Sea Legs [Excerpt]
Renee Roberts
The Pomegranate and The Light
By daybreak, the little mermaid sits in the middle of the kitchen, sleepless and peeling pomegranates on the floor with her little dagger, as the sun slashes the room open until the light oozes down the blue walls. Closing her eyes, she feels the skin of the pomegranate with her slender fingers, then guides the dagger down its back until it bursts. Sticky sweetness collects on her fingers. She remembers her mother, her hollowed eyes, singing lowly with a small smile and her head bent:
Wander not where you wonder
Your dreams are made of bones
Your heart is made of entrails
Your body is the road
Mother morning, like the anglerfish
Her jaws are the pillow
She’ll swallow you whole
Then ache as Weeping Widow
When the little mermaid lies on the strawberry jam red carpet, she watches silverfish and spiders scuttle busily up and down the walls, weaving with the light. She remembers when she was a little girl, she would rest their backs on stones and her mother would tell her to watch the way light dances because it is free and endless. She would tell her that she wanted to keep all the light for herself in a little box, if she could catch it. When she tried to look at her mother, she knew she was somewhere far away, looking beyond where they could be, fixated on the light. Bright threads seem to align themselves with the shadowy sways of the trees and elongated people walking by. She wishes that she could walk on the web. That she could climb inside of it. That she could become light.
When the boy returns they share pomegranates, with a glass of milk that coats their upper lips. Webs of light and shadow surround them until they are swaddled inside of it. In the middle of the kitchen, they hold each other, and sway back and forth, listening to the inner workings of their bodies, heartbeat, flinching, breath, contract, and release, until the sun blows out like a candle.
That night, the little mermaid stands over the sleeping boy. She holds the dagger in her hand as if she is comforting an uncertain child. As he snores, she mounts him, the gray slender question mark of a body arched. Yet she does not drive the dagger. She hovers there. She lowers herself down. But she does not weep. She lies beside him and aches but does not touch him before curling onto her side, her back against his, locating his breath. She follows it, contract and release, up and down his spine.
The Patchwork Girl & The Nightmare
On my nineteenth birthday in November of 2017, I stood up to Christian on the way to the sushi restaurant because he didn’t want to go. He did not say this but I knew he didn’t see a point in celebrating me when I was such a nuisance to him. I can’t remember what we said to each other but I remember being furious. By this point, arguing was no longer a novel experience, happening most of the time. Yet, this time, he forced me to surrender.
I left his car and tried to run from him on the sidewalk of the suburbs downtown, the chilly air nipping my bare arms as a reprimand. He screamed at me while he rolled a window down, telling me I was making a scene, that I was just like my mother, and I was anxious about catching anyone’s attention so he took us back to the hotel and I was sobbing and I could not stop sobbing and I was nauseous and I put on a golden bear onesie back at the hotel because I wanted to feel better and soft without being visible and I was sniffling and he held me and smiled like he had never been happier because he liked me like this and he didn’t need to say it because we both knew it and we went to the grocery store and I had wild hair and red bulging eyes and I was trembling and everyone was staring at me so we forgot store-bought sushi and went to Panera instead and he took off my onesie when we went back to the hotel room so he could make me have sex and my mind went to black. And still. And static.
That night I had a nightmare about being a scientific experiment, half-pig half-human. I gazed at the chimera of myself in the mirror, examining the patchwork stitches of my skin. Next, I had to perform a jazzy set at a lounge bar. In the middle of the performance, a flurry of social elites shoved me onto a table and ate me alive with my legs splayed open. When we woke up the next morning I told him about the nightmare, and he said it would make a great work of fiction.
I wondered what nineteen would look like for me that morning, as we dressed and checked out of the hotel. This was the final push. I became compliant. The loud girl I used to be disappeared. He spoke to me kindly for the rest of the day, and we found a comfortable silence that numbed the pain I was feeling. Christian decided I would never try to celebrate my birthday again, which would be “better” for both of us. It was too much excitement. I would never spend another holiday alone with my family because he needed to protect me. We agreed I was too soft and couldn’t make decisions by myself. Finally, he had the last word. I found a strange comfort in that.
The Recollection
In Hans Christian Anderson’s tale, the little mermaid is allowed to join the “daughters of the air” who will eventually be rewarded with a soul because of her self-sacrifice. Brown suggests that this tale warns of “too much wanting” which can “change the one who desires (whatever her object) to the point of deformity” because of this all-consuming desire. Yearning for love is punished and met with rejection and shame. The more I asked for love and acceptance, the more these things were taken away by him, and so I wished to harm myself for not being worthy enough for his love. By the end of the tale, the little mermaid might be able to earn a soul with the daughters of the air, if she performs enough good deeds after three thousand years. For Brown, this horribly wry instance of spiritual bureaucracy in “The Little Mermaid'' proclaims “how difficult” it is to “successfully become something we are not.” Despite the fact the little mermaid does everything she can, she still loses everything she has because she cannot accept herself. I reconciled that I was never going to be loved by Christian in the way I wanted to be. He could never love me for who I was. I had to be better. I relinquished control and surrendered myself. However, as Jeanette Winterson says in Sexing the Cherry, “Time has no meaning, space and place have no meaning on this journey” and “The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body.” In the end, the little mermaid allows herself to be divided because she understands that all transformation is endless and constant, without a true beginning or end. There is always hope for escape.
The Dissolution
With Lady Moon as her witness, the little mermaid, in her black cloak, walks out into the night with her dagger. The little mermaid’s soul can no longer belong to the sea nor the earth. She belongs truly to elsewhere, and nowhere, divided from the worlds she knew. At last, she remembers her mother’s meaning, all of her songs, the ache they share: your body is the road.
Kneeling where the land meets the sea, the little mermaid places the dagger on the threshold. She kisses the sand and rests her palms on the earth in a prayer of gratitude. Then, she walks back into the sea, as her body separates, divides, and expands into the mist. She feels no pain as she dissolves.
Every part of her decides to journey differently. Some sink to the seafloor to rest with their mother in the grotto of bones. Others join the atmosphere. Many become light. Some return to her sisters, her father, and her grandmother. While given the choice, none return to the Earth.
Renee Roberts is a creative nonfiction writer with an overactive imagination. A recent college graduate from Hollins University (Class of 2021), Renee studied English where she found a love for cross-genre, lyrical writing, utilizing fairytales to shape her personal narrative. She has been published in Catfish Creek.