A woman sits in a rowboat in the middle of a midnight sea. As she pushes and pulls the worn oars, the blue light of algae ignites in the breaking water. The black sky and sea heave as one breath, one body.
In this vision, the woman speaks into the whorl. She calls on the pearl divers that came before her: her mother, grandmothers, great grandmothers. Before she left on her journey, they had met her on the shore. They encircled her, placing their lined, roughened hands upon her head and shoulders. Their bare, speckled breasts were bowed, stomachs loose from the bearing of countless children. On their thighs were puckered scars. Around their waists, they wore sheathed blades of obsidian.
Now the woman stands within their power.
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In a distant memory, gulls circled the blue sky and waves rasped across the sand studded with the halves of tiny clam shells. You stood at the lake’s bank, grinding your toes into the gravel. You were nine years old. You smoothed the sleek sides of your navy bathing suit and eased into the water. The current welcomed you, washing cool and strong over your calves, thighs, then hips.
Excitement flared in your chest as you floated, stroking your arms just like your swimming instructor had taught you. Your breathing merged with the thrum of the water as you swam until your feet barely brushed the silky tendrils of seaweed on the lake’s bottom.
Sunlight glinted like diamonds over the waves as you treaded water. You marveled at the strength of your body, your legs that churned, bearing you up, your cupped hands parting the current.
Your mother stood at the bank, smiling. Her blue and rose-colored housedress rippled in the wind. Under her loving watch, you were safe. Then, you had been a new creature, innocent and unafraid.
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In the boat, the woman shudders as she thinks of the depths, the fanged, eyeless creatures, and her body pressed into a sliver. The woman crumples. She doesn’t know if she can survive the journey downward.
Her mother’s voice rises from the sea. Her presence looms over the woman like a cresting wave.
“My child,” she said. “You have suffered for too long. Now, you must enter the depths, move towards its center. In the darkness you find what you need, something that will release you.”
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When you were a girl, you feared the darkness. In the quiet nighttime hours, memories would constrict around you, binding you to the twin mattress. Image after image refracted in your mind: blue eyes, glinting incisors, hands pallid as bleached coral.
You remembered the boys in your fourth-grade class, the popular ones with MTV keychains and blond crew cuts. The ones that knew how to conceal their darkness behind white, aligned smiles and buttoned shirts.
One day, they surrounded you as you read your favorite book in an empty classroom. Pinning you, they groped you. They poured into you the names that they had chosen, what they wanted you to become.
“Chink,” they said.
“Jap,” they said.
“Slut,” they said.
That night, you left. Like a cloud, you drifted away from your body that lay on a twin mattress. It’s hard to describe what it’s like to be split, to be severed from a vessel that you’d known and cared for. But you couldn’t survive in a dead thing swollen with bilge.
For three years, you floated above your body, watching as the boys cornered it in the back of the bus, in the classroom, on the kickball courts. You watched as it clamped its mouth to dam in the surging bile. You watched as it binged on your mother’s homecooked beef stew and bok choy then vomited.
You wanted to tell someone, but shame shuttered you. You felt alone, adrift from your mother, father, sister, brothers, and friends.
You should’ve said no.
You should’ve fought.
You should’ve been stronger.
Hovering above your body, you watched as your mother cradled it and wiped the salt that streamed from its eyes.
“What’s wrong?” she asked over and over.
But your body couldn’t answer without you. And without a body, mist doesn’t have a voice.
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The moonlight reveals a thick-waisted woman, her black hair cropped short, her dark eyes glinting. Unyielding, she bares herself up against the wind. She thrusts her feet through the open neck of a white wet suit, rolling it over her full hips and breasts. She spits into her diver’s mask, scrubbing it with a fistful of kelp. She peers into the waves thrashing against the side of the boat.
Though a searing stone settles on her chest, she recalls her mother’s words, the command for her survival. She thought of how she would retrieve what she needed from the depths.
Dropping the lead anchor, she takes breaths that swell her large belly. She prepares to plunge into the sea.
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One evening after you had finished your sixth-grade homework, you went to your parents’ bedroom and took off your white-washed shorts. You stood in front of their full-length mirror. It reflected a monster with hairs sprouting around its crotch, its hips and breasts swelling like overfilled water balloons. A thing that held the stinking waste of shame. You looked away, unable to bear how ugly it was, how unlovable.
Then, you took a shower. You grasped a razor and scraped away the hair from between the beast’s legs. Blood and black strands were swept away by a stream of hot water. As you traced newly shaven flesh, you became innocent again. You returned to the summer before the boys: the cool current, the sunlight, the sparkling jewels. You remembered that you had loved your body before you had understood its curse.
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The woman tosses a black basket bound with a white rope into the waves, then braces herself as she leaps into the water. She angles her flippered feet downwards, cleaving the frigid waves. Churning her legs, she peers upwards and the clouds part, revealing a constellation of five gleaming stars. Following their light, she paddles, her heart pulsing with each stroke. She binds the rope around her waist then takes a deep breath and dives.
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There were times when you were young when you reentered your body. Once, December’s gale tore through the barren trees outside the community gymnasium. Hovering above your body, you gazed into the gleaming indoor pool.
You remembered the joy of the water, how when you were in it, you became another kind of animal. You slipped into your body and felt the slickness of the black swimming suit, the chlorine prickling in your nose. You gripped your toes on the pool’s frigid metal edge, shaping your arms into an arrow above your head. Taking a deep breath, you filled your lungs until they tightened against your ribcage. Leaning forward, you dove.
Cool and dark, the water pressed down on you. The pool filters hummed, blurring into whale song, the fluid murmurs of orca. The current caressed you like a mother’s hand. Within it, you were protected, shielded from the mocking eyes of boys. In the water you loved your body. There, you knew what to do—the strength of your arms and legs parting silky shrouds.
Your lungs burned, time ticking away in silver bubbles. Though you longed to stay within the water, your body urged you upwards. Drawing your arms over your head, you kicked, bringing yourself closer and closer to the gleaming surface.
You climbed up the pool ladder, your suit sagged, revealing the silhouette of breasts and hips. From the balcony, boys’ laughter erupted, sharp as sea-lion barks.
“Look!” you thought one shouted. “Look!”
Gravity pulled your body into a stinking mass with bulging eyes and bristling hair. Spittle dashed its reflection rippling on the pool’s surface.
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Following the gleam of starlight, the woman pushes against the current, her muscular arms churning. She swims in the way that other pearl divers had taught her. Making her body into a spear, she thrusts through the water.
The woman passes the ledges of bleached coral until she reaches the oyster beds. She unsheathes her obsidian knife, prying open ragged shells. Her stomach plummets as she flays each oysters’ slick flesh, only to reveal empty shells void of pearls. The blade slips, and a plume of blood erupts from the woman’s gloved palm.
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You lay curled up in bed, your belly cramping. You adjusted the pad between your legs, as blood flowed from you. You were thirteen years old. The throb intensified and you twisted, stomach churning. During these cycles, you merged with your body, caught in the waves of its animal agony.
When you weren’t in pain, you watched your body go through the motions of everyday life, pulling on wrinkled shirts, stuffing itself with greasy slabs of pepperoni pizza at the middle school cafeteria. It slouched near the bleachers of gymnasium during breaks as other students laughed with their friends. Your body continued to wander a gray landscape between the dreaming and waking worlds.
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A chill crackles the woman’s spine and the rope around her waist jerks upwards. As she cradles her wounded hand, strength fell from her. Then she remembered how she had descended many times before, how she never left the comfort of the oyster beds, how she never found treasure.
But she felt the age of her body, how her joints throbbed, how her eyes were weakening. Someday, she would moor her boat on the shore. She would join the other pearl divers in a greater sea. She felt time slipping through her hands like silt. She had to make the journey now.
The obsidian blade glints as the woman cleaves the rope, departing from what she knew into the unknown. The severed length drifts upwards, undulating in the current. The rope’s braided remnant around her waist glows white as the woman descends further into the gloom.
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One afternoon, a boy crossed gymnasium floor towards the bleachers. His pristine, white sneakers squeaked across the polished floor. He wore a button up shirt, his blonde hair styled in a crew cut. His lips parted, revealing gleaming incisors.
“Hey, slut,” he said. “Remember me?”
Suddenly, you returned to your body. You blurred into a crimson flare.
You remembered all the times you had remained silent, slipping further from your body each time. If this happened again, you wouldn’t survive.
You stepped towards him, and swung your open hand, striking his smiling face.
Saliva frothed in your mouth and your voice surged like a wave through jagged rock.
“Get away,” you said. “Get away.”
As you slapped him again and again, his blue eyes clouded with confusion.
“Don’t touch me,” you said. “Don’t you ever touch me again.”
The boy stepped back, fading into the crowd of other students.
Your breath escaped in ragged gasps, nails digging into clenched hands.
For a moment, you were alive.
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The woman slips into the trench that gapes like an endless maw. As she presses deeper into the whirling darkness, it closes around her. Flexing her arms, the woman tunnels through the frigid water. She forces back the darkness, her body widening, her hips and shoulders pushing against the crushing pressure.
Suddenly, tentacles stretch out from the void. A glowing eyeless creature grasps the woman’s thigh, yanking her towards its jaws. Crimson blurs the woman’s sight as jagged mandibles slice into her belly. She reaches for the obsidian blade at her waist and plunges it into the beast’s slimy head. A flood of blue light plumes in the water and the monster vanishes.
Warmth gushes from the woman’s belly and she cinches the white rope tighter around her waist. A light shimmers, beckoning the woman. She swims towards it, not knowing if she’s descending or ascending. Finally, she reaches the pulsing glow, her fingers brushing the surface of a large pearl half-buried, wedged beneath the ribs of a ruined boat. Unearthing it, the woman cradles the pearl. She pressed her cheek to its cool, luminous surface.
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Time passed. The power you felt in the gymnasium was worn away like sandstone as torrents of voices rushed over you: You don’t belong. You’re ugly. You’re a slut.
You graduated from middle school and high school then entered college. Unable to feel your body, you allowed men to blacken it, to crush it under their weight. The monster became riddled with large, festering sores.
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The pearl’s light flickers. From the darkness comes the rattle of a million skeletal teeth. Blue light pulses around the woman, revealing a myriad of creatures, their bulbous, sightless eyes. Their translucent bodies bulge with remnants of other divers, fists still clenching obsidian knives.
The woman tucks the pearl into her flayed belly. She cinches the white rope around her wound. A rage courses through her and she slashes into the void, bringing forth plumes of glowing blood. Fangs tear into the woman’s calves as she flees, her legs pummeling the water. She commands her body forward towards the shimmering surface.
With all her strength, the woman hoists herself into the boat. She breathes just like her mother, grandmothers, and great grandmothers had taught her. She takes in the salty breeze, releasing it from her mouth in moaning whistle, the sound of a woman giving birth to herself.
On the bottom of the boat, the woman thrashes. Blood flows from wounds of her belly, hand, and legs. For hours, she labors under the light of the five stars. Then, the pearl drops from her body, transforming into a child. The woman cradles the girl, washing her soft, luminous face with tears. The forms of the girl and woman waver as they fold into one body.
It’s okay, I tell myself. The danger is over. You are free.
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Time shimmered and folded like a cresting wave as fifteen years passed. I leaned against my mother’s kitchen counter as she scrubbed dishes. Pausing, she peeled off her yellow rubber gloves, her damp hands drooping over the edge of the sink. She turned and looked at me, her dark eyes moist.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know about the boys.”
I traced the worn countertop, remembering my girl-self. Then, I had gouged the counter’s veneered edges as my mother cooked and cleaned. The story of the boys scalded my gut like a mass of brimstone. How I had longed to ask for my mother’s help, for her to embrace me in her strong, brown arms. But fear and shame had clenched my mouth shut, and I had spiraled downwards into the frigid depths.
Now, the afternoon sun streamed through the dull window-glass. Light gleamed in my mother’s dark hair streaked with gray. Her face sagged with exhaustion, the wrinkles around her mouth deepening.
Like a warm current, strength surged through my chest. Breathing deeply, I released the smoldering mass and churned upwards to the sea’s gleaming surface.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I said. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I was scared. I was just a kid.”
Silently, we stood side by side, the sunlight weaving us together.
My mother gazed at me. She spoke, her voice soft and steady.
“You are so beautiful,” she said.
A golden strand tightened, binding me to my body. The dark image of my past-self wavered, revealing the form of a young woman, her eyes luminous, brimming with saltwater.
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Placing my hands on the oars, I push the boat through the choppy water. For many days I row. Finally, I reach the shore where the other pearl divers wait. They gather around me as I pull the boat ashore. They draw me into their circle. One by one, we reveal the scars on our bellies, legs, and thighs. We answer death with laughter. We place our chapped hands around each other’s waists, gathering closer and closer. Under the blue sky and white gulls, we sing in one voice: Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.
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I stand under the warm water falling from the showerhead, allowing its warmth to run down my shoulders and breasts. I enfold myself in my arms, my biceps squeezing into my soft flesh. In the scarred ceramic bathtub, a current streams over me. I caress my arms, allowing my hands to travel down to the C-section scar concealed by a fold in my belly. I recall being pregnant with J, how I had cradled him within my blood and water.
I take deep breath after breath, allowing warm air to fill me again and again. I place my hands on my shoulders, belly, and hips, thanking my body for sustaining me, despite how I had hated it. I remember my feral strength, how in the water, I had always known what to do.
I open my arms, collecting droplets in my cupped palms. The shower fills with the chant of a current: beautiful, beautiful. My mind overflows with the scent of seaweed and rasping waves. I remember the glide through the water, the diver-girl stretching, reaching up into the shimmer.