Water Steps (2 page)

Pep got in the shower. “I'll show you.” I closed my eyes as he turned on the water. “Look at me, Kyna.”

I squeezed my eyes tight, so I didn't have to see the water running over his face, near his mouth and nose, crowding up the spaces where breathing air is supposed to go.

Mem hugged me from behind and gave me a nudge with her knees. “Look, Kyna.”

Pep stood in the tub, the water washing over his shoulders, not his face. “See, just a little wetness. A
little cool cleanness.” He rubbed the water over his skin.

“Let's try it,” Mem said, stepping forward, bumping me ahead of her.

“Just my hand!” I screamed, putting it out.

“First your hand,” Mem said.

Shaking, I closed my eyes and put my hand forward, felt the tiny
pat pat
of the water. Rain. Rain leads to storms. Storms drown people at sea! I yanked my hand away and buried my face in Mem's tummy. I'll take hand sanitizer any day. Thank you very much.

“Try again, Kyna,” Pep said. “Just think of it as a little wash up in a very big sink.”

Sink? Huh! No one's ever drowned in a sink.

Rubbing my back, Mem turned me around, then said, “Go on, both hands this time around. Then one foot. Little water steps.”

Water steps. We'd been taking water steps ever since we started visiting Dr. Clark. And sometimes, just sometimes, it made me wish they'd never adopted me.

Mem made me take my first water step when she put a tiny pool of water on the back of my hand and wouldn't let me wipe it off. I was only three years old, but I felt sure it would spread and spread until it drowned me. But Mem did it again the next day, then
the next and the next until I could look straight at that water touching my skin and not panic.

That spring, I had to put my whole hand in a bowl of water. When the water slipped over my skin, I felt sure it could pull me in. Had me gasping for breath in seconds. The leaves started to fall from the trees before I could do it without panting.

The summer before I started school, Mem began to put a glass of water on the table at every meal. Seeing that water just sitting in that glass still as you please set my stomach to sailing on rough seas. That first night, she set it on the far corner, then inched it closer to me each day. Bit by bit, the storm in my stomach lost its steam. When the glass got near enough for me to see the bubbles inside, I had to close my eyes, but I kept the sea calm in my stomach.

One month we worked on me holding the glass until I could stop shaking, then I had to put my lips on the rim. By the time pre-school started, I could take a sip of water without gagging.

In kindergarten, I graduated to wet wash cloth wipe downs. Now I can take a short shower if I keep the door open, but that's not enough for Mem and Pep. They want me to take the next step and live on a lake for a summer. A whole summer. I'd never sleep.
As soon as I close my eyes, I'd see myself drowning.

Drowning is my first memory.

I remember smooth arms cradling me, the whooshing rush of water pressing against me as we sped to the surface, but the darkness took me before we broke into the night air.
To this day, I ache to remember that first breath.

As Mem tells it, she and Pep hid in a cave on the seashore to wait out a terrible storm. The sea had grown angry while they swam by the shore. It whipped and churned like a sheet held in the hands of many frenzied children, snapping it up and down from all sides. The ships at sea were tossed like so many balls thrown on the sheet—my family's boat among them.

The folks around town say my father had been a good seaman who even sailed the treacherous waters of Tierra del Fuego down on the tip of South America—a patch of sea so fierce it'd been sinking boats for hundreds, maybe even thousands of years. Seaman or no seaman, he couldn't navigate that terrible storm off the coast of Maine. The sea had gone to war with the wind. Our boat got caught up
in the battle. They tugged and pulled at the boat. The wind pushed it toward the shore. The sea bashed it into the rocks.

Mem and Pep stood in the cave, holding each other, praying the boat would survive. But it began to sink. Rushing down the rocks, Mem and Pep dove into the angry sea to rescue my family. They could only save me. The sea swallowed my whole family. My mother, who had wax white skin and red hair. My father, who had a gap in his mustache, right below his nose. My brother, Kenny, who wore a berry blue coat when he went to sea. And even my Grandma Bella, who wore a yellow rubber hat like the deep-sea fisherman you see on the package of fish sticks.

I hate fish sticks, but I love the box. It makes me think of Grandma Bella. I don't remember her. I can't. I was just a toddle-about baby when that boat sank. I only know my family from the pictures—all the pictures that Mem and Pep put in frames for me and spread throughout that narrow little house on Larpin Street in Perryville that'd belonged to Grandma Bella.

Mem and Pep did everything they could to keep me close to my family—fight for the house our family lived in with Grandma Bella, use all the furniture my family had lived with before the sea took them, and
hang every last picture of my family they could find. My family was at sea in so many of those pictures, their faces wide with smiles, the sun forcing them to squint. They loved the sea. I hate it.

And no matter how many water steps Mem and Pep force me to take, I'll still hate the sea. Now. Forever. And always. I won't go live on a lake for the summer. I won't.

M
em and Pep had it all rigged. They'd had it rigged for months. I tried to tell them I had to stay home if I ever hoped to take a picture that would earn me a blue ribbon at the Cortland County Fair.

But they had a defense for that one. “They have a Clinton County Fair in Plattsburgh, New York, not twenty minutes from our lake house,” Pep told me.

Mem sweetened the pot with, “We'll even take you to New York City for some great shots in Central Park, if you're up for it.”

But I didn't really even hear her because I couldn't get over Pep calling it “
our
lake house,” like we owned it and it wasn't just a place we rented for the summer.

To make things even worse, they rented our cute little house in Perryville to a family with two hairy, smashed-faced dogs that grunted when they ran. I couldn't stay behind unless I wanted to defend Kippers against grunting dust mops all summer.

Then Hillary told me her parents wanted her to go stay with her grandmother for a month while they taught a class in Mexico. Grandma Homzie lived in a one-bedroom apartment. Hillary slept on the couch. There'd be no room for me.

And no matter how hard I searched, I couldn't find a summer camp that didn't include swimming. Even the Ven Valley Horse Camp had swimming lessons—with your horse!

I had to go live on a lake. A huge, enormous, pool of drowning water.

As we drove to the stupid lake, I tried to draw a map of the one trail Hillary and I had cleared and marked with the posts we'd made ourselves, but Mem and Pep kept telling me silly silkie tales.

They dropped folktales into a conversation like other parents told
when-I-was-your-age
stories. But Mem and Pep's were no Cinderella-type tales. And even though I'd heard them enough to recite them backward, I still listened because I always hoped Mem
and Pep might let something about themselves slip. Other kids heard about the time their parents got caught taking a neighbor's bike for a spin or trying to sneak into an R-rated movie, but the only things I knew about my parents were that Pep tricked Mem into dating him with soggy Chieftains tickets and that they decided to honeymoon in the U.S. because they'd heard about the fabulous beaches, ferries, and islands off the coast of Maine. That vacation had become a permanent move to the U.S. when they adopted me.

But if they missed home, they never showed it by telling me tales of their childhood. No, I had to hear about a goofy mythical creature who could've used a map. Silkie lore. No stories about those lifeguardy creatures would make me feel safer about being near that lake.

“They guide ships through dark waters,” Mem said, her eyes squinting as if she led a ship herself.

“I won't be on a ship in any waters,” I said, petting Kippers.

Pep tapped the steering wheel. “Now Kyna, if you're swimming . . .”

“Swimming!” I sat forward. “I'm never going swimming.”

“Just listen, love.” He smiled into the rearview
mirror at me. “If a swimmer, any swimmer, were to have a bit of trouble in a silkie lake, the silkies would rescue them. You can't drown in a silkie lake.”

“Pft!” I crossed my arms. “What's a silkie doing in an American lake anyway?”

“They're immigrants, like us,” Mem said.

Pep lowered his voice into adventure-story mode, then said, “In a summer so warm folks thought the North Pole might melt, a pod of silkies set to sea. Young adventuresome silkies they were. Wild ones who grew up on stories of the seal folk who guided Leif Erikson on his journey over the great ocean. They swam clear to Canada, right into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Slipping into the St. Lawrence River, most of the pod made their way to the Great Lakes for a bit of a holiday.

“But as the story goes, a young silkie lad named Terin got himself turned around. The water had lost its salt and gone murky green long about twilight. His lungs hurt with that weak, salt-free water. And the sounds didn't travel right, bouncing off rocks and the riverbed. With the water all shallow and filled with tiny rushing currents, he got tangled up in a batch of weeds, misheard the calls from the front of the pod, and went the wrong way down the Richelieu
River. Finding him missing, a few of his kinfolk went hunting, winding their way down rivers and streams.

“Meanwhile, Terin came out in Lake Champlain, a grand, beautiful, clear lake filled with islands to the north and reflecting great gray mountains topped with pine trees to the southwest. But aye, what he loved the best were the rolling green hills to the east. What with the rocky shore and the green hills and the mist of the morning, Terin felt himself at home. And when his aunties and uncles found him there, swimming along the shores, they too had to agree with him. And there they stayed.

“That's how the silkies came to Lake Champlain.”

“Oh yeah? When did the leprechauns show up?” I asked.

“And how would they do that?” Pep asked. “Have you ever seen a rainbow big enough to cross the Atlantic?” He glanced back at me. “Well, have you?”

“No.” I rolled my eyes.

“Well, then, there you have it. They can't get here, now can they?”

“Why not just buy a plane ticket over?”

Mem laughed, “I can see them all standing on each other's shoulders to hand off a wee passport to the customs officer.” She squeaked up her voice, “‘We're
traveling for pleasure, sir. Off to see the rainbows cast by Niagara Falls, sir. See what they've got at the end of them.'”

Mem acted out what she described. “And the big one on the bottom's all red faced and shaking. A minute later, they all tumble to the ground in a screaming pile of buckles and hats, poking out feet and elbows everywhere like some muddled-up hedgehog.”

We all laughed.

“And can you imagine trying to buckle a leprechaun into an airplane seat? One good bout of turbulence and he'd go sailing.” She zoomed her hand through the air. “Probably end up in some lady's handbag.”

All the crazy stories and I almost forgot where we were headed. Then Pep pulled down a long tree-lined road. I could see the tall gray mountains in the distance to the south—craggy like the wrinkled faces of old men with pine tree beards and pointy hats. I feared these were the mountains to the south of Lake Champlain.

“Are we getting close?” I asked, sinking down in my seat.

“Why?” Pep asked. “Are you excited to jump out and see if you can catch sight of a silkie?”

“No. Just planning an escape route.”

Mem frowned at me. “And what if this is meant to be your best summer ever? You're ruining any chance of that with your sour thoughts.”

Best? Try worst. I'd never sleep. They'd expect me to eat slimy fish. And those mop dogs would probably drool, chew, and piddle their way through my attic bedroom back home. I'd be lucky if I'd even survive my eleventh summer of life. I'd certainly never forget it!

W
e came to a gravelly halt in front of a big old house with a stone foundation, wide gray shutters that looked like splintered wood, and large boxy windows in the roof that looked out over the trees like bulging eyes.

Staring at the attic window eyes that faced the lake as I got out of the car, I said, “My bedroom doesn't face the water does it?” I loved my attic bedroom at home, far away from the downstairs bathroom, but I didn't want to be anywhere near a good view of that lake.

“Not at all.” Pep said, lugging a suitcase out of the trunk. “Your bedroom's the back one, right there.” He
pointed to a bay window above the back door.

“Come on, Kippers.” I put the cat down, keeping his leash in my hand, and walked him inside. Kippers liked to think of himself as a dog, so he traveled on a leash and played fetch with superballs.

His leash hook jingled and echoed through the nearly empty rooms. I could even hear his claws clickety clacking on the hardwood floors. I didn't like the silence of the place. It made me feel like an invader.