Drowning Ruth

  “What happened to that baby?” Ruth said suddenly. She held her fork in the air, a beet slice skewered on the tines.

  No one responded for a moment, as Amanda and Carl decided whether they were relieved or annoyed to be distracted from their argument.

  “What baby?” Rudy asked finally.

  “More tomatoes, Rudy?” Amanda held out the plate.

  “The baby we took to its mother,” Ruth said. “How did it get lost?”

  “A lost baby?” Carl said. “Who loses a baby?”

  “She must be talking about a lamb,” Amanda said.

  “I'm not talking about a lamb. It was a baby and it was crying, so we brought it to its mother.”

  “The stork brings the baby to the mother,” Rudy said.

  “No,” Ruth said, “we did. Aunt Amanda and me.”

  “Aunt Amanda and I,” Amanda corrected.

  “Maybe you read it,” Carl said, “in a book.”

  “That girl, always the book,” Rudy said.

  “This wasn't in a book,” Ruth said. She pushed her beets around her plate, painting with their pink juice.

  “Are you sure?” Amanda said. “Because I know sometimes when I read a story and then I dream about it, when I wake up, I'm not sure what I've read and what I've dreamed and what really happened.”

  Ruth put her elbow on the table, her chin in her hand. She looked over her shoulder at the floor, away from the rest of them. “It was a real baby,” she said sullenly.

  “I remember walking with you when you were just a bitty baby. You must have had colic something terrible, because you cried and cried,” Rudy said.

  Ruth frowned at Rudy. “No, I didn't! I did not cry!”

  Amanda's chair scraped back from the table. She grabbed Ruth by the back of the collar and stood her on her feet. “You apologize to Rudy this instant, Ruth Sapphira Neumann!”

  Ruth hid her face in her hands. “I'm sorry, Rudy. I'm sorry I shouted at you.”

  “That's all right, sweetheart.” He winked at her.

  “Now you go to your room,” Amanda said. She followed Ruth out of the kitchen and watched her climb the stairs. “Ruth,” she said, when the girl reached the top.

  Ruth stopped but didn't look back.

  “I'll save you some pie.”

  Chapter Ten

  Amanda

  “Swim!” the little voice piped just beside my ear. “Swim! Swim!”

  I opened my eyes to see Ruthie standing beside my bed, just as she had every morning for the past two weeks. “Let's go swimming,” she announced and clapped her hands.

  “All right, sweetie. Shh, shh, yes, we'll swim.”

  I pulled her into the bed with me. It was the middle of July now and so hot that even the sheet over my shoulder made me sweat and kept me from falling asleep at night. It seemed I'd closed my eyes only an hour before. “Let's sleep another minute.”

  But Ruthie wouldn't stay still. She bounced on the mattress and wriggled in my arms and the word “swim” burst from her in a whisper every few seconds. Finally I gave up. At least the water would cool us.

  “Be quiet, Ruthie. You'll wake your mother,” I said, struggling to pin up my braid.

  “Shh, shh!” she said, jumping up and down on the bed and clapping her hands again.

  I went to her and held out my arms, and she leaped into them with a final tremendous squeal. I carried her out of the house and down to the water.

  We swam, although you could hardly call what I did in the water swimming, in our nightclothes, since Ruth had no bathing costume and mine wouldn't have fit me even if I'd thought to pack it along.

  We played awhile in the shallows, me sitting on the lake bottom, letting the cool water lap over the tops of my thighs and around my waist, Ruth, squatting, getting her bottom wet but keeping her knees dry. I trailed my arms through the water and patted cool handfuls around my neck. Ruth splashed, wetting us both, thrilled with the sensation of flinging something her fingers couldn't hold and with the sight of the scattering droplets. Then she laid her palms gently on the water, testing the surface tension, before plunging her hands under, where she studied her fingers, which no longer seemed related to the ones she knew in dry air. She grabbed for pretty rocks and laughed when she came up with only a fistful of water, because the stones were so much deeper than they appeared.

  Soon she would wander farther out, and I would have to scramble after her. By the time the water was above my knees, she would almost be swimming. I would support her tight little tummy with my palm, but she hardly needed my help. She kept herself afloat, paddling like a turtle, her neck straining to hold her chin above the water, her feet pumping wildly behind.

  Always at some point she'd scoot away from me. She'd move a little distance and then stop, checking to see if I'd noticed. I'd look away, pretending I didn't see, until she made her way under the willow whose vines hung down to the water.

  “Where's Ruth?” I called. And her laugh would come from the tree. “I wonder where Ruthie could be.” Finally I'd pull back the drapery of leaves and grab her up and we'd struggle through the water to the shore.

  This morning Mathilda was standing in the doorway. I set Ruthie down on the beach, and she went running toward her mother. Mathilda didn't look at her, though. She stared at me as I stood there, my nightgown plastered against my middle.

  When I was fourteen and Mathilda was six, she burst into our room one morning as I was dressing. I had been careful around that time to be sure she was safely downstairs or fast asleep before I changed my clothes, but on that day she caught me. My nightgown was already over my head and my dress was all the way across the room. She stopped in the doorway, her eyes wide.

  “Shut the door!” I said.

  But she just stood there, staring. Slowly, she brought both her hands up to her chest and inscribed two little arcs in the air. She had no words to describe this impossible thing. I was no longer the sister she knew.

  “Amanda,” Mathilda whispered now. That was all.

  It was my turn to catch Ruthie up and hold her tight against me. I needed her to cover my bulging secret.

  The maple leaves were only the size of a child's palm, but the afternoon sun was hot as July. It had been a whole week of the calendar lagging behind the weather, when anyone could tell it was summertime but still school went on interminably, refusing to give up and be done with it.

  Imogene and Ruth, Ray and Louis walked along the sidewalk, not quite together.

  “Step on a crack, break your mother's back,” Louis said.

  Ruth worried. Did it count if your mother was really your aunt? She placed her feet cautiously and was relieved when the sidewalk ended and she could move freely along the edge of the road. Ray and Louis kicked a stone as they went, raising dust.

  “Ach, so much dust,” Imogene said, turning her face away.

  Ray kicked harder then to produce a bigger cloud.

  “We oughta do something,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Louis said. “Let's do something.”

  “We oughta go somewhere.”

  “Yeah, let's go somewhere.” Louis stopped and turned, waiting for Imogene and Ruth to catch up. “Do you wanna go somewheres?”

  “Where?” Imogene asked.

  “I don't know. Somewhere different.”

  Imogene looked at Ruth. “We know a place.”

  Ruth frowned. “No, we can't, Imogene,” she whispered. “My aunt won't like it.”

  “We'll go without you then.” Imogene skipped ahead to join the boys.

  Ruth watched them start down the road together. She was sorry, but she couldn't move from where she stood. She knew she was right.

  Ten steps, eleven, twelve, and then Imogene ran back and grabbed her hand, pulling her forward.

  “Please come, Ruth. I don't want to go without you. Please don't spoil it.”

  And so reluctantly, when they reached the path, Ruth followed them into the woods. The woods were green, but a tender gr
een, and the leaves were not yet massed into dense, impenetrable walls, but barely overlapped each other at the edges to make a lacy, scalloped screen. The stiff branches were sending out new, flexible green shoots, and the dirt path was carpeted with bright little nettles and young poison ivy plants, easily crushed under the children's heavy shoes.

  “We have to take the boat,” Imogene said self-importantly, resting a hand on the gunwale. “We'll get in, and then you boys push it in the water,” she directed.

  They did, and then scrambled aboard, wetting their feet, but it was Ruth who fitted the oars into their locks and began to row. It was her family's boat, after all.

  Then Louis slid onto the seat beside her. “Here, let me do that,” he said. And she let him.

  Zigzagging slightly, they made their way toward the island.

  Imogene had the front seat. “I'll test the water,” she announced, dangling her fingers over the side. “Perfect!

  “You know this island is where Ruth was born,” she said a minute later. “And where her mother drowned. That's why Ruth isn't allowed to go swimming.”

  Ruth scowled. Imogene shouldn't be telling these things. “She didn't drown on the island.”

  Imogene went on, imperturbable. “Well, of course, I didn't mean on the island, but somewhere out here. She might have gone down right here, right in this very spot.” She leaned over the side and stabbed one finger into the water.

  Ruth studied the place. You could stare and stare at the water, but you could never see down more than a few feet. A whole other world could be going on under there and you'd never know it.

  For a time, when Ruth was young, she'd believed that her mother was a sort of mermaid who lived in a house at the bottom of the lake. She liked this idea in the daytime and expanded on it endlessly, giving the Mathilda she knew from photographs a seaweed garden and neighbors, imagining an underwater post office where Mathilda would pick up the stones on which Ruth had scratched messages before she knew how to write. In her sleep, however, this benign vision became a nightmare. She dreamed of hands reaching out of the waves to grab her, pulling her down by the feet, by the arms, by the hair, holding her under until at last she awoke, gasping for breath.

  Ruth blinked now and looked up at Imogene. “No,” she said. “I don't think it was here.”

  “Say,” Louis said, resting on the oars, “where do I go?”

  They were nearly to the island.

  “Go around to the right,” Ruth said. “There's a beach.”

  They pulled the boat up as far as they could on the little spit of sand and wrapped the painter around a sapling for good measure.

  “Hey, let's see the house,” Ray said.

  “It's all boarded up,” Ruth told him.

  Ray ran ahead anyway and pushed on the door. “It's open,” he yelled.

  “You go ahead,” Ruth said from the bottom of the steps. “I'll be down by the water.” And while the other three went inside, she turned and went back to the lake.

  A willow grew so close to the shore there that its tendrils hung over the shallow water, making a sort of house. Ruth, while she wrapped a vine around her hand and hung for a moment or two to see if it would bear her weight, peered beneath the canopy. The water seemed more still and a deeper green under there. The sound the waves made bouncing against the rocks seemed louder, while the noise outside—the other children laughing and talking—was muffled. This was where a mermaid would live, if there were such a thing. Now Ruth knew there wasn't, of course.

  And then, suddenly, the others were back.

  “There's nothing in there,” Ray said. “Just a bunch of furniture and stuff.”

  “I thought it was pretty,” Imogene said loyally. “How come it's open, Ruth? Are you going to move back here?”

  “No, not that I know.”

  “Maybe some tramp's got in there,” Louis suggested.

  “I bet it's a gangster hideout,” Ray said.

  “It is not,” Imogene said. “Don't worry, Ruth.”

  But Ruth, still thinking about the cave beneath the willow, wasn't listening.

  Louis was taking his shoes off. “I'm going in.”

  “Me, too,” Ray said, unbuttoning his shirt.

  The boys stripped down to their short pants and raced each other in, shouting when their feet slipped on the rocks.

  “It ain't cold!” Ray called. “Come on in!”

  Imogene was already wading gingerly, holding the hem of her skirt high. “It is, too, cold, Ray Johnson.” She looked back at Ruth. “My mother says the water's not really warm enough for swimming until July. She'd throw a fit if she knew I even got my toes wet this early.” But she kept on wading, deeper and deeper, until she lost her footing and sat down with a splash. The boys laughed and she laughed with them, pushing her wet hair back from her face. “Well, I'm in now. I guess I might as well swim. Come on, Ruth. Come in with me. It's nice. Really, it is.”

  Louis shot a spray of water from between his teeth. “Yeah, come on, Ruth! Come on in!”

  The others splashed Ruth and shouted, getting louder and louder as they tried to outdo each other, but when she still hung back, shaking her head, they lost interest.

  “Look, I found the dropoff,” Ray said and disappeared.

  “Let me try,” Louis said when Ray's head bobbed up again.

  “Let's see who can swim the farthest underwater,” Imogene said. “I'll judge.”

  Ruth watched them, the willow fronds draped over her shoulders like a cape. “You always liked to hide in the shallow water under the willow tree,” Aunt Mandy had said, night after night, when Ruth was tucked in bed with her eyes closed. She was telling Ruth one of her stories about “the olden days” to put her to sleep. “And your mama and I would call—‘Where's Ruthie? Where's our girl?' And then finally you couldn't stand it anymore. You would laugh and we would find you. We would always find you.” Ruth bent to untie her shoes.

  Slowly, with her eyes on the other three to distract herself and with her hands wrapped tight in willow vines, Ruth inched her feet into the chilly water. Imogene was demonstrating her strokes now, dipping in and out of the blue-green water like a frog.

  Ruth waded tentatively into the lake, reviving the forgotten sensation of cool water on her skin, of rocks slimy with algae beneath her feet, of the sun glinting through droplets on her lashes. Deeper and deeper she went, pushing against the gently resisting waves, ruffling the surface with her palm, bending her knees to feel the water rising tingly and soft around her thighs.

  “Hey, Ruth's coming in!” Louis yelled.

  Ray had been showing Imogene how to hold her nose and turn a somersault. “Hey, Ruth,” he said, “you wanna swim? We'll teach ya. C'mon, it's the easiest thing there is.” All three of them came toward her, pushing steadily forward so that the water made V shapes behind them.

  Where was she? Amanda pulled the edge of the curtain back as if that single inch of fabric could be concealing Ruth as she came up the drive. She should have been home an hour ago, and there were the sheep, practically in the backyard when she'd told Ruth they needed to be herded to the lower meadow that afternoon. Suddenly an idea struck her so hard she nearly staggered. She knew where Ruth was.

  Sure enough, when she reached the lake, the boat was gone. So she would have to use Joe Tully's boat again, she thought grimly, marching along the shoreline around the bend in the bay.

  The Tullys' rowboat was grimy from lack of use and slugs were stuck to the seats, but Amanda wiped it down with a couple hand-fuls of grass and then launched it with one mighty shove. She stepped in so smoothly at the last possible moment that her feet stayed perfectly dry. She rowed hard, until she heard their voices, squawking like gulls fighting over a fish. And then, on the far side of the island, she looked over her shoulder and saw them, one small, dark head sliding along the top of the water, two boys cheering the swimmer on, and Ruth in the lake beside them.

  How many times had she warned Ruth to stay away f
rom the water? At one time or another Carl and Mary Louise and even Joe all had begged her to let them teach Ruth to swim. Then she would be safe, they claimed. Then no one need worry. But that was a foolish hope, as Amanda well knew. Mathilda could swim like a duck and still she'd drowned. Ruth would only be safe from the water if she stayed far from it. And now she was in it, up to her waist, with two boys, their narrow white chests defiantly naked, beside her.

  Ruth heard Amanda's voice before she saw her bearing down on them. “What are you doing?” came the shout, so fierce that Imo-gene heard, though her ears were half under water, stopped swimming, and let her feet touch the bottom. All of them stared at Amanda, too surprised to answer. “What are you doing here?” she yelled again, clearly aiming the question directly at Ruth.

  “I'm … I'm swimming,” Ruth said.

  Amanda heard Mathilda's voice coming from the water beside the girl.

  Imogene laughed. “Well, she's not really swimming yet. But we're teaching her.”

  Amanda heard Mathilda's laugh from the water beside Imogene. She looked from one girl to the other. She looked at the grinning boys. Amanda felt rage, like a wave, begin deep within her gut, and then grow until it filled every artery and vein, until her very eyeballs and fingertips swelled with it. She heard her own voice, as if from a distance, mimicking Ruth's.

  “Swimming,” she said. “I'll teach you to swim!”

  The children stared at her as she began to row stern first toward them. Nearer and nearer she came, with long, powerful strokes that made the water bank along the transom and spill into the boat. First the boys, then Imogene, stepped back and back, and finally turned and ran for the shore. Ruth, though, stood still, waiting.

  Amanda brought the boat right up to the girl in the shallow water, so close that their faces were even, and Ruth could see how tightly her aunt was holding her jaw. She could see the sweat wetting the roots of her hair. She could see the tiny lines, like little cuts, along the top of Amanda's lip.

  “What … ?” was all she managed to say, before Amanda leaned toward her, holding out one hand. Ruth took it.