I Found a Girl in the Water

2.

I brought you some clothes, I said to the girl when I brought her some clothes.

She looked up at me from the couch my mother had thought was stylish ten years ago. No thank you, she said. I'll just wear this, she said. The white dress dripped sadly onto the carpet that had been stylish twenty years ago.

I'll make you more cocoa, I said, shuffling off towards the almost bare kitchen.

Wait, she said from the couch. I would much rather have some medicine. Any Tylenol?

I told her I would get some. I walked upstairs, the creaking stairs scuffed pale in the middle from my younger feet traipsing up and down. Now my steps were slow as I went to retrieve painkillers for a girl who had almost drowned. A bobby pin unlocked the mirrored medicine cabinet. I took hold of the familiar bottle, and it rattled when I touched it, like it was greeting its old friend.

I heard gasping on the way downstairs and hurried my steps. In my mother's outdated living room, the girl I had pulled from the waves had a white plastic garbage bag wrapped over her head like a child's last-minute Halloween ghost. I dropped the bottle and it fell to the floor with its customary plastic jangle. My fumbling fingers went to her neck, where the orange drawstrings where pulled tight. I tore the bag open with my chewed-off fingernails. I grabbed the girl's face in my hands.

She smiled as tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes and soaked into her damp hair. I told you, I would rather go back in the water, she croaked like an old woman after many years of smoking to keep the weight off and drinking to forget she hadn't quite managed to.

You can't do that, I yelled in her face, feeling her cheeks with my thumbs. Her mouth twisted as tears pooled in her ears. Her teeth where white and uneven, like marble grave markers.

I'm sorry, she apologized. I'm so sorry.

If you are sorry, don't do it again, I exclaimed, helping her off the floor and holding her trembling body in my own scarred arms.

I am sorry. I won't, she promised.

I wrapped her in a blanket that had not been stylish even thirty years ago and sat on the floor with her, my arm around her shivering shoulders. Why do you want this? I asked, looking into her blotchy face, with its rambling eyebrows and gingery lashes.

I don't think there's anything left for me, she cried into the blanket. I have no one.

You have me, I told her.

I don't know you, she said.

That doesn't matter now," I said, and I pushed her up off the unpolished hardwood floor. I'm going to take care of you.

I walked her upstairs and put her to bed in my twin with flannel sheets and a quilt my late grandmother had made for me. She looked like a child, snuggled in beside flower-printed pillows and the threadbare ears of my stuffed rabbit doll. She closed her eyes and I smiled for her, even though she couldn't see me.

I went to sleep in my parents' empty bed, but before I curled up underneath the faded jordy blue covers, I relocked the medicine cabinet, and I threw away all the bobby pins.