Born of Water

Mom?” I spluttered around my toothpaste foam as I stood in our living room in my pjs with my toothbrush in hand. The morning news was on and beside the anchor’s heavily make-upped face was a photograph of movie-star Rachel Montgomery partying on the deck of a yacht with her entourage.

I was getting ready for the last day of the school year when I heard the words “storm,” “yacht,” and “rescue,” come from the television.

During the week, we always kept our small screen TV tuned to the news in the mornings. Most of the time I ignored it, but not when there was news like this.

“When we return,” the anchor was saying, “more details on Miss Montgomery’s hair-raising rescue from our own Devil’s Eye Cove.” Then it cut to commercial.

“What is it, Targa?” I heard mom through the screen door as she replied from the driveway where she was loading up her work truck.

“There’s been a wreck!” I managed to get out before toothpaste suds dribbled down my chin. I ran into the kitchen, spat in the sink, and grabbed a towel to clean my face. It took me no time at all to get from the living room to our kitchen because they were the same room, the only division was a small kitchen island.

We live in a renovated trailer. Since my dad passed away when I was eight – which was almost nine years ago now – our quality of life has backslid. Mom didn’t work at that time so we could no longer afford to stay in the two-storey we had in the suburbs. We had downsized to a doublewide located in the trailer park at the edge of Saltford, the small Canadian east coast city where we live.

The trailer park is pretty, as trailer parks go. The residents care for their properties and small gardens as though they’re Italian villas. ‘Trailers don’t have to be trashy,’ is the unofficial community motto. If I’m really honest, mom and I are the worst residents in the park if property beauty is the measuring stick. Our place is nearly the very definition of a trashy trailer. We have no garden or even so much as a geranium in a flowerpot. We have gravel instead of a lawn and the concrete steps leading up to our front door have a menacing crack right down the middle.

Don’t think that we’re destitute though, my mom works her ass off to make sure that I have whatever I need. But the state of our home has never been a priority for her.

As the commercials played in the background, I rinsed our stovetop espresso maker out in the sink. I lifted the lid on the overflowing compost bucket under the sink to dump the old grounds when the lid snapped off its hinges and the bucket shook. Slimy onion skin and rotting orange peel splatted onto the ground and on top of my bare foot. I sighed and held my breath as I picked up the stinking mess and took the bucket outside to dump it.

It’s my job to make note of anything that requires maintenance. My mom spends too much time working to worry about the house. According to her, as long as we are warm in the winter and have electricity and running water, we live like royalty.

My mom Mira MacAuley is the opposite of materialistic. She’s so far in the other direction that she can’t relate to people who spend their time investing in art for their houses, thousand-count cotton sheets, or a nice vehicle. She doesn’t judge people for their choices, she’s just bored out of her mind to find herself in conversations revolving around these things and consequently has a tough time making and keeping friends. Not that she cares. Sometimes, I think I’m the only person in the whole world who matters to her at all. She cares about my friends, but only because I care about them. If someone is important to me then they’re important to her, too.

I brought back the empty bucket, rinsed it out and put it back under the sink before continuing to make the espresso. I put fresh coffee grounds in the reservoir and twisted the top and bottom together. I lit our sixty year-old gas stove with a match and set the espresso maker over the blue flame.

I looked out the front window and saw that mom was just about finished loading her gear into her work truck. The boxes of diving equipment that she lugged around were just part of the many props she needed to keep the illusion for her job intact. They were also the bane of her life.

Every black box was stamped with the words BLUEJACKET UNDERWATER RECOVERY & SALVAGE. The same was written on the side of her truck that Simon, her boss, had given to her as part of her new contract. The vehicle was a perk that no other employee had and is a testament to her value. The ironic thing is that of all of the Bluejacket employees, my mom needed the truck the least.

I smiled as she threw the last box in the back and the whole truck shook as it landed with a thump. That box must have contained the diving weights. She slammed the hatch and looked up with her crystal blue eyes to see me watching her. She gave me a sheepish grin. I shook my head at her.

The espresso was bubbling and as I went back to the stove to pour it I felt a wave of sadness wash over me. I know how much she hates the facade she has to present to the world, and I also know she does it because she loves me.

Sprinting up the drive and taking the porch steps in a single bound, she came into the house. She closed the door behind her with too much force and I winced as the house shook. My mother is stronger than anyone I know and she shows our property the same disdain she shows her useless diving equipment.

“Really, mom?” I said as I held out her java, “tens of thousands of dollars in company equipment that Simon has entrusted to your care and you treat it like it’s a wrecking ball.”

“Was there a question in there?” she said before shooting her espresso like it was whiskey. She handed back the empty cup. “Did you say there’s been a wreck?” she asked, her eyes bright.

I jerked my chin towards the television screen as I took her cup back to the kitchen sink and rinsed it. The news jingle announced that commercials were over and the report was about to continue. We both watched, me from the small kitchen island and mom from our tiny entry way.

“A-list actress Rachel Montgomery and her entourage were sailing a sport yacht off the coast yesterday when they became caught in high winds and thirty foot waves,” the news anchor was saying. “The yacht struck rocks and was wrecked on Devil’s Eye, like so many boats before it.” The anchor was supposed to be impartial, but he was also a local and clearly of the opinion that Rachel Montgomery and her friends had been galactically stupid.

Devil’s Eye Cove is a big bay encircled by jagged rock formations. It’s less than five miles from Saltford beach, the main beach that all the tourists flock to in the summertime. The Cove is infamous for its powerful currents, huge waves, and sudden storms. The shape of the cove on a map looks like an angry eye, earning it its official name. As if Devil’s Eye wasn’t sinister enough, the combination of violent waves crashing on jagged rocks had also earned the cove the nick name The Boneyard. Of course, only the locals call it that.

Not a summer has gone by that I don’t remember some unfortunate tourist getting into trouble there. They were drawn by the rugged beauty and the privacy it offered. Locals know better so they never go out to the Cove. But in spite of the warnings the city of Saltford has peppered their tourist information with, tourists still go.

“Idiots,” my mom muttered under her breath. While she watched the report, she raked her long black hair back from her face and up into a mess of a ponytail. She grabbed a full bottle of water from the multipack on the floor near the door and chugged the whole thing in one go. My mother drinks more water than a racehorse.

“No one was seriously injured,” the anchor concluded. “But the yacht was completely destroyed and everything on board was lost. Authorities continue to warn the public to stay away from Devil’s Eye Cove…”

The reporter’s voice was drowned out when mom’s cell phone rang. She snapped open her ancient flip phone with the same fluid grace she did everything. She wouldn’t update her phone until the day it died. I was already impressed with how long it had lasted considering the abuse it endured.

“Mira here,” she answered in her silvery voice.

I listened to the one-sided conversation as I finished bagging my lunch. It wasn’t hard to fill in the gaps — I knew it was Simon. He is the entrepreneur who started Bluejacket and my mom is his star diver. Just like the rest of the team, he has no clue what the real secret to their success is.

I went back to my bedroom to finish getting dressed and run a brush through my hair. I kept my ears tuned in to what she was saying. There was little to no privacy in our tiny trailer and the sound of her voice traveled easily through my open door.

“Yeah, I just saw it on TV,” she was saying. “They’ve already called? That was fast. Must be valuable stuff. It’s Devil’s Eye… is Davis on it? You know he won’t give it a pass,” she scoffed. “Yeah, ok. I’ll be there in 10.”

I frowned as I pulled on my jeans. The Bluejacket office was down in the harbour, a 20-minute drive away. I had given up on trying to prevent my mother from speeding. She speeds every time she gets behind the wheel and she’s been stopped dozens of times. Has she ever been slapped with a ticket? Nope. She turns on that siren voice and charms her way out of it every time.

My own phone chirped and I picked it out of the front pocket of my backpack to see that it was Saxony sending an audio text to our group of friends – Saxony Cagney, Georjayna Sutherland, and Akiko Susumu.

I pressed the play button on the message and Saxony’s voice rang out from my phone, sounding exactly like the vivacious redhead she is. “Last daaaaaaaay! Last day, last day, last day! No more pencils, no more books…,” her message stopped there. As I was about to record the rest of the rhyme, my phone chirped again and I saw that Georjayna had beat me to it.

“No more teachers dirty looks,” her smoky voice concluded.

My phone dinged again and there was a text message from Akiko.

I think I’m having a panic attack.

She was kidding, of course. Akiko adores school and mourns the end of it every year as though a beloved pet had died. She’s also the last person of the four of us to ever have a panic attack. I don’t think Akiko’s heart rate ever changes, even between sleeping and sprinting, she’s the proverbial cool cucumber. Saxony wrote back as quick as a flash.

Really? I’m having a hot dog and it’s delicious.

Georjayna: For breakfast? Gross.

Out in the kitchen, I heard my mom zip her bag closed. “Gotta go, sunshine!” she called.

“Yeah, I heard.” I came out of my room dressed in jeans and my favourite t-shirt, a black off-the-shoulder with the number 89 emblazoned on the front. I left my long brunette hair down in loose waves. “I guess you’re going to go out to The Boneyard tonight after work?”

This was my mother’s secret and the main reason she was so busy. During the day she played the professional salvage diver but at night was when she did all the real work, completely alone and in dark and usually dangerous waters.

Her eyes sparkled, “Yeah, do you mind?”

“No, mom. What are you after this time?” I perched on the edge of our faded pistachio-coloured sofa and pulled on my socks.

“Heirloom jewelry. I guess Rachel’s manager has already called us to ask about salvage possibilities,” she answered, kicking my running shoes over to me.

I yanked my shoes on without undoing the laces. “That was fast. But, did I overhear you say that Eric has declared Devil’s Eye off-limits?”

Eric Davis is Bluejacket’s team analyst. His job is to analyze the dive site and decide whether it’s safe to take on the salvage contract or not. The sites he declares unsafe are the ones my mother does on her own time. Of course, any payment offered then goes to her alone. Sometimes the Bluejacket team finds out that she dove on her own, sometimes they don’t. If they do find out, the whole team is furious with her, Eric more than any of the others. He takes it as a personal insult even though its got nothing to do with him.

“Since when has that ever stopped me?” she cocked an eyebrow. She wasn’t breaking any company rules by diving on her own time, but every dive school in the world would condemn her for diving alone. She’d earned herself a reputation for being foolhardy, but only because no one knew her secret.

“Since never,” I answered. “But every time you dive on a wreck he’s declared off-limits, you make things harder for yourself. He already has a serious problem with you.”

She was back at the front door, her slender hand on the knob. “I don’t care how he feels about me as long as he stays out of my way. Besides, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt us.”

I sighed, then gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Be careful, okay? I know this is your brand of fun but you know I worry about you when you go to The Boneyard. Especially at night,” I shuddered. Just the idea gave me the willies.

“Hey, who is the parent here anyway?” she laughed as she grabbed another bottle of water. When I didn’t reply she looked at me, her violently blue eyes scanned my face and she became serious. She reached up a pale hand and laid her palm on my cheek. “If you only knew what it was like. You’d have nothing to be afraid of.”

I nodded. I’d heard it before but it was still hard to imagine, and it didn’t really make me feel any better.

She gave me a quick hug and said, “have a great last day, sunshine.” And she was gone.

As I gathered my things, turned off the lights and locked the door behind me, I fought the familiar twinge of guilt that came when I thought about how my mother was trapped in a life she hated because of me.

What if dad were still alive? Would she still be here?

My mother is a creature of the deep, a siren, a mermaid. And because her daughter is human, she can never really go home.