by Jan Baross

Strong arms around my waist lift me back from the edge.

When I turn there is a man, naked, except for an immodest loincloth of dripping kelp. He seems either unformed or torn into pieces that hover together. I must be dead or frozen in a dream.

Something is so familiar, the way he cocks his head from side to side as though he were shaking water out of his ears. Above the roar of silence, I hear my heart start to beat.

"Gabito?" I whisper.

Slowly his features come together like a table puzzle.

I did not know beauty like Gabito's could ever change. The right side of his face has a few cuts in his still-perfect jaw. But on the left side, his face and body look like they have been trampled by a herd of horses. Blood drips from his scalp and his split lip. He smooths his wet hair over a hole in his cracked skull the way men try to hide their baldness.

"Tortugina," says Gabito.

The voice doesn't go through the usual cavities but flows directly from a hole in his throat.

My heart pounds louder than the old tortilla machine.

"Gabito!" I say. "It's true, what the brujas say, that no one really dies."

He looks down at the puddle of seawater forming under him.

"I am some kind of dead," says Gabito.

"Gabito, forgive me," I say.

He shakes his head, and the bones seem to settle closer to their old shape.

"A good diver should never be distracted, Tortugina. It was not your fault."

He watches my eyes adjusting to the new him.

"Do I look that bad?" he asks.

"You will always be you, my Gabito."

I am trembling. I hear the dripping of his kelp loincloth. His torn cheek flutters like a gill.

"Tortugina," he says sweetly.

His fingertips against my cheek are just as solid as if he were alive. They are cold, but not as cold as skin after a dive. This cold feels sore.

As he bends to kiss me, his left eyeball loosens from its socket, drops, and dangles on his cheek. He tucks the eye back under his lid.

"Sorry," he says. "It takes some getting used to."

There is nothing more than a membrane to shield the left side of his chest. The muscles and tendons have been torn away. Gabito places my palm on the thin sheet that remains. I feel his tender pulse. If I pressed, my fingers would break through and touch his heart.

Gabito turns his good side toward me, firm, whole with only a few wet gashes. His good eye flirts sweetly. He is a wondrous stranger without being a stranger at all.

"Marry me, Tortugina," says Gabito. "I have earned you with my life."

I want to scream, "Yes." My dream to marry Gabito has come true. But his death, it is hard to know what changes it brings. Can we make love, Gabito? Can we have children? If I keep thinking, the obstacles will mount higher than a funeral pyre.

"Tortugina? Did you hear me?"

Gabito's hair is drying into his old curls. He is so nervous, his left eye slips out of its socket again. He cocks his head and it shifts back into place. A new habit, unconscious, like pushing slipped reading glasses back up the nose.

"There is only one question, Tortugina," whispers Gabito. "Do you love me?"

"With all my heart," I say.

I try to think of the good side to this union. I will be married to the man I love. I do not have to cook or clean for a ghost. And half of him is still handsome. How many women can say that about their husbands?

"Yes, Gabito," I say. "I will marry you."

In front of the steps of his father's house, Gabito solemnly takes my hand. His scarred fingertip circles my wedding finger where a ring would be. His touch leaves a bluish gold band.

"With this ring," says Gabito, "I, Gabito Ramirez, take you, Tortugina Gomez, for my wife. I pledge my love for eternity, though my eternity has begun a little earlier than yours."

Gabito circles his ring finger, leaving a purplish gold ring mark on his skin.

"It looks like a bruise," I say.

His broken lips spread into a smile. "Our courtship has been like that, hasn't it?"

His spread of loose teeth widens into a bigger grin. I suppose it will not be so startling in the morning if I wake up on his good side.

"Now it is your turn to pledge yourself to me."

"Gabito, my beloved," I say. "In heaven or hell, on earth, for eternity and a day, I am your wife."

Tears gather in Gabito's eyes. He blinks at me with the eye that remains steadfast in its socket. I am quickly growing to like his new face. It is more vulnerable in the rearrangement.

Gabito leads me around the side of the house to the wooden bench below the kitchen window. He moves his hands as though he is shutting a curtain, and a thick, luxuriant, warm mist surrounds us. His kelp loincloth drops in a wet heap.

"I do not want to rush our wedding night," says Gabito, "but I must return to the sea."

He gently lifts the black dress up my thighs and removes my white panties. My blood rises to meet Gabito's cool touch.

"I am finished with my first blood!" I say. "It lasted only one day."

Gabito smiles and rubs my white underwear against his cheek. It absorbs his trickling blood.

"Whenever I see your underwear, I will think of death," says Gabito.

We meld together on the glowing bed of mist. With sighs of relief, Gabito takes me apart, inch by inch, with the pleasure of his touch, his tongue damp from the taste of the sea.

There is no sense of his physical weight. Gabito floats on top of me, his hips to my hips. I feel him between my legs, gently rubbing against my wetness. His body moves softly, then harder, pressing. Finally he thrusts deeper, and there is a sharp pain. Virgin skin tears me free into womanhood.

"At last," I sigh.

My diver Gabito plunges again and again as though I were a current of the sea. Our breath is as ragged as Gabito's bones. Something is gathering inside me that his movements have awakened. In my woman's mound an ache grows and cramps until I must scream. And then I do. I scream. The sun releases inside my body. Bursts! The ache releases. I cannot stop screaming until the air is gone from my lungs.

"Tortugina!" Gabito cries with his last thrust.

I hold onto his shoulders and feel his heart beating as though it were in my chest. My woman's mound feels like a hot bowl of honey.

"Gabito," I whisper.

My throat is raw. Our breathing slows together.

"Am I good in bed?" I say.

"You are," he says with a long kiss.

My lips spread in a smile nearly as wide as my legs.

"I love you, Gabito," I say, and I try the new word. "Husband."

"I love you, Tortugina," says Gabito. "My wedding gift to you is this."

He hands me a scalloped shell with a hole in it like all the divers wear around their necks for luck.

"Someday you and I will dive together," he says. "I will make your dream come true."

I want to scream again, but my throat is too sore. "Yes! I love you, Gabito!"

Gabito kisses me one more time before he floats away naked through the disappearing mist that surrounded us and dives over the cliff.

I curl under my shawl and fall asleep with the shell in my fist.

Over the whine of the wind, I hear the front door slam. Maybe Mamá has come with another shawl for me, or food. I am as hungry for beans as I was for Gabito.

I pull on my pants, adjust my dress, and limp to the corner of the house. Tomás, Gordo, Vicente, and Luis stumble out of the house drunk and into the stony road with their wagon-wheel wreath.

"Tortugina!"

Tomás sees me. He cocks his arm and throws his beer bottle at me. It explodes on the corner of the stone wall. Foam and wet fragments of glass cover my face, hair, and shawl. If his aim were better, I would be wearing the bottle in my brain.

"Go to hell, Tortugina!" yells Tomás.

With his drunken insult, Tomás is the first person outside my family to acknowledge my existence. His words break the code of silent banishment.

"Witch! Witch! Witch!" yells Gordo.

I am surprised how gratifying even bitter recognition is. Their silence was unbearable.

"You whore, puta," screams Vicente.

All I need to do is answer, and we are engaged in conversation.

"Pigs!" I yell. "Drunken pigs!"

I watch the effect of my words on their faces. Dark fury, blacker than the blackest storm cloud. Tomás drops his handhold on the wreath.

"I am going to kill you, Tortugina!" yells Tomás.

I pick up the neck of his broken beer bottle and hold the jagged edges like a sword.

"I do not care if I die!" I mean it with all my heart. "I am not afraid of you!"

I wave the sharp glass. "Go ahead, kill me!"

Tomás grabs my arm and twists the bottle away. He grabs my hair and holds the jagged edge at my throat.

"Die!" screams Tomás.

Vicente grabs his arm. "Tomás! Leave this to God."

Tomás drags the sharp glass across my skin. The cut does not feel deep. Warm blood trickles down my neck.

"Tomás!" I say. "Gabito was here. He gave me a shell like yours. He said I could be a diver."

Tomás shoves me onto my knees.

"I am telling you the truth. Look!"

I show them the shell in my hand, but they do not seem to see it. At a signal from Tomás, the boys pick me up and carry me to the back of the house.

"You want to dive, whore? Then dive!" yells Tomás.

The divers drop me into a horse trough full of green water. Hands push my head under. Hold my breath. Face down into the bottom slime. Struggle to get my head up. Hands push on my back, my legs. Fight! Kick the bastards! I did not get a good breath! My fingers grab the edge of the trough. They cannot kill me! A hard heel crushes my hold. Water leaks into my mouth. Breathing. Breathing water. I cannot fight the floating blackness.

I sink deeper under the dark water, under the waves. Tentacled creatures with transparent bodies swim past my face and become two large hands. And then I see his face.

"Gabito?"

He is wearing an ancient blue navy jacket with large golden epaulettes. His long legs are covered in white tights that follow every curve.

"Tortugina, beloved, I did not expect to see you so soon. Are you all right?"

I push him away as he tries to take me in his arms.

"Your brother tried to kill me," I say.

He frowns and looks up through the waves crashing above our heads.

"He loves me," says Gabito.

His brown hand cups my face.

"I promise," he says, "you will never come to harm as long as I am dead."

He kisses me. I have developed a taste for his blood, and I kiss him with my tongue.

"Am I good?"

"Tortugina," says Gabito, "you are so good that I have something to show you."

He motions for me to follow him and swims away. I swim after him with more of a talent for the water than I knew. He leads me into a shallow cove on the other side of the cliffs. Half hidden by seaweed and sand is a mossy Spanish galleon the size of a large whale. The masts are broken and the hatches are ripped open.

Gabito gathers me in his arms like a bouquet.

"Come!" Gabito disappears through a hatch covered in seaweed and slime. I swim after him through a corridor with trapped, algae-green skeletons. They bump gently against the swollen teak walls. Gabito knocks bones out of my way. He turns at a door and waits for me.

"Mind your head," says Gabito. "This is the captain's cabin. I haven't had time to clean."

The captain's cabin is small, with a table and two chairs in the center. All the surfaces are covered with delicate flags of lime-green algae.

"It needs a good scrub," I say.

"Look, Tortugina."

On one side of the cabin, under mounds of sea snails, is a bed with a small canopy. I've seen such beds in books and thought they looked like little boats.

"Look at the view." Gabito points to a window at the back.

Outside is a red rock gully. Schools of yellow fish zigzag in and out of the filtered light, flashing gold and black.

"This is our home, Tortugina," he says.

"Then let me stay," I say.

Gabito kisses my hand and sucks each of my knuckles as though they were strawberries.

"When our son is grown," he says.

"Our son? Are we having a son?"

"When he is strong enough in the world," says Gabito, "then you can stay. A man must leave his seed or else he truly dies."

"Does a daughter count?" I say.

There is a loud knocking outside the galleon.

"We will talk later," Gabito says.

He quickly swims me back to the edge and leaves me with a kiss.

Returning is never easy. My fingers are anchored in the bedsheets. I am half drowned in light quilts. Mamá's hand is under my neck and raises my head above the waves.

"Tortugina? Tortugina, please wake up."

I rub my lids clear enough to see Mamá's fat face. She sits in the wild swirl I have made of my covers. Orange lantern light flickers across her wrinkled forehead.

"Thank the dear Lord," she says. "You have come back."

She strokes my face with a damp washcloth.

"What happened?" I whisper.

"Poor little turtle," says Mamá. "You were seized with such sadness, you tried to kill yourself. But the divers saved you."

The old disappointment in Mamá's dark eyes is gone. She looks at me with a tenderness I have rarely seen before.

"My poor baby," says Mamá.

"Mamá," I say. "There is good news. Gabito is not altogether dead. He returned to me and we married!"

I hold up my hand to show her the blue wedding band. There is no band. I open my hand to show her the shell, but there is no shell.

Mamá feels my forehead.

"Tortugina, Gabito's death has driven you mad."

Mamá clasps her hands in prayer. "Why is God punishing me like this?"

Her wide back shakes with sobs.

"Tortugina, I am sorry." Mamá looks in my eyes for such a long time, I start to count her blinks. "It is beyond me how you came into the quiet blood of this family."

She wipes her eyes. The mattress rises as she stands.

"We have a guest. Dress quickly and come to the front room."

In our hallway hang pictures of dead relatives in white wedding dresses and black suits. I like to think they dance at night and trade partners between centuries when no one is watching.

Through the doorway, firelight spikes up the wall from the front room hearth. Mamá and Papá sit with the great black tent that is Mother Mary Inmaculada. They turn in their squeaking leather chairs to stare at me. Mother Mary's bird-of-prey eyes follow my progress into the room. Her wings shift under the black habit.

"Tortugina. Come in, child."

Mother Mary's voice is pitched high to catch the ear of God. So, is it the convent for Tortugina? Does Papá want to jail me in a drafty monastery that was once a barn, where I will be forced into the unnatural position of prayer for the rest of my life?

The nun's talons hold Mamá's guests-only porcelain coffee cup. The delicate cup is covered in hand-painted roses and lime-green petals with two blue-gold finches on the handle. It is the last cup of a set of expensive cups that were Mamá's mamá's mamá's on her wedding day. When I begged shamelessly, Mamá said the bird cup would be mine, when I married.

"Tortugina is a child of God," says Mother Mary Inmaculada, "and every child of God can be redeemed. Or at the very least, it is our duty to try."

Papá nods, but Mamá snorts as though Gato had brought us another dead bird.

Mamá and Mother Mary do not like each other. In school, Mother Mary was called Althea, and she had no urge for Jesus then. Her large frame was not built to duck under the doors of the nunnery but to push a plow and struggle under a giant husband. Though it is never mentioned in my presence, something happened between Mamá and Mother Mary that has a great deal to do with Papá.

"You will be a nun, Tortugina," says Mother Mary Inmaculada. "Your Papá agrees that it is the only way he will find peace. Where parents fail, the church teaches."

Mother Mary arches her pinky and sips the coffee.

Mamá's fat face seems to narrow. "Althea, you want our wild Tortugina for your little convent? This is not a marriage made in heaven."

Papá slams his heavy coffee cup on the table.

"But you agreed, Celia! She needs more discipline than we can provide."

"Hector, you are the one who agreed," says Mamá. "Do not be so eager to entomb our Tortugina."

Papá and Mamá never argue in front of guests. Mamá's voice has a soft tremor that threatens tears.

"Hector, someday I want to hold Tortugina's children in my arms."

She dabs at her eyes. Mamá switches from dry to wet easily. But now she needs my help against the others.

"You will hold my child in your arms soon, Mamá. Gabito has left me a son."

Mother Mary spits coffee. The bird cup drops from her hand and shatters on the floor. Porcelain finches and painted roses roll in different directions.

"My cup!" I scream, ready to bite the nun's hand.

Papá is equally stunned. "Celia. A son?"

Mamá stands and whispers, "Just dreams. I am going to get a broom."

Papá shifts noisily in his leather chair. "Celia!"

Mamá walks past him to the kitchen. I kneel and scoop the tiny pieces of my shattered inheritance from the floor into Mamá's little saucer. The porcelain reds and blues and greens look like bits of candy.

Mother Mary glances over her shoulder at the kitchen door where Mamá disappeared. Leaning toward Papá, she speaks as though I were not there.

"Hector, your daughter's behavior is beyond anything I imagined."

Papá answers as though I were not a foot from him. "Tortugina lives in a world of her own."

I do live in a world of my own. If only I did not have to leave it so often. Mamá slams a cupboard in the kitchen.

Mother Mary rests her hand on Papá's knee.

"If she had been my daughter, Hector, it would not have come to this."

Papá lightly touches his skull in search of something to say.

"Had she been ours . . ." says Mother Mary Inmaculada.

I lean close to the shameless nun's beak nose.

"Mother Mary, you could not produce an heir if God himself seeded you. Your body is as infertile as your soul."

The nun's hand jumps off Papá's knee.

Papá slaps my face so hard a button pops off his sleeve.

"Apologize to Mother Mary!" says Papá.

I can smell the nun's dry breath. "You are a human drought!" I shout.

Mamá hurries in from the kitchen with her tiny hand broom.

Papá clamps his hands on the arms of his leather chair and stands.

"The discussion is over, Celia! Tortugina will be a nun!"

Mamá's face softens into a smile.

"With all due respect, my dear husband, Tortugina will not be a barren sister of God."

Papá follows Mamá's hips coming toward him that now have a rhythmic sweep.

"We will give her one last chance," says Mamá.

"What chance have we not given her?" His eyes moisten as she presses close to him. Her eyes are a wonder of seduction.

I am watching strangers who are my parents, and I no longer wonder what keeps them together.

"You cannot have my daughter, Althea," says Mamá.

Mother Mary twists the black edge of her habit.

"Tortugina will choose a husband," says Mamá, "at the Promenade de los Adolescentes. What better punishment for our savage child than for her to become a wife and a parent herself?"

"I am having Gabito's baby," I say.

She shakes her head at me.

"Not a dream child, Tortugina," she says. "A real sucking, squalling, stinking little sea rat like you. Then you will grow up fast!"

Papá takes her hand.

"The Promenade, Celia? What boy would want her, this creature that God in his wisdom has given us to temper our good fortune."

Papá's words hurt, but I have learned from the results of Mamá's gentleness.

"Let me try, Papá," I say sweetly. "Sometimes there are new faces, someone who has not heard of the wicked Tortugina."

My little sarcasm, but he seems not to notice.

Mamá pouts like a schoolgirl. "One more chance, Hector."

Looking down at her solid breasts pressed against his chest, it is hard to imagine the store counter dividing them all day.

Papá chuckles, "Well, one more chance."

It is gratifying to see Mother Mary Inmaculada as close to tears as the face of a nun allows. She gathers her dignity, rises out of her seat, and keeps growing up to the wood rafters. Her shadow covers both Mamá and Papá, who cowers slightly.

"I am sorry, Althea. I should not have called you," says Papá.

His eyes cannot apologize enough to Mother Mary.

"I understand, Hector," she says. "You were desperate. Excuse me."

She sweeps past us and down the stairs. Papá follows to unbolt the front door. Mamá and I are alone at last.

"That made me very tired," says Mamá.

I am surprised by how tired I am as well, and then I remember that I am recovering from a drowning.

"May I go, Mamá?"

She wraps her wide, fleshy arms around my shoulders, and my body remembers only the good parts of her. I will take the soft heat of her kitchen smells back to bed with me.

"Make me proud at the Promenade, Tortugina."

"I promise, Mamá."

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