I Am Water Read online

  Water Dream #3

  My legs meld together and sprout scales. I touch the water and it shimmers out from my fingertips. Beautiful silver ripples. The glittering curves are like crescent moons or Ezra’s eyes. I can breathe underwater all the way to the base of a towering waterfall. I dive below and surface behind it. Wild vines and flowers the size of my face weave a tropical jungle. I crawl onto a heap of moss and ferns. The ground is so warm beneath me. Then, I hear his voice. His tinkling voice, say, “Hannah, I knew you were a shapeshifter.” I am water. And he is earth.

  Hidden

  On the way into school the next day, I pass Ezra on the sidewalk. His smile is all flirt and glimmer. But he flinches when I grab his hand. Peers over his shoulder. Eyes flitting nervously, to see if anyone behind us is watching. He says, “Best not to let anyone know. You agree?” “But why?” I ask. “Just trust me, okay? It wouldn’t be good for us if certain people found out.” I’m about to protest, but he squeezes my fingers to assure me. Then he lets them slip. Putting the doubts in my mind at ease. “Well, alright then,” I say.

  January

  He says I water the grass inside his head. That whenever I’m near, his mind runs barefoot.

  March

  He leaves me bits of treasures from his greenhouse in my locker. Pansies to show he’s thinking of me. White clover to ask me to think of him. Jasmine, for love. I bring home the clippings and put them in a mug in my room. I will feed them water to sustain them. I will feed him water to sustain him.

  Bo, Incident #1

  Ezra has been sitting with us in the lunchroom regularly for months now. Sam didn’t like it at first. But he cooled off. After I apologized for what I said at the coffee shop. Something new has started to happen over the last few weeks. Girls I’ve never talked to before are sitting with us, too. Girls who aren’t eddies. Girls who flow with the mainstream. Girls like Victoria. They question Ezra endlessly. About fashion. And the city. And the secrets of the stars. They ask to see his tarot cards. Ask for him to read their palms. Ask for stories about what the moon tells him. Sometimes I can’t help but feel left out. Feel like I am a riptide. Tugging on him to join me in the sea. While five senior girls stand on shore, in sunhats and shades and polka dot bikinis, and wave him back in. But then he catches my glance and smiles. Ever so slightly. Too sly for the rest of the table to notice. It’s then that I picture myself as salt water. The kind that gives itself with fondness to his skin. Reminding him of the ocean long after he has left it. A secret intimacy. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bo and his posse at a table not far from us. Spiked hair. Ripped jeans. Studded belt. Muscle tank. Bo wouldn’t be caught dead taking fashion advice from anyone. Let alone a boy with glittered eyes and a moon scarf. He is snickering and elbowing Derek. Gesturing toward our table. Mouthing the word “fag.” The water boils inside me. I make note to prepare a shipwreck if I need to. Looking back at Ezra, I decide, yes. I can be salt water. Salt water to clean stinging wounds. Salt water to cradle his body. Lifting it to the surface with invisible hands. Keeping his head above water.

  Bo, Incident #2

  Ezra is showing me the sprouts in his greenhouse. Life breaking ground in emerald and olive and gold. A boy walking by outside shouts, “Homo!” as he races by the door. I recognize Bo’s deep, rocky voice. Ezra ignores him. The green of his eyes dulls to a gray hazel. He looks toward the now-empty doorway. Then gazes at the ground in silence. After a minute he says, “Do you know why people don’t want weeds?” I don’t see where he’s going with this. “Because they kill what someone is trying to plant. But a weed is just something unwanted. What is and isn’t a weed depends on what plants someone wants. A dandelion is considered a pest. But not to someone who makes wine from the petals. Some of the most beautiful flowers are wild and would take over a garden if someone would let them. Most plants people consider weeds are more natural to the area than the ones they import. Most have stronger roots. And many make good homes for small animals. Animals also considered pests.” “You’re not a weed,” I say. “And you’re not unwanted.” “Maybe not by you. But I’m definitely not the kind of thing this town would like to see grow. Though, somewhere else, like back in the city, I’d be left alone. Maybe even helped. Did you know plants can protect themselves?” he asks. I shake my head. I wait for him to continue. “Nature is full of interesting species. Mimosa plants actually curl away from human hands. They know touch can be damaging. So they don’t let themselves be touched.” “You’re not a coward,” I say. “Sometimes protecting yourself is necessary.” He continues. “Nightshade can kill a man.” “You’re not violent like that,” I say. “Poison ivy grows on land that has been torn and ruined. To keep people from doing any more harm. Until the plants regrow. A defender.” “That sounds more like you,” I say. “A defender. Ivy breaks through cement and brick. Bur oaks are fireproof.” He smiles gratefully as I continue. “Strong. The earth is strong. Like you. Fireproof. Which is good because Bo is a fire sign.” He looks me straight in the eye and I reach out with fingertips to his cheek. He doesn’t curl away like a mimosa would. Instead, the green relights in his eyes.

  Makeshift Horoscope for Today

  On my desk later that day. A handwritten horoscope. Pisces: Tonight is a favorable time for romance. The stars shine down on a relationship with a devilishly handsome partner. (Meet me at the river, 10:00 pm.)

  A Reveal

  I tell Sam I have plans after our weekly milkshake. He eyes my midnight blue cotton dress and lace tights like he knows something is up. I almost always wear baggy jeans and an earth-toned zip-up. He braces to ask a million questions. But I switch the subject to chemistry, the one class he now loves. Mr. Ralph taught them to make molten iron and fires that can’t be put out with water. Questioning dodged. After our milkshake, I walk down to Sam’s and my spot. But Samless, to meet Ezra. Guilt wells up inside like a spring. But Sam wouldn’t understand. And I get why Ezra doesn’t want to go somewhere like a movie theater, where he might run into any of the guys from school.

  The Quarry, Waxing Gibbous, Egg Moon

  He’s there waiting with a potted philodendron. A gift. But he looks nervous. Like he needs to tell a secret and he doesn’t know if he can. “What’s on your mind?” I ask. “I know what people are saying about me, but I’m not gay. And I’m not bisexual. I’m gender fluid.” He talks fast as he explains to me what it means to be both a man and a woman. At one point he seems to be at a loss for words. Until he looks up to see the moon. He continues, “It’s kind of like the moon is the feminine me and the sun is the masculine me everyone expects me to be. The moon is always there, but, during the day, the sun mostly overpowers her. Sometimes, if you look closely though, you can see her. Faintly. But it is only when she is left alone and the sun sleeps that she can give off her full light. Other times, one eclipses the other and I can’t find a piece of myself. And everything goes dark. Those times are hard.” I can tell he’s troubled by my quietness. He probably thinks I’m freaked out by his truth. But it’s entirely the opposite. A dam opens up inside my chest. All the things that have been caught in the backwash between my head and my throat flood my mind. Once you are told how water works, you understand things you have experienced on a river. Once I was told how gender works, as Ezra went on in detail about social constructs and being outside the binary, I understood things I had experienced in life. I understood the slumber parties I never wanted to attend. I understood my confused sadness at my parents’ disapproval when I cut my own hair with a bowl and scissors. Age eight. And ran off to the creek with the boys next door. I understood my outer pride every time someone praised me for being a strong girl in a man’s job. But also my inner need sometimes to pretend I am just another boy on the river. The river. Nature is full of species that have no gender. Or change gender. Or break the norm of what gender should mean. Fluid. Like a river. Like water. I smile and a single tear wanders down my cheek. I nod. “I’m not sure. But I think, maybe, me too.” His face is a
mix of relief, surprise, and excitement. “Can we try something?” he asks.

  An Evolution

  It’s 11:00 on a Friday night. Teenagers, classmates, hang out in front of the box office. On street corners. Outside the coffee shop. Ezra and I stroll hand in hand down Main Street. I in his black jeans and button-up shirt. He in my midnight blue cotton dress and lace tights. Heads start to turn. And whispers turn to jeers. I grasp his hand tighter in mine. “You look beautiful,” I say. He looks at me. For the first time all night, his eyes are focused. Calm. Steady. “It’s true. I’m earth and you’re water. I need you in order to grow.” Then he does something that makes every drop inside me surge up like a towering wave. He holds my face in his palms, as if he were cupping a very big, fragile seed. Or a precious drink of water. And he kisses me right on the street. In the midnight blue light. In a midnight blue dress. And I’m swimming through the sky. Swirling and stroking endlessly through the depth. And the only thing that brings me back down is the mix of shock and anger on a face in the crowd. Lit by a single flame from a purple lighter.

  A Night of Mixed Dreams

  That night I have two dreams. An earth dream and a water dream. The first. My room is filled from wall to wall with potted philodendrons. They whisper green to me. Pulsing. The green feeds my imagination’s predawn hunger. Growing as wild and huge as the plants pouring out of their containers. The walls drip moss and nectar. Sapping and releasing spores. Bristling and breathing. Ezra is lying on the bed next to me. A mattress somehow made of soil. A garden bed. A canopy of vines winds down his shoulders and around my waist. The room is bright with magenta and tangerine. Forest green and marigold. And the plants take in the colors like a sort of photosynthesis. Ezra says the philodendrons don’t need much. He says he doesn’t need much either. But I am still learning the things I have for giving. He is bent around me. Arms wrapped around my middle. Feet laced together into threaded roots. Digging deep into the sheets. The green behind our closed eyes and in our stomachs reassures us. It’s enough to get us through tomorrow.

  A Nightmare

  A harbor shimmers in the speckled moonlight. Blue-green and serene. There is a thick, inky blackness. It dribbles at first, from somewhere unknown. But begins to spew faster and faster. Until it’s gushing unstoppably. Scummy. Tar-like. Deathly. An oil spill. Then the whole scene alights in a screaming blaze. Orange and deep red. The surface of the water is burning.

  Poise

  Red: a single ball-shaped earring dangling from one lobe. Orange: a pair of Keds he kicks around in when his leather boots are too much. Yellow: a wool poncho. Draped like confidence over strong but delicate shoulders. Green: eyes that seem as hungry and lively as the ferns he grows. Blue: nail polish he tried before calling it— with a wink— too glitzy for his humble style. Purple: a graceful defiant harmony of pink and blue, girl and boy. This is the portrait of Ezra. As he struts down a side street of a small town no one in Paris or Milan will ever hear of. And not caring all the same. He wears a chip on his tooth from singing in a punk band. Just as proudly as he wears a silk dress with cutouts. And that, in this town, might be the most dangerous and exciting thing of all.

  Social Deforestation

  Neither Victoria, nor any of her friends, sit with us at lunch today. In fact, the whole school is acting weird. Like we crossed some unsaid line in the sand. Giving us blank stares and cold shoulders. The only thing warm at all— too hot, in fact— is Sam’s burning stare when we try to slide in with him. I should have told Sam that we’re together. That I blew him off for Ezra. I can tell Ezra thinks it’s because of his outfit today. That his boldness has outworn its welcome. Wearing a dress to school. To school, of all places. Why would he expect people to act any differently? I doubt it ever crossed his mind. For Sam, perhaps the kiss was more bold than the fashion.

  Bo, Incident #3

  Ezra is leaving the school grounds at the end of the day when Bo reaches him before I do. Furious, he shoves Ezra by the shoulders. “I mean, it was gross when you were justgay,” he sneers through clenched teeth. His fists are balled up. Tight. At both sides of his studded belt. “When you were the gay friend. But what kind of sick game are you playing?” “You think you can love a woman dressed like that? You think you can compete with us? That you’re one of us? A man making a pass at our girls, playacting like that? Who do you think you are?” I want to run. To bowl his spiky-haired, muscle-shirted, tough and manly, bully body to the ground. But I’m frozen 20 feet away. Ezra’s gaze tells me to hold off. He can handle it. “Ah, Batesian mimicry,” Ezra says calmly. Coolly. “Do you know what it is?” “What?” Bo spits. Eyes squint. “I said Batesian mimicry, you idiot.” Bo’s face looks crazed with disbelief and rage at the insult. But whether it is curiosity or cowardliness, second-guessing or just toying with prey, something keeps his fists at bay. Ezra gives Bo a slow up and down with his eyes. “It’s when a harmless species changes itself to look like a harmful species. They appear to be more of a threat than they actually are.” “Harmless? I’ll show you, freak,” Bo says. “You’re gonna wish I was harmless.” Bo raises his fist to strike when my instinct kicks in. I leap at him. I knock him across the side of the head with a backpack full of books. He stumbles backward to the ground. Looks up at me with hate and surprise. His friend Derek rushes over to help him up. Ready to jump into the fight. But Bo stops him. “We’re done here,” he says, as he shoots us a look that could kill. And walks away.

  A Memory I Wish Was a Blur

  That moment. It was brief but long enough to send me spiraling into a flashback: It’s September of my freshman year and my first of the high school parties on the other side of the quarry. I’ve had a few too many red plastic cups and didn’t feel it until now. Until the music from car radios is pounding the inside of my skull. Like water beating against a boulder. And the darkening sky is blurring like everything is underwater. Images seem bent. Sound is wet and slurred. I lost track of Renny an hour or so ago. When Victoria showed up in a leather jacket and rose-red lipstick. I stumble toward the spinning oaks and maples. Because I think I need to pee. Or get some air. Or not be slammed with all this noise. A branch snaps behind me. Bo backs me against a broad tree. His arms blocking my escape on either side. His torso presses heavily against mine. Pushing me into the trunk. His breath smells rotten as his mouth bites my collarbone. I can’t kick or move my arms or even speak. Just a grumble. Then suddenly, a miracle. It stops. Strong arms yank Bo off me. Throw him to the ground. Strong arms. The arms of a baseball star. Arms of a carpenter. Arms of an older brother. “If you ever touch my sister again, I will personally show you why they say I have the best swing in the county. You understand?” Bo coughs and spits. Throws up in the dirt before nodding. We leave him on the forest floor. Renny flips the matted hair out of his face. He stretches my arm around his shoulder and takes me home.

  An Understanding

  This is why there is a comfort in seeing a woman’s eyes gaze back from within a boy’s body. If he knows what it is to be rough- handled for being too strong in the wrong ways. For being not strong enough in the traditional ways. If he knows what it is to fear a man. To both love and fear his own softness. To fear rough hands. Then he is not to be feared. He is like me.

  A Heartbreak

  It’s late on a Sunday night and I follow the sobs to Renny’s door. Dragging my stool behind me. He gives a half-hearted nod. I enter. Victoria broke up with him. He discovered she’d been cheating with a football player from the community college. I can see the hurt and confusion on his face. Though I knew something like this would happen, the protective anger waterfalls inside me. It grows tentacles. Until it is a sea monster. Tearing the U.S.S. Victoriaapart. Board by slimy board. My anger becomes a creature of the deep. Scaled and finned and terrible. I want to spear her. Or swallow her whole. Or drag her down to an ocean trench. Where she can see nothing but darkness. So her vision will match her stupid terrible heart.

  A Disagreement

  �
�Well, things like that happen,” Ezra says, with a shrug. “It sucks, but you have to let people be people.” I’m taken aback. “How can you say that? She cheated on my brother.” My brother who adored her. Who was nothing but kind and gentle. Who she didn’t deserve. Renny. My brother. “That sucks, I know,” Ezra says, “But people have different needs. Changing needs. And maybe she and your brother just didn’t have what they once had.” Then it happens. I run out of words. In fact, I can’t say anything. My face becomes the top of a still lake. Alive with unseen snapping turtles. Or a river pool hiding deadly currents just below the surface. “I have to go,” I say coldly.