Creatures of the Sea

by Ruth E. E. Carr

My Mama likes to talk, a lot. Being around her is sort of like listening to the radio: some programs I like — some I don't. I can pretty much keep coloring or drawing or even making rhymes when she talks about the Tom Fool W.P.A. or the Robber Government or the Shame Of The Cost. I gotta leave, though, when she finally gets around to talking about my Daddy's nose. And how it’s a good thing he broke it when he was a kid and can't smell, what with That Woman having an odor like a long-distance truck driver.           My Daddy used to smell like Lucky Strike cigarettes — I remember. And sing "D-o-o-n't fence me in!" And drink Regal Beer. Once Daddy and Mr. Johnson tried to make beer in our bathtub. We only had that one bathroom. Nobody could take a bath for three days.           Every time I look inside my head at those old pictures, I feel terrible sad. My eyes fill up with water … and itch. Maybe I won't look inside me right now. I'll just look outside — where I'm at.           The new morning sun is making my back warm. Lots warmer than my stomach that's laying on boards number one-hundred-and-twenty-five, and one hundred-and-twenty-six of the Waveland Wharf and Public Pier. I always count the boards. Mama says it’s important to know where you're at and where you're going.           Hope these boards don't dirty my new, pink, two-piece, Sears and Roebuck sun-suit. When I get home, if Mama sees me messed up, she’s gonna pull her eyebrows together and mash her lips into a tiny red line. ''Oh, Mae Lynn, how do you get so dirty so fast?" I hope she’ll be talking to Gran Maw and won’t catch sight of me at all — like usual           I don't like that picture in my head either. Better to go back to thinking on what I was thinking about way before … Now what was it? I have this problem sometimes. I get to thinking about something, then another thought jumps up out of the thing I started with. I go off after that jumped-up idea and forget all about what I had on my mind in the first place. It's sort of like when I bite on a big piece of rock candy and a hunk breaks off and goes rolling away, and I put down the big piece to go look for the little one, then forget where I laid the big piece.           I was thinking about . . . Oh, yeah, mermaids. If I could be a mermaid, I'd have long, yellow hair and pointy busts. I'd be all wet and shiny, so's I could just slide right off this pier and swim out to sea. And I'd know fish language. And all the fishes would swim in a circle around me. And I'd talk to them. And they'd be real quiet. And they'd look at me with big eyes and wave their bodies — soft, so the current wouldn't pull them away.           When I think about all this, my throat gets a lump in it. I just have to stop Wanting Too Much.           Mama always tells me, "You Want Too Much, Mae Lynn. You got to remember, life's not like that. You can't, just sit around mooning and Juneing over some silly poem or drawing pictures. You got to study and learn and make a living in this world. Nobody's going to do it for you . . . ‘specially Some Man!" Then she goes back to mending her favorite Maidenform bra, or mopping, or doing her Work That Came Home From The Office. Like I'd just disappeared before her very eyes, and there wasn’t no more need to look at the empty spot where I used to be.           Sometimes it makes me feel so disappeared that I have to touch myself to know I'm still real. Like this. I reach over and touch my arm, right up above my elbow. The skin feels cool there. And it's white — white as a barnacle.           I look down at the post, right where it goes into the water. There's a whole ring of barnacles. The ripples in the water make their white shells turn to rainbows. I wonder if barnacles have Mamas and Daddies?           "They certainly do," says a voice.           O-o-h, Lordy! Now, I'm in real trouble. I've been talking out loud again . . . and . . . somebody heard me! Mama said-a-hundred-times-if-she-said-it-once, "Never, Never talk to a Stranger, Mae Lynn. A Stranger can be terrible bad and mean."           My face feels all hot. I can't even feel my sun-suit on me. I want to get up and run, but I'm glued to these boards. I can't do nothing but keep staring down at the water. Without moving my head, I try to roll my eyes up in the direction of the voice. I can't look far enough to see anything but water. Besides, doing that makes me dizzy.           I sit up and turn my back to the voice, like I never even heard it to start with. Then I start dusting myself off. When I brush off my arm, I peek sideways behind me.           A Lady in light brown shorts and shirt is standing out in water up to her knees. She's not too far away. While I'm looking, she bends over a box that's floating in front of her. Her big yellow sun hat bobs in the light — up and down, up and down. A daffodil, I think. A water daffodil. I give her a good stare all over. Sure don't look like no Stranger to me. The Lady looks up before I can turn away. Her mouth is moving.           "What?" I say, turning back around to face her.           "I said 'they do have mamas and daddies.' " She just keeps on looking at me. Right in my eyes.           "Who?" I wish my voice would stop coming out of me like I'm stupid or something.           "Barnacles. They do have mamas and daddies. But I think the baby barnacles would be surprised if they knew who their mamas and daddies were."           I'd feel a lot less squirmy if she'd stop looking at me. I'm near 'bout dying to ask why again, but I know I've gone too far already. One more question, and The Lady's hands will go flying up over her head and she'll be saying, "Don't you have anything better to do than sit there asking useless questions?"           So I say, "Oh," and start swinging my legs back and forth over the water. I stop to pick the scab on my knee. I pay real close attention, so's I can get off all the parts that are ready and not pick into the part that'll bleed again.           Without my having anything to do with them, my eyes keep looking back at that yellow daffodil hat. It dips and turns when The Lady bends over the boxes. She's looking in them so hard that little lines crinkle around her eyes.           I want to ask, what's inside? I catch myself though. Children should be seen and not heard. Mama says that . . . a lot.           The Lady walks in the water from box to box, coming closer and closer. Every time she steps, her legs make little water-waves. I watch each tiny wave roll all the way over to my pier. When The Lady's close enough to jump on — if I got a running start — she stands up real straight and puts her hands on her hips. "My name is Beth."           I wait for her to ask "What's your name?" but she don't. It's not nice to stare, so I get busy brushing all the scraped scab off my knee. But I saw her real plain. Her eyes are blue, not dark brown. She don’t have on no lipstick, or any green color on her eyes, or any rouge. Her cheeks are red, though. And her nose. I swing my legs real busy like — so she won't think I'm just sitting here prying into her business.           The Lady's voice starts again. "I think morning is my most favorite time. Everything feels so new." Her laugh purrs out. "Even me." Then she's talking about the sky, blue as a robin’s egg, and how the blazing, sky-candle sun burns into the trees 'til they glow emerald. When she talks about the birds, I catch my breath. She's saying something I didn't think anybody else but me in the whole world ever noticed: that birds start their day with a sleepy, little, one-peep song.           I stop peeling long, skinny splinters out of board number one-hundred-and-twenty-seven, and I see her looking right at me. She keeps talking, moving her arms in soft, wavy motions.           I feel the whole alphabet dancing on my tongue. But what comes out of my mouth ends up being words I hadn't planned on. "My Mama says, if she didn't have to go to work, she'd sleep a month of Sundays." I don't know why I just have to say that, but I do. Then I wish I hadn't, 'cause now I'm remembering how mean I feel when I ask Mama to play Spill the Beans with me or to take me to The Park. What with her having to work all week and only having two days to rest. And her having to have some adult social time sometime, don't she, for Cry Sake. But sometimes I ask anyway. Sometimes she takes me too. To the zoo. And I know I'm glad she lets me walk around all grown-up-like, by myself, while she catches her breath on a bench. So I don't tell her about spilling my popcorn or about how I skint my knee when I slipped off the rail trying to see the bears. She usually don't notice, though. When I come back, most times she's talking to some other grown-up. Or resting her eyes.           The Lady out in the water don’t seem sleepy, though. And if this is her work, she don't even seem to be working very hard. I want to ask her if she has to take naps. But, like usual when I'm with grown-ups, my mouth goes on saying things that don't have nothing to do with what my brain’s been thinking.           "I don't take naps anymore, even on Sunday," I tell The Lady. "I was in second grade last year, and we didn't take naps like the little kids. I had my own desk too. In the middle of the room, second from the front, after Rebecca. That's because Mae Lynn Felton comes after Rebecca Farley."           "Do you like sitting second from the front, Mae Lynn Felton?" The Lady isn't laughing at me. Not even smiling. She's looking at me steady.           "Yes." That's better than letting her know I never even wondered about liking it.           "I want to rest a bit before I check my other boxes." She looks past me down the shore, then back.           I wish she would not keep putting her eyes on me.           "Okay if I sit here with you?"           My tongue lays huge in my mouth, and I just nod my head. I do believe I am going to die of dumbness right here, for Cry Sake. She pretends not to notice. She just puts one foot over the other on the pier's cross beams and climbs up next to me. I wonder how she can get around so good. She's as old as Mama. Maybe even older.           I look all around in my head for something real smart to say. Nothing's there, so I just keep swinging my legs. I'm glad she's looking out at the water. It keeps her eyes off me. The Lady's swinging her legs, too. I think about Gran Maw or even Mama sitting here swinging their legs. That's so funny, I almost laugh out loud. But I don't. I really want to ask what's in those boxes. But I don't do that either.           Finally, The Lady stops swinging her legs and looks my way "You know, I was just thinking. If more people knew how much fun Marine Biologists have, there might be more of us.           "Is that what you are?"           She says, "Yes."           And I don't show how dumb I am by asking, what's a Marine Biologist? But this time it turns out all right. She tells me anyway.           "We get to look at all the wonderful things living in ponds and rivers and oceans. We have the joy of learning about the creatures of the sea."           I hum "Creatures of the Sea" over in my head a few times when The Lady stops talking. I let the words sort of wash back-and-forth inside, all green and mysterious.           I don't ask her, but she starts telling me stories about the Creatures of the Sea. She tells me about the long, skinny sea shrimp who lives in the deepest, darkest depths. He's down so deep that any other fish or even a submarine would be squashed flat if it ever tried to visit him there.           The sun sparkles off the water now, flashes at me as I float on The Lady's voice out to the porpoises. They're calling each other through the waves. Then I float out further, to the mother whale while she carries her new baby on her own back up to the air so it won't drown.           The Lady keeps talking. She's telling so good about all the Creatures of the Sea, that I see them plain in my mind. I see that dark and sneaky, electric eel. And that huge, bumpy-backed, sea turtle — so old he must be a grandfather a hundred times over. And, my favorite, the fairy-like Argonauta, whose dear mothers cradle their tiny Argonauta eggs in their own creamy, see-through shells, to carry them up to the top of the water, where the little eggs can hatch into fairy-babies and swim away.           In my mind, I suddenly see a picture from my Sunday School book. It's Noah bringing the animals into the Ark. Each animal is wonderful — like a Miracle. The Creatures of the Sea must be like that — special Miracles. I feel giddy and bold. "Are those Creatures of the Sea in them boxes?"           The Lady's eyes are blue enough to swim in. "Yes, they are. Would you like to see them? I'm going to check on the ones right down the beach."           "Yes." My heart leaps, and I can hardly breathe. I'm standing up before she is. Even though she walks down the pier swinging her legs long and easy, I almost can't get slow enough to stay even.           It's not like when Mama lets me go shopping with her. Those times she keeps a'holt of my hand real hard. I gotta skip to keep up. One time I didn't. Mama pinched me, and I cried so loud that she couldn't take me with her any more until I could remember to Act Civilized. I'm always scared that one day she'll be pulling me along, and I'll slip from Acting Civilized. I won't be able to stop myself from Wanting Too Much, and I'll just holler, "Wait!" Out loud.           But nobody's holding my hand now.           "Can the Creatures get out?" I just can't hold it back. "From the boxes, I mean." I'm remembering The Train – so I make a point of looking at her face real good.           "No. They'll be there." Her face don't have one trace of a smile.           Not like with The Train. Once when I was only seven, Santa Claus promised me a real electric train. On Christmas Day, I opened the biggest box I ever got. It was so heavy. My heart was singing. When I pulled the top off, there, laying on a pile of old, dirty sticks, was a big piece of white paper with red printing: BAD GIRLS DON'T GET TRAINS. SANTA.           I was melting —slow-like, my blood thumping — when a noise started behind me. I turned around. Mama and Daddy were laughing with wide, pink mouths filled with rows and rows of teeth. I got to keep remembering that they had the real train box in their lap. That was a long time ago — I know. But when I think about it, I still hurt so bad, I got to look to see if my heart ain't bleeding right through my skin.           I look hard at The Lady again. "Cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die?" I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I'm just going to mess up everything. Then I'll never get to see in them boxes. But I can't help it, I gotta ask. "They can't get out?"           "Well, I can't guarantee it. But I can tell you that I have never had that happen yet."           I don't know if I'm mad or glad or what. I decide not to think about it now because we’re on the beach, and The Lady's asking me if I want to run. And we do.           She's running backwards now, laughing out loud. So I run backwards too. We’re side by side, running where the foamy water slides up on the sand. I watch the water wash our footprints away. Like maybe we're invisible or walking on air.           The Lady stops with her hands on her knees, breathing hard and laughing. Bent over like that, her head is even with mine. She turns to look at me. "I liked that." Her yellow hat slides off and swings by the tie under her chin. Her short brown hair is sweaty and smashed flat in places. Her hair's got two grey streaks. One on each side — high up, above her eyebrows. Like those dogs — Huskies. I saw one once. Its face made me think of magic. My insides trembled then too.           Then The Lady's saying, "We're here," and walking out into the water. I wish we would be running again, splashing water so high I can taste the drops on my tongue. But I remember my new, Sears and Roebuck, two-piece sun-suit. I slow down and Act Civilized.           All of a sudden, the box is here, under the water, right in front of me, and I can't catch my breath, and The Lady is pulling on a rope I didn't even see before, and the black box is coming up, real slow, and it's at the top of the water, and waterfalls are pouring down all over it from places where the boards don't come together real good, and I think I ought to kneel or bow or something for the Miracles, the Creatures of the Sea.           The Lady is opening a little door on top of the box. I can tell she could take the whole top off if she wanted to. But I'm glad she's not doing that. I want to holler, "Wait! Stop!" 'cause I don't feel like I'm even ready for the little door. But I don't say nothing. I don't have no more breath.           The Lady is holding the door open, smiling.           The Creatures of the Sea, the Miracles! I’m so scared, my belly's shivery. But I want to see them Creatures real bad, so I make my eyes stay open and look into the dark water inside, moving, splashing. I see blue. Brown. Red streaks flash. So bright, I almost have to pull back. Then the water is slipping away, and the curves and angles are coming together for my eyes to behold. I stare, and the shapes get bigger. I pray that I will not stone-cold faint from pure joy.           And then I see. I see. And I know.           I stumble backward from the box and turn to run. But the world has slowed down. There is no sound. Then I am falling — forever — falling. Water. Gasping. Sand grinds. The scab on my knee, gone. Grains crackle my teeth. Words howl in my head. Stand up! Stand up! Run . . . run . . . run.           The gloomy shadows under the pier don't hide me enough — not nearly. Got to cover my face with my hands. Sand and salt and snot mix up together. I try, but I can't stop these whimper noises from coming out of me.           Then soft. "Mae Lynn?"           She’s followed me!           But it don't matter. Not no more. I raise up my face — to scream — but I strangle, croak. "You lied! You lied! Them weren't Creatures of the Sea in them boxes. Them was just dumb old crabs!" I wish she'd try to touch me. Then I could jerk away.           But she don't touch me. She's just kneeling in front of me. Still. Not moving at all. "Mae Lynn, will you let me tell you about those crabs? Will you listen for just a few minutes?"           I want to say, no, and run. But I don't know no place to run to.           The Lady starts talking slow and even. She's telling me about crabs. "They’re absolutely just about the most mystical of all the Creatures of the Sea."           I tell myself I’m not going to listen, but, in between the jerky, sobby noises, I can't help but hear her plain.           "Mae Lynn, crabs have been living on this earth for longer than you or I could count. Millions and millions of years." She sits down next to me and wraps her arms around her knees. "Crabs are so good at learning that they learned to live better and longer than even the giant dinosaur."           My throat's still making squeaky sounds. But I sort of peek at her out the corners of my eyes.           She keeps her eyes on the water and talks some more. "Do you know, Mae Lynn, crabs have done something no other sea creature has ever done." She smiles — still looking out like she's remembering something sweet and happy. "Crabs have found out how to live in all kinds of places, in all kinds of water. In shallow, little tide pools just on the edge of beaches. And in huge oceans, hundreds of feet deep. And they can live on land, too."           I see her raise her head and close her eyes, like she's praying or something.           The Lady's voice is more silky smooth than ever. "It is very important to always remember that every crab creature has been made very, very extra-ordinary. And that each one has a special place in this world that belongs to that crab creature alone." The Lady rocks back and laughs. "Why, those crabs way in the deep can even make their own light so they can see down there."           I rub my eyelids with the back of my hand. My knuckles are full of sand.           The Lady sticks both her arms out in front of her and wiggles her fingers. "And if one of their legs or claws gets bit off in a fight or gets caught in something, they can grow a new one. Just like that." She snaps her fingers.           I'm wondering, how can they do that? But I can't get the words past my teeth.           "Nobody in the whole world knows how they do that."           Was I talking out loud again? Guess not, 'cause she’s going right on.           "But there's one thing they do, Mae Lynn, that is so lovely and so magical, it takes my breath away."           Like it or not, I am listening hard now. I can tell — I'm holding my breath.           "Every lovely crab creature keeps living and growing inside its tough shell for a long time — until it is ready to be bigger. Then, at its own individual time, a crab creature goes to its changing place. When it gets there, it wiggles and wiggles — until it finally just slips right out of that stiff, battered-up shell . . . 'cause it doesn't need it any more.           The Lady's quiet so long, I think she's finished talking. I look over to see. Her eyes and mouth are smiling. And when her voice starts again, it’s smiling too.           "Then that lovely new crab creature just leaves that useless, old covering behind . . . and swims . . . away." Now, she turns and looks at me. That smile comes right into my eyes, while she talks some more. "After a crab creature comes out, the old shell is so much littler than that new crab is now, that nobody could believe that this wondrous, new creature had ever really been in that tight, little shell at all."           Then we don't talk no more. But we don't have to. I can still hear all those words of hers moving around inside of me — like those tiny dove-shells moving inside a sand dollar. The breeze dries my face and turns the blood on my knee to streaky brown. The shadows from the pier slide sideways until a sunbeam slices through a chink in the boards and sparkles my eye.           Suddenly, The Lady asks if I want to go with her to look for some empty shells that the crab creatures might have left behind on the beach.           "Yes!" I say. And start running backward until my knees begin to tremble.