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Into the Chesapeake
Chilaili
stood on the bridge and looked at the cold, brown bay below. The waves were
capped with bits of ice, and she imagined how it would feel on her skin. Would
the water’s icy fingers sting her legs and arms as she fell through the
surface, or would it envelope her in a numb embrace, a welcome state of
nothingness? The wind whipped her long, black hair around her head, slapping
her in the face as if to bring her back to reason, but she took no notice. She
couldn’t feel the wind or the layer of snow crystallizing on her thin shirt and
bare legs. All of her attention was focused on the drop below, the beckoning
Chesapeake Bay, and final escape. She contemplated how long it would take to
hit the surface, but not her reasons for leaping. She was beyond that now. She
was beyond the should have, would have, could have, and could only see her mother,
the sea, below. She was going home now.
Chilaili
spread her arms like an eagle, out from her sides, fingers to the sky. She
arched her back and rose up on tiptoe, as if in mid-flight, then closed her
eyes and tilted her head back, inhaling the salt and cold and snow. The smells
brought back her first memories of the sea.
She
was four. She was wearing an aqua blue bathing suit with a ruffle at the bottom
that her mother had bought her for the occasion. The water was the most beautiful
thing she had ever seen. It was powerful and big and never ending, but she
didn’t fear it. Even then she respected the sea. It could sweep her away
whenever it chose, but it also made her feel safe. It was a part of her, and
she of it. Her mother had taught her to never turn her back to the ocean and to
always stand sideways to keep the riptide from drawing her in. Too bad she
never applied that lesson to her life.
And
now, from the swaying, steel bridge, she could feel the pull of the tide. After
all the years of trying to keep afloat in the ocean, she was relenting to its
power. She wanted nothing more than to feel it swallow her whole, to erase all
that she knew, all that she was, all that she’d never be.
Her
shirttails flapped in the wind; her long, brown legs were turning purple from
their naked exposure. Her body shivered in a final, futile effort at
preventing hypothermia.
It was time.
Chilaili slowly opened her eyes and lowered her arms. She
stepped softly over to the waist high railing of the Bay Bridge and carefully
swung one leg over the rail, balancing on her palms. She had always been afraid
of heights, or actually of falling, and she felt momentarily dizzy, but quickly
steadied herself. No need to fall haphazardly and risk hitting her head on the
beams on the way down. She suddenly laughed at the absurdity of it all. Here
she was, half-naked, ready to jump off a bridge to plunge to her death, and she
was afraid that it might hurt on the way down. She swung the other leg over and
perched on the ledge, her back to the rail, her hands locked around the icy
steel.
A car stopped behind her, its emergency lights flashing. She
could hear someone shouting, but the wind was strong and ripped away the words.
Chilaili looked to the sky one last time.
“Si’yo!
Make room for me at the campfire of my ancestors!” she called to the Great
Spirit.
She
could hear the person running toward her now, could hear feet sliding in the
gray slush. She released the rail, raised her arms into a diving position and
launched herself up and forward into the wind and snow. She thought that this
must be what birds felt at takeoff: exhilaration, adrenaline,
freedom.
The
person above screamed. Or maybe she screamed. It was hard to tell. She was
falling so fast; the water was so close; would she feel the ice?
Robin A. Smith is a self proclaimed beer-philosophizing,
bohemian, aspiring writer living in Chapel Hill, NC. Due to a short attention span
that she blames on too much MTV as a child of the 80's, she normally specializes in
writing short stories and poetry but is currently working on completing her first novel
just to contradict herself.
Email: Robin A. Smith
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