“Important ideas are often discouraged by lesser people.” She picked at her fingernails, which were rimmed with red dirt. She had started going back into the field, but still looked pale and tired. “You didn’t answer my question.”
“I’m going to swim,” I said. “I’m going to find a trainer and practice and become great.”
“You won’t make it far, Celia.” My mother straightened her sunglasses. “You don’t have it in you.”
“You have no idea what I have.”
“Strangeness is everywhere and everything makes you tired in the end,” she said. “When you figure this out, you’ll be back.”
I asked the hotel owner to arrange a taxi for the morning and then packed my bags. In my room, I counted my money, making sure I had enough for a car and a plane ticket. I planned to show up and wait until I could get a flight to the States, eventually ending up back in New York, where I would look for a job and an apartment near the Atlantic. I couldn’t imagine ever making my way through the lanes of a swimming pool again; I had grown used to the expanse of the ocean, the sensation that I could, at any moment, vanish within it.
When I came out of my room the next day, I found one of my mother’s postcards by the door. A desert was on the front and on the back she had written: what the world will look like when all the water leaves us, along with some statistics on the evaporation of the Aral Sea, formerly the world’s fourth largest lake and once a popular training ground for distance swimmers. I tucked the card into the side pocket of my backpack, next to Daud’s pictures. I did not know what my mother would do after Madagascar — travel to another foreign place and join a different research team or extend her stay in Fort Dauphin, though I was sure she wouldn’t return to New York. She reminded me of a skydiver who’d cut the strings of her own parachute, volatile and doomed.
The taxi was waiting for me outside. The driver was a small man with a white beard. The top of his head barely reached the headrest. I was climbing into the backseat when I saw, in the far distance, a figure moving towards the rainforest. I asked the driver to wait and followed my mother down the road. I wanted a chance to say goodbye, to say the things we might not ever be able to say again. I stayed just close enough to keep her in sight. The sprawl of trees ahead looked bright and endless, an ocean of green. She had to know I was there, had to hear my feet tapping the red dirt, but she never turned around, never spoke a word.
When the driver honked, I stopped walking, as though I had been yanked by an invisible string. I watched until she became dark and slanted, imagining the cries of the Indris swelling, the vines bending underneath her boots; a moment that, over time, became like a scar on my brain — my mother moving down that crimson path, the ancient, knotted trees parting for her like a secret, the tall grass bowing like waves breaking on a beach, before her shadow disappeared into the sea.
acknowledgments
No [wo] man is an island, and so many people have contributed to the existence of these stories, in ways large and small. I am grateful to more people than I can include here; I hope you know who you are.
My gratitude to the editors who first supported these stories: Abdel Shakur, Tracy Truels, and Meghan Savage at The Indiana Review; Jill Myers and Stacey Swann at American Short Fiction; Susan Muaddi Darraj at The Baltimore Review; John Witte at The Northwest Review; the staff of Third Coast; Debra Liese at The Literary Review; Junot Díaz at the Boston Review; Hannah Tinti, Maribeth Batcha, and the rest of the amazing One Story staff; Elissa Bassist, Dave Eggers, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading selection committee; John Kulka, Natalie Danford, and Dani Shapiro of Best New American Voices; Bill Henderson of the Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses series.
Thank you to the communities at Emerson College, Grub Street, Redivider, Ploughshares, West Branch, Memorious, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. A special thank you to Michael Collier, Jennifer Grotz, and Noreen Cargill for the opportunity to learn so much and to make so many unforgettable friends. And a special shout-out to the back office crew: you are all rock stars.
Thank you to all my friends — most especially James Scott, Henry Cheek, Shannon Derby, Matt Salesses, Josh Weil, Benjamin Percy, Bret Anthony Johnston, and Robin Lippincott. You all mean the world to me.
Thank you to every teacher I’ve ever had, in particular Philip Deaver, for helping me get started, and Margot Livesey, for her brilliant instruction and unfailing generosity.
Thank you to Don Lee, for his wisdom and friendship.
Thank you to Connie May Fowler, for her sisterhood.
Thank you to Jacquie Berger, for helping me find my way.
Thank you to Katherine Fausset of Curtis Brown for believing in these stories and for being such a trusted advisor and dedicated advocate — the best any writer could hope for.
Thank you to Dan Wickett, Steven Gillis, Steven Seighman, Keith Taylor, and everyone else at Dzanc Books for their support, faith, and dedication. I will be in your debt always.
Thank you to my family, immediate and extended. My parents, for whom this book is dedicated. My siblings: Egerton, Gladys, Alexander, Alicia, David, and CJ.
My grandmother, Ethel Merritt, who offered solace when it was needed.
And finally, my deepest thanks to Paul Yoon, for being there.