Page 89 of Just One Look
The car jolted forward a little, like when you went on the Ferris wheel, and her mama said, “Sweet Jesus, the water’s too high. Lord, what do I do now?” The car jolted again, and she said, “Oh, my lord. That’s a river up ahead.” Then she was reaching over the seat, saying, “Birdie! Unfasten your seatbelt!”
“But we’regoing,”Elizabeth said. You weren’t allowed to unfasten your seatbelt when the car was on. Her mama tipped almost all the way over the seat like somebody in a cartoon, pulling off the pink blanket and punching the button for Elizabeth’s seatbelt, then yanking her over the seat. Elizabeth hit her head on the ceiling and her knee on the bump between the seats, but her mama was tipping over with her again now, out into the rain.
It was like going in the Gulf of Mexico, except it was colder, and the water hit you harder. Her mama was walking in big, funny steps, like when you pretended you were stuck in quicksand. Elizabeth looked over her shoulder and said, “Mama, our car’s driving away by itself,” but her mama didn’t hear her. She was saying all kinds of things, talking to Jesus again, doing the quicksand-walk up a hill until they got to a light pole. There was water all around them, with just the pole sticking out, and there was a really high hill on the other side. Her mama hooked her elbow around the pole, hoisted Elizabeth up higher on her hip, and said, “You hang on, too, baby girl. You grab on right here. We’re going to rest a while now.”
“OK,” Elizabeth said, and did it, while she looked out over her mama’s shoulder at brown water. The water didn’t look like the Gulf of Mexico at all. It looked like chocolate milk, and there were red and pink lights back there, flashing. The pink and brown was pretty, and it reminded her of her pink blanket, which was called a quilt, and her Memaw had made it. It had butterflies and bunnies and other animals on it, and if you were sad or scared, you could pretend you were petting the animals. She wished she had her blanket now.
There was water around her mama’s legs, up to her knees, but she said, “We’re just going to keep on resting here. You keep holding on, too. Don’t you let go. It’s a game of holding on.”
* * *
Luka asked, “What happened then?”Hearing this hurt like a hard fend to the chest. His own childhood had been a bit grim, but bloody hell, this.
Elizabeth said, “It lasted a long time, I think. It was raining so hard, like today, and I wished we were still in the car. The car had floated like a boat, and I thought, why couldn’t your car be a boat? The water was over my shoes, then, and I remember thinking that I’d get in trouble for getting them wet. And then there was some noise, some people shouting, and a whole bunch of them came across to us, stretched out, holding hands. I thought it was another game.”
He’d swear she could see it, that she couldfeelit. She was shivering a little even in the tracksuit, and he grabbed the throw from the end of the couch and put it over her.
She barely seemed to notice. “The last person in the chain put his hands on me. I remember they were on my waist, and they were holding really hard. He was shouting, and my mom told me, ‘Let go now, baby girl,’ and I said, ‘It’s a game, though. I’m holding on.’ And she said, ‘You win, baby. Let the man take you, and I’ll come on in a minute.’”
She stopped talking, and he waited, then asked, “What happened?” Even though he knew. He could feel the cold rain, the water running over his feet, because he’d felt it today, and so had she. She’d hung on to that tree, too. She’d hung on until he’d peeled her away and taken her to safety.
She said, “I could see over the man’s shoulder while everybody pulled me back. The water was way up on my mom’s legs. She looked like half of a mom. And then she let go. She was on the water for a second, and then I saw part of her, like she was swimming. And then I didn’t see her anymore.”
He said, “Christ.”
“Yeah.” Her body was rigid against him, with a tremble not far below the surface.
“And today …” he said.
“They didn’t know who I was at first,” she said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “I was in somebody’s car, then their house. After that, the police station, because it was full of police. Everybody was running around, but they told me to sit on a chair, so I did. I asked if my mama was coming, and they said she was, and I had to wait for her. After a while, I fell asleep there.” She sighed. “It took all day for them to figure out who I was and find my dad, and longer for him to get there on those roads. I slept in somebody’s house that night. I don’t remember whose, just that it was a different bed, and that I didn’t want the light turned off, but they turned it off anyway. You know something, though—it didn’t seem all that strange. When you’re a kid, things are always changing around you. You have no control at all. You go where you’re told and get with the program, at least I did. I was an obedient child. After that, I was even more obedient. But I remember all of that as just … waiting. Like I was stepping so carefully, watching to see what people wanted me to do. Trying to be small, so I’d fit. Hanging on to the edge of the chair, to the edge of the blanket. My mama was swimming in the chocolate milk water, and I had to hang on here until she could come get me.”
Luka’s arm was around her now, neck or no. He pulled her closer with the other hand and wished she’d cry. Her eyes were bright, her face pale and set, like she was made of glass and she was afraid of breaking. He said, “That’s hard.”
“She didn’t come,” Elizabeth said. “She never came. I hung on, but she never … came.” A gasp, and then, finally, a sob. She had her hands over her face, and she was crying. Not in the angry, frankly terrifying way some women did, or the sad, pretty way other women did when you were breaking up. This was a whole different category of tears that made you understand what a broken heart really was. When you were in the water again, and you were going to be trapped, the ground beneath your feet washed away and nothing to hang onto anymore.
She cried, and he knew that in her mind, she was holding on, and her mother was slipping away anyway, sliding down in the dark water.
That mum had held on. She’d held on, and held up a four-year-old for God knows how long while the water tore at her legs. Her arms must have been screaming, but she’d held on. All the way until help appeared, and then all the way until it reached them. Until she could pass her little girl off and know that she was safe.
After that, she’d had no more fight left, because she’d already given everything.
He said, “She must have loved you so much.” And Elizabeth sobbed harder.
