1
SHE HAS PACKED CAREFULLY. SHE HAS REMEMBERED THE NECESSARY things. The plane ride goes well. No turbulence. She uses the time to feel her life. Lucy colors in an Alice in Wonderland coloring book that keeps her occupied. The White Rabbit is not white. It is pink eyed and colorful. Later she plays with her figurines, entranced by her imagined world.
Jocelyn keeps her eyes on her daughter, tries to feel her without putting her hands on her. She traces the straight little nose, the tiny fingers, the lips. She has never loved as deeply as she has loved this child. The pilot announces their descent.
“Hold Mama’s hand,” Jocelyn says. “I’m scared.”
“Are we here?” her daughter asks. “Cincinnati?”
“Kentucky,” Jocelyn says. “In just a few minutes and then across the bridge. But yes.”
She kisses her daughter’s forehead. “You are the best traveler, Lamb.”
“Let’s call Papa when we get on the ground,” Lucy says, unmoved by Jocelyn’s compliment.
“Yes,” Jocelyn says. “Let’s.”
THEY RENT A LUXURY CAR AT THE AIRPORT. THERE IS A CONVERTIBLE TOP. It takes thirty minutes from CVG, but the bridge waits for her—a patient friend, inevitable. She remembers so much of her child life as they drive the rental car through Covington. It is a little bit cool. There will be a light ribbon of fog on the water. She sees her small self, her sister, her brother. She sees the debt she owes for all the things she has denied and looked away from. No happy ending, no allowances made. There has always been this lurking. She is what she has always been. She is the suffocation. There is no escape.
She hears Lucy chattering on the phone with her father, but it is not enough to save her, to clean her. Conrad’s warm back, holding on to him. It just won’t do.
The voice is there. Louder in her home city than before. The tiny ticking treble of it. There is Gladys as there always is. A bunk bed slat. The wood board against Ycidra’s forehead. The rooms in Winton Terrace, the air saturated with begging. Please, Please.
She pushes harder against the gas pedal, trying to press the memories away. The car surges through Kentucky, the top of the state, the base of Ohio. She has forgotten what woods are, what green is, having lived so long in what is essentially desert. Blood will out, Gladys says, speaking to her. Trash will stay trash.
As the four lanes of traffic merge onto the bridge, there is a bit of a backup, but the traffic here is nothing like the traffic in Los Angeles. At the entrance to the bridge, she sees a group of tourists walking. She sees benches, a homeless camp, a small tent in the park. There are two young people asleep outside it, their bodies leaning into each other. Heroin, she knows, the red, red hands and feet of Ycidra. There are people rubbernecking.
She looks ahead at the car in front of her. An arm shoots out of the car window and dumps ice from a cup onto the road. She slowly rolls her car forward, sees a dog sleeping, just at the bottom of a city parking sign. A heavy chain around its neck. Too heavy for such a small living thing. Lion, Simon, Jocelyn thinks, and then looks away.
She tries to follow the overhead signs into the city. It’s been a long time though. She tells Lucy to hurry up with her phone. She doesn’t want to miss her exit.
“Mama needs the GPS,” she hears her daughter say, and then, “Yes, Papa. Of course, we miss you.”
Jocelyn reaches to take the phone from her daughter. She loses sight of the road in front of her for just an instant, and when she turns back, the car ahead of her has stopped. She slams on the brakes to avoid hitting it. Her daughter sits forward, looking. A picture unfolding. The long body of a young woman in jeans, leaning into the car in front of them. A prostitute, Jocelyn knows. Quite pretty, she thinks. The hair is too shiny, too well done. A wig, Jocelyn realizes. Shoulders a bit broad, a swimmer’s body? A woman? Jocelyn wonders suddenly. Not a woman, a voice inside her says.
The car in front of them moves away. The negotiation is over. No takers. Jocelyn watches as the prostitute walks slowly and carefully in front of their rental car—narrow hips swaying, lots of confidence. A horn behind Jocelyn sounds. The red heels don’t quicken. The shoes are huge. What size could they be? What would they go to in men’s sizes?
The head finally turns when more horns chime in. The man (no woman) looks back, catches Jocelyn’s eye. She knows me, Jocelyn thinks. She knows what it is to be both—to realize that the person who isn’t you, is you. Another horn sounds, and another. Jocelyn keeps looking, watches as the prostitute carefully and confidently lifts a middle finger. Jocelyn laughs, feels the sharp ping of pity and respect. The red nails are like fire.
Blood will out, Gladys’s voice says again, and it is, she knows, a relentless lesson. I couldn’t become anything else, she whispers. I couldn’t lift me out.
2
SMALE PARK IS NEW. IT IS ON THE EDGE OF THE OHIO RIVER. A PLAQUE on the river walk says that it was built with money left to the city by a successful P&G businessman. It is part of the gentrification of downtown, of Over the Rhine, or the OTR as the modern signs call it. She had hoped the bridge and the park would be a bit more crowded. She had hoped to get lost in a crowd. She and Lucy dip their toes into the splash pad. There is the squeal of her daughter. A sound she loves. She is aware of time passing. Aware of losing her nerve. She cannot wait forever, although a part of her asks why not. She reminds herself that she is always weak, always uncertain. She is stern with herself, knowing that when she has a clear mind, there is only one choice.
Her daughter has the loveliest hair, sunlight lives inside it. At each turn of her tiny, perfect body, it seems to dance and glow.
“Let’s go on the carousel again, Mama,” Lucy says.
“Okay,” Jocelyn says. They’ve gone five times.
It must be a perfect day. Anything her daughter wants. A trade: what Lucy wants, and then finally what Jocelyn wants. “How about we go for a walk after this? And then up to the bridge.”
She watches Lucy look. She has told her daughter the plan. She has explained the ultimate jump—like the club, she says. We are mermaids. She has waited until they are alone and away.
“It’s super high,” her daughter says. “Do you think we can do it?”
“We’re super brave,” Jocelyn says, trying to seem assured. “It’s how we’ll earn our tails.”
She can feel the sweat dripping down her back as they walk away from the carousel to the car. She will retrieve the carrier—the Ergo—the warm padded cotton of it, the safety clips. She has held her child in it since the day she was born—body to body, skin to skin. They will go to the car and drive to the Covington side of the Roebling Suspension Bridge. She has looked it up online, and foot traffic is easier from there. She must fall headfirst. Make certain of the outcome. Her phone rings. It is Simon again. Simon. Four missed calls. She has texted that they are well, but there must be something inside him that senses it isn’t true.
“Let’s swing,” Lucy says. “Before we go to the bridge. We haven’t tried these swings.”
“Yes, my lambchop. Let’s. Let’s swing.”
When they’ve finished, Jocelyn leaves the phone there. Again a buzzing, real or imagined, but still, they walk to the car.
When they are almost to the rental, she looks back at the water. Lucy looks too.
“This is the Ohio River, Lucy. It’s different than where we live with Papa. In the Palisades, it’s the sea. I never saw the sea until I was a grown woman. When I saw the ocean for the first time, I was happy, because I knew there were so many things in the world still to see. So much that I could still know. You can’t imagine how much I love it.”
“Do you love it more than me?” Lucy asks. Everything is always a competition.
“I don’t love anything more than you,” Jocelyn says simply.
“Not even Papa?”
Jocelyn can feel her voice catch. The answer is always the same.
She squeezes her daughter’s hand tightly. Pulls her closer. “I’d sell Papa down the river in a heartbeat for you.”
“What river?” Lucy asks, playing her part.
And this time Jocelyn points at it. “The Ohio, my love.”
SHE STANDS WITH HER DAUGHTER, WONDERING IF SHE IS MAKING A MISTAKE. This time in front of the rental car’s back door.
“Let me help you with your seat belt, sweetheart,” she says.
“I don’t need help,” Lucy says. “I can do my seat belt my own self.”
“I’d like to help,” Jocelyn says.
She wants to pull the belt slowly and safely across her child. She wants to touch her knees, her little arms. She wants to push the sun-filled hair behind her ears. Tap the straight little nose that only Jocelyn knows she has inherited from her sister, Ycidra.
“No way,” Lucy says. “I’m big. Go away, Mama.”
“I love you Lucy,” Jocelyn says, settling for opening the door for her child.
And with a brightness that is unusual for the very serious, unaffected child, Lucy says, “I love you too, Mama. I love you too.”
THE BRIDGE WHEN THEY GET BACK TO IT IS STILL NOT CROWDED. THERE IS a barrier when they first begin to walk, which makes Jocelyn panic. She hasn’t thought of this. Online, the bridge looked open. As a child, there was nothing there. Nothing but the sound that the bridge made, and this memory tackles her, because it is here now, as it was then. The cars humming over it. Her sister’s voice. Listen, Jo-Jo. The bridge sings.
As they walk along though, the barrier disappears. There is just a railing, waist high, no longer a cage. There is a perfect view, a perfect drop into the river below.
She bends down, looks into her daughter’s dark brown eyes.
“You are the best daughter anyone could ever have. Do you know that?”
Lucy looks at the river. “I’m a little scared, Mama.”
“Don’t be scared, sweetie. It’s an adventure, remember? Like I told you. Just like at the pool.”
“It’s bigger than the pool and there’s no board.”
“You’re right,” Jocelyn says, sensing that disagreement won’t work. “We’re mermaids, though, remember? Remember Mama’s back, the marks. I’m going to hold you. You’ll be in the carrier.”
The child says nothing.
“Have I ever dropped you?”
“No, Mama.”
“We love it at the pool, right?”
“Yes, Mama.”
“I could never ever hurt you, Lucy. As soon as we hit the water, we’ll have tails.”
The child peers over the edge. She is sizing it up, deciding. “Just hold me tight, okay?” she says at last. “Will the air be like cotton balls?”
“Absolutely,” Jocelyn says.
When she picks up her daughter she holds her hard and firm against her chest. She presses her face into her breasts, remembering how she fed her, how she was able to do every single thing for her, except this one thing.
“Don’t look,” Jocelyn says. “Don’t look down when we go, okay?”
“Okay,” Lucy says. “I won’t look. I won’t look.”
Lucy snuggles into her. Jocelyn wants to feel every part of her girl, smell her, crush her even, press her body back inside her own, place her back inside her belly. She smells the hair that reeks of baby shampoo and sweat. She lifts the cotton back of the Ergo, wrapping her daughter in it. She lifts the straps, one over each shoulder. She clicks the clasps closed behind her own neck, making sure all of it is tight.
“Hold on to me now, Lucy. You hold Mama as tightly as you can. Even though you’re in the carrier, I want you to hold on to me, so I can get onto the rail. And when I get my balance, I’ll put my arms around you again.”
The child does as she is told. Jocelyn can feel the little heart beating. She can sense the child’s fear. She lifts herself onto the edge of the railing slowly, drapes one leg over, and then another, slowly, slowly. She grips the top rail tightly, finally finds her balance, teetering a bit. She remembers climbing fences as a child—the blinding metal, hot in the summertime, the urge to slip forward as much as back once she reached the top.
Lucy begins whispering. A small sound. Jocelyn cannot understand the words, doesn’t try to. A mantra, like a confession, quiet as a prayer. Jocelyn wishes she could sit for a while but knows there are cameras, does not want to torture her daughter. She is aware that she has very little time. She wants to hold her child in these last moments, feel the river breeze that she grew up with, but there is movement in her peripheral vision. Someone coming.
She holds tight to Lucy with one arm, tight to the top rail with the other hand. She will have to jump away from the railing. She will have to balance on the edge for a few minutes and then jump out far enough. She doesn’t want to bump her head on the bridge wall.
“Miss?” she hears, a male voice, invading. It is a few feet away now, but still far enough. She does not look toward the voice, keeps her eyes on the water.
“Ready?” she says to Lucy. “Don’t open your eyes.”
“Miss?” she hears again, more insistently. A slow walk toward her. Afraid to startle. There is the edge of confusion in the voice. Hesitation. I can be stronger than he, she thinks. This time I will be.
“I’m afraid, Mama,” Lucy says. “I’m afraid.”
A pause then. A stutter in Jocelyn’s intentions. A need to explain. “Don’t be afraid, baby. I’ve got you.” She tightens her grip around her daughter. “Miss?” she hears again. “We’re mermaids. Remember? Mama and the fisherman and his net. I’ve got you.”
The whispering begins again from Lucy’s little mouth, so fast. Sounds running together, desperate. A bit louder now. Words merging. “Please, Mama. Please. Don’t jump, Mama. Please!”
The little hands are in the fabric of her shirt and are gently plucking, but it is a child’s T-shirt now in Jocelyn’s mind, and she feels the dried blood against her own shoulders, pulling away from her skin.
“It’s okay,” Jocelyn says to her daughter. “It’s okay.” Don’t listen, she tells herself. Don’t listen. Do what you must.
“Please don’t, Mama!” Lucy says again. And Jocelyn wishes she could cover her own ears, but she can’t let go of the rail, and she can’t let go of her daughter. Not yet, not at all, and the voice will not relent. And it is Ycidra. And it is William. And it is herself. Please, Mama. Please, Mama. Don’t! And the tears prick. And her own heart is like a weight in her chest.
“Miss?”
“Don’t,” Jocelyn says. Just one word to him, because he is close enough for her to see his eyes now. The eyes that are made up to be smoky and the wave of the fake hair—the curl. They called it feathered, a Farrah Fawcett hairstyle, but not Farrah Fawcett—a poster on Ycidra’s wall. A hairstyle they could not accomplish. Farrah Fawcett was blonde. She was blonde, Jocelyn says to herself, and that sort of rights her. The blending of the past, and the now, and a man who is also a woman, and the thin waist, but the broad shoulders: I know any black girl, she remembers saying, joking with her sister. No matter how white she is. You can tell he’s a man by his feet, her brother said. The Metro. William, at the bar, braiding someone’s hair. A man’s. Isn’t she beautiful? he asked her. She was solidly confused. There are so many, many of us. If only I could not see.
“Miss?” she hears again, and she knows she has to jump. She can feel the heat of the man’s body. Will she be able to? Maybe she shouldn’t? Will it be like the phone, the pajamas, the doubt? Forty years ago, she could have stopped it. You shouldn’t have been put in the position, she hears Dr. Bruce saying. Act now, she says to herself. Act now!
“Miss?” she hears again. A step toward her, a finger light on the small of her back. And in just that moment, she lets go of the rail, and she is not sure if she has done it, or if the man has pushed her, and she feels the drop and the panic and a tick of regret for having done it, and then the surprising painful pull and stop, the stretch of the fabric and the press of her daughter’s body against her chest, so tight that she thinks her ribs might break, a hand in her own hair suddenly, pain, close to the scalp and holding, and a swinging—the clutch of fingers, a strong grip around the Ergo’s straps, knuckles in her back. A man’s grip. A woman couldn’t do it.
She holds tight to her daughter, not wanting her to tip out of the carrier, to go down to the water below without her. The screams of her daughter are so loud. And then the voice that is this man’s voice, shouting, begging. “Help!” Panic. “Somebody please! Help me!”
IT TAKES MANY HANDS AND ARMS AND MEN TO LIFT THEM BACK OVER THE railing. They are dropped, the three of them, onto the safe side of the bridge like a pile of laundry. The man who has saved the two of them is on his back breathing heavily. His makeup is smudged. He is gripping and rubbing the hands that kept them in this life. A heel from his red shoe has broken off and looks wicked against the stone walkway.
Jocelyn is aware of people around her, trying to get Lucy off her chest, trying to release her from the Ergo. She kicks at them, shouts for them to get away. Lucy is crying—a continuous wail. They all stand around her staring. Fear in their eyes more than anything else. One of the women is on her cell phone, calling, Jocelyn knows, 911. Her daughter presses her face against Jocelyn’s chest. Jocelyn pulls the little hood of the Ergo over her daughter’s head, giving her privacy.
“I’m sorry, Mama,” she says. Little gasps of breath interrupt the words. “I don’t want to be a mermaid. Please don’t make me. I want my papa.”
Jocelyn stills her own body against the ground. She holds her daughter, soothing her as she cries. I have made my daughter afraid of me, she thinks. I have done what I said I wouldn’t do. Gladys. I have been like Gladys.
“It’s okay, honey,” she says and pats the small back. “Shh. Shh. Shh.” In rhythm. “It’s okay.”
She is bouncing Lucy now, as she did when she was a baby on her chest. Nothing else is on her mind but her child and her own failure.
“It’s okay,” she says. She strokes the golden-brown hair. “We won’t go,” she says. “It’s okay. Mama is so sorry.”
SHE TURNS HER HEAD TO THE SIDE, AND THE MAN WHO HAS HOOKED them, snagged them back into the now, his hands under the strap, tight around her hair, clenched, has started crying. Horrible rushing tears. His face is dirty, his smoky eyes are smeared, his wig has fallen off somewhere, and all that remains is a stocking cap. She thinks for a second that this is a shame she has brought to him. She has made him ugly. She has not meant to do this. She is sorry.
“I couldn’t let you go,” he says to her in a loud whisper that only she can hear above the crowd of gossipy voices. “You weren’t going to make me see you falling for the rest of my life.”
He stares at her, breathing quickly. He is angry at her, she realizes. Spittle flies in the small space between them. “There was no fucking way,” he says again sharply. “I was not going to let you do that to me.”
“I want my papa,” Lucy says, interrupting the man. “Make that man stop talking, Mama. Make him stop talking to us.”
Jocelyn hears the sirens in the distance. She knows they are for her. When they ask her whom to call, where home is, she is surprised when she says Simon.
HOURS LATER, CONRAD AND SIMON COME IN SIMON’S PLANE. CONRAD IS raging. He threatens her. You will never go near my daughter. He says that to her, as if it were true: my daughter. Only when they’ve been in the air for almost an hour, only when Lucy begs her father to let her go to Jocelyn, does he relent, allowing the girl to climb up onto Jocelyn’s lap, onto the fine leather seat, to be held. Lucy falls asleep almost immediately. Jocelyn watches the small chest move up and down, the smallest snore. She kisses the cheeks, sings a quiet song. She doesn’t care about her husband. She doesn’t look at him. She looks out the window. She contemplates telling him to fuck off. She imagines tearing his eyes out, beating him down. No one will take my child from me, she says inside.
And all the things she has lived through, everything that she has survived, comes to her now. Lucy is as old as I was, she realizes. I was she, in front of the black phone in my yellow pajamas, calling who? Ah, my little lamb, she says to her younger self. There was no one to call for help.
Simon reaches for her. He just touches and then holds the hem of her shirt. He knows not to invade her body. She sees his beautiful brown hand. His urge to pull him to her.
THEY TAKE HER DIRECTLY TO THE “TREATMENT FACILITY.” IT’S A PSYCHIATRIC hospital, although no one calls it that, and no one except Simon and Conrad’s family knows she is there: Malibu Gardens.
They bathe her, sedate her, and then tuck her in. Conrad leaves with Lucy almost immediately, but Simon stays, making sure she is all right.
When they put her in her bed, there is no hospital gown, no nurse in a uniform. A helper is provided, warm pajamas, a cup of pills. There is a view of the ocean. There are grounds. They mean to make the place feel like home.
“He can’t take away my daughter,” Jocelyn says to Simon, because it is all that matters.
“Rest,” he says. “I will stay with you. Don’t worry. We will work it out.”