love, it washes few and drowns most of those.
You will not come?
There it is—the rain at last. I must race to the shells I have collected and nurse my brother.
You are bound to your brother as fast as husband to wife.
Don’t come upon him or he will think he is raving for sure and I will have to attend his supporations all over again. And don’t leave any more of your prints. He will become a cannibal himself if he is reminded.
You send me away after all my trouble? Why can’t you see that you know your rightful place all along, and long now to swim there?
I am no girl, nor fish. I am not your sister, nor your father’s child. I am a pirate on a pirate’s island, with no past at all, and surely no future. Do not slander what little I have left. Begone from me. Leave my sight!
17
In the beginning, everyone lived beside water.
I like that. Beside and not in it.
Everyone lived beside water that was sweet and you could drink all of it. You didn’t wait for a storm, you didn’t wait for a bird to show it to you.
Water, I want water.
You should not have scared the bird.
Let it fan me with its water-love, let it fly to me with a key to water around its green neck. I didn’t mean to throw so many rocks.
Sit down, sit down. The dew can be sucked from the leaves on the morrow. Let us try again for a water story: Tataunga, the great chief—
—whose teeth crushed shells, who cannot see his business his belly is hitched out so far, who keeps pirates behind staves to dance on his fire.
The savage king Tataunga gives a great feast in praise of water, with grog and beers and soups—
Not soup. Never soup again. Too much rope in the soup.
Tataunga possessed two beautiful daughters, begot by a woman flung off a maharajah’s vessel.
Named Ma.
They are all named Ma who have you as a son.
One of the daughters escaped the evil Tataunga and the other stayed below and kept her fins. The son who is not so beautiful is from another father.
So many fathers. What of the fish woman?
She’s a whale. Small, but not perch or something with silver in its skin.
Whale, fish—they are all mostly water.
O, hateful water, oh beautiful water.
This beautiful fish with watery fins and skin the color of ruby beaches at sunset the boy befriends, speaking to her just long enough to get her true secret.
Many palms sway behind Tataunga as he dances—what secret would that be? The secret of life? I know that secret, it’s the thing that Tataunga does at night to his last and final daughter.
No, not at all. The fish gives him the secret of death instead, that’s it, the fish tells him how death fights us.
We are all dying. Great gasping breaths, the hawking, then the phlegm. How can we listen?
Don’t lean on me so—the daughter possesses an eye that sees beyond all others and she uses it. Though Tataunga sends her to every part of the sea, to every shore that the seas wash up to find her sister and her secret, he dies before he hears it.
I have the eye. See—a whale’s eye.
Give it here. That eye is mine.
I was given it, I didn’t take it from you and I need it
now, to fight off Tataunga with mine eye.
It stinks. You don’t want it.
I’ve had it too long to stink, unless it be the stink of my skin against all these washed-up clothes.
Keep the eye then, you cur. Tataunga brings his hooks and axes. I see him bury himself inside the whale’s chest.
I’ll bury myself.
You’ll get sand down your gullet, you’ll choke on it.
You are without respect! Tataunga comes to cut out your tongue.
Put down that cutlass. It’s my cutlass.
The palms wave as if to attack, we must fight Tataunga.
All right, we’ll fight the palms so they don’t cut out your tongue. As long as you don’t harm the stick I walk on. Tataunga!
Tataunga! Not so close. I think you are too close.
The battle ends with Tataunga drinking a cup of grog with us—
—and weeping over his lost daughter.
What about the daughter?
His tears fall
You will not come?
There it is—the rain at last. I must race to the shells I have collected and nurse my brother.
You are bound to your brother as fast as husband to wife.
Don’t come upon him or he will think he is raving for sure and I will have to attend his supporations all over again. And don’t leave any more of your prints. He will become a cannibal himself if he is reminded.
You send me away after all my trouble? Why can’t you see that you know your rightful place all along, and long now to swim there?
I am no girl, nor fish. I am not your sister, nor your father’s child. I am a pirate on a pirate’s island, with no past at all, and surely no future. Do not slander what little I have left. Begone from me. Leave my sight!
17
In the beginning, everyone lived beside water.
I like that. Beside and not in it.
Everyone lived beside water that was sweet and you could drink all of it. You didn’t wait for a storm, you didn’t wait for a bird to show it to you.
Water, I want water.
You should not have scared the bird.
Let it fan me with its water-love, let it fly to me with a key to water around its green neck. I didn’t mean to throw so many rocks.
Sit down, sit down. The dew can be sucked from the leaves on the morrow. Let us try again for a water story: Tataunga, the great chief—
—whose teeth crushed shells, who cannot see his business his belly is hitched out so far, who keeps pirates behind staves to dance on his fire.
The savage king Tataunga gives a great feast in praise of water, with grog and beers and soups—
Not soup. Never soup again. Too much rope in the soup.
Tataunga possessed two beautiful daughters, begot by a woman flung off a maharajah’s vessel.
Named Ma.
They are all named Ma who have you as a son.
One of the daughters escaped the evil Tataunga and the other stayed below and kept her fins. The son who is not so beautiful is from another father.
So many fathers. What of the fish woman?
She’s a whale. Small, but not perch or something with silver in its skin.
Whale, fish—they are all mostly water.
O, hateful water, oh beautiful water.
This beautiful fish with watery fins and skin the color of ruby beaches at sunset the boy befriends, speaking to her just long enough to get her true secret.
Many palms sway behind Tataunga as he dances—what secret would that be? The secret of life? I know that secret, it’s the thing that Tataunga does at night to his last and final daughter.
No, not at all. The fish gives him the secret of death instead, that’s it, the fish tells him how death fights us.
We are all dying. Great gasping breaths, the hawking, then the phlegm. How can we listen?
Don’t lean on me so—the daughter possesses an eye that sees beyond all others and she uses it. Though Tataunga sends her to every part of the sea, to every shore that the seas wash up to find her sister and her secret, he dies before he hears it.
I have the eye. See—a whale’s eye.
Give it here. That eye is mine.
I was given it, I didn’t take it from you and I need it
now, to fight off Tataunga with mine eye.
It stinks. You don’t want it.
I’ve had it too long to stink, unless it be the stink of my skin against all these washed-up clothes.
Keep the eye then, you cur. Tataunga brings his hooks and axes. I see him bury himself inside the whale’s chest.
I’ll bury myself.
You’ll get sand down your gullet, you’ll choke on it.
You are without respect! Tataunga comes to cut out your tongue.
Put down that cutlass. It’s my cutlass.
The palms wave as if to attack, we must fight Tataunga.
All right, we’ll fight the palms so they don’t cut out your tongue. As long as you don’t harm the stick I walk on. Tataunga!
Tataunga! Not so close. I think you are too close.
The battle ends with Tataunga drinking a cup of grog with us—
—and weeping over his lost daughter.
What about the daughter?
His tears fall
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