When We Believed in Mermaids(32)

Josie stood with her arms crossed hard over her chest, glaring at Dylan. “You taught her and not me?”

He settled on the blanket, taking grapes and bread and cheese from the basket she’d carried down. “You weren’t here. Did you sleep in your room?”

She gave a hard, jagged shrug. “I couldn’t find you guys, and it was dark, and I just went to my bed.”

“Hey, hey,” Dylan said, “we didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” He stood on his knees to rub her back. She jerked away violently.

He backed up, hands palm out. “You okay?”

“Fine.” She fell to the blanket, her body sharp, all knees and elbows. “I’m just mad. I want to learn to surf too.”

He watched her for a minute. I sat close, and he wrapped an arm around me. “Eat, kiddo.”

But he didn’t have to tell me twice. My gut felt like an empty, yawning hole, and I chewed as fast as I could. Josie radiated prickly light, most of it directed at me, but I ignored her, feeling my blood swaying in an echo of the waves. I watched them rolling in, little, little, little, big. Little, little, big. Little, little, little, big. Big. Really big.

“It’s fun, Josie,” I said, and something in me was quiet. “You’ll like it.”

“If I’d known there was gonna be lessons, I’d’ve been here.” She almost sounded like she was going to cry. “No one told me.”

Then she did cry. Crumpled over herself, knees sticking out side to side, skinny arms bracing her head, all that long hair scattering over her like a blanket.

“It’s okay, Grasshopper,” Dylan said, patting her head. “We have all day. We’ll all surf, right?”

Josie didn’t raise her head, just stayed where she was, crying softly, Dylan’s hand in her hair.



Decades later, I stand on the beach at Piha, New Zealand, clad in a rented short-sleeve wet suit and holding a rented board, and I think about how much he smoked weed and drank with us. We idolized him then, but as an adult, I’m appalled.

Taking my measure of the waves, I feel the ghosts of Dylan and Josie, eyeing the waves, eyeing the sky with me, all of us quieting as the sea weaves her fingers through our hair. I find myself humming “The Mermaid Song”: “We there did espy a fair pretty maid, With a comb and a glass in her hand, her hand, her hand, With a comb and a glass in her hand.”

It had not been an easy undertaking to get to this beach, but the more trouble I encountered, the more desperate I was to surf, which is often the only way I can think clearly.

Or maybe it’s my drug.

Either way, in the end I hired a driver to drive me the forty kilometers to the west coast of the island, and I rented the board and suit right up the road. Once I got to the shop, they spoke my language, even if it was not always exactly my language, given the accent, and I was golden. The dude running the joint could tell I knew my stuff, and when I asked the right questions, he got me the right equipment. My driver, a chubby Maori woman, bought a hat so she could sit on the beach, happy to sit and watch for the money I paid her to stay so I wouldn’t have to call anyone else when I was finished.

The guy at the shop told me there is a cyclone up north, which is whipping up better waves than would be found ordinarily at this spot at this time of day, and I’m eyeing the line with pleasure. Clusters of waves are rolling in, some up to five or six feet, and it isn’t crowded. I paddle out politely and take my place, lifting my chin as a guy acknowledges me.

One by one, the surfers take their rides, and I see this is not a serious crowd. There are some decent riders in there but only one I’d call an expert, a sturdy, dark woman with hard-braided black hair and a red-striped wet suit. She rides easily, relaxed, until the wave carries her all the way home.

When it’s my turn, the waves have risen to six feet and hold their shape like they’re carved, the wind pushing them to shore. I catch my wave, find my center, and ride. The air is hot, the water cold, the view completely different from my Santa Cruz vistas.

The wave ripples downward, downward, and I slide home to shore, realizing that my mind is completely empty. Exactly what I wanted.

Carrying Dylan and Josie with me, I head back out to the line to meditate some more in the sunshine and the water.



After the earthquake, my mother, Josie, and I lived in Salinas. My father had been killed, the restaurant and our house had been destroyed in the earthquake, and we were flung into a small, cold world, just the three of us. My mother worked in restaurants, all she knew, and stayed out late drinking the rest of the time, leaving Josie and me to our own devices. As ever. But it was worse then. The city was known for gangs, which scared even Josie at first. I don’t know why my mother took us there, honestly. I think about some of her decisions and a lot of them were insane, but Salinas? What possessed her? I would ask her, but she carries enough scars without my adding another one.

The earthquake had caused a lot of damage, so rentals were at a premium. Maybe that was the only place she could find. The only job, the only apartment. It was in a decent neighborhood on the north end of town, but in comparison to the little jewel of our house on its hill with its Spanish touches and views of the wild ocean, it was a cardboard box. Cheerless with bad light and shag carpet left over from the seventies. Josie and I had to share a bedroom, though my mom gave us the master, and I hated sharing with her. She was a slob, her clothes everywhere, her books. She hid her pot all over the room, mostly on my side, and it infuriated me.

She wasn’t there much, though. My mom worked nights, and Josie cruised, riding with this boy or that. She didn’t have a lot of girlfriends. She said the only girlfriend she needed was me, but I knew the real reason was that she’d sleep with a boy on a whim, girlfriend or not, and who’d want that girl around?

I missed my real sister, the one who whispered with me, the one who used to be in my corner, but I couldn’t find a way to reach her. She had disappeared into another life, and I didn’t know how to follow her there.

Did my mother know she was out all the time? I don’t know. That first year, we were all a mess, grieving the loss of everything—everything we’d known, the people we’d loved. In a way, it was smart for my mom to move us away from all that was so familiar. Fresh start. That’s what she said, a fresh start. At first she was a hostess at a high-end steakhouse, the kind that was all the rage in those days. Steak, potatoes, wine served in tiny glasses, flickering “ambient” lights. She was a great hostess, dressed in her wardrobe of sexy dresses left over from everything. She hadn’t been able to save them all, but she’d found a bunch. Plenty for her to make a splash, to make a living.

Sort of. Turned out the hostess gig didn’t pay as well as tending bar. She stepped down in atmosphere at the restaurant to get a bump in cash at the bar.

The one good thing was that the apartment was close to the mall, and we loved the mall. We had a swimming pool, where Josie and my mother could stop hearts by sunbathing and turning their skin mocha. It wasn’t that far to the beach, though we didn’t have a car, of course, so unless we could coax my mom into taking us there, we had to ride the bus. It was fine, just time consuming, and you had to be sure to get the bus back in time, which wasn’t always what you wanted to do.

When we first moved there, I was alone in a way I never had been in my life. Back at Eden, there was always someone around—my sister or Dylan or my mom or dad. Failing that, there were cooks and waitresses and musicians and delivery people. I had Cinder and the cats who lived in a feral colony in the coyote brush.

Cinder had died of old age only a few months before the earthquake. Dylan, Josie, and I had held a teary, earnest funeral for him and scattered his ashes over the ocean, then cried on one another’s shoulders until we had no tears left. He was sixteen, which we told ourselves was 112 in dog years, but it didn’t make it feel better. I’d never known a world without his constant presence, and I mourned him deeply. Our parents had been promising we could get a new puppy, but no one had gotten around to taking us to look for one.

Just as well, as it turned out.

In Salinas, there was only me in that bland apartment. By the time I got home from school, my mom was ready to go or had already left for work. Josie had been a party girl before the earthquake, but she quadrupled that in Salinas. I had a library card and used it whenever I could find a ride, but it was hard to get my mom motivated. Josie and I hung out at the mall sometimes but not often.

So I was alone. I read. And I watched a lot of TV. I probably saw every network TV show on the air during that time. I had to have the noise. I learned to bake while the television in the living room played The Wonder Years, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and my afternoon favorite, the soap opera Santa Barbara, which Josie also used to watch but wouldn’t deign to do anymore. I didn’t care. My life and family had exploded, but everything was the same in the soap, where Eden and Cruz were still living their up-and-down life. I baked. I cooked. I checked out cookbooks from the library and taught myself every technique I could find, making supper for all of us every day. Most of the time, the leftovers went in the trash after I’d had my fill, but I liked having the meals anyway.