Ohio Pearl

Katherine Tunning

Delia watched the brown water close over her mother. It took only seconds for the river to smooth out the small interruption and turn flat again. Her mother had been wearing lipstick because she always wore lipstick, and when Delia thought of her surfacing, she imagined the red-handled knife of her smile breaking the water first. Delia wasn’t worried. She was a little embarrassed, though, and she glanced up and down the stretch of river beside which her mother had parked the car in what was clearly not a parking spot. The only other people she could see were a couple of men fishing on the far bank. Delia hadn’t realized there were even fish in this river. Sometimes she saw headlines about cars being dragged out of it, or bodies, or parts of bodies. There had been three torsos this year already. She hadn’t mentioned that to her mother, though, just followed her down the gravelly slope, picking her way around the trash. Her mother had taken off her shoes and socks and given them to Delia to hold, fingers hooked inside white Keds worn gray, grayish socks tucked inside.

Ten seconds. Maybe fifteen.

Delia wondered how far her mother might go before she came up. She was a good swimmer. So was Delia. Her mother had taught her in the pond at the old house where they had lived with her uncle and his two kids, until her mother loaded all their stuff in the car and drove them away one night after dinner. There had been shouting but Delia didn’t remember what about. There wasn’t much point remembering what shouting was about, she found, so she let her mind go smooth like water and things drifted away on it, or sank.

She wondered how fast she could get out to the middle of the river. There wasn’t much current. She set her mother’s shoes down on a flat rock and went over to the edge of the water. It had a strong smell, kind of fishy but in a way that made Delia think fish wouldn’t like it. She didn’t want to go in, and besides, her mother would be angry. She had told Delia to wait there. She had told her to watch the car in case the cops came. She had told her that there were oysters at the bottom of the Little Miami, and in the oysters there were pearls.

Thirty seconds, Delia thought.

She trailed her fingers through the water and wiped them on her shorts. The sun lay in blinding sheets on the water, sliding along with the slow current. Delia tried to picture her mother under there, sundress and hair billowing out in the filthy water as she swam down and down. She kept thinking about torsos. It was easier to picture her mother unmoving, bobbing aimlessly back to the surface. Delia knew she should prepare for it. She began to move her mouth around the inevitable words. It wasn’t the first time she had practiced them. She would have to say them first to a stranger, maybe the men fishing if she could get their attention, or maybe someone flagged down from the road.

The street that ran next to the river was busy, and every few seconds Delia heard the whoosh or honk of a passing car. It was strange that no one had seen her mother go in. Maybe someone had and just didn’t think it was any of their business. Delia had learned that there was no end to the things people thought weren’t their business, the things people would just walk past. On the other hand, it wasn’t anyone else’s business. It was between her and her mother, or her mother and the river, or her mother and the pearl.

Another ten seconds, or fifteen.

Then she would have to talk to the police, but Delia had talked to plenty of cops before, and she knew how to stay calm but not too calm, and how to say what they expected her to say. She would tell them the most important thing, which was that her mother really did believe there were pearls at the bottom of the Little Miami. Or maybe that part wasn’t important to the cops, but it was to Delia. Then they might send her to stay with her uncle. She missed her cousins, or at least she remembered liking them well enough. And the pond was nice.

Delia kicked a stone into the water just to see it shiver. The rings moved for a long time. The sun was heavy on the back of her neck but goosebumps had come up on her arms. They would ask where she lived, where she went to school, why she wasn’t in school now. She was fairly sure it was a Tuesday. She would tell them she was homeschooled: she was studying local geography and biology and the water table. She was studying how pearls were formed. She and her mother were studying together, day by day, everything there was. Delia sat down on the rock beside her mother’s shoes and slipped off her sneakers. She had no socks on. Her feet shone pale in the sun, toenails bright blue.

More than a minute now, she was pretty sure.

But her mother could hold her breath for ages. She said she would teach Delia, but she hadn’t yet.

“Pearls are accidents, and the finding of one is luck,’ her mother had said on the drive over. Before she could stop herself, Delia had asked, ‘What if you’re not lucky?” Then her mother’s lips made a thin red line and she glared out at the road. After a while she sighed and said, “That’s Steinbeck. When you’re twelve you’ll be old enough to read him. Anyway, you’re my luck.” She nudged Delia with her elbow, cheerful again. “And my accident,”she added, the blade of her smile bright.

Delia shaded her eyes with one hand and looked over at the two men fishing. They had woven green and white lawn chairs and a cooler full of beer. One had his back to Delia, but the other was facing her. She lifted a hand to wave and then dropped it quickly.

A minute and a quarter, probably.

The man had seen her, though, and he stood up and waved back. Delia stared at her feet. The man called out to her: “You all right?” She looked out at the water, the little pitted places where it shifted and scooped even though there was no wind at all, just the river moving itself, or her mother moving the river. Delia stood up on the flat rock. “Yes!” she yelled. The man cupped a hand to his ear. “No!” she yelled. Then: “I don’t know!” The man shrugged and started walking toward the pedestrian bridge that crossed the river a little farther downstream.

Delia put her hands on her hips and frowned. She wasn’t afraid of him, or of men in general. Her mother had taught her what to do when a man bothered her. Her mother had taught her how to knee a man in the crotch, and how to swim, and how to pump gas, and how to whistle with a blade of grass, and how whistle without a blade of grass, and how to climb a chain-link fence, and how to make it look like you hadn’t been crying. She was going to teach her how to put on lipstick but she said Delia wasn’t old enough yet. Maybe next year, along with Steinbeck. Delia liked the books her mother gave her better than the ones she had to read for school, but if it was Steinbeck who gave her mother the idea to dive for pearls she was going to knee Steinbeck in the crotch. She wanted to take her fists to all her mother’s ideas sometimes, to break them down, to make them stop coming one after another after another.

Nearly two minutes.

Delia stepped off the rock and the gravel and rubble of the shore bit into the soft soles of her feet. She walked toward the water. The fishing man was on the bridge now. The cool water eased over her feet and foamy scum lapped at her ankles. “Wait!” called the man, closer now. Delia ignored him. She breathed out all the air in her lungs and then breathed in and in and in, and then the blank place where the river had swallowed her mother began to shake. The water thinned and broke and up rose a dark wet head and a sharp red smile. Delia staggered back out of the water. Her mother took a long shuddering breath, still grinning, and paddled toward shore until she could stand. She had a muddy lump clutched to her chest. She lifted the hem of her ruined dress and wiped the mud away until the curve of the shell was revealed, sharp and grooved and gray. Then, with obvious reluctance, she held the oyster out to Delia.

“There’s a pearl inside,” she said.

“I know,” said Delia, but did not reach out to take it.

Katherine Tunning lives in Boston with her partner and a highly variable number of cats. Some of her recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in Eclectica Magazine, Triggerfish Critical Review, The Lascaux Review, and Midway Journal.