Ocean

Ocean

Faces peer down at me but they aren’t the faces of my parents. They’re wearing medical masks with wrinkled eyelids, heavy creases. Fluorescent light spackles their eyebrows--monstrous wiry things scurrying over grey spectacles. Voices are telling me things but I don’t hear them. The old man keeps fussing with the plaster around my knees, he’s fidgeting with the metal bar between them. My legs are leaden and everything feels wrong. I’m too heavy. I raise my chest, but I am pulled back down. I try to kick my legs but they won’t move. I try to look away from the faces, but the lights are too bright and hurt my eyes. I shake while the tears slide down my face and pool under my shoulder blades. 

My mother’s face appears, blocks out the lights, and her smile fills up my vision. She places a hand on my heart and another over my forehead. She soothes me with her voice, tells me to stop kicking. I stare into her eyes and stop screaming. My father’s face is a ghost floating in the background, grey and insubstantial. The doctor’s move them both away and my screams return. There’s a metal door opening and closing, sweeping cold air into the room. My mouth tastes metallic. It hurts to keep my eyes open. Sweat drips off my body, making puddles under my back. The plaster hardens. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to stay in this pain body anymore. I think I came to this world too soon. 

I’m wrapped up in a blanket, enveloped in my mother’s arms. My dad is unlocking the station wagon doors and bone white branches dance in the gray sky. 

“He’s too young for all of this,” my mother says. “He’s just a baby.” 

My father looks down at me. There’s dark circles under his blue eyes, and they shine even brighter in the contrast. “He’s stronger than they think.”

My mother holds me in her lap in the back seat of the station wagon. She fidgets with the blanket, tucking it under me over and over again. I am watching the winter skies of Indiana change from white to blue, from blue to grey, and then from grey to white again. My legs are heavy and I want to kick them, but my mother’s got me wrapped up tight. A low wail rises from me, born of frustration and impatience. 

“I have prayer meeting at the church tonight,” my father says. “I can see if one of the women from the choir can sit with you and Luke.”

“You can’t cancel the meeting? Your son needs you.” She’s looking out the window now too. Whispers under her breath, “I need you.”

“Now how would that look if I did that?” he says. “Those folks look up to me. I gave them my word, Rose.”

My mother’s face flushes red. She frowns. 

“You gave me your word when we got married. That should count for something.”

The heat from her breath descends upon me, further stifling me. I start to fuss. 

The front seat is eerily quiet as my mother rocks me. More silence passes between them, and then she says, “I don’t understand why those meetings need to last into the night the way they do. I’ve never heard of a pastor doing such a thing. An hour or two at most is plenty.”

The car takes a sharp right, and Mother and I are pressed against the door. 

Rhinehart! Be careful!” Mother cries. 

The car slows down, feels even again.

My father clears his throat. 

“I told you when I took this job we’d have to make some sacrifices.”

“Well, why am I the only one making them? We’ve only been in Fort Wayne for a few years, Luke hasn’t even turned three yet. He’s got more needs than other babies. And I don’t want any of those judgmental biddies in my house. 

“I’ll make sure we all pray for Luke in meeting tonight.”

“While you’re praying, I’ll be changing diapers and making sure Luke doesn’t break his casts. Not a fair trade-off to me.” My mother wipes her eyes with her hands. A tear splashes onto my cheek.

My father lets out a deep sigh. “I’ll ask everyone to pray for you too.

We are home now. I am trapped in the middle of a bed much larger than I deserve. Quilts fold around me, weighing me down. I stare at the ceiling, wondering if I could rise above it, float away, escape this heaviness. But Mother will be in soon to check on me and I don’t want to upset her. 

Exhaustion overwhelms me, and as I close my eyes, I imagine I’m in the ocean. I’m paddling around quite happily until I begin to sink, the plaster around my legs weighing me down like an anchor. I descend, watching the bubbles rise out of me and rise up and away. Water fills my lungs and it’s easy to surrender to the darkness. There is no panic within me. Just a moment of ceasing to be. Suddenly the heaviness gives way to movement, and I am astonished to feel a slight buoyancy in my body. I look with joy at my legs and see that they have been transformed into a fishtail. Fish swim around me, tickling my skin as they flit past, abruptly turning away when I reach out for them. The water is warm and comforting. I am gliding with seals, sliding up beside dolphins and leaping with them into the air and back into the water. Up and down we go, up and down. I swim powerfully, a mer-boy moving majestically through the dark water towards the light. 

When I wake, I’m lying on the hardwood floor amidst the quilts. There are broken bits of plaster around my legs. My mother puts me back in the bed. She picks up the plaster pieces and there are tears running down her cheeks. She presses the quilts on me and kneels beside the bed, puts her hands together and nods her head. “Dear Lord,” she says. 

The next day my parents take me back to the swinging doors and bright lights and medical masks. This time I hover above my body while it sweats and screams without me. I’ll jump back in when the water dreams can come back. That body doesn’t fit me right and I’m not convinced these men can fix it. The doctors tell my mother that while my feet might become reformed into their proper shape, they say I will spend my life in a wheelchair.

I’m bundled up again, watching the sky through the backseat window of the station wagon. Mother holds me tight. 

“They weren’t very encouraging,” she says. 

But my father doesn’t hear her. His hands double-grip the steering wheel while he thumps his thumbs against it. His voice reverberates throughout the car, off-key, drowning out the gospel music playing on the radio. “Bought by the blood! Bought by the blood! I am bought by the blood of the Lamb!”

“Rhinehart!” she yells. 

My father stops singing and turns down the radio. He looks at my mother through the rearview mirror, raises an eyebrow. 

“I said, the doctors weren’t very encouraging,”

“They don’t know everything.” 

“They’re doctors. It’s their job to know.”

“They’re men of science, not faith. And I know God has a plan for Luke.”

My mother shifts uncomfortably in the back seat.

“Well, I wish He’d clue me in.”

“Don’t worry, Rose,” my father’s says, his voice joyful, almost triumphant. He whistled a short tune. Mother winces. He’s off-key again. She shrugs.

“What are we going to do, Rhinehart?” 

“We’re going to prove the doctors wrong.” 

I’m in the living room, and my father’s holding me with one arm. He’s raising his right hand to God and he’s proclaiming the healing power of Jesus Christ. There are many people gathered around him, heads bowed, arms outstretched, touching him, touching me. There’s chanting all around us. People are saying yes, Lord, please Lord. Some are fevered, crying out in unknown languages. The hands and the voices close in around me. I’m enveloped in a bubble of warmth and fervor. My father’s voice grows louder and the sweat from his forehead splashes down on me as he becomes more animated, more possessed by Spirit. Baptised by salt and determination, I am filled with fear, confusion, anxiety. I cannot slip away. Then it’s over and I am safely tucked in bed, covered in ointment and weighted down with quilts, enveloped in energetic warmth. I sleep. 

In the nights after the doctor visits, when I woke up in the middle of the night thrashing around with the plaster casts on my feet and the metal bar between them, my mother came to me, held me in her arms and sang. She placed a cold washcloth on my forehead, a quilt on top of me, up to my chin. There weren’t always specific words, sometimes just a melody, but the humming distracted me from the heaviness in my feet, the dull ache in my joints. She kept me from breaking the casts again.

Weeks pass and my legs no longer need the casts to straighten them out but my feet still look misshapen. Every morning, my mother holds me upright, helps me walk, stimulates the muscles that restrain me while they are still pliable. Her encouragement is the fire that lights me up, keeps me trying. Every time we practice, she methodically laces up my sandals, but I have to wear them on opposite feet. 

My parents take me to the beach. My father carries me in his arms while he wades into the ocean. The breeze feels like God’s kisses, and the salty air fills me up. I shake with excitement. I am ecstatic to see the water beneath me, more powerful and colorful than the water in the bathtub. It is the water from my dreams that nurtures me. The dark nest of my father’s chest hair, coarse and curly, rubs against my skin. The waves roar as they lick at his legs. I’m wriggling with anticipation. 

My father lowers me into the water up to my waist and immediately I scream as electrical currents lance through my knees and ankles. It’s excruciating. The water saps the heat from my body and I am immobile. My father scoops me back up into his arms and brings me to my mother. She wraps me in a towel. 

My skin is still blue when we drive away in the station wagon. I’m devastated. The ocean never hurts me in my dreams. I would be held, I thought. I would be embraced. But I wasn’t.

~SA