrete to create an artificial reef. At the end of the pier were piranha and stingrays. Sand sharks swam just beyond the harbor. Seals could get lost or caught in the canals. The Long Beach Breakwater, though it had its openings, kept out most of the larger sea mammals, like whales and big sharks, and created a safe haven for mammals like sea lions and seals, and other large fish. Sea lions, in particular, had become strangely assertive in the last few years, leaving the rookery at the southwest end of Catalina Island and crowding the marina and the oil rig platforms. Sometimes they would crawl right up on the docks, especially if they were used to being fed by people. They were noisy and would defecate all over the pier and sometimes the boats, ruining equipment and eating the fishermen's catches. Fishermen struggled with them; in this place, everyone and everything crowded and competed for space and food.

 

THE STORM WAS just getting started.

The Twin Palms' parking lot was just beyond E. Ocean Boulevard. Belmont Shore, developed in the 1920s, had been almost entirely underwater at one time. Developers had built up the land and filled the canals with sand. Bordered by Naples Island and Seal Beach in the south, and Redondo Beach to the north, it was now a thriving beachside community and a popular spot for boaters and beachgoers, with quaint shops, restaurants, and stores on popular Second Street. But the motel was blocks away from all that.

Most days at the motel, it was so quiet that all you heard were the gentle waves lapping at the shoreline and the rustle of branches of the palm trees. Now, there was nothing but rain. My knees shook as I sat in the car, trying not to look at the ocean as the windows vibrated from its roar. My heart pounded and sweat crept up my neck. I pressed my hands over my ears, trying to drown out the noise of the waves crashing against the coast. The latest El Niño, a warming climate pattern, which tended to come on in the winter months once every several years, had formed over the Pacific and caused flooding and heavy rains along the California coast. Though the breakwater kept out the biggest waves, the year Dolly and I were eight and six, the coastal neighborhood of Belmont Shore saw floods.

“What is it, Ruthie?” my mother asked, tucking me under the sleeping bag the night before.

“You didn't say good night last night,” I lied.

“I know you're afraid. I'm here now.”

“You left us alone last night.”

“I'm here now. Don't be silly.”

 

THE TWIN PALMS Motel was a Spanish-style stucco with a red barrel tile roof. The walls outside had been touched up so many times with peach paint that they looked as if there were shadowy blooms, though there was nothing but sand around.
The clay roof had been salted white with sea spray. Outside, the window boxes, painted turquoise to match the front door, were filled with dried cacti atop an inch of sand. The shutters were turquoise, too, and askew. I couldn't take my eyes off the bougainvillea that seemed to be crawling before me.

Cascading from the roof and creeping down around the front door were huge succulent blossoms—the deep purple Brasiliensis, the pale pink Easter Parade and Rosa Preciosa; the brilliant pink Temple Fire, Texas King, and La Joya; the deep red Mahara Magic; the orange petals of Rosenka; and the yellow of California Gold and Golden Glow, all of which I would learn to identify from a tattered magazine,
Ocean's Green Thumb
, which I found in the bookshelf of the motel lobby, and which Dr. Brownstein, the owner, had slipped into the front seat of my mother's station wagon as a gift.

“No, Mom, we can't stay,” Dolly whispered on my behalf.

“Now, Ruthie, I know you're afraid, but we don't have a choice.”

Seagulls cried out from hunger, circling the parking lot in search of food, making noises that sounded like a baby's cry.

Inside room 21, Dolly and I slipped under the covers with my mother and agreed to wait out the storm. As I watched my mother sleeping, I felt no anger; rather, I felt its absence. I told myself that there were gnomes outside, guarding our door, protecting us from the huge ocean waves and whatever else it was that had been out there, and now, I was sure, was trying to get in.

 

WHEN I WOKE up a few hours later, all was still. I noticed the framed painting of two large palms on the wall above our soft queen-size bed. Two lamps with tissue-thin shades stood atop worn wooden night tables. The bathroom was clean, and tiled pink, with a white claw-foot tub and a fresh stack of white washcloths on the vanity. I imagined sinking into that tub,
picturing bubbles on my kneecaps like two islands, just like the Calgon lady in the commercials.

Our bodies were warm against my mother's naked body, with Dolly and me on either side of her, pretending to be asleep, recalling how the wind had shaken the windows behind thick green drapes. Appreciative of such a large bed, I pulled the palm tree–patterned comforter over my head. I rarely felt this close to my mother. All I wanted was the sound of her breathing to disguise the waves. I tried to make friends with the ocean. I closed my eyes and imagined the waves leaping up into a burning hillside, covering it with water and putting out the fire. I felt intoxicated by the smells: the musty traps of the drapes mixed with Chanel No. 5 perfume from a former guest; the dampness of the gray carpet beneath our feet mixed with the scent of laundry soap; and fresh-pressed linens.

I told Dolly I was happy to be here. “You're adopted,” she said in a loud whisper, propping herself up on her elbows. “This place is a dump.”

“I like it here,” I whispered over my mother's back.

“It's so obvious we have different fathers,” she said. “I look like Mom, you look Irish, like the milkman.” She had been named Dalia, after our mother's grandfather Daniel. My great-grandmother Ruth was my namesake.