CHAPTER SIX
Jostling and grass. Sky and heat. Hands on me, lifting, lifting, and then falling. Falling into blackness. Falling upside-down. Falling in a weightless orb that swallowed me whole. Falling like Alice through the rabbit hole.
Ground. Dirt. Sleep. So sleepy. Water passed my lips and I drank, but I couldn’t think.
I heard laughter and talking, talking, talking but no words registered.
Green swirled to black again, black swirled to orange, orange swirled to white, in a kaleidoscope of color, sparkling like individual points of light.
These points of light grew and stretched the closer I approached them in my mind.
They were a specular reflection, the way the sun glints off water.
But it wasn’t water. They were pictures of my life.
Specular reflections of my memory mirrored back to me as I floated, was carried, and jerked through the labyrinth of greenery by stranger’s hands.
I glimpsed waterfalls and black mountains, but also saw Greg throwing back his head in laughter. Was that memory or the present?—I couldn’t decide. I heard the beat of the medi-chopper, and watched as it landed on the roof of my hospital.
My mind couldn’t decide if I was awake or dreaming.
I felt my face lying in the dirt, my body heavy with sleep, my brain fuzzy with current details.
But the memories were crystal clear. They continued to shimmer past me.
I watched myself performing chest compressions on the little boy who hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt.
His face was a mangled mess of blood and skin.
I remembered nursing school. The EKG rhythms blurred on the screen up front, which meant I had to get fitted for glasses.
My high school locker flashed through my mind.
Cheer squad. Swim team. Graduation. My brother Jonathan taking me for ice cream the day he turned sixteen.
Jonathan teaching me how to dive…I stayed with that one a little longer, remembering how I felt that day.
“Put your arms up and make a small arch. Ok, now keep your hands together, but point them down so they cut the water without a big splash. Ok, now, put your feet and knees together, and bend slightly.”
“Are you sure this is right? I feel like an idiot!
“Well, I wasn’t going to say anything…but…”
“Jonathan!”
“Ok, ok, ok, give the knees a slight bend and jump into the water following the arch your body is making.”
My fourteen-year-old, bikini-clad body jumped, sufficiently landing in a belly-flop that stung like crap. Jonathan was laughing when I came out of the water.
“It’s not funny!” I said, mad and splashed him. “You’re supposed to be teaching me!”
“I am. It takes practice.” His wet, brown hair curled around the edges of his temples and forehead.
“I’m getting it before you leave, or you can’t go,” I threatened.
“You might sabotage yourself with that line of thinking. Come on, try again.” he’d said with a splash. “You’ve got to defend the Jones’ name!”
“I haven’t even made the team, yet…I doubt I’ll become an All-American.”
“Not with that attitude, you won’t…come here.”
The chlorinated water felt cool on my skin, and the bright sun sparkled off the ripples and waves our bodies were making. Water. Water. I was in the water, the sun sparkled, pierced, glowed.
“I don’t want you to go,” I whined.
“I know.”
“We are never going to be at the same school. It’s not fair.”
“I prepared the way for you,” he reasoned.
“Yeah, and I’ll always be Jonathan Jones’ little sister.”
“No you won’t…here, lay on your back,” Jonathan’s warm hand braced the small of my back, as I lay horizontally. “Just float for bit. Close your eyes.” I obeyed, feeling the cool water ripple all around me, the sun above warmed my face. Safe. So safe in the water with Jonathan.
“What’s the first rule of swimming?”
“Never swim alone,” I mumbled.
“What? I can’t hear you!”
“Never swim alone,” I shouted.
“Ok, good. Now tell me you’re going to make the team.”
But I didn’t think I would make the team. How could I live up to the legacy he’d left at Bellaire High?
“I’m gonna make the team.”
“Say it again.”
“I’m gonna make the team,” I said more convincing.
“Yeah you are…you can do anything you set your mind to, Sid, remember that.” and with that he dunked me under.
A sharp pain pierced through my skull and I felt the water envelope me like a cold sweat.
I opened my eyes to a foggy stream of golden hair.
Was that hair? It looked like hair. Was it my hair in the water, floating, waving, like the hair of a mermaid?
Dry, tawny, slivers, all waving in the same direction.
My eyes followed them until I saw a wooden post wrapped in more of the yellowish hair.
But that wasn’t hair. My mind groped for a word that would feel sufficient to describe it.
Grass? Long grass. Why was I wet? I reached a hand to peel away my shirt from my chest, and felt the dampness all around me.
God, it was hot.
My eyes began to adjust. I could see yellow light coming through the small window-opening on the other side of the room.
What time was it? Where was I? What had happened?
I pushed my mind to remember, like I was propelling in water, up from the bottom of the swimming pool, up, up, trying to reach the top, trying to break through to the surface.
But no memory came. I felt myself panicking.
Breaths short. Heart racing. Calm down, a rational voice echoed.
Breathe. I’d done this before. A plan supplied itself on the next wave of anxiety—breathe in, one, two, three, four.
Breathe out, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven.
Repeat. It worked. I felt my heart rate return to normal and began to make assessments.
No injuries on arms and legs, save for the hundred or so bug bites that covered my skin like scales, similar to the lizard that just skittered by in my periphery.
It made me jump, and the searing pain at the back of my head presented itself again.
Ok, so it’s a head injury, I thought, my brain supplying me with a list of questions.
I wasn’t sure where they had come from, but I followed them.
What do you remember just prior to the impact? How did you get here? Are you alone? If not, who is with you? I tried in vain to think of answers to these questions but it was like swimming in the ocean, looking for land, a lifeboat, a raft—anything that would give me something to hold onto.
I reached up and felt gingerly on my forehead and pulled away a sticky substance littered with green clippings.
Herbs? I felt a raised cut just above my eyebrow, but the pain was coming from the back of my head.
I lifted slightly off the pillow, which felt to be a burlap sack filled with grass, and carefully felt the back of my head. Leaves?
Yes, thick leaves with the same sticky substance in a make-shift bandage ratted into the mess of my hair. When did I hit my head? My brain just kept bringing me back to Jonathan.
“Jonathan is my brother,” that statement helped the tumultuous waves of my thoughts.
But was I with Jonathan? No. There was something else surrounding thoughts of Jonathan.
Something unresolved that I didn’t want to touch.
I remembered it now. The dream—or memory—when Jonathan taught me to dive had happened the summer before he’d left for college.
When the day he’d left finally came, I’d run to the attic in tears refusing to say goodbye.
I’d watched him out of the small round window hug Mom, scruff the neck and ears of Sasha, get into the car and leave—then, he’d never come back.
Jonathan was my brother, my mind offered the past-tense.
He’d left me just like our dad did. But why couldn’t I think past fourteen-year-old Sidney?
How did I get here? First of all, where the hell was here?
I raised up on my elbows and took a look around the room, allowing the dizziness to subside before I opened my eyes.
The room was small and a rickety homemade table was tucked in the corner, with a stool to match.
The bed where I lay was fashioned similarly and creaked under my weight as I swung my legs to sit on the edge.
A tsunami of nausea washed over me and I swallowed several times to keep it at bay.
I really should lie back down, but curiosity overpowered rational thought and I stood, using the back wall as support.
Upon closer inspection, the back wall was also made of grass, or more like straw.
Thick chords of straw expertly woven across each other making a strong and almost impenetrable structure of natural material.
Finally, standing without the assistance of the thatch wall, I shuffled slowly to the small, open window, no more than a square hole, on the opposite side of the room. The light grew brighter. I could see the sun peeking up from the horizon of trees and heard the chatter of jungle sounds.
As I reached the edge and grasped the sill, I was greeted with another wave of dizziness.
My vision doubled with the blur of green and yellow as I realized I was looking at the ground from twenty feet in the air.
The awareness of my orientation did nothing to subdue the growing anxiety that came from the question foremost in my mind—where was I?
I retreated from the window and pressed myself against the wall, careful not to push my full weight against it in case it decided to give way and I fell backward from this height—maybe I should get back in bed.
A noise on the floor caught my attention.
I hadn’t noticed the hatch door before, but now it rose in a perfect square, held up by an arm sinewy, and wrinkled…
the color of dark-roast coffee. A woman’s head popped up like a toy jack-in-the-box.
She had a short black afro, streaked with white, and a surprised expression on her weathered, aged face.