100. Neighbor
NEIGHBOR
She is a jellyfish. Every morning, her white hair billowing out from her head, her pale shift swirling around her body, she drifts, arms thrown out, face barely above the surface. But it is above just enough that if I squint, I can see the smile there.
“Jellyfish!” my son bleats from my hip, little hand flapping in the direction of the woman in the sea, the woman we can see if I stand just so at one window in our house at a certain hour in the morning.
And if I carry him outside and walk closer to the footpath that breaks up the cliff’s edge and leads to the stone shore, we can see the jellyfish woman’s husband standing and watching her.
He stands just to one side as he only has one eye.
I suppose this allows him the best view of her when she swims. And she swims every morning.
“Jellyfish,” my son repeats, and his voice is delighted.
“Yes, she is a happy jellyfish,” I agree with him.
We watch her every morning, sometimes for a long time, sometimes just for a breath or two, enough to see that swirl of paleness in the dark gray-green of the sea.
It is rare that I watch long enough—that I have the time in the morning—to witness her finally, after he has called out to her, fight to walk against the foaming crash of waves at her back and return to him.
Her shift clings to her, and when she pulls the dripping silvery swath of hair off of her shoulders, I can see the tattoos on her upper arms, somewhat withered and faded with time.
She is still smiling on her stumble to shore.
She has had her taste of Sister Sea for the day.
For though she is a woman of the low country, she worships the Tintarian gods. Here in Vyggia, we are superstitious and we pray to our own sea gods, but it is more about luck and fortune and crossed fingers. For this woman, the jellyfish, she says she has spoken to her gods.
Though she seems of a sound mind, I always attribute that to her age.
Her man, the one she refers to as husband, though I suspect they have never married, always shakes his head and pulls her to him, despite her wetness from head to toe. Sometimes he kisses her forehead, sometimes her mouth.
As time passes, I find myself watching for this kiss more and more.
Even when my children call out for me, even when my husband is trying to speak to me, I spend longer in my vigil these mornings.
Perhaps it is because the man, who goes by Reed, recently has told my husband that men die sooner than women and has asked would we watch out for his wife after he dies?
Robbie, the jellyfish woman, has recently told me that her man is nearly seven winters younger than her and she thinks she may die first. She too has asked our family to look out for him.
Though they are both white haired and she has celebrated a seventieth day of birth, a lucky number not all reach, they still seem so spry.
To keep coin in their pockets, Reed joins my husband twice a week in the salt shallows.
My husband says he can still labor alongside men half his age for most of the day.
And Robbie often assists our midwife in births.
And she tells me she can walk inside certain trees that grow inland here, harvesting a moss that only grows inside the bark, and that is where she gets the paste she delivers freely to the women here.
She does not seem taxed by any of that work.
I tell myself they are still far from their end, but in my heart, I know those winters will pass quickly. And that is why I watch.
Today, her swim feels cut short. Not to be caught by either Reed or Robbie, I turn and walk away from the footpath and pretend to be soothing my son by walking around our house with him still on my hip. He watches my pretense with curiosity. Why would I comfort him when he is not upset?
When they crest the last slope of the footpath, my son waves.
Robbie has her arm around Reed’s waist, and he has his arm about her shoulders.
They wave back with their free hands and start the steep walk to the highest point on this part of Vyggia, where their house sits overlooking the ocean.
It was a house Reed paid my husband’s father to watch and tend to for many winters.
My husband took on some of the tasks as a boy, and when the one-eyed man returned to our island, he told me he was excited to meet the owner of the house.
It’s a house no different from any other islander’s home, from any house where other salt folk live, but its owners and its position are unusual, so it is a bit of a famous home here.
It is a day of rest. My children are done with their chores and begging to walk down the footpath to swim.
Neither my husband nor I feel like watching them.
We tell them no. They are fractious and bored, and I am about to threaten them with a chore when we hear wagon wheels.
They run to the door and one of my girls cries out, “There is a woman covered in tattoos just like Robbie!”
I step to the door and peer outside. I recognize the wagon.
It’s owned by a man down at the docks who sells the use of it and his horses to merchants who bring trade there.
He has delivered two women who look at least ten winters or more older than I am.
One of them is covered in tattoos like Robbie’s.
She is smaller, fine boned with dark hair.
The other woman is taller and carries more weight on her bones.
Something about the angle of her head, the way she holds it, reminds me of Robbie.
“That’s right,” my husband says. “Her niece and her daughter are visiting. All the way from Eccleston. Must have taken them two whole moons.”
Robbie must have told me this and I forgot. “She has a daughter? I did not know she had children. Do you mean the woman called Fox?”
My husband shrugs. “Reed just said she is ‘like a daughter’ and the other is her niece by blood.”
“Let’s go and meet them!” one of my girls squeals.
“I want to see the tattoos up close,” shrieks the other.
My son begins to babble along in his half speech, trying to keep up with his sisters. All three of them begin to make as if to leave the house when I call for them to stay.
“If we are invited over, we will go. But Robbie hasn’t seen her family in some time. We will let them reunite.”
There is a collective disappointment that I ignore, but I smile.
On the second day, we are invited to their house.
We meet Adelaide, Robbie’s niece, a smiling, shiny-eyed woman.
We meet Fox, the tattooed woman who is like a daughter to Robbie, who does not speak.
She signs something, and Adelaide tells us what she means.
Then Adelaide shows my children some gestures with her hands so that they can speak to Fox.
They are delighted by this and by her tattoo of a fox on her forearm. The way it is positioned, it looks as if it is at play in a field of daisies.
Robbie is incandescent. She sits and stares at the two visiting women and watches them converse with us. I can tell she is trying not to cry.
After the meal, Reed and my husband walk down to the beach with the children who, though mystified by Fox’s tattoos and charmed by Adelaide’s friendly manner, have lost interest in the conversation of adults.
We sit outside, four chairs from the house brought out so we can look out at the ocean.
We shell peas from Robbie’s garden. Fox smiles at me and hands me a bowl from a stack she has carried with her.
Robbie pours a heap of the peas into each of our laps from a bucket, and then we sit.
I listen as Adelaide and Robbie ask and answer a thousand questions.
Sometimes there is silence when Fox adds something, and then there is a repeating of it to me as I do not understand the elegant flow of her fingers.
And though I do not know the people or places they reference, I do not feel left out.
And then they reference something I am too young to know about, the great war between Perpatane and Tintar, something that broke out when I was too young to know the terror of war. It did not reach the islands of Vyggia.
Then Fox begins to weep softly and spills her peas when she pulls her apron out from under them to dry her eyes. And Robbie begins to cry too. Adelaide turns to me and says, “We’re here to give the ashes of two women to the sea. My stepmother, Tessa, and our dear friend, Ilsit.”
“I would give anything to see my Jade again,” Robbie says, and she spills her peas too to use her apron on her own wet eyes.
None of them seem concerned about the vegetables.
Adelaide seems to enjoy her role as interpreter and says to me, “My aunt Jade is in good health, as is her husband, Reed’s brother, but a physician suggested that at their age they shouldn’t make such a journey.
And Keir would have made it, but once Jade was told she shouldn’t—Well, he won’t let her carry anything heavier than a tin cup.
And it has nothing to do with her age. He’s always been that way.
And then Dermid wanted to come, but Jade got after him about his own age and it was a whole to do.
All three of them talking at once. It is a very, very arduous journey from Eccleston to here.
And when Ilsit passed, Fox and I figured we had better do it as we are both already near fifty.
My father is too old as well, but he funded our journey here.
Said we should lay our dear ones to rest somewhere beautiful. ”
I nod along even though I do not understand. I just understand that all these people, both the dead and the living, had and have love for each other.
“Will you come to the shore with us?” Adelaide asks me. “We’re going to give their ashes to the sea in the morning. I’d like it if you could come.”