Page 36 of Death of the Author

36 Naija

“Don’t go,” Msizi said through her phone’s speaker. Later, these words would haunt Zelu. But at the moment, they just annoyed

the shit out of her.

“Ten days in Durban without calling me and this is the first thing you say? Nice. Who even told you?” she snapped.

“Your terrified mother.”

They were both quiet for a while, Zelu looking out her window at the lake. Minutes before he’d finally called, she’d been

double-checking the booking of her ticket. She was all set.

“It’s been two years since my father died,” she whispered.

“Zelu... I just have a feeling,” he said, also softly.

“Is that why you’re finally calling?” She squeezed her phone as she spoke. “Because you have ‘feelings’? Finally. After not

calling me for ten days?”

“I said, ‘I have a feeling ,’” Msizi emphasized. “And not a good one. Why do you have to go to your village? I get it; you want to see your father’s

grave. But it’s still too dangerous for you. Can’t you... can’t you only go to Lagos?”

“So you talked to her before you even talked to me?” Pain lanced through Zelu’s chest.

“I...” He sighed.

“Look, I’m going with Hugo, Marcy, and Uchenna. We’ve traveled together plenty of times.” In the years following her father’s

death, she’d felt restless. She’d invited her MIT friends on more posh trips to cool destinations, including Trinidad and

Tobago, Qatar, Zanzibar, and Kenya. But none of those little adventures had filled the gaping hole inside her; there was only

one place Zelu wanted to be. “I’ll be fine. I need to see where my father is laid to rest. Everyone else has been but me! It’s been two years!”

“I understand,” Msizi said slowly. “I’m glad, but I just—”

“I’m going!” she screamed at her phone. She hung up. “ Fuck that shit !” Her hands were shaking so badly, she dropped the phone. She caught it just in time. The last thing she needed to do was

break her phone right before traveling. “ Dammit! ” she screamed. “No, no, no. He can stay out of my head.”

She stared at her phone. After a moment, she checked the call log. Yep, Msizi had actually just called after freezing her

out for ten days; she had not hallucinated the whole exchange. “Woooow,” she said, looking at his name. “The nerve.” When he’d left for Durban, they’d

bickered over nonsense. She hadn’t liked how anxious he’d been to leave her, and he hadn’t liked how clingy she was being,

which made her more anxious. She’d told him not to bother calling her when he got there. “Hey, maybe I’ll just see you when

you get back here in a month,” she’d spat. He’d nodded and that was that.

Their phone call had lasted exactly two minutes. She humphed, shoved her phone aside on her bed, and went back to packing.

“Oh man, this is going to be awesome,” Marcy said. She was sitting in the first-class pod beside Zelu, whose own pod was next

to the window. Zelu was quickly texting her family group chat that she had boarded the flight to Lagos. She was looking forward

to takeoff, when she’d be disconnected from the world for some hours.

“It is going to be awesome,” Zelu said, putting her phone down.

“Once we get to the hotel, maybe,” Uchenna said. “The Lagos airport is always like a gauntlet. I hope you guys are ready.”

Hugo pushed his neck pillow into place. “Ah, I love a good adventure.”

Zelu turned to her window and looked outside, trying to disappear for a little while. Behind her, a man was speaking to someone

in very stressed Igbo. They were still in Atlanta, but this was the flight that would go straight to Lagos. Once at their

gate, it was like they were already more than halfway there. While their flight from Chicago to Atlanta had been full of American

passengers, most of them white, this flight was different. Almost everyone on the plane was black and most likely Nigerian.

You could see it in the style of dress and body language; you could hear it in the accents and languages spoken. You could

smell it in the choices of perfumes and colognes. And, of course, you could tell by the hectic way people lined up to board

the plane; it was already a competition.

To show his solidarity with Zelu, Hugo had opted to wear his short pants, which showed off his prosthetics instead of hiding

them. The utter commotion that she and Hugo had caused when they got in line was only a precursor to what she was going to

experience when she arrived in Nigeria. People had gasped, stepped aside, stared, pointed, loudly commented. How the two of

them must have looked, though. Hugo with his high-tech prosthetic limbs that allowed him to move just like any other person,

and Zelu the famous writer with her exos. One young guy had turned to his friend and laughed, saying, “Na that writer who

is robot!” Five people had asked her to autograph copies of the books they were carrying, and seven more had rushed to the

airport bookstore to grab copies for her to sign.

Hugo took it all in stride, but it was exhausting to Zelu. The last time she’d traveled to Nigeria, getting around by wheelchair had been not only extremely difficult but humiliating. People had spoken to her as if her disability were mental as well as physical, or they didn’t speak to her at all. Some of the children had laughed at her. Some adults, too. Mainly the ones who were envious of the status that came with being an American. Not to mention the fact that it had rained the entire time they were there and the mud had left her stranded inside the hotel for two days.

Now she was at a different stage in her life and even more of an anomaly. When the plane took off, she sat back, put her noise-canceling

AirPods in, and closed her eyes. She reveled in the fact that she was in the sky, where walking was useless even if you had

the full use of your legs. She was cut off from the rest of the world. No internet, no phones. She couldn’t even see below

the clouds.

“Excuse me, miss.” Someone was tapping her on the shoulder. She groggily opened her eyes. When did I even fall asleep? she wondered. Was it dinnertime? A copy of her book was being pushed in her face. A British edition. It looked well-read.

Zelu blinked, trying to shake herself up. “Huh?”

“Sorry, o,” the woman said, grinning. She had one gold tooth among her many white ones. “Can you... can you sign this?

I really love it!”

Zelu stared at her for more than a few seconds. Had this total stranger really come up into first class and woken her just

to get an autograph? Seriously?!

“Sorry, o,” she said again. Yet she did not go away or take her book back. Zelu scanned the aisle for a flight attendant.

Of course, there was none in sight. Marcy and Hugo were asleep, too. Uchenna had his gigantic headphones on as he stared intensely

at his computer. She took the woman’s book. “Do you at least have a pen?” she asked.

“Oh yes, here,” the woman said, totally oblivious to Zelu’s annoyance. Or more likely, she just didn’t care. She handed Zelu

a blue pen. Zelu sighed loudly and autographed the book.

“Eh, could you write my name, too?” the woman asked when Zelu tried to hand it back.

“Are you serious?” Zelu asked.

“I just... please, o,” she said, grinning wider. “My name is Prosper Egwim-Chima.”

Zelu scribbled the name and handed it to Prosper, who left quickly. Zelu was still holding her pen, but she didn’t bother calling the woman back. “Whatever,” she muttered. Then she smiled, reminding herself of a fact that always pleased her: she had fans in Nigeria.

“Okay,” Uchenna said. “Push your bags fast. Move quickly. Our ride is already there waiting for us, so we do have places to go. Act like you’re in New York. Zelu, get ready to walk fast.”

Zelu chuckled. She’d been ready from the moment she’d stepped off the plane. This was new to Hugo and Marcy, but it was routine

to her. They were past baggage claim and now they merely needed to get to the exit. There was sometimes one final checkpoint,

and this was where airport security would try to ask for bribes and waste your time. She waved her hand near her waist, staying

close behind Uchenna. Thankfully, people were so busy staring at her exos that Zelu, Hugo, and Uchenna walked right past the

final checkpoint line. Zelu let out a breath.

“Hold on, guys,” Uchenna said.

Marcy had been stopped and was now having to lug her suitcase onto a table and open it up. Uchenna went to help her.

“You doing okay?” Zelu asked Hugo.

“Is it always like this?” he asked, wiping sweat from his brow with a folded paper towel. It was hot and muggy.

“Yep. They don’t really turn the AC that high in the airport.” They stood in front of a restaurant where some young men were

eating and people-watching.

“Yeesh,” Hugo said. “What a way to welcome travelers.”

“We haven’t even gotten outside yet,” she said, grinning teasingly at his discomfort. She was enjoying herself. “Ah, it’s

good to be home.”

“A place’s airport says a lot about the place.”

“True.”

“But I’m really excited to be here,” he said, perking up. “I can’t believe I’m fifty-two years old and just making it to West

Africa.”

“Better late than never.”

“Excuse me, sah, ma,” a young man in jeans and a red T-shirt said. He was already taking Zelu’s bag from her. Zelu snatched it back. “Can I help you carry—”

“No, I’m fine,” Zelu said.

But the boy didn’t let go. “I just want to help.”

Zelu roughly pushed his hand off her suitcase handle. She was so irritated and focused that she didn’t even lose her balance.

“I can roll a suitcase just as well as you can.”

“Hey, what are you doing?” Hugo asked.

The boy held up his hands. “But robot ma—”

“‘Robot ma’?” Zelu sneered. “Seriously? What... how much for you to fuck off,” she angrily said.

The young man blinked at her. “Twenty dollars,” he blurted.

She reached into her side pocket and brought out the twenty she’d stashed there just in case she got caught at the checkpoint.

She thrust it at him. “Fuck off!” She shook a finger at him, her speech suddenly shifting. “And don’t you dare send any of

your guys to come and harass me, o. Or I will insult you all!” He took the money and scurried off as if he’d seen a demon.

“Zelu,” Hugo said, looking impressed. “It’s like you shape-shifted into one of those Nollywood ladies.”

Zelu sighed, her adrenaline subsiding. “I’m sorry, this airport just brings it out of me. ‘Robot ma’?! What the hell is ‘robot

ma’?!”

Marcy also ended up paying a twenty-dollar bribe, but at least they got out a few minutes later. And thankfully their ride

was waiting right where he’d said he would be.

The hotel was nice, despite the staff staring at Zelu as if she were an alien. The room was small, but laid out such that she didn’t bump into things the way she did in most hotels. The edge of the bed was rounded and the blanket hung over it. There was a table, but it, too, had round edges, and there was plenty of space between it and the bed. The air conditioner worked. The bed was far enough from the wall that she had plenty of space for her suitcase. On top of this, an entire south wall of her room was a window that gave her a lovely view of Lagos.

That evening, the four of them opted to eat in their rooms since they were so jet-lagged. She ordered a basic yet delicious

meal of jollof rice, stewed chicken, fried plantain, and a bottle of Bitter Lemon. She gazed at the window from her bed and

frowned. She wished her mind would shut up. She’d decided to come to Nigeria without a wheelchair as backup to her exos. She

didn’t use her wheelchair at home anymore, but there was a difference between not using something you have and not having

it at all. However, since she’d gotten to her hotel room, she couldn’t stop thinking that she had to stand up if she wanted to get anywhere.

She grabbed her phone and hovered a finger above Msizi’s name before she remembered they’d fought before she left. She sighed

and called her mother instead.

The phone rang once. “Zelu!”

“I’m fine, Mom,” she said with a laugh.

“Oh, thank the Lord! Have you spoken to your uncle Ralph and auntie Mary?”

“We only just reached the hotel, Mom.”

Her mother’s voice came fast. “Call them soon so they know you’re there. And make sure you have enough data on your phone—”

“Mom, I have unlimited data. You can call me as often as you like.”

“Oh, good. But call them right after.”

“Sure, sure.”

“How was the flight?”

Zelu sighed, thinking of the woman who had woken her. “Boring, so good.”

“What of your friends?”

“They’re fine.”

“How are you?”

“Mom.” She laughed. “I’m fine. Really.”

“I don’t know why you couldn’t just stay at the palace instead of a hotel.”

“It’s okay, Mom. This way is better.” Waaaaay better. The last thing she needed was to stay at the palace and be inundated

with a procession of potential suitors. Though making Msizi jealous would have been a plus.

“Okay, o. Call me when you can,” her mother said, a hint of anxiety still in her voice. “Doesn’t matter the time, I will answer.”

Zelu spent most of the night staring at the TV, which showed only the news and Nollywood films. When the sun finally began

to rise, she put on her exos and stood on the balcony to witness its arrival. She looked at her phone and considered calling

Msizi again, but decided against it. She had brought her computer in case she actually wanted to try writing something, maybe

even book two. She hadn’t tried in so long, and she still didn’t feel like trying now. The stupid film had really done a number

on her; she needed to shake it out of her system, and she had no idea how long that would take. She’d extended the due date

with her publisher five times. Rusted Robots continued to sell, pushed by the subsequent success of the movie, but her editor, agents, and fans were officially champing

at the bit. Asking, bugging, pushing, nagging. Someone had posted on her social media:

Why are you torturing us, Zelu?

She wanted to ask them the same thing.

Around eight o’clock, Hugo texted her. Everyone was already at breakfast. She rushed to get dressed and join them.

“I’m so wide awake,” she said, biting into a piece of bread. They sat at an outside table at the hotel restaurant.

“Ah, the euphoria of fresh jet lag,” Uchenna said.

“Feels like being a bit high,” Marcy agreed. They all laughed.

The air smelled glorious. The bread Zelu was eating was the best bread she’d ever tasted. Her tea was delicious. And she was sitting with three good friends. She just wished the waitresses near the back of the restaurant would stop staring, talking shit, and giggling.

“Oh man, I’m in Africa,” Marcy said for the millionth time, grinning.

“Nigeria,” Uchenna said. “Specifics matter.”

“Lagos,” Marcy said, rolling her eyes. “I don’t know the street name, sorry.”

“Don’t start, Uchenna,” Zelu said, laughing. “Let Marcy vibe.”

“Thank you, Zelu,” Marcy said. “Afrrreeeeekaaaaaaah!”

“Afrrreeeeekaaaaaaaaaaah!” Zelu said, imitating her bad accent. “Deh mothah land , where eet all began !”

“I dunno, man,” Marcy said. “For you and Uchenna, it’s one thing. You, Hugo, you’re a white guy; it’s an adventure for you.

For me...” She sighed and shook her head, pressing her fists to her chest. “I don’t care how cheesy it sounds. It’s a homecoming.

I’m the first in my immediate family to make it back here.” She tilted her head, letting the sun warm her face. “Any of you

get any sleep at all?”

“Slept like a babe,” Hugo said. He’d ordered a plate of white rice, stew, and goat meat for breakfast and eaten every bite.

He patted his belly. “Jet lag is my friend, not my enemy.”

Uchenna kissed his teeth and rolled his eyes.

“How?” Zelu asked.

Hugo tapped his temple knowingly. “You lean into it. When you want to sleep, you sleep. When you’re awake, just be awake.

I’m telling you, it works. Even when I was in New Zealand, I was fine.”

“That really works?” Marcy asked.

“Yep.”

“Nah,” Uchenna countered. “The body is spinning, and doing that will just make it spin faster. You need to give it order.”

Hugo shrugged. “Which of us is well rested and which of us is high on sleep deprivation?”

Marcy got up. “Then I’m going to my room right now and going to sleep.”

Zelu looked up at her. “Wait, I thought we were going to the beach together.”

“Go without me,” Marcy said over her shoulder.

“Have a nice sleep!” Hugo called after her.

Zelu rushed back to her room and changed into her swimsuit. She put on a pair of long jean shorts, a black T-shirt with the

word justice on the chest, and some sandals. Then she put her exos back on. Hugo and Uchenna were waiting in the lobby when she came down.

She frowned at Uchenna, who wore a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers.

“You’re not gonna go in?”

He shook his head. “I’m not a good swimmer.”

“So?”

“So people die out there,” he said pointedly.

“What about you?” she asked Hugo.

He shrugged and looked sheepish. He was wearing khakis that covered his prosthetics, a T-shirt, and gym shoes. “Nah,” he said.

She took a deep breath. Didn’t matter. “So which beach are we going to?” she asked.

“What of Tarkwa Bay Beach?” Uchenna asked. “I heard that one is quiet and relatively clean.”

Zelu had never been to a beach in Nigeria. Other than her father, her family had never taken an interest in swimming the way

she did. She couldn’t wait to see what it was like.

“Okay, let’s go to that one,” she said.

They took an Uber to where the Internet said they should go. When they got there, they learned that they had to take an additional

boat ride to get to the swimming area.

Zelu was annoyed. She hadn’t anticipated squeezing into a boat with a ton of locals. “Rather find a different beach,” she

said. “I don’t want to—”

“Zelu, let’s just find out first,” Hugo said, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry until you have to.”

“I don’t want... it could be embarrassing,” she said. She looked back. Their Uber had already left. Shit. They always left so quickly. She glanced at Uchenna. He had his phone out and was typing on it, probably cataloguing her exos’ response to the sandy concrete. “Uchenna, stop using me as research.”

He shrugged. “You are research.”

She groaned and turned back to Hugo, but he was already walking to the boat booth. “Oh my God,” she muttered. “ Why can’t anything be simple?”

“Excuse me,” Hugo said to the man in the booth. He appeared to be in his early twenties and had the biggest smile Zelu had

ever seen as he looked down at Hugo. “Can I help you, sah?” he asked.

“Hi, how much is a boat ride to the beach?”

“How many, sah?” Still grinning, the man glanced at Zelu.

She turned around and looked toward the water where the boats bobbed. The sky was cloudy and it looked like there was a storm

on the horizon. Not the greatest day to go swimming, but she was here in the moment, in Nigeria, Lagos. Oh yeah, she was going

to swim here. They were heading to the southeast in two days. This was her best chance.

“It’s fine,” Hugo said behind her.

She jumped at his voice. “It is?”

He nodded, holding up three tickets.

“Did they recognize me?” she asked.

“Yeah, we just had to pay three times as much for you.”

“Ugh,” she scoffed.

“Think of it as paying for the exos. If you’d been in a chair, they’d probably have charged extra, too.”

“Isn’t that disabilities discrimination?” she muttered.

“Yep.” He shrugged. “You’re cranky today. Wanna leave?”

“No. Let’s do it.”

“How much extra did they charge?” Uchenna asked, walking over to them. He was still typing on his phone.

“Three times the price,” Zelu said. “And it makes me feel like a freak. Write that part down.”

The boat was tiny, rickety, and probably overloaded. There were five other tourists, white Brits from the UK in their sixties; they were quiet, but none of them was able to resist staring at Zelu. She stared right back, daring one of them to say something. When one did, she was annoyed.

“So... are you that writer?” one of the men asked. “With the movie?”

She clenched her fists and forced a smile. “That’s me.”

“Oh, I knew you had that name, but I didn’t know you were actually from Nigeria,” the woman sitting beside him said. She was petite and wore a swimsuit that was too small for her. Zelu was sure

one of the woman’s breasts would pop out before they made it to the beach.

“Yeah, by way of my parents,” Zelu said. Why can’t they just shut up with the small talk so I can look out at the ocean?

“So, you’re an American?” the woman asked.

Zelu glanced at the others in their group. They were all looking at her intensely. They really wanted to know.

She chuckled, keeping the smile plastered on her face. “Would you like me to produce a passport?”

The woman flinched. “Oh... well... I didn’t mean to pry.”

Then shut the fuck up , Zelu thought. But she laughed again and said, “No, no, you’re all right. Yeah, I’m Nigerian American. Born in the USA.”

This and Zelu’s smile seemed to set them all back at ease. She glanced at Uchenna and Hugo; both of them were silently cracking

up. She shot Hugo a discreet middle finger and Uchenna silently cackled even harder. The boat ride to the beach took twenty

minutes, and thankfully, everyone soon turned their attention outward to the glorious waters. When they reached the beach,

they had to jump into about four feet of water and swim to shore.

“You couldn’t tell us this before we left?” Hugo asked the captain.

“I thought you knew,” the captain said. But the smirk on his face told Zelu the guy was purposely being an asshole. She giggled.

“Do we look like we knew that?” Uchenna asked, motioning to his jeans and sneakers.

“I’m not the type of man who judges people by their appearance,” the captain said.

Uchenna rolled his eyes.

“You can stay on the boat,” the captain said. “I will be the one taking you back in an hour anyway.”

“Fine,” Hugo said, looking down at himself uncomfortably. “You all right with that, Zelu?”

The other passengers had already jumped out and were wading toward the beach. The cool water splashed over their bodies, the

waves lapping at them with gentle curiosity. She looked out at endless blue and sighed. “Yeah, no prob. But if we’re just

going to wait, could we at least go a little further that way?” She pointed toward the deeper water, farther from the crowded

shoreline.

“These waters aren’t very tame further out,” the captain said.

She fished a few dollars from her pocket, and he took them, nodding. She turned to Hugo. “You’ll watch my exos?”

Hugo nodded. “Remember Dubai? You get sand in the upper parts and you’ll have to spend hours picking out every single grain

with tweezers. I didn’t want to discourage this excursion, but I’ve been thinking about it this entire ride.”

“Cool,” Zelu said. But her mind wasn’t on the thought of fishing out grains of sand from her exos. She was willing to do whatever

she had to do. She was thinking about the ocean. She touched the sensor on the side of her exos and held her hand there for

twenty seconds.

“Name?” her exos asked.

“Zelu,” she said, holding her face still so that the exos could not only recognize her voice but scan her retinas. The exos

responded by removing themselves from her legs and packing tightly into a heavy two-by-two-foot box. So much possibility was

now wrapped into a solid cyan cube. It always reminded her of the monolith in that old movie 2001: A Space Odyssey .

She took off her shirt, folded it, and placed it atop her exos. Her swimsuit consisted of blue-and-green Ankara-printed shorts and a matching bikini top. She took the elastic bands from her backpack and put them around her thighs. As she prepared, she ignored the captain, who was staring at everything she did. It was annoying, but she couldn’t say that she wouldn’t have done the same if she were him. Still, she wished he’d cut it out.

“Want some help?” Hugo asked.

“Yep,” she acquiesced, handing him two bands and instructing him to put them around her calves and ankles.

As he worked, she looked out at the water and grinned. She made the mistake of meeting the captain’s eyes. “You have done

this before?” he asked.

“All the time.”

“You’re a good swimmer?” he asked.

“Very.”

“Even though you cannot walk?”

“Imagine that.”

“We’re not going to ever see you again.”

“Oh, you’ll see me again,” she said. He was really getting on her fucking nerves.

“No one in Nigeria has ever had your success writing about robot,” he said. “It’s really cool. Maybe you want to get lost—”

“I don’t want to get lost.”

“We cannot afford to lose you. A lot of people look up to you... even when they say they hate you.”

Zelu paused, raising an eyebrow. “People hate me?”

He smiled. “Some. You know how it is. People at home will hate you most.”

Zelu nodded, but she was looking at the water again.

“I’m going to tell everyone about this,” the captain said to Hugo.

“I don’t doubt it,” Hugo said.

Splash!

Her first thought was I’m free . Then she swam to the surface, noted the boat’s position, and started swimming. Smooth and easy, she stayed near the shore, keeping the boat in sight. She fell into a rhythm, and that rhythm aligned her with the motion of the water. Soon she felt it, that feeling she always sought. A connection. A joining. But this time, it was more profound than it had ever been. Something great and deep was hugging her, holding her up as she moved. It would never let her fall.

The salty water took her tears. And still she swam. Through everything. She was deep in her communion when she heard someone

shout, “Hey!” It wasn’t coming from the boat or the shore. The voice was only a few feet away. “Mami Wata’s daughter!” A man’s

laughter.

She stopped and bobbed in the water, looking around. “What the... Is someone else out here?”

Then she saw him. He was nearly beside her. A light-skinned black man with a bald head and a flat, arrow-shaped nose. He might

have been in his twenties or thirties, but it was hard to tell. “Who you?” he asked.

“Who you?” she responded, grinning.

“I am an Ijaw man taking a swim on his lunch break.”

She looked toward the shoreline; there were no buildings in sight. “Seriously? People do that?”

“I am doctor, my job is stress. When I come out here, I’m free,” he said, leaning back so the water carried him. “For a little

while.”

“I get it,” she said, leaning back, too.

“Where you coming from?” he asked.

She pointed behind her. She hadn’t realized she’d gotten so far from the boat; it was a speck now in the distance. “Tarkwa

Bay Beach.”

“Eh!” he exclaimed. “You are true swimmer. I don’t meet many people who can swim that far.”

She nodded. “The water’s great.”

He brought himself closer with a languid stroke. “Lagos is most beautiful from out here. It will be underwater soon enough.”

“You think so?”

“Oh, of course.” He laughed, as if this thought delighted him. “I th—” His eyes grew wide, as did his grin. He pointed behind Zelu. “Look! See? Everyone comes to Lagos!”

Zelu turned around just in time to see the first one. Its firm blue body glinted in the sunshine before rolling back under

the water. Zelu gasped and dunked her head to see, and she did! The dolphin glanced at her just before it darted away. She

saw another pass by, peeking at her for a moment above the water. And another, this one near enough to her that she moved

closer to the man with surprise. “Heehee!” she shrieked. “Just like with my dad!” She bobbed there, staring after them.

“Well, lunch break is almost over,” he said, moving into a backstroke. “Enjoy your swim. Don’t let anyone tell you these waters

are deadly! They’re only deadly to people who cannot submit to it. See the water’s citizens?”

Zelu nodded. “I do.”

“Go with that!” He waved good-bye and was gone.

Zelu stayed there awhile longer, soaking in the glorious moment. Feeling her various selves come together to be present in

these waters peopled by curious dolphins. She imagined telling her father all about it. She could hear his laugh when she

told him about the dolphin who’d thought her important enough to peek at from above the water. Maybe it had questions after

it had seen her legs tied together below. She rolled onto her back and floated there, staring at the overcast sky.

She inhaled and then exhaled, and whispered, “Clarity.”