Songs of the Humpback Whale Read online

About this time I witnessed a miracle: the birth of a pilot whale in captivity. We had been studying the mother’s gestation and I happened to be in the building when she started labor. We had her in a huge underwater tank for easy visibility, and naturally when such a marvel occurs everyone stops what they are doing and comes to see. The baby spit out of its mother in a stream of entrails and blood. The mother swam in circles until the baby had become oriented to the water, and then she swam beneath it in order to buoy it to the surface for air. “Tough break,” said a scientist beside me. “Being born underwater to breathe oxygen.”

  That day I went into town and bought an engagement ring. It had not occurred to me before: the only thing that could be better than becoming famous in my field was to do it with Jane by my side. There was no reason I could not have my cake and eat it too. She possessed all the qualities I knew I would never grow to espouse. By having Jane, I had hope. I understood sacrifice.

  Jane. Lovely, quirky Jane.

  Would she believe in second chances?

  Suddenly mortified by my behavior, I cross my hands in front of my groin. I pull on my clothes as quickly as possible and zip up my suitcase. I have to get out of here before this waitress comes. What have I been thinking? I drag the suitcase down the long hallway and into an elevator, hiding behind balustrades to make sure she isn’t coming. Then, calmed by Muzak, I take deep breaths and plummet to ground level, thinking of Jane. Jane, only of Jane.

  33 REBECCA July 15, 1990

 

  According to Indianapolis Jones, the DJ on this radio station (and no relative of ours), the temperature has reached 118 degrees. “One hundred and eighteen,” my mother repeats. She lifts her hands off the steering wheel as if it too is boiling. She whistles through her front teeth. “People die in this kind of weather.”

  We have stumbled into a drought and a heat wave, mixed. It also seems that time is passing much more slowly here, although I imagine that could be due to the temperature. We are destined for Indianapolis, but I don’t think we will ever make it. The way things are going this car will explode in the heat of its own gas before we get there.

  It is so hot I can’t sit up anymore. I never thought I’d say it but I wish we had the old station wagon back. Inside, there was plenty of room to create shadows. In an MG there’s no place to hide. I’m curled into the smallest ball I can manage, with my head pointing down on the floor mat. My mother looks at me. “Embryonic,” she says.

  Sometime before we actually cross into the city of Indianapolis the temperature rises another three degrees. The vinyl in the car begins to crack, and I point this out to my mother. “You’re being ridiculous,” she tells me. “That was cracked to begin with.”

  I feel the pores on my face breathe. Sweat runs down the inside of my thighs. The thought of entering a city-concrete and steel-disgusts me. “I mean it. I’m going to scream.” I summon up every morsel of strength I have left and shriek, a high pitched banshee sound that doesn’t seem to originate from any part of my body.

  “All right.” My mother tries to put her hands over her ears but she cannot do this and drive at the same time. “All right! What do you need?” She looks at me. “A Sno-cone? Air conditioning? A swimming pool?”

  “Oh yes,” I sigh, “a pool. I need a pool.”

  “You should have said that in the first place.” She nudges over the suntan lotion that sits on the seat between us. “Put this on. You’re going to get skin cancer.”

  According to the Indianapolis Department of Tourism, there is no city pool, but relatively nearby is a YMCA where we could probably pay admission to swim. My mother gets directions and (after stopping off for Uncle Joley’s letter) drives to the building. “What if it’s an indoor pool?” I whine. But then I hear it: the screams and the splashes of kids, towels dragging on concrete. “Oh, thank God.”

  “Thank Him after you get inside,” my mother murmurs. You know the way your body feels on the hottest day of the summer, when you actually get within swimming distance of a cold, blue pool? How you feel more relaxed than you have in the seven hours you’ve suffered from heatstroke-as if all you had to do to cool off was imagine that you would finally be able to dive in? This is exactly the way I feel, waiting with my back pressed up against the cinderblock yellow walls of the YMCA. My mother is negotiating. It is not their policy, the woman says, to let in nonmembers. “Join,” I whisper. “Oh, please join.”

  I don’t know if it is mercy or fate that makes the woman let us in for five dollars each, but soon we are standing at the edge of heaven. The cement burns the balls of my feet. There is a lesson going on in the shallow end. The lifeguard keeps calling the kids her guppies. They are doing rhythmic breathing, and only half are following instructions.

  “Aren’t you going to go in?” I ask my mother. She is standing next to me, fully clothed, and she hasn’t even taken her bathing suit in from the car.

  “Oh, you know me,” she says.

  I don’t care; I don’t care. I don’t have time to argue with her. As the lifeguard yells and tells me not to, I dive into the deep end, into the heartbeat of ten feet.

  I hold my breath for as long as I can. For a moment, drowning seems better than having to face the heat above. When I burst to the surface, the air wraps around my face, as solid as a towel. My mother has disappeared.

  She is not at the car. She is not under one of the umbrellas, with large ladies in flowered bathing suits. I drip my way into the YMCA building.

  I pass a Tai Chi class. This amazes me: why would anyone be doing exercise on a day like today? Down the hall I see a blue door marked LADIES LOCKER. It is steamy and humid inside. A gaggle of women are crowded into the showers. Some are behind the showers with curtains but most choose the open showers with no privacy. Three women are shaving their legs and two are shampooing.

  The woman farthest on the right is young and has a tattoo over her left breast. It is a tiny red rose. “What do you have going for this weekend?” she says. I jump but she is not talking to me.

  The woman under the nozzle behind her reaches for her towel to wipe her eyes. She is tremendous, with patches of cellulite waffling across her arms and her thighs. Her stomach forms a furrowed V that hangs over her private parts. She has painted toenails. “Oh, Tommy’s coming out with Kathy and the baby.”

  “Tommy is the youngest?” the tattoo woman asks.

  “Yeah.” The other woman is older than I thought at first; without-the shampoo her hair is speckled, gray and black. She sounds Italian. “Tommy is the one who got messed up with this girl who’s been divorced. I keep telling him, You do what you do, but you don’t marry her. You know what I mean?”

  The other three women in the shower nod vigorously. One is shaped like a pear and has bleached hair. The next one is very old, and wrinkled all over like a giant raisin. She kneels on the floor of the shower, letting the spray hit her back, as if she is praying. The last woman has long white hair and is round all over: round shoulders, round hips, round belly. Her nipples are pushed-in, and stay that way. “Why do you let him come to the house, Peg?” she says. “Why don’t you tell him he comes alone or he don’t come at all?”

  The enormous woman shrugs. “How do you tell that to a kid?”

  One by one the women leave the showers until the only person-left is the old woman. I begin to wonder if she is a permanent fixture. Maybe she needs help. This is what I am thinking when the curtain opens from the shower across the way and my mother steps out. “Well, hi honey,” she says. She acts like it is perfectly normal to find me standing there.

  “How come you didn’t tell me you were coming inside? I was worried about you.”

  All the ladies are watching us. When we turn towards them, they pretend to be doing other things.

  “I did tell you,” my mother says. “You were underwater, though.” She unwraps the towel from her body; she is wearing her bathing suit. “I just wanted to cool off.”

  I’m not going to fight her. I walk through the twisted lines of lockers. My mother stops in front of Peg, who is hoisting up her underwear. “Give Tommy time,”