Chapter 23
True to her word, from then on, each day Zaneta roused Mira in the dark, and they trekked together to the inlet, but that was the easiest task. Between the ages of seven and twelve, Mira’s fall and spring were a balance of school, chores, and lessons from Zaneta. Summers, she swam.
Born on an island, of course she could swim.
Before she could walk, Mira’s father dangled her legs in the sea, letting her splash and kick at the waves as they rose and fell.
Like her brothers, she could throw a net, cast a line, and dig an oyster by the time she was five.
They all swam for fun or to cool off when the sun beat down in the cloudless sky.
This was different. Zaneta took Mira to the cove, and some afternoons they swam for hours, until Mira’s muscles ached and her lips were pickled in salt brine.
She swam laps like she was trying out for a swim team or a channel crossing. No floats, no fins, no aids.
“You can do more than you think you can, Mira. Do it underwater this time, and I don’t want to see your head pop up until you’ve made it across the cove.”
Zaneta set timers around the house. Sometimes, while Mira did her homework or took a bath, Zaneta would shout “Time!”—her cue to begin holding her breath while continuing her task.
“Breath is God, Mira: spirit. God is forever. Your breath will last longer than you think if you let Him hold it for you. Trust. Quit being afraid.” One minute.
Two minutes. Gradually, she increased her time.
The practice she did while out of the sea lessened the panic once her head was underwater.
Zaneta pushed and insisted. Once, when Mira was getting over a head cold, they ventured out to the shallows, and Mira quickly grew tired of the laps she swam.
“Too lazy to swim? We’ll dive, then. Get ready.
” They both breathed deeply for a count of five, then slowly exhaled, signaling their bodies that air would not come quickly.
After the fifth repetition, Zaneta nodded and they went under, face to face, until they sat, cross-legged, on the sand, swaying like seaweed in the rocking of the water.
Mira watched her mother’s face. It was impassive, calm, a mere observer.
For the first minute, Mira was calm, too.
She noted the silver arrows of a school of barracuda as they flashed in the sunlight, a crab scuttling along a section of rock.
After the second minute, she began to squirm under her mother’s scrutiny and felt an itch in her lungs, too early, too early.
Mira needed to cough, and her sinuses started to throb.
She unfolded her legs so that she could push off the bottom and ascend, but Zaneta shook her head and pointed to the sand.
Stay. Mira’s concentration had broken. The sea pressed in around her like a cloak, and air bubbles released and rose from her nose, her mouth.
She shook her head at Zaneta and pointed toward the surface, her eyes wide.
Zaneta frowned and patted the seafloor, sending up a cloud of sand.
She tapped at her left wrist, signaling time.
It wasn’t yet time. She grabbed Mira’s ankle to anchor her.
Every cell in Mira’s body now begged for air.
She knew it wasn’t time. She’d been under far longer than this before and knew she could do it if she could only concentrate and calm her thoughts.
She tried not to look at Zaneta’s face, where she knew she’d find disappointment and impatience.
The tickle in her throat was insistent, demanding, impossible to resist. Finally, she coughed out a burst of air in response, not thinking that her weakened lungs would reflexively respond with a natural intake of breath.
Except there was no breath; there was only water, and despite her hours in their world, Mira wasn’t a fish.
The intake of water where air should be sent her feet into action.
She kicked off her mother’s hand and dug her toes into the sand, vaulting the short distance to the surface, where she sputtered and gasped, her hair plastered to her face and salt water streaming in her eyes.
She coughed repeatedly, belching and trying to calm the spasms by breathing through her nose.
Zaneta stayed underwater. Mira could see her there, still cross-legged on the sand, waiting out the clock, or perhaps avoiding her daughter’s display of weakness.
They didn’t speak on the walk back to the house.
She heard her parents’ raised voices that evening as she fell asleep, heard her father mention the word pneumonia and her mother’s derisive hiss.
“There are much worse things than that. She has to overcome.”
Mira practiced even harder afterward, using the clock on her classroom wall in school to hold her breath during quizzes or while someone read aloud from a book.
When she no longer worried about when her next breath would be, Mira started to relax during her swimming.
She took time to notice the way the sunlight shimmied on the seabed, and her eyes picked up the movements of other creatures below the waves—eels, urchins, and once, an octopus that had camouflaged itself against a rock.
When she swam past, it flashed from dark brown to mottled green and thrust its tentacles in a jet of ink to escape.
It surprised her, but she wasn’t afraid.
She was spending so much time in the water that it was becoming her second home, and like her neighborhood above with its quaint fishing boats and nonnas minding their grandchildren, the sea brought Mira a measure of comfort.
“Mamma, you’ve told me the history of byssus.
I know the ancient stories, back to Berenice, but where are all the others now?
” Mira once asked. She was seventeen. It had been ten years since she’d begun walking the byssus path.
She’d learned to parse out her questions carefully, not too many at once, making sure she’d tried to reach an answer herself before bothering her mother with something she should already know.
They were kneading dough for dinner, and her mother’s hands had stilled a moment, knuckles buried in the yeasty mass.
“It’s just us. Your grandmother and aunts are gone; you know that,” Zaneta snapped.
“Aren’t there others? Other families who weave?”
In a rare moment of openness, Zaneta mused.
“It’s 1961. There’s been a man in space, now.
” She shook her head in wonder. “The world’s changing quickly.
America’s President Kennedy is seeing to that.
Maybe it’s too busy for such a thing as weaving.
People think they’re too advanced to bother with such things, but look, Mira, at the wall going up in Berlin, the hate dividing people in America.
Despite all they know and how fast they know it, we still need what the byssus represents, beauty, peace, proof that the world still has gifts to offer, and it’s up to us not to let it be lost to the past. What are you doing to prevent that? ”
“I’m up to three minutes underwater,” she offered. “And I know the life cycle of the Pinna and when to harvest. I can rinse and clean the threads, and I spin the cotton, linen, and wool well.” Mira cast her eyes down. “I know I need to improve spinning the hemp.”
“You’re still clumsy with those,” agreed her mother. “And you have yet to learn to handle the cloth from the prickly pear and palm. Next low moon, we will spin those as well.”
“How much more is there?”
“Before what?”
“Before I am . . . like you?”
Zaneta smiled sadly. “You shouldn’t wish to be like me, figlia.”
“I mean, until I can do all that you can.”
“Oh, that.” Zaneta waved a doughy hand. “Many years yet. There is spinning, weaving, dyeing, and much more about plants and their secrets. It takes a lifetime to become a master.”
Mira sighed and pinched under the ends of her braided challah bread.
For the first time, it occurred to her that this meant she must always learn from—and stay with—her mother, for as long as it took.
Already, some of her friends at school talked about their futures, what they might study, where they might go.
None of them had to hurry home after school to spin or swim.
Families didn’t stay in Sardegna for generations anymore.
Several of her friends’ older siblings had gone to the mainland or even farther instead of staying to work in mining or farming like their fathers and grandfathers.
What would it feel like to have many futures as a possibility?
What would it feel like not to carry the family’s expectations?
For the briefest moment, Mira wondered whether she actually wanted to be a water woman.
As soon as the thought occurred to her, she glanced, stricken, at her mother, as if she might’ve uttered it aloud.
Mira took it back as soon as she’d thought it.
It was beyond her. This was her calling in life, the singular way she mattered.
She held the end of the thread; she was the only one who could keep the sacred tradition alive.
Doing so meant that, thanks to her, something beautiful would remain in the world.
Mira glanced at her mother as she turned to slide the tray of bread into the oven.
Someday, Mira thought, being a water woman might actually make her beautiful, too.
Seeing the byssus in its raw form in the shell before it came to life filled her with both reverence and a measure of fear.
Her mother had instilled both. Her voice echoed so clearly in Mira’s head, sometimes she couldn’t tell whether it was her mother’s voice or her own that automatically scolded her.