The waterfall, or a dream

Carlyn Schmidt

 
 
I don’t know the name of the place. I don’t remember how we came to be there. Those memories had slipped from my mind a long time ago, or maybe they never existed in the first place. 

My friend and I each share an earbud, and Deep Blue Something plays through the iPod shuffle. Typically, I keep my thumb on the skip button, but I’d let my mind wander. She knows within seconds. Her eyes sparkle, ready to announce my crime. 

“You don’t listen to good music,” she says. 

Strange of her to make that generalization now, when I had shared my music with her this entire trip. I didn’t hear her complaining when one Green Day song played after another. I think what she meant to say was, “You listen to bad music sometimes,” but I’d never been one to split hairs. 

It’s Sabrina’s mother, sitting in the fraying passenger seat of the four-door sedan, who calls back. 

“Sabrina,” she chides. “You can’t say things like that to people. It’s very rude.” Sabrina’s lips press together in a hard line. 

The drive is mostly silent. Every so often, Sabrina’s mother will ask the driver, Paola, a question and she, small and polite, will answer back in short bursts of Spanish and English. I have to stare out the window to keep from getting sick. We weave through narrow and crowded streets and then the road is open, surrounded by trees. Not palm trees, but similar. I don’t know their names. These are wider, with light and wispy fronds that look like they might tickle. Out of the city, the sedan pulls over onto the mud-packed shoulder. It only feels normal because there are other cars lining the road. 

Paola leads us through a narrow trail. Fronds brush my shoulders as I pass. They do tickle. The air is cooler here and I clutch my arms to my body. I am in my bathing suit — a tankini — and denim shorts that hit just above the knee. I cradle a hotel towel to my chest, covering the newest additions to this body that grows fuller and more foreign with each passing day. 

The culvert in the trees opens before us without warning. The sun shines directly overhead onto an irregular stone platform that hosts a few picnic tables. The ground is cool. Beyond the platform is a small pond, smaller even than the above-ground swimming pool in my neighbor’s yard back home. Feeding this pond is a cascading waterfall. It is small and gentle, descending over smooth rocks before falling a few feet and disrupting the calm water below. 

Paola gestures to the table nearest the pool where a shirtless boy sits, waiting. He doesn’t show any recognition as we approach. In fact, he looks terrified. 

“My son,” she explains. “Luis.” 

Sabrina’s mother greets him in English. “Hello,” he replies, the word too round in his mouth. 

Paola says something to Luis in Spanish, and he nods, looking to me and Sabrina and gesturing silently to the pond. Already? We follow, exchanging giddy almost-smiles. 

Luis is not small like most boys in my seventh-grade class. They are short and wiry, with tennis ball arms and jutting ribs. Not like Luis. He is as tall as I am, but shorter than Sabrina. His arms and belly are full in a way that makes me wonder how he spends his days, what he does for fun. I want to ask. 

There is no obvious entryway into the pond. No ladder or gradient. Luis steps carefully over rounded stones toward the water. Before we can follow, he turns to us. Clenching one hand into a fist, he swipes a flat hand over it in a sweeping motion. He does this a few times before I nod and say to Sabrina, “It’s slippery.” 

It is slippery and Sabrina falls. I help her to her feet, and we laugh. Luis smiles, revealing dimpled cheeks. 

The edge of the rocks is a sharp descent into the clearest water I have ever seen. Luis sits on the edge with his legs submerged. No expectation hangs in the air as he moves his calves against the clear water, disturbing the calm of the surface. He doesn’t look up at us. He waits, patiently, as if he knows that this setting is impossible to take in in one big gulp. 

The tree canopy has given way to the pond, and I can see clearly where it protrudes through the fronds overhead. Beams of warmth stripe the surface of the water. The breeze is cool and gentle. The surface ripples then quickly settles back into an undisturbed state. No place has ever looked so lovely, so untouched. 

I dip a foot into the pond and yelp. A laugh peals behind me. 

“It is cold!” Paola shouts in accented English, grinning. I grin back. Sabrina’s mother sits opposite Paola looking pale and sour. Her questions had grown more and more personal as our journey progressed, which made them harder to ignore. We had left them sitting at the picnic table as Paola searched for the words to answer the question, “Where is your husband?” 

The water is cold. Freezing, icy, cold. Far colder than the ocean or Lake Muskoka in April. I remove my denim shorts quickly, since my body feels like a secret, and lay them on the slick rocks. I sit as Luis is, but not close to him. My face contorts into a grimace, and he laughs, a sound I can barely hear over the soft beating of the waterfall. 

“I don’t know if I can go in,” Sabrina says. 

“It’s not so bad once you get used to it,” I attest against clattering teeth. My nerves are fraying at the seams, screaming to be released. Sabrina’s jaw flexes as she sits beside me. 

For a while, this is all we can stand. 

“You can go in without us,” I say to Luis, but panic flashes in his eyes. He doesn’t understand. I think about how afraid I am to speak to anyone my own age and wonder whether a language barrier will make it better or worse. Better, I think. 

I shake my head, hoping to convey something like, “Don’t worry about it,” and his face relaxes. 

He dips his hand into the water and looks at me, slyly. When I realize what he’s about to do, he has already done it. Fingers flicked and sprayed icy cold water across my neck, my shoulders, my face. My sharp scream fades into laughter. He gets Sabrina too, only reaching her upper legs. There are those dimples again. We beg him to stop, and he does.  

After a while, the breeze slipping through this small culvert in the trees has made me so cold that I imagine the water can’t be much worse. Without warning, I push myself off the rocks and feel the sharp bite over every inch of me. My face hurts the most, and my ears, and my neck, previously untouched. I burst through the surface, exclaiming, and look back at Luis. Is he impressed? Every muscle in my body is tense as I tread water, waiting for the clutching in my gut to subside. Trying not to be too obvious about it. I’m fine, I’m fine. I do this all the time. 

Luis follows soon after and we coax Sabrina together, my trying to assuage her fears and Luis threatening to splash her again. Her frustration turns to consent turns to fearful excitement. She jumps, careful to keep her head above the surface, and we’ve done it. 

“Now what?” I say as we tread water. 

Luis cocks his head toward the waterfall, and we follow. He dips his head under the wet veil and disappears behind it.  

“No,” Sabrina says, “I don’t want to get my head wet.” I sigh and continue on. 

The space under the waterfall is a small cave, barely enough room for three. I should be glad that Sabrina isn’t here, but I’m not. Luis realizes what he’s done now and seems once again like the bashful boy from the picnic table. There’s nothing to say, nothing that could be said, to alleviate the silent tension, the tangible wordlessness. Rushing water pounds through the cave and I am desperate to pretend that there is more than Luis. I look through the water, at the grainy shape of Sabrina’s head on the other side. I pretend to study every cleft and hollow in the rock above. Luis does the same.  

An object, hard and bristled, passes against my mid-thigh. I shriek, stupidly, and search the clear water. There is nothing but Luis’ legs and mine, kicking in a fluid and synchronized motion. His leg, I realize. His leg against my leg. I snap up, electrified and dreadfully conscious of where the fabric of my too-small swimsuit hugs my body. 

I search for an answer in his brown eyes and find that panicked expression again. I wait, hopefully. A simple “I’m sorry” would render the situation bearable. Awkward, but bearable. Maybe he doesn’t have the words. 

Maybe he's not sorry. 

Too many moments pass as I ponder all the questions that I wouldn’t dare ask. Something about my expression must amuse him because his face erupts into that warm, dimpled smile and I realize with a start that Luis is kind. Never had I met a boy my age who was kind, yet here is one. Not prodding, not performing, not letting his eyes roam where I don’t want them to. Not even punishing me for what might now be interpreted as rejection, if he is as not sorry as he looks. 

I could easily close the distance between us. I want to. The cave is so small, it would almost be like an accident. I’ve never done anything like that before. But I could. And wouldn’t this be the place to leave such a moment? Safe and protected by a kind boy and a veil of water? Sabrina would do it. Sabrina would do it without a single thought. But that is her power, not mine. 

The air in the small cave tightens as we tread water, moving inches toward and away from each other like the undulating tide of breath. We dance until the lingering question becomes too heavy. I could do it, I could do it. But I am not brave, and I know, through some small understanding, that Luis is not brave either.  A small smile, awkward and unfledged, passes between us, and we dip back into the main pond. 

Luis demonstrates how to climb up the rocks. Sabrina and I are hesitant at first, then eager. She seems grateful to be free from the water. Her lithe form clambers up the incline with little effort. I feel exposed, hungry for the familiar blanket. The rocks are soft against my skin. We slide down the waterfall dozens of times, until the once soft material of my swimsuit bottoms is rough and pilled. Until I can no longer feel the cold of the air. 

Luis’ mother calls us out of the pond. She has prepared sandwiches. We eat them while shivering under hotel towels. I return to the rocks, towel wrapped around my waist, to fetch my shorts. There are others now. Tourists, locals, sitting at the edge of the pond rousing the courage to jump. 

That’s where it ends.  

I think of Paola, our guide, and wonder how we came to know her, how our wet bathing suits soaked the seats of her car, what happened after we left Luis at the picnic table. Their features are so clear in my mind that any notion of their nonexistence seems crass, an insult to their undeniable humanity. 

How did these memories come to exist; I ask myself. I try to remember remembering them, grasping for clues that might tell me where this all began. I look back to when I was a teenager, when they would have been fresh. I ask my husband if he remembers my telling him this story. He doesn’t. I could reach out to Sabrina, but she is even more distant than this memory. Instead of tracing it back to a time that I know was real, a vacation with my friend and her mother, I grasp for sensations. Slick rocks at my backside, a show of kind dimples and a warm flutter, icy water penetrating deeper into my skin. The sharp awareness that can only come from seeing a beautiful place and knowing that you are not likely to see it again.