The Woman Who Owned the Shadows by Paula Gunn Allen

Author:Paula Gunn Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aunt Lute Books

The Child Of The Water Now Is She

One day after Tommy died, Teresa, Thomas and Ephanie took the infant Tsali, the two other children, sturdy Agnes and silent Ben, and went to the ocean that was far away from where they lived, some hours drive. They went and she nearly gave herself to that ocean. Ephanie nearly went away into the water and did not return. She had been knocked over by a large wave in rough surf. The undertow kept her from touching the sandy oceanbed. She was not tall enough to get her feet, not strong enough to swim against the tug of the retreating water that pulled her out to sea each time she had almost fought her way back toward shore. Fighting silently for awhile, she looked around for Thomas who had been beside her when the wave dumped them. He was not there.

She began to realize her peril. Her lack of strength. Her lack of power. Angry she began to curse, almost under her breath. The sea that would drown her. The man who was not there. The weakness that imperiled her. “Damn. Damn. Goddamn.” She chanted. Swimming, being pulled, helplessly, swimming too weakly, too slow, chanting. “Damn. Goddamn.” And heard her mother’s voice saying “Relax. Let it take you. Go with it. You must not resist what is too strong. Let it take you out. It will bring you back.”

She had thought for so long that she would be happy to go out. To sea. To see what was beyond the sky. To go home.

Damn.

Damn.

Goddamn. She could see Thomas running along the water’s edge, toward Teresa who sat on the sand. He was running away from Ephanie, who fought the pull of the water, of her soul.

She struggled with the water then, struggled relentlessly. No longer silent, no longer willing to give in. “I didn’t come all this way just to die,” she said to the water out loud. And repeated it, over and over, furious that it should come to this, that an ocean would try to drown her just when she had come to silence, to resignation.

Finally she began to call to bathers near her for help. She shouted loud, trying to be heard above the roaring surf. Men just a few feet away from her ignored her calls. She could see them splashing, knew their feet were firmly planted on the sand below the waves. They didn’t turn her way. They acted as though they did not hear.

She struggled with rising fear. She couldn’t get close enough to shore to put her feet on the ground. Was being pulled against her will out to sea and she was afraid.

Then as she was about to give in to the pull a hand reached out to her and she grabbed it, barely aware that it was attached to a human being.

Teresa, not much taller than Ephanie, had swum out into the pounding surf and pulled her out of the deeper water to where she could stand again on her own brown feet, walk out, lie on the sand, shivering, spent, mute.

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