where the wise man walked

[first weekly self-therapy assignment, as revised at the advice of fellow patients and therapist.]

They told us that our beach is a holy place, and we always believed them. Preacher said God is everywhere, so of course God is here. They prayed as they waited by the shining waves, so I knew they were people who liked preacher talk. I told them that God is everywhere, and they said, “not like this, little baby, not like this.”

My sisters and I used to see them walk onto the beach in the morning, but we never saw them leave. We three decided that they must’ve left late at night, after the salt dried in their clothes. We never spent all day watching them. We have seen our brothers play, the hermit who walked the stepping-stones, the waves that swallowed the waiting people, the people who wanted so much to be swallowed. This is where we live.

The men who watch saw things we didn’t.

The waiting people never swam, which I think is silly. They just stood and let the waves wash over them. Sometimes they whispered about riptides and people who drowned here, just because a wave caught them. I imagine they fancied themselves brave, allowing themselves to be caught, believing they would not drown.

We swam all the time. Ocean water is cool, and it helps scrapes and bruises heal. I know because the hermit told me when I was very small. He taught me about healing, about the way time and God and the ocean make everything better. The hermit spent a lot of time with the ocean, out on the sandbar or on the stepping-stones near it, walking and sitting and thinking. We liked to watch him jump from stone to stone, his calluses holding fast to the slippery rock.

Everyone knew the hermit was very wise. Only a wise man would be so alone.

When the hermit left, he didn’t say good-bye. My sisters and I swam to the sandbar and looked for him, squinted our eyes tight against the shining waves, but we couldn’t see him anywhere. We asked our father again and again where he had gone, but he did not answer. He did not even shake his head.

We didn’t mind terribly, of course. It was still our beach, and the water still healed us when we hurt. The hermit didn’t need to be around to remind us. Once or twice, we even swam out to where he had walked and sat and thought, though we never did acquire his knack for jumping the stepping-stones. With time and practice, I know we could have.

My brothers started worrying about the hermit once a watching man descended from the high-rise to the sand where they built castles. One day he came down with a yellow plastic folding chair, and there he sat until after dark, gray and serious and still. At first I laughed at him, sitting like a rock on a canary’s back.

Every day he came down with that chair, the sight of which grew less and less funny as time passed. The hermit’s absence had not hurt us, but the watching man’s presence wore on us all. He watched, pinstriped, from behind mirrored sunglasses. At first our brothers ignored him, or pretended to ignore him. At last they grew too nervous, and stopped playing by the shining waves. Our two brothers asked our father where the hermit had gone, why the watching man had come. Our father did not answer, not even then, not even for his sons.

Our home seemed more crowded after that, as our brothers stayed indoors, as we walked to the shore less and less. Our father was the only one who left when the sun rose, and his absence hurt us. His laughter did not echo in the kitchen; his footprints did not disturb the patio dust. An unfamiliar silence nestled in the walls. The boys played marbles, and the clicks of glass on glass shot holes through the quiet of days.

My mother’s lips grew thinner, her shoulders hunched, her eyes tired. When I saw the yellow chair, or the vacant air above the sand bar, I no longer thought of the hermit: I thought of my father. Our mother assured us that he was out working very hard for us, his family, but the words spilled out too sober and quick. The time came when I never saw my father, not even before the sun rose. Sometimes, in my sleep, I felt his kiss on my forehead, but I was never sure if his touch woke me, or if I was only dreaming of him.

I saw sadness in the faces of my sisters, and I knew they dreamt the same dreams. We stayed close. We were wary of our brothers, whose laughter was too high and hollow, too unlike our father’s.

My sisters and I turned to our mother, then, and asked in the language boys never learned (lest they overhear):

“Where has the hermit gone?”

I knew that, secretly, our mother had liked to watch the hermit walk and sit and think, as we had; I knew, also, that she saw my father in that empty place in the shining waves. Even so, when we asked her, she just stared at the onion skins in her apron and tried not to tell us. She did not look at us. We asked her again, and again she did not look at us. She has a way of not looking, our mother. We sisters drew closer together, more afraid, more alone. Quiet days passed. Marbles clattered, but our footfalls were soft.

One day, she saw the watching man in his yellow chair on the white sand, where no son of hers played, where no castles stood. She looked at us then, and we looked back. She told us:

“The watching men were afraid of him. They took him away.”

I think we all laughed, because we had never been afraid of the hermit who walked the stepping-stones. For a moment, the silence broke. When our mother went back to not looking, we stopped laughing. She stirred the soup above the fire, and looked only at the potatoes floating in the kettle. Something was wrong –– so wrong that there were no words for it.

Later, maybe an hour later or maybe a week later, I asked my mother:

“Why are the watching men afraid of our hermit?”

She was hanging linens, and her skin was dark against the white sheets. For a long time she pretended I was not there, and she almost convinced me I was not there.

I asked her again, listening to my own voice with an interested ear. I sounded as if I were about to cry. She clipped a sheet’s last corner to the line, and she turned to me. She knelt in front of me, and I saw her eyes were blue. I had never seen her eyes so close. I could not hear tears in her voice, but I think I saw them, waiting in her eyes.

“You know the watching men are far away, little baby?”

“Yes, mama.”

“And you know it’s hard to see things from far away.”

“Yes, mama.”

“The men that watch see things we don’t. You understand?”

I did not understand, and I told her so. She breathed a long breath, and picked up another white sheet, and did not cry. I knew it was time to give up, so I did.

Slowly, the beach changed. The waiting people came later to the shining waves, and some left before dark, before the salt dried in their clothes. The watching man stopped sitting in his chair all day. He walked up and down the beach with a black vine on his head, and spoke softly to himself as he watched.

One day I heard him whispering, and I remembered how the waiting people whispered before they stepped down to be swallowed. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but that didn’t worry me, because I can only understand what the waiting people say about half the time. They always understand me.

The sun shone brightly that day. I think the light made me crazy and made me forget the quiet and melancholy in the air at home, and that’s why I decided to talk to the watching man.

I walked next to him for a few steps before he noticed me. He looked at me, then went back to watching. I tugged on his jacket. He looked back.

“This beach is a holy place,” I told him, in the language boys learn.

He was quiet for a moment, and after looking this way and that, his eyes settled on mine. Before that moment, I had felt invincible. I remembered then that I should probably be afraid of this watching man.

“We know,” he answered. His voice was friendlier than his face.

“But God is everywhere. Not just here.”

“Especially here,” he chided me, like they all do. “This place is God’s favorite.”

I blinked. I had never thought that way. “But favorites aren’t fair. God mustn’t have favorites.”

The watching man stopped walking, and pressed on a knot in the vine on his head. He crouched down, so he was only a little taller than me. I couldn’t see his eyes past his sunglasses. He could see me, though. I knew he could see me.

“I don’t think favorites are fair, either,” he said. His voice was soft, real soft. “I wish God would play fair.”

He smiled, but not happily. I wasn’t sure what to say to him, but I said something anyway.

“Why were you afraid of the hermit?”

Quiet. “What?”

“We had a hermit. He walked on the stepping-stones, out in the waves. Mama told me you watching men took him away, because you were afraid of him.”

The watching man was still confused. He stood up.

“Will you show me the stones?”

Why not? I thought. They’re only stones. Soon, of course, I would understand how much more they were –– infinitely more.

“Okay,” I said.

I walked down the shore, past the line of people waiting for the waves to come up and swallow them. Some of them looked afraid of the watching man, but some of their eyes turned to watch us. The waves lapped at their feet, and then their feet turned and followed us too. I felt strange, with so many people following me. I’m no one important; why should they follow me? They hadn’t even asked where I was going.

I stopped and pointed to the place where the hermit used to walk the stepping-stones. His absence hit me like a stone to the chest, like the sound of glass striking glass.

“There –– you took him from there.”

The watching man and all the waiting people looked out for what seemed like a long time. At last the watching man took off his sunglasses. His eyes were dark, dark brown, and they squinted at the shining waves.

“I don’t see any stones,” he said slowly. “None of us saw them.”

A long silence followed.

“What did you think the hermit was walking on?” I asked the watching man. I was almost laughing, crazy in the sun’s heat.

He looked down at me. A deep shadow hid his eyes from me, but the watching man breathed slowly as he answered: “Water.”

I smiled up at him, uncertain of what I had heard, but sure that this wasn’t funny, either. Nothing seemed funny anymore. Past him, I saw all the waiting people were looking at me, just as confused as the watching-man.

“Water?”

A hesitant nod rippled through the entire crowd that followed me, as if a wave had broken out of the ocean into the sea of bodies. I shook my head; I shook it so fast and hard that my braids whipped my face.

“Anyone can walk out there!” I cried. More than anything, I wanted them all to hear. “Haven’t you ever gone swimming, ever, any of you?”

I kicked off my sandals and dropped my bracelets in the sand. The watching man dropped his jacket and his polished shoes, and tore the black vine off of his head. I looked at all the waiting people, one by one. Their eyes were afraid, but locked on me, as if I were their way out of a dark maze: A child with sun in her eyes. I must have been glowing like a torch.

They stood still as I walked onto the wet sand. They did not follow when my feet left the shore and kicked against the tide. The white lines would dry into my dress later. I wasn’t thinking about white lines then.

The cool, satiny feel of the ocean on my skin relieved me of everything. Every fear, every sadness, every brave and brazen moment washed away. I just wanted to swim. I love the water, and I know it loves me, because it bears me up just like my father did once, like he always will, while I sleep.

From the crest of the first wave, high as his shoulders, I could see the stepping-stones. The next wave dropped me there gently, and I stood and turned to face the waiting people. They looked horrified. More watching men came over the dunes, and each one dropped his sunglasses and jacket and polished shoes in the sand.

“Swim out!” I cried to them. My voice left my lips without asking my brain. I hardly knew what was happening, but I knew it needed to happen for everyone there –– especially for me. “Don’t just stand there watching, waiting like you always do!”

I leapt to the next stone and clung there with my toes. I did not slip; I did not fall. When I looked back, the crowd was following, wading into the shining waves. My heart swelled, filled with the sunlight: They were too old to learn how to swim for the first time, but there they all were, learning anyway. I was teaching them. The ocean was teaching them, healing them, making up for all the time they had lost just standing on the shore.

Coming over the dune, behind the watching men, I made out five familiar figures, four small and one bigger; the last figure wore a clean white apron over a long brown dress. My eyes strained for a sixth, but he did not come. That’s okay. I felt as though, if I turned around fast enough, I’d catch him standing just behind me, and the look on my face would make him laugh.