Water Ghosts Read online

  I don’t remember; I was little.

  I want to be.

  Jesus Christ, Sofia says. She blows out a long streamer of smoke, affecting glamour.

  I don’t want to live here all my life either. What’s it like?

  It’s like taking a bath.

  Chloe takes off her shoes and hooks them on a branch, unfastens her garters, and unrolls her stockings, leaving them hanging. She hops down, calf-deep in brown-green water.

  Show me what it’s like. She bends and trails her fingers in the water; water rolls by, cool.

  Stop, Chloe.

  Chloe looks up at Sofia and swats her ankle. Sofia, Big-City Sofia, show me what it’s like.

  Sofia flings her cigarette into the river. She pulls off her shoes and drops in next to Chloe. She faces Chloe. The light plays through the leaves and flutters across her face.

  Get down.

  Chloe kneels.

  Chloe Virginia Howell, do you reject Satan and all his empty promises? Then Sofia whispers, You say, I do.

  I do.

  Do you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?

  I do.

  Sofia moves to Chloe’s side, her right hand behind Chloe’s head, her left on Chloe’s breastbone, and slowly pushes Chloe backward.

  You’re going under now, she whispers.

  The water slides over Chloe’s face and she holds her eyes open for as long as she can. Sofia hovers above her, figure distorted by water. Trust seeps from Chloe’s pliant body to Sofia, and Sofia begins to shake, pushes harder.

  She’s losing her breath. Chloe grabs for Sofia and Sofia pulls her up from the ice, back into the warm day. Chloe’s eyes tear from the sting of cold and silt.

  That which is born of the flesh is flesh; you must be born again, Sofia whispers. You’re saved.

  Chloe breathes hard. She climbs onto the branch and looks at Sofia while she twists water from her dress.

  Were you scared?

  No. There is a long pause as Chloe keeps her eyes on Sofia.

  The first revelers begin to line the bank.

  We should go, Chloe says.

  No, Sofia says. Stay here.

  2

  WHEN POPPY APPROACHES Richard on the riverbank, the anxieties of the morning return. Large black hat pulled low across her right eye, she glides up next to him. Heat rises from her heart to her neck and floods up from chin to cheeks. Scents spin off his body, so strong they are almost visible to her—the slick, wax smell of Brylcreem in his hair; the sweat coming through his suit; body scent, unrelieved by soap and cologne, that lingers behind his ears and in the lines of his throat.

  She greets him with a tentative smile.

  He turns his head in his slow and easy way and says hello as if she’s merely a cat rubbing persistently against his legs.

  I didn’t see you this morning.

  I was by.

  You should have stopped in on your way out. She says it lightly.

  I had to get back to the Lucky Fortune.

  Poppy presses her lips together and nods. The sun passes through the trees. everything grows hotter. Prickles of heat rise up Poppy’s back, underneath the cool feel of her silk dress. She places a hand on Richard’s arm to steady herself.

  Are you all right?

  She nods and closes her eyes. The feeling settles and she sorts it out in the pause: a home in China with brick floors and round doorways. Richard’s gaze met by the eyes of a body afloat. She hears his name spoken from the mouth of a teenage girl.

  Richard fans Poppy with his hat: Summer comes with a vengeance; let’s go in the shade.

  Under the shade of an oak, Richard says, I’ll be going home soon. Maybe Chloe mentioned it?

  Poppy says nothing.

  To see my wife.

  Poppy’s head throbs. She watches the unsteady boats bobbing toward some semblance of a starting line, trying to ease their bows straight and even. She asks, Will you come back?

  I don’t think so.

  Richard turns from her to watch the river. A man stands in tentative balance in one boat. He rolls up his shirtsleeves, tosses a toothpick in the water, and shouts something that makes his oarsmen laugh. The conversations around them flatten out as people turn toward the river in anticipation of the starter’s gun. A girl tosses rice into the water to satiate the fish. It’s a talisman against the myth: the dragon boats reenact the lifeboats sent to find the drowned hero-poet, whose body was fed upon by fish. The oarsmen toss paper money into the water now to appease any lurking spirits. The drummers bend around, stretch their torsos, and stuff the dragons’ mouths full of money. on shore, fireworks explode to scare water spirits who might lie in wait.

  The popping of the firecrackers intensifies the ache in Poppy’s head. She presses her fingers to her forehead and tries to rub out the pain.

  You might.

  What? Richard looks at her again. She blushes, ashamed at the relief imparted by his gaze.

  You might come back.

  He turns back to the river as if disappointed by her banality. He says, I’ll leave money for Chloe.

  Chloe can take care of herself.

  At a gunshot, the boats are off. The spectators shout with delight as the oars push through water, fight currents. each boat represents a Delta product. There are the asparagus men, the pear pickers, the tomato laborers. The pear pickers inch in front of the asparagus men, but then, biceps strong from digging, the asparagus men pull ahead. The tomato boat drifts behind. The money offering flutters loose from the dragon’s mouth and melts into the water. The shouting on shore grows to a roar. Suddenly, despite the cheers, all rowing stops and paddles skim the surface of the water. Black clouds roll over the sun and shade the hot June day. All boats are lost, unsure whether to proceed. The river—animals and people and water—falls silent. Poppy, hot and sure she’s in the throes of another vision, this one so strong the whole town engages, faints.

  . . .

  WHEN THE SKY goes dark, Sofia says, It’s going to rain? She steps out from under the tree and holds out her palm. It’s going to rain?

  Chloe does not answer. She watches spinning boats and revelers with heads angled in curiosity and, beyond them, a mist that creeps over the silty water. It bathes the slough in the color of dawn. As the wave of clouds tides in from the range to the west, a bank of fog creeps down the river from the north. It swallows the light and land in its path.

  I said it’s going to rain, Sofia repeats.

  Chloe’s eyes are drawn to the black, black center of the fog, at some pulsating thing trying to birth its way through.

  Sofia, Chloe says, look at the river.

  THE FOG DRIFTS quickly through the still air, carried on an unfelt breeze. The fog obscures the finish line and the rowers have stopped. Their oars skim the water, a smack smack as they bounce over small ripples and slap the surface again. The fog’s dark center laces their blood with reluctance. They try to turn the boats away. But the drummers, their backs to the fog, keep pounding out their rowing rhythms, palms against taut-hide barrel drums. They beat with insistence and wonder, each one dumbfounded at the oarsmen’s apathy.

  Those on the banks, whose attentions have shifted from the boats to the fog, bring their hands to their mouths and noses. It is a gesture of horror propelled by the stink.

  The smell is a prelude. For Richard, it hearkens back to a hot August day fifteen years past: his father’s body laid out in the parlor, puddles of melted ice beneath him. Mourners dressed in white, all windows open, but even the crossbreeze couldn’t undercut the humidity. When the funeralgoers passed by the body with handkerchiefs held up to their noses, Richard shifted, embarrassed.

  For some, the fog steam smells like salmon dead from the effort of spawning, and rotting in the November sun on the banks of a river. For others, it is salt-encrusted heels flecked with sand after a day at the beach. And to some, it is afterbirth boiled into a broth for new mothers.

  Stillness descends. The dragon boats, caught
in a spiraling current, spin in lazy circles. Mothers hunch down beside their children and whisper nonsensical assurances in their ears; men shift their legs in preparation to either fight or flee.

  The dark center breaks through the heaving belly of fog. What spills forth, in a shimmer, is a tattered boat. eighty-four-year-old Cholly Wong finds himself twenty-one again, in october 1865, on the day he helped pull bodies from the water. The Yosemite, a steamer, had just left its dock on the riverside when the boiler exploded. The sky filled with people, wood, and metal. Those in the China hold, the section next to the boiler, bore the brunt of the explosion. The pieces of their bodies were sent first to the river’s bottom before they floated slowly to the surface. They’ve floated again, bodies held down for years now free for burial. Cholly pushes at his sleeves with hands stained with liver spots and braces for the cold water.

  Richard, crouched next to Poppy’s limp body, turns toward the water. The boat carries three women. Badly dressed, but he can still discern curves and long strands of hair falling loose from upsweeps. Runaway prostitutes. Singsong girls, tramps. And a valuable load—it costs over a thousand dollars to smuggle in just one. Richard arches at the thought of conflict—if the boat lands here, someone will inevitably follow. Will it be worth it to be run after with knives and guns? Better to let them drift on to another destination. He presses the back of his hand to Poppy’s forehead and murmurs, Wake up, wake up.

  Behind closed lids, Poppy waits a moment longer, reluctant to be pulled into the silent chaos around her. Behind closed lids, she experiences a different sort of premonition: All she has worked for since her escape—from a man who was to be her husband but became her broker—taken from her, piece by piece, dollar by dollar. The freedom she bought, through slick thighs, and a disease that scarred her womb; the business she built—all gone, taken by a presence whose borders she can’t quite feel out. Let her stay in this moment, deaf to the swirl, for just a heartbeat longer.

  CHLOE CLIMBS PAST Sofia. She cranes her neck, searching through the gray. She climbs higher, steadies her bare feet against bark. emerging finally through the leafy top, she follows the line of the water down toward the fogbank. She sees a tattered craft, and aboard—one, two, three!—goddesses stepped down from heaven. She makes up details to match paintings she has seen: regal backed in black gowns, hair twisted up and held with hand-hammered silver combs, ears that dangle glass baubles. She hears her breath above the lap and slosh of water and is suddenly aware of the heat, the gloriousness of the heat, which has, for eighteen days straight, elicited comments from everyone she passed in the street and through the discomfort made her aware of her skin. She pauses for a moment in the wonder of it, then clambers down the tree again, foot sliding just once, and hears Sofia say, We have to go there.

  THE BOAT DRIFTS closer and closer, gliding past the dragon boats and their gape-jawed rowers. The women’s vague faces grow more defined as the fog recedes. Mirage becomes real. As the boat bobs past the pier, the townspeople pick out the details that mark the women as solid: the tangled hair, the sunburnt and salt-licked skin, the hands that grip the side of the boat and expose knuckles raw and white.

  Cholly Wong, one suspender hanging off a bony shoulder, knees splayed, pushes off the pier with the shout:

  I’ll save you!

  His legs hold a strength surprising in so short and old a man, and he leaps out so far that his head knocks against the side of the boat. The women gasp as the boat rocks and threatens to spill them.

  Cholly falls deeper and deeper into the ice-cold water. He can see only a few inches in front of him. As he aims for the surface, he feels the swoosh of a body diving toward him, a plunge that causes flurries of bottom sand to erupt. Cholly closes his eyes and feels for air, for the breaking of the surface. The light glimmer across the top of the water dims to darkness.

  Cholly reemerges in Manny Chow’s arms and the crowd sounds out the first notes of cheer, until they realize that the old man is limp and water streams from his nostrils. Manny struggles to pull Cholly onto the pier.

  A few women rush forward to drag his wet body into the sun, to give him the dignity of a dry death. Look at them! a little girl cries.

  The women in the boat have now drifted well south of the pier. Manny kicks his way back into the river and grabs on to the back of their boat. He directs it to shore and stops when he hears the grit of sand against the bottom of the boat.

  Though soaked, the water running off his body in icicle streams, Manny helps the women from the boat with a graceful hand. The feeling of solid land against their tender feet makes their knees shake.

  The dark clouds break apart. The fog sinks into the river. Tunnels of sunlight shine through.

  3

  IT WAS A momentary shudder in the weather, but it has passed and again the sun blazes down on the water until the refraction of light, the tiny diamond glitters, causes everyone to squint. Richard swipes his hand along the beads of sweat rolling down Poppy’s flushed face. He fans her with his hat, then holds it so its shadow protects her. In the commotion on the water, no one has noticed her faint, or even now, her limp body on the wood, the splinters snagging her dress.

  She opens her eyes and asks, Did you see it too?

  The boat? Runaway singsong girls.

  You saw them too? I thought I’d dreamed them.

  Richard shakes his head and looks over to the murmuring mass of people who have crowded around Manny and the women. Such naked desire for gossip and tragedy. As if these people were not dressed in their parade-day clothes, but unshod in the dirt paths of a village with nothing else to occupy them. Richard says, I’ll help you home.

  He pulls Poppy to her feet. The flush has not left her cheeks and she looks like a schoolgirl—eyelashes faintly damp, eyes bright and dark in awakening. There’s the patter of feet on the dock and a little girl approaches. She’s hot too, twisting in her too-small dress and scratching at her waist.

  Manny wants you, she says.

  Me? Richard asks.

  She nods. Her eyes dance as if she holds a surprise. I’m coming.

  THE LITTLE GIRL leads the way with a brisk walk that barely refrains from skipping. She tips her head up from side to side to make sure everyone sees who leads Richard. And the people step aside; the crowd splits like the wake of a fast boat. As the trio slices their way through the group, a smell grows, unnameable but distinct. Poppy stays at his arm, her face now pale, and she strains in anticipation of something. Somber faces alongside him, Poppy silent, the little girl proud. even Chloe is there, at the edge of the group with her whole dress damp and her balled-up stockings held in one hand. Their eyes meet for a moment before she looks away. Richard feels as if they are all witnesses to his own funeral. Maybe he is already a ghost.

  But the real ghost stands at the center, next to Manny. A faded, older version of Richard’s wife Ming Wai, whom he has not seen in ten years. She lives in China; this he is sure of, because he sends her money each month, and sometimes a letter as well. She would have no reason to be vengeful and, beyond this, no reason to be here, standing next to Manny, torn-up-looking and smelling like a dead dog. But she has Ming Wai’s light-eating eyes, and her pout, and the woman falls to her knees and says, Husband.

  She is battered, no doubt. Skin the color of a fading bruise, blues pushing through yellow. Her clothes seem to consist wholly of frayed thread; the tears and splits reveal the pale skin beneath. Her small bound feet peek out from under the hem of her pants. The soles of her slippers have split down the middle from the swell of her feet. She holds out her hands before her and they are brown from the sun. A sharp line at her wrist demarcates where the cloth protected her. Her hair falls from her shoulders in snags, knotted like lost nets at the bottom of the sea.

  Husband, she says. Forgive me.

  Ming Wai? he asks. He stiffens at the hope heard in his own voice, the falter in two syllables.

  I’m sorry, she says. I don’t deserve to look at you.
The voice makes sense now. It breaks its way across time and his memory. It is Ming Wai. He has always recalled her singing. While she embroidered, she sang the tale of the Weaving Maiden and ox Herd. Two lovers permitted to marry, then torn apart as punishment for neglecting their work—the shuttle that lay still at the loom and the oxen that trampled the fields. A river of stars separated them, and they were permitted to meet on only one night a year—the seventh day of the seventh lunar month. A flock of birds became a bridge for the two across a wide swath of the night sky.

  Richard looks at the two other women who cling together behind Ming Wai—in just as rough a state and of indecipherable ages—then around at the faces surrounding them—the interested ones who can understand; the more interested ones who can’t. Delicately furrowed brows that ask: Will he claim her as his wife? Does he even know her? or is she a long-lost, jilted lover? Poppy has unlinked herself from him and stepped away.

  Stand up, he says. Ming Wai moves off her knees to wobble on her pus-and-salt-sore feet. Richard casts off to no one specifically: She’s my wife. I’m taking her home. He lets her rest her hand on his arm. Her touch seems unreal, and it’s very light—light as a memory, which, for a moment, Richard is sure it is.

  HE DOESN’T LET her venture beyond the small kitchen and living room area. He’s afraid that beyond that, in the bathroom and bedroom, she will glimpse the life of a bachelor. He seats her at the table that crowds into the kitchen, next to the icebox. He gives her water from the tap; she asks for tea.

  I’d hoped our reunion would be more romantic, she says. She touches her torn clothing.

  Richard turns to the boiling water. Ten years, he says. I don’t understand. I was coming back—didn’t you get my telegram?

  I paid a smuggler. She runs her fingertips over freckles of salt on the tabletop.

  Richard scans her body for signs of violation. She is wind worn, sea worn, sun worn. He realizes he has been breathing cautiously this whole time. As a boy, he’d once come across a dead dog in some tall grass. Flies hummed black around its muzzle as gases wheezed out of the bloated corpse. Richard brings his hand to his nose, looking at his wife and thinking of the dog.