Black Water by Joyce Carol Oates Page B

barrier of the windshield)
yes Mother was there to comfort her.
    As the black water splashed over her
mouth.
     
    Except
by a sudden exertion of strength she would not have known she'd had after the
initial dazed trauma she was able to lift herself partway free of whatever it
was clamping her knee, and now there was her foot, her right foot entirely
without sensation, as it was invisible to her as if it did not exist and
perhaps it was severed... except if so she would have bled to death by now she
reasoned, so much time had passed.
    Still,
she could neither move the toes of that foot nor feel them and even the
physiological concepts of toes, foot had become confused in her mind
so quickly she stopped thinking about them: she was an optimist.
    Kelly imagines she's
so cynical, so wise to the ways of the world her friends teased her fondly, Oh but we know better! unable to resist teasing her about the
Dukakis debacle, and her stubborn loyalty to Carl Spader, who treated her like
a typist, once at a party she'd overheard Jane Freiberg telling a man Yes that's Kelly Kelleher let me introduce you she's so really sweet once
you get past the —and she'd turned away quickly not wanting to
hear the rest of Jane's words.
    So
rude, people talking of her while she was within earshot. While
she was alive.
    Her friends speaking of her so. How did they dare!
    Kelly?—beautiful.
    A voice jarringly close in her ear. But she saw no face.
    Nor
could she remember his name exactly except to know that he was laboring to get
to her, swimming against the swift choppy current his hair lifting in tendrils
from his pale anguished face, he was reaching for the door handle, his fingers
groping for the door handle that would release her if she had faith if she did
not give in to fear to panic to terror to Death.
    Here. I'm here.
    Somehow
it had happened she was lying upside down across what she understood to be the
ceiling of the wrecked car, the roof was now resting rocking as if shuddering
against the invisible creekbed , and close above her
cramping her was the cushioned seat to which in some way she was still attached
too, a strap across her shoulder, across her neck failure of the
spinal cord to fracture as the prisoner falls so that the prisoner slowly
suffocates but it was her right leg that was caught fast in the
twisted metal: her foot paralyzed, numb, as empty of sensation as if it were a
rock: severed? or still attached?
    But
no, she must not think of that. She was an optimist.
    She
realized then that she had vomited on herself without knowing when, reasoning
swiftly that such a purging was beneficent clearing her stomach so that there
would be less poison to pump out of it, this water that was not water of the
sort with which she was familiar, transparent, faintly blue, clear and
delicious not that sort of water but an evil muck-water, thick, viscous,
tasting of sewage, gasoline, oil.
    Here? Help me—.
    Holding
herself up out of the seeping water by sheer tremulous force gripping the steering
wheel, whimpering like a child with the effort understanding If I can keep my head up, my mouth clear she would be able
to suck at the air bubble floating above her irradiated by moonlight.
    That
bright flat moon! Proof, so long as she could see it, that she was still alive.
    We'll get there Kelly And we'll get there on time.
    She
knew, she understood, they were counting on her. He was counting on her.
    There
would be an ambulance. A siren. The
red light spinning wildly bouncing careening through the marshland.
    The
girl named Lisa, the girl with a twin sister, who had tried to kill herself
swallowing thirty-eight barbiturate tablets. They'd come to get her and pumped
her stomach out and saved her and all the girls whispered in awe of her
afterward her absence in classes and in the dining hall so conspicuous.
    That
girl, though a twin, a sister, was not Kelly
Kelleher.
    Kelly Kelleher who, after G-----,
vowed she would never take her life for all life