We drove to the lake in silence. In the glare of the taillights, I could pick out daddy’s truck following behind. I studied my Grandfather, watched his hands on the wheel, the button on his shirt he’d missed, obviously dressing in a hurry. I had nothing left to say to him, so I didn’t. When we got to the water, most of the town was already there, lined up along the lakeside. All the girls were dressed in white, with flowers in their hair. Grandfather opened the door. He hesitated and tugged the rosary down from where it hung on the rearview mirror and placed it around my neck. He walked me to the water and everyone stared in eerie silence. It was as if the people in town moved as one, the closer I looked, all of their chests rising and falling at the same time as they slowly raised their left hands to point at me from the crescent they made around the lakeside. Grandfather turned to momma, who had come up behind us, held up by dad as she cried, grief trying to pull her bones to the ground.
“Please, Lorna. Please don’t make this worse than it needs to be. Wren deserves that at least.”
I saw Tommy and his momma in the crowd. Both were blank-faced and pointing, even when I caught Tommy’s eye. His momma’s wedding ring flashed on her finger, still there even after all these years. I felt a hand slowly slide into my own, knotting our fingers together. I and my mother walked into the lake together. The water was cool around my waist as we stood facing each other, me in my ratty t-shirt and her in her sweatpants. She smiled, bottom lip held fast by her teeth to stop the shaking as the tears kept coming. She held my face in her hands a moment, staring into the green of my eyes we both shared, same as Granny. Same as Lyla. I had none of my daddy’s brown- eyed ways about me, just that strange light green. Momma cradled me a moment in the water and dipped me low.
The lake rushed over my head, cool green and soothing, like fingers running through my hair. I thought I could hear singing, soft and half-drowned sounds about apple trees and murdered lovers. And suddenly I understood everything about everyone in town. It was like the lights turning on after being born in the dark, terrifying and brilliant all at the same time. I knew why Tommy’s daddy swam into the lake. I knew why Jonah drank at home alone on his twin size mattress. I knew why Beth’s parents had divorced when she was small. I knew what the preacher really did on Sunday nights at the strip club in the next town over. I knew why the girl that sat behind me in math had hidden scars all the way up both of her legs from ankle to hipbone. I knew that Lyla had known she was going to die the last time I saw her. I knew every story and addiction and sin from the people that had raised me, the people I’d grown up with, every dirty thing behind every closed door, every unsung act of kindness and salvation, beatings and bruises and love, so much love, all wrapped up in hundreds of heartbeats from my neighbors and friends and the strangers I’d pass on the streets of our town every day.
My head broke the surface of the water and I knew what was really between my legs, that when my momma had felt that first kick in her stomach like all the women in our family she had known what would happen, had felt that low pain in her back teeth that I would be born a girl, green- eyed and raised to be swallowed by the lake. So she and my daddy had made a decision, to raise me safely, to protect me from the thing that kept our town’s blood flowing. I saw my whole life around me as I went under again, every rule they’d made, every passing piece of advice that was carefully constructed to keep my reality intact. A secret my parents had carried around with them for fourteen summers. But you can’t hide from nature.
I felt it then, the thing under the lake, older than anything up on the land, with our fragile bones and thin minds, our Gods and our houses, somewhere deep within the water. I felt it calling me, tugging at my ribs and lungs. I started to wade out into the deeper water, the lake slowly rising up to my ribs. My mother made me when I grew inside her, and as I left my mother behind, I forgave her. I forgave my daddy for not fighting what was inevitable. I forgave my uncles and aunties, the people my little cousins would grow up to be. I forgave my Grandfather for the rage and the grief that had got the better of him. I forgave my Granny for not telling me sooner. I forgave everyone in the whole damn town standing up on the lakeside watching me go, all the terrible and beautiful things they would do and had done throughout their long, little lives. The lake reached up to my jaw and started filling my mouth, cool against my tongue. I felt the trees shift in the dirt, felt the chain-link fences in the backyards swaying, felt the bends in the roads and the fruit as it grew. I felt everything and I knew everything. I heard Lyla’s voice calling me from the other side, through the mist. I imagined her red hair floating on the lake surface, like blood, or strange flowers.
“Swim, Wren. You got to swim.”
And so I did.
