She

by Natanya Epstein

I remember the first time we met; she, sitting at the other end of the pub’s dark wood bar, with hair shining in the sunlight. I remember because it was an odd place and time to see the glow of light streaming through a woman’s aged hair. I could see each strand carefully backlit, almost as if they exuded their own radiance against the stale apathy of a bar in midday. We looked at one another, somewhat by mistake, and quickly turned away returning to ourselves….I found myself staring into a mug of brown that had grown cold while I thought about my life. You see, everyone knows each other in this town. Most of us know one another even better than we do ourselves and though we constantly moan about the lack of autonomy, we secretly cling to the communal comfort. But she was from somewhere else, dragged in off the weekly ferry desperate for work or maybe she was there to re-unite with her long-lost parents as natives have been known to do in previous years, having been ruthlessly stolen as children away into a world of white too young to understand the future implications of a mainland stranding.

I remember walking out of the bar with her, hand in hand, like old friends after a lifetime together. She held my puny lump of a mitt inside her strong fingered one and led me down the Main St. past the bars with their neon signs quietly dangling over our heads. I felt like a tourist in my own town. It was the first time in my entire life that anyone had ever led me with so much quiet assertion and it was the first time I was not afraid. I watched her instead of the ground and I stumbled many times, but I couldn’t pull my gaze away from the gray and black haired woman. She was something to be looked upon.

Eventually I learned that her name was Shirley by birth, but that kind of birth is not the one we focus on around here and so we call her Rock. Since that day, so many years ago, we have not spent a day apart. I live in a room off her kitchen with sieves for windows that surround me on three sides. It is a long room presenting the front of this yellow house to the ocean deities across the sand. I wake each morning to the sound of her coffee pot whistling to the tides, calling them in, knowing that one could not survive without the other. Her creaking footsteps circle back and forth past my door and I imagine her preparing another day for her hands and her soul.

I was the town orphan before Rock came to me. I knew everyone, where to get food, where the best fishing holes were, and which animals were too poison- filled to hunt while others could be traded with the men down the road. I always tried to have something to trade in my pack just in case we crossed paths, for those men had been known to take what was not offered and I did not desire to wind up in that way. I did pretty well, sometimes leaving the main part of town for a few weeks at a time while I wandered the edges of my craggy island home and wondered what it was like across the water. I had memories of being somewhere else, but they were unclear and did not provoke me to stow away onto one of my friend Jerry’s ferry runs. I’m sure he would have let me in return for a bit of sanding, but I never desired the trip. It always seemed I was busy hanging out on the corner, helping pull up the crab pots, stealing into the movie theatre, or just sitting. I know all the shop-keepers. Most of them don’t want me too close to their front doors…say I’m too dirty and turn customers away, but that’s not true. All the customers are my friends and though we never talk about it, they all know that I sleep wherever I can and that I’m a hard worker. Most people around here are happy to help out, inviting me home to dinner so much that I almost always get one full meal a day.

But when Rock came along, I was tired. My best friend, 18 year old Louisa had finally moved away after threatening to do so for many years and I, finally understood why people were always leaving. I, too, was sick of the same shops. I was sick of putting on a show for anyone offering a bite and my back was aching with the years of sleeping on our small town library floor. I knew that Rock was different. She even sat on the crooked stool differently, the one we always laughed at when someone who was too drunk to sit upright came to it for grounding. That stool would turn you on your ass faster than you could blink. We had all been there, but Rock, she didn’t have to tilt her body weight back and forth to bring the stool into normalcy. From the very start, she sat down on that piece of wood as if it were part of her and I swear, it never even wobbled. She sat in that dingy bar that reeked of lack and saw right past Harry’s we don’t like outsiders around here look. He reluctantly brought her a pint and then quickly snaked away into the back as if there were more important things to do. She never took a sip but instead left a few coins from a geography unknown to cover the place where his disdainful hand remained in the form of a sweaty streak.

That day is burned on my brain. I can still smell the stale peanut shells that escaped Harry’s early morning broom sessions. I can still feel the tension between her and me; how desperately I wanted to feel her coarse grey hair hanging past her denim pockets.

Her dog, a black Labrador named Jinx, was waiting patiently for us on the bar’s front stoop and happily led us away out of town. It didn’t really occur to me how odd it was that I had never seen Jinx or Rock and that I didn’t know where we were going, but I, the hometown tramp, didn’t care. I just wanted to be with her. We walked and we walked following Jinx’s bouncing steps until we came upon a large tired yellow house. It was two stories high and had big windows like eyes that would look you over judging whether you were worthy enough to enter. Rock guided me up the front steps as I heard the ocean’s lapping waves coming from an unknown distance behind. Luckily, I was worthy and we slipped inside the front door.

That was seven years ago. Today I carefully lifted the weight of my door off its hinges so it wouldn’t disturb as I pulled it open to steal a moment of Rock’s morning solitude. She was still someone to be watched. I sat on the end of my iron cot frame and peered around the door as she stood at the kitchen sink, holding her worn hands around the streaming water. I could see the steam rising from the protected circle she made holding its warmth and I knew she was praying. Soon, we would be going out into the blustery coastal air to look for seaweed, to dig for clams, and to commune with the seals and gulls. This is what we did. We never spoke. Not once, in seven years, has Rock said anything to me in the traditional sense and honestly, I have not missed the lack of words. She occupies so much of my soul, speaking seems like it would be overwhelming to the experience of us.

And so we drift with the tides up and down the cold sand beach. We fill our baskets with life and I practice the ways of her. Sometimes, Rock seems like a goddess with a wisdom far beyond that of any human being. At those times, I sit down in the lumpy sand and let my exhaustion take rest as I observe her floating along the boundary of land and water. Her feet hardly make prints though she always covers more ground than I. Her baskets always overflow with colors and smells that seem to only come into existence after encountering her touch. We have an abundance of food and love and though we almost never get visitors, we keep a plate for them always. Other times, Rock is the epitome of humanity. She bears a sadness that overwhelms the soul and she wanders away from our home into town. The only thing I ever see her take is a pack of cigarettes, many years old, that she slips into her right coat pocket as she leaves the water behind. I don’t know where she goes and we never speak of my pathetic half-filled baskets upon her return, but I have noticed the cigarettes diminishing over the years, like fallen soldiers.

Without explanation, I have come to know Rock as my mother, my love, my Goddess, and my truth. I have learned the ways of the world by watching a snail sit calmly in her palm. I have filled myself with purpose between the sand and her hair, between the wind and the salty water I can smell in her clothes. I know who I am because she knew who she was. I say was because tonight, after stomping my frozen feet up the back stairs, I felt the moment of difference. I quickly lifted my chin to find her body laying in all its solidity, but Rock had turned to air and I realized that it was time to finally cross the water alone.

Natanya Ronit Epstein is a Fairhaven student graduating in the summer of 2007 under a concentration entitled, "The Nature of Animal Communication." Her passions include photography, writing, reading, and thinking, particularly on the ethics of science. Her future plans include attending graduate school for science writing, crossing northern Asia by train, learning Spanish, doing field research with cetaceans, and writing the second chapter to "She".