The Rattled Bones
S.M. Parker
For my sons.
The story of how you walked into my life will always be the greatest story I could ever tell.
BEFORE
My mother had been pacing the lip of the ocean for hours, talking to the Water People the way she did. They tended to visit when the fog rose high, and the fog always rose high when my mother neared the sea.
On the back deck, I leaned against my gram’s chest as we watched my mother patrol the slice of shore where the waves met our backyard. Her long yellow skirt was wet at the bottom, the waterline crawling up the cloth as she walked back and forth and then back again. Her skirt held the brightest glow under the stars, and the light made six-year-old me wonder if my mother carried the moon tucked under her heart.
I didn’t tell Gram how I squinted my eyes to try to see the Water People. I didn’t tell her how much I wanted to run to my mother on nights like this, pull her away from the spell of the people who visited with the mist.
I wanted to talk to the people who lived in the ocean and I wanted to hear the words they spoke in whispers carried on waves. Because then I could tell them to go away, that my mother didn’t need them.
But no one ever heard their voices.
No one but my mother.
I watched her pluck small stones from the band of foamy sea spit, collecting jewels from the deep. My blood ran with excitement, wanting her to come to the deck and show me all the rocks made glossy from the lick of seawater, give them to me like gifts. She’d tell me of their origin and how they were millions of years old, once trampled on by dinosaurs, squeezed by continents of ice. Sometimes we would find broken glass, pieces soft at the edges thanks to time and the rolling current. We would talk about the story of the glass, how a great ship lost an exotic perfume container to the sea, its purple shell shattering into treasure of a different kind.
Then there were the broken bits of potter’s clay my mother would tuck against her breast, as if holding these shards could make the pottery whole again. She told me tales of how the Water People left their pots behind. She knew everything about the Water People, and I was both jealous and frightened.
But my mother never showed me the rocks that day. As I waited, Gram’s body went rigid behind me. It felt as if her heart had stopped, as if she froze still. I wondered if she finally saw the Water People too. But Gram rose too quickly, dumping me from her lap. I knew then that my world was turning over. My gram didn’t bend to me to see if I was okay. She only said one word. Tossed into the ocean, a skipping stone.
No!
Just that one word, but it seemed so loud over the waves, over the breathing of the sea. The small lonely word thumped inside of me, replacing my heartbeat. No. No. No. I didn’t chase after Gram as she darted into the house. I heard the frantic hum of her words spoken into the phone in our kitchen.
I stayed watching my mother hunt for larger rocks to add to the pockets of her long skirt. How my mother bunched the skirt at her waist as the elastic band began to slide at her hips. I could see the weight of the rocks was almost too much to bear. And I watched her walk straight into the waves with all that weight on her body, with so much purpose in her every step. I thought she might go into the sea and bring the Water People back for me.
But it was Gram who brought my mother back. She ran out of our house, across the lawn. Gram dove into the midnight water and drew my mother from the grip of the deep. She wrestled her to shore and rocked her daughter’s wet limbs in the cradle of her own body. My mother curled her long legs so tightly to her chest, as if she wanted them to disappear. My mother still called to the sea from the safety of Gram’s arms, her words wet and distant.
My mother and Gram stayed locked together like that for so long I thought the sun might have enough time to rise, push away the moon. But I couldn’t watch for the sun. I kept my eyes on my mother as she eyed the sea. Knowing, without anyone telling me, that she wanted to be with the Water People more than she wanted to be with me. Fear crept inside of me then, a dark eel slicking through my veins.
After Gram walked my mother to the ambulance, she came to hold me once again, wrapping me close enough to sync our fears. I pressed into the thundering wail of her heartbeat.
I told Gram I would never need the people from the deep.
Gram promised she would never leave me.
I latched tight to her promise.
As the sirens faded in the distance, I burrowed hard against my gram so that no one could climb between us, separate my heart from hers.
CHAPTER ONE
There is no name for what I am.
Boys have their choice of titles—lobsterman, sternman, fisherman—but since I’m a girl, I am none of these. My gender isn’t welcome at sea, which is ridiculous since no one is more tied to the moon and the ocean than a female. But maritime lore has always claimed that a girl on a ship is bad luck, even though nearly every sailor in the history of braving the ocean has named his boat after a girl. Men even invented the mermaid to feel safer at sea.
I’ll always defend my right to fish the water.
But today I don’t want to be here.
I nudge my wrist forward, pressing against the throttle to make the Rilla Brae quicken. My lobster boat—the one Dad named for me—cuts a certain path through the rough, curling Maine water. The morning fog parts as I push against its thickness, the displaced mist twisting into thin gray fingers, beckoning me toward deeper waters.