I don’t go home. I go walking down the road, streams of water running down like rivers, and keep walking through the mangroves, rain pelting against the tops of the trees, brown water swirling around my legs and water sloshing to my knees. My boat is right where I left it, floating upright and waiting for me, ready for the journey.
You ain’t got no one to hold you.
Don’t know where I’ll be going now, but I’m going to let the water take me there.
You ain’t got no one to care.
I lie down in my father’s boat and rest my hands over my chest like so, and close my eyes, to listen to the water and the wind, and I think maybe this is really where I belong after all. Nowhere else wants little Caroline Murphy.
Boat starts swaying and rocking to and fro, and the rain hits me hard and cold, so much so the water runs up my nose and stings my eyes and I can’t breathe, so I get scared I might die, and just as I’m gasping and sitting up, I see the boat has been drawn out to the ocean, farther than I even really wanted it to. The waves are swelling with every second, and the black clouds in the sky fall down all around me. I can’t see the lights of the island anymore. My heart is beating fast. I try sticking my arm into the water to paddle back, but I don’t even know which direction to try and go in. I lean over too far and one wave comes and sucks me into the sea.
It’s dark and quiet. Can only hear a beating in my heart. Spots of light shine through the gray water, specks swirling all around me. I can’t see anything. I can’t see the bottom. I try swimming for the top again, but another wave crashes down on me. I try reaching for the boat, but it’s gone in a split second, gone so fast it might as well not even exist at all. My lungs are burning, and if I could cry I would, because my legs and arms are tired from all the kicking. Now I’m going to die. I’m going to die, and I’m going to leave my father behind. He won’t have anyone anymore. Maybe that’s what makes me the saddest of all.
Even light stops shining through, and everything’s so dark that I almost don’t see her. And there’s my woman in black. Waiting for me like she’s been waiting my whole life. Come like she’s ready to take me away now. Nothing I can do about that. I just close my eyes.
I can breathe. My throat feels raw whenever I do, but I still take in one long breath and let it out slowly, savoring the feeling of air in my lungs. There’s yellow light pressing against my eyelids. I open them, and I see I’m in a bed that’s not my own, in a room of white walls and one single window with open curtains and a closed door.
My father is there, but he isn’t looking at me. He’s sitting in a chair with his head resting in his hands, bent over like he’s been that way since the day I left. Maybe I let out air a little differently than before, because something catches his attention. He looks up and stands up, and for a second it looks like he isn’t sure if he wants to cry or hug me or slap me, and maybe it’s possible for him to do all at once, but he doesn’t do any of them, so I tell him that I’m sorry. He nods and pats my hand uncertainly, like he still doesn’t know if he wants to hit me, but then he finally wraps his arms around me and holds me tightly and shakes as he cries like a little boy might cry in his own mother’s arms. His voice rumbles low, like he hasn’t spoken in years, and he tells me never to do that to him again, before asking me if I’m feeling all right, if I need anything at all, and saying that I should never do anything like that ever again.
I tell him I’m fine about a dozen times before he believes me, even though I don’t know if I believe myself. I’m too afraid to ask my father what I think might be the truth. That I might have actually died, and that he’s a figment of my imagination in a personalized heaven. Though maybe it’s a little much to think I’d actually be in heaven.
I decide to tell him the truth. “I went to see my mother.”
“I know,” he says. “I got a phone call from her. She said that you’d found her.”
“You knew she was here.”
He doesn’t answer me. I wish I could be angry at him, the way I know I should feel, but I think I’m just too tired to feel much of anything. My lungs are still burning, my throat raw, and my legs and arms are the sorest they’ve ever been.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He swallows hard. “I didn’t think you’d understand—didn’t want to scare you. She mentioned she told you the truth,” he says. “She tried to hurt herself, and she needed the space, but I … I thought it might be easier to say she’d just left us than to explain everything. I’m sorry. I should’ve told you the truth.”
We sit in quiet for another long while, partly because I have too many thoughts swirling through my head to grasp one and put a voice to it, and partly because my throat still hurts too much anyway.
“How was she?” he asks me.
What sort of question is that? How in the world could I ever answer something like that? “I don’t know,” I tell him. “She seemed
