Page 60 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
In the present moment, however, those handful of bright spots feel very far away. They have been left behind with a war-torn city, lost along with a missing father.
Right now, you cannot remember Mami at her best: tired and trying, telling you stories, making you food. In the heat of your anger, she is only stupid, stubborn, old, and pointlessly secretive. Every unfair criticism, harsh word, scolding tongue, contemptuous click, unearned slap, stair-running punishment, bad day, or cranky argument comes tumbling into your brain and you can’t bear to be around her for anotherfuckingminute.
Should have let her meet those ghosts on her own. Why do you keep saving her, anyway? Why do you keep running after her? Youarea stupid chicken, actually, but not for the reason she thinks. You’re stupid for always coming back to her, for trying again.
Anger boils up and yourun. Out of the house, down the overgrown trail toward the beach. Away from her, away from everything.
A grass-choked path unfurls at your feet. The forest sprawls on all sides, filled with birdsong and tree-rustling and wave-roaring. Empty of people, though. Behind you, the house is swift to vanish, its ghosts too slow and heavy to keep up with your flying steps.
The deep sense of isolation strikes you, sinking in all over again. The sensation is freeing, giving your spirit wings and lifting the corners of your mouth into a smile. You start singing out loud, because there are no ghosts or people around to observe an awkward young woman belting out the worst rendition of Bai Hong’s “Spring Wind” on this side of the Pacific.
Skip a little, run a little, walk when tired. Following the half-rotted signage, your feet tracking through the forest and out again, along the sultry curve of coast to a particular sprawl of beach where the water is a reflective sheen and the wind a quiet companion. Sunlight skitters across surf.
Heart swells. Breath catches.
It’s perfect.
Back in the city, you were never far from the shore. Beach trips were an occasional weekend thing, and Baba taught you how to swim years ago, though Mami always stayed stubbornly on shore.
Still, those trips had nothing on this place. Stanley Bay was full of litter, crowded, the sand strip narrow and speckled with crusty rocks. This is a pristine paradise, empty and clean, filling your ears with the raw smash of water.
Suddenly, the only thing you want to do is swim. Mami’s warnings, like Mami’s moods, feel of little consequence. What does she know about anything, anyway? It’s nearly spring, now, with the days already heating up and the water looking inviting. Certainly, it will be safer than going for a dip in August, when the rains come in heavy.
Time to dive. Peel off those sweaty, grimy shirt and trousers, and leap in wearing just camisole and drawers. Why not, no one is around to see. Cool water silks over skin, washing heat and dirt away. The waves are big, crashing over and around, tumbling limbs about. Sand grits under eyelids and fingernails and you surface for air, licking salt from cracked lips. Swarms of little moon jellyfish brush your skin, gentle and quivering as they move with the tides.
Laugh, dip down again. The shore sinks deep quickly out here but it’s clear water, with good visibility. Not too much kelp, either. You swim down a dozen feet, feeling like a deep-sea explorer, and touch the bottom in joyful triumph while avoiding spiny urchins and irritable crabs. Rise again to surface, pushed by natural buoyancy.
It is unholy to be this happy.
Hard to believe that a couple of months ago, your life was so completely, unutterably different: the long drudge of working in a street restaurant, the sluggish surge of city life, the war that threatened like a snarling dog in the corner. The days leading up to Hong Kong’s invasion had narrowed your existence until the hours seemed to fold indistinguishably into one another.
After an hour of swimming and splashing, your limbs grow tired. Time to turn for home and swim back. The beach is a good fifty meters away, and the front crawl back to shore is filled with reluctant weariness.
But as you strike out for shallower water, the current tugs in the opposite direction, its pull noticeably stronger than an hour ago. It doesn’t seem like a problem at first. You’ve swum on the southern side of Hong Kong Island. This is not any different.
Except… it is.
The current here is more of a yank than a tug. The riptide picks up force and urgency. Suddenly the water isn’t a friend but an enemy—dragging you, bewildered and terrified, through churning surf.
The next time you surface, the shore is farther than it was when you started. Tired and alarmed, you strike out for home once again. There are rocks ahead, an outcropping that stretches far into the water. If you can reach it, that will be a reprieve.
Almost, you make it. At the last moment the waves push too hard, dashing your leg against the very barnacle-encrusted refuge you sought. Sharp edges cut unexpectedly into skin. Blood clouds the water and you’re stunned; you didn’t know such harmless shells could do so much hurt. At least from here you’ll be able to climb up, reach the shore—
The next set of waves comes in, sweeping you off the outcropping and farther out to sea. Again.
The funny thing about riptides: they are most dangerous when you swim against them. Let them pull you where they will, and you’re less likely to drown. Resist, and they’ll pummel you into submission.
No one’s ever taught you how to swim in this kind of a current, though. So you strike out for land with increasing panic and get rolled up like a cigarette by those tremendous crashers. Into shore, back out to sea. Into shore, back out to sea. No closer than where you started, fifteen minutes ago.
The next time, that current drags you under and doesn’t let you go. Sand on your tongue, in your throat, up your nose. Salt searing the eyes. Forever and a day underwater and the strangest thing is that you can’t seem to reach the surface, no matter how you try. The current is carrying you even farther and still you’ve not been up for air, the burning in your nose, throat, eyes matched only by the intense fire in your lungs.
It occurs to you with sudden, piercing clarity that you are going to die out here. In love with this place more than anything or anywhere else in your life, and it will be the death of you.
The edges of your vision are going dark and you’re not sure what’s up or down, where the shore is or how to reach the sky, can’t imagine ever breathing again. Everything hurts and you reach both hands out, blindly, without hope or expectation.
Something grasps your wrist.
Fingers, hard and slim. Long nails that press clean edges into your flesh. The shadow of a face you can’t make out with salt-stung, half-closed eyes. A flash of long, dark hair, the streaming tendrils curling like tentacles.
