“I need to tell you something,” I say. My voice is not to be trusted.
He shakes his head. Tries to talk, then gives up and shakes it again.
“It’s about Emily,” I say.
“No,” he says, clearing his throat. “You don’t need to tell me… anything.”
“That day… by the river,” I start.
“I know you blame yourself, son.”
He called me son.
“But it wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. Everyone knew that… except you.”
My face is wet.
“And look what it did to you.”
Am I an empty shell because of that day? That precarious minute?
“You’ve been punishing yourself ever since. Pushing everyone away, trying to get yourself killed. Angola, Nigeria, Thailand. And now you’ve finally committed a crime that vindicates your punishments. You’re like a goddamned Kafka character. You’re stuck in your own twisted novel like a fly in amber.”
I blink at him, wanting him to say more and therefore postponing the words that will have to leave my mouth.
“Your mother couldn’t stand it,” he says, “She couldn’t stand your mortality. She told me that when you were born it was like some part of her was cut open, never to heal. Every bruise you had hurt her, every scratch. It was like walking around without skin.”
I have heard this a hundred times. Every time I asked where Mom had gone in the year after she left, I heard this speech. Skinless. She couldn’t stand it, he always said. But I knew it was because she couldn’t stand me. Couldn’t stand the memory of that day, of what I had done.
“That’s not the reason she left,” I whisper, head in hands.
“Of course it is. She told me so. She was so… depressed. She’d go days without changing her clothes, or washing her hair. She wouldn’t talk. Do you remember that? It got to the stage that I didn’t know if she would… survive… her grief. There were warning signs. Extra bottles of pills, Minora blades in the bathroom, sitting in her running car in the middle of the night. That’s why I let her go. She wouldn’t have survived the life she had with us, with me.”
“That day,” I stammer, “At the river. I pushed her under.”
Dad looks at me, not understanding what I am saying. “I pushed Emily under and Mom saw it happen.”
48
A MONUMENT TO LOST CAUSES, REVISITED
It was my idea to swim. I knew that we weren’t allowed to, that it was dangerous. At first Emily said no, she didn’t want to get into trouble. But I jumped in, told her how cool it was and called her a chickenshit. She always hated that. She sat on the bank for a while with pinched lips and watched me while I did tricks for her: backward roll, dead man floating, walking handstand. She crept closer and closer, edging down onto the slippery rocks until, splashless and without a ripple, she was in the water. We laughed at how the cold water made her breathe too fast. Her summer dress floated around her body like a giant lampshade and we giggled at that, too. I tried to teach her how to backward roll but she got a nose full of water the first time and didn’t want to try again. I was always trying to teach her things. She was my baby sister. Then I thought of a new game. We could go to the deeper part, just a few metres away, and dive down for jewels. Whoever got the most jewels would win. We were pirates on a dangerous mission – going to the deeper part would mean that we were just in view of the family holiday house – and if we got caught we’d get a really good thrashing, or not be allowed to go to the beach the next day, or both.
Emily dived down first. I thought I’d give her a head start, her being small, and a girl. I watched her wild underwater kicking as she tried to reach the bottom. She stayed down a bit longer than I thought she would and, just as I was about to worry, her head popped out of the water, grinning and gasping, a stone clasped in her hand. It was a good game and we played for a while, piling up our treasures until the time that Emily didn’t come up. I thought she was playing a joke so pretended not to worry for a while but then it seemed too long, so I went under with open eyes trying to spot her ballooning white dress in the browncloudy water.
I saw her right away, swept a small distance way from me, struggling against some unseen thing, some watery ghost. I swam towards her with every muscle pumping and when I reached her, I went under to find what was holding her down. She was fighting hard for air and managed a lungful every now and then but her head stayed mostly underwater. I went under again and again to see what it was and I flailed around her in the hope of somehow detaching her.
Only then, when the desperation hit, did I think of calling for help. I broke the water and yelled with all my might. I screamed and shouted, but the dry world was still and quiet. Em was slowing down now, not kicking as vigorously as before.
I screamed for help again then ducked under. That time I saw her dress was caught on something: a root or branch, a sharp black arm pulling her under. I grabbed it with both hands, trying to break it, but without being able to touch the river bottom my arms were powerless. I tried to unhook Emily’s dress but she was pulling too hard in the opposite direction. I came up again, gasping for air, with not enough breath in me to yell. The only thing left to do was to push her under and at the same time, unhook her dress. She was pedalling in slow motion then, as if asleep, but when I tried to push her down, further into the water, she woke up and thrashed around, kicking me and scratching my cheek. She was almost low down enough; I could feel the material give somewhat with my right hand. I pushed her harder, deeper, and the dress was released.
A feeling, a golden feeling came over me. Emily would be okay. I brought her to the surface and looked up in triumph. A small white face stared back at me from the faraway house then disappeared into a run. That’s when I noticed that Emily wasn’t breathing. I floated her in my arms, not sure what to do, when there was a yell and a blast of water in my face.
A man I’d never seen before snatched my sister out of my arms and handed her upwards to another man standing on the bank, who laid her on the grass and began beating her chest and breathing into her small blue lips.
The man in the water was as big as a giant. He lifted me with one arm and carried me out of the water. On land, he placed his vast hand on my shoulder as we watched, then he swapped positions with the other man. On land, my heart was sprinting, my legs were riverweed. Eventually they stopped beating her and kissing her. The giant picked her up in her sticky white dress and cradled her in his arms.
I looked up at him, the man like a tree, the image forever burnt into my mind: a Monument. An animal noise made us look over to the other side of the river, where the houses were, and the white face came racing toward us. Mom. Gasping, shaking, all four of us dripped.
We waited for the screams in silence and dread.
49
THE MEMORY OF WATER
“She saw you?” he asks. He is as grey as the room.
I nod. It has been a difficult secret to keep, and at last I am free of it.
“She could only have imagined the worst,” I say.
He sits back. “Yes,” he says, taking a while to grasp the implications.
“Dad, she left because she couldn’t live with what she saw that day. She couldn’t live with a murderer for a son.”
Dad is shaking his head again. “What a waste,” he mutters with clenched teeth, “What a goddamn shame. Why didn’t you tell us?”
“What could I say? At first I didn’t want to get into trouble, I couldn’t imagine being responsible for such a loss, such heartbreak. Then later – I felt like a murderer – I did whatever I could to pretend it never happened. She would be alive today if it weren’t for me.”