A reading from Losing Amber-Lee
Silence, deep as an underwater tomb.
Water - the Blood of the Earth; it enters through my nose, my ears, my mouth. Bleeding into me.
Silence, deep as the womb.
Weightless.
Warm.
Silence.
I drift downward, backward through time.
The sun dashes its light upon my blue world, piercing its undulating surface; it careens downward off the walls in shadows and shafts of twisting spinning light. The surface remains still. Breathing is suspended. There are pressures on every inch of my skin. Gently I come to rest upon the solid floor.
Time passes.
A body explodes through the surface in a pocket of air bubbles and splintering light; the dull displacement of sound pats upon the membranes of my ears. Another explosion. And still another. Now come toy boats and balls and floats tearing through the skin of my world, only to bob like corks back upward toward the sun. Then come the children, to cavort and splash and play, and muffled-shriek the day away.
And then they are all gone, and I am left to my stillness
In the corner on the bottom
To my stillness
to the blue
to the dying cobalt blue.
Airless.
Weightless.
Soft skin upon concrete cold.
The sun arcs its way west; it pushes the dark shadow of the house across the surface of my world-without-air like a blanket drawn tight for the night. My world grows dim, then dark, then black. Utter silence; save the murmur and gurgle of the pumps, like a human heart thrusting thin blue blood.
Underwater-time passes slowly.
Slowly.
Bright lights burst from above, drenching the darkness in white. Spotlights, their alien beams sweeping. There is no air, no time, yet somehow I know it is midnight.
A shadow stretches stretches strrrretches across the surface. I look upward from my underwater home. An exaggerated human form; it curves around the shallow end and I can see her now, see her carrying the bundle clasped close to her shoulder, remembering the mother clasping Amber-Lee to her breast, that elder version of this younger Elena Alvarado. Her shape is distorted by the shifting surface, by the undulating blue, by the stark and probing lights. Yet I can see her, feel her, know her as she bounces this bundle of baby; and I can feel this baby's crying; feel it deep down here with my water-muffled ears.
Elena paces. Her light-refracted shadow slides past me, from the wall to the floor to the wall; her shadow passes over me, passes through me. The baby bounces. My heartbeat matches the pumps, then thunders beyond the beat of the pumps. Upon her shoulder the baby bounces, bounces. Then another figure appears behind her. It is tall, menacing, its arms extended – a Nosferatu. There is movement, a struggle, their silhouettes merging, then careening apart. And Elena Alvarado turns as if to run... and the bundle of baby slips... and the baby falls... and the baby spills naked from the blanket, her tiny shadow cast upon my waters.
A fragile skull meets the concrete skirt. This meeting of baby bone and man-made stone, it is a sound so irrevocable, it cleaves this submerged man's world into two.
My mind does not comprehend. My heart no longer beats, for now this baby has exploded through the surface of my world, and its blood is blending with the Blood of the Earth as it ever-so-gently tumbles and turns like a leaf falling softly through thickened blue air.
Trailing blood like shark bait tumbling; now comes the lifeless little form, drifting drifting down, closer, tumbling closer. And quietly, and ever-so-gently, bumps upon my chest.
And into my arms, I enfold the other Amber-Lee.
I burst through the surface, sucking clean fresh air into my emptied aching lungs. Celia Whitman is standing there at the edge of the pool with a towel, a look of astonishment on her face that says, I cannot believe this I hardly know you You are in my pool I trust you.
I tug at her husband's bathing suit. I drag air into my chest. I am suffocating with Amber-Lee's grief, with the truth that, even now, she does not know.
To save me from drowning, I will need more than all this air to breathe.