By Way of Water

By Doris Schneider

“Dibs!” is what Sissy says the first time she finds Paolo in her camera lens, and her young heart is caught by his essence of loneliness. By Way of Water is a coming of age story between a Mexican boy and a young Carolina girl who draws broken animals and people like a magnet into her circle of healing and care. Together they sail the Lockwood Folly River into the Intra Coastal Waterway and discover the joy and pain of caring too much and the significant difference between being loved and loving.

By Way of Water begins where Borrowed Things ends. However, it is not a sequel but a companion piece, each able to stand alone. At the very beginning, Paul opens Sissy’s journals, and the reader steps back in time with him to 1965. Her mother’s memories intermingle with theirs and, along with their own adventures, we relive the amazing time of Civil Rights, Vietnam, assassinations, and the Beatles.

Doris Schneider's tender story is set against the growth and tumult of our country during the 1960’s. The culture of the times as it was shaped by the young and the young as they were shaped by the times is beautifully related in this book. If you were there, read it and remember. If you were not, read it and experience, through its characters, the emotions and vigor of those brave times.

Jayne Davis Wall
author of Winter Goldfinch

In a time honored tradition of Southern women’s fiction, By Way of Water births more than young love, hope and faith. It layers teen dreams and conflict within a countercultural revolution of racism, sexual exploration and social tension. The end result is a palette of vivid color and tender remembrance set against the beautiful waterway of coastal North Carolina. A superb story from start to finish.
Angela Beach Silverthorne
author of Promises Seeded Inside, Cries of Innocence and the award winning book, Depression Cookies.

This stunning novel accurately reflects the nation's troubled emotions during the Vietnam War and the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kenney, Jr., while it beautifully describes the pathway of a love story of the highest kind. Schneider's lyrical prose and ear for dialogue provide a balanced story that will sweep readers up and carry them along on a tidal wave of action and emotion.
Marni Graff
author of The Nora Tierney Mysteries

• Language: English
• Publisher: Doris Schneider
• Release date: Dec 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310215469

Doris Schneider

Doris Schneider is a writer, artist, and former professor of theatre at William Carey University and North Carolina Central University. While directing a play in Singapore, extra time in a lush hotel room prompted her to continue writing a story she had begun years before in a not-so-lush tent in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The result is Borrowed Things. Her interests also include short stories and memoir.

Book preview

His foot is sinking, pulled by an undertow of earth, downward. Using all his strength, he drags it free as the other foot is swallowed. She reaches out to him, and he throws himself forward. But now hands as well as the sucking maw hold him, pull him back, prevent him from following.

Paul shakes his head, the familiar nightmare slinking away, hiding in a corner until he closes his eyes again. For years, the details of that day had been safely tucked away in memory’s recesses, but a few months ago they returned, nagging at his subconscious, then surfacing during the last several nights, haunting his sleep in widescreen Technicolor 3D. The reason is obvious—the death of Sarah’s mother.

He looks at the clock—one in the morning. He’s exhausted. A much-used grocery bag and its spilled contents—a diary and a stack of spiral bound notebooks—lie on his old oak table. They were brought to him after Marjorie’s memorial service by a family friend. She knew their private contents belonged only to him.

Marjorie’s funeral liturgy was attended by people of varied races and ages. It was a celebration, but not without grief. His childhood friends, Jeremy and Ayesha, were both there. The crowd had spilled from the small church outside to the lawn. And although he didn’t see her, he was sure Sarah was there as well.

In her last days at the hospital, Marjorie had finally shared her own recollections of his and Sissy’s childhood in an effort to help him understand her daughter’s choices. But there were gaps in her memory, spaces of time when her mind had been closed to reality. Nevertheless, her pieced-together stories, combined with his, gave him a perspective that had been beyond his reach as an adolescent boy so many years ago.

The heavy sleep that often follows deep emotional strain had postponed what he had hoped would be the end of his long search for answers. Now he looks at the notebooks and accepts that they may reveal nothing new. But if they do, will the knowledge bring absolution or condemnation?

Still groggy, he delays the reading further, deciding to awaken his senses with a shower. Stepping under the soothing spray, soaking still-black hair and sun-weathered face, then stiffened back and limbs, he stretches in the warmth before slowly turning the hot water to cold. He faces the sharp icy spray, letting it clear his thoughts, letting it take his breath away.

In a clean t-shirt and soccer shorts, he sits again and lifts the faded pink five-year diary, opening its worn cover. The spine cracks and the first page floats free. He catches it in the air, seeing the carefully penciled letters:

To Sissy from Mama, for your memories

Sissy, her name from birth through high school. Marjorie never stopped using it.

It’s dated December 25, 1965….when Sissy was twelve, and I was thirteen. He looks up at his calendar on the old plastered wall. March, 2005. Forty years since I was brought to this town—by way of water; thirty-four years since Sissy left—by way of water; thirty-four years since I left—by way of Uncle Sam, to Vietnam.

Glancing at the covers on the notebooks, he sees they are also dated: 1968, 1969, 1965, and four others.

He rises, pours a glass of wine, and then sits again, tenderly replacing and turning the loose page, planning to reattach it later. He pushes his reading glasses up on his nose and peers at the tiny compressed lettering that could only be from the hand of a young girl, trying to say as much as possible in a too-small space.

December 25, 1965

Dear Me,

For a moment he can’t breathe. Dear Me—such a simple phrase, but he had forgotten it. She said it all the time, in place of hmmm, or well!, or wow!!!

Dear me, she had sighed after the first time they made love. Another image replaces the last—a girl on a red bicycle, her hair and skin gleaming in the sunlight, contrasting with his own darker hair and skin covered with grime as he tried to disappear behind the fishing boat’s console. Dear me, she had said softly, I can never remember the word for ‘shrimp’. ¿Cómo se dice ‘shrimp’ in Español? Her question betrayed her knowledge of his presence and required an answer. His voice broke, further humiliating him and betraying his youth and hormones. It was the first of many times she would leave him with his hands shaking and his heart clenched.

Now Paul takes a deep gulp of air and consciously sets aside all but the words on the page.

Merry Christmas! Mama said that if I want to be a photojournalist, I have to keep a journal. My New Year’s resolution is to look up two new words each day, and use them. I wonder if bitchin or groovy are in the dictionary. And if you’re reading this, Mama, YOU should be ashamed (not me) because this is PRIVATE.

Paul smiles as he remembers the horrendous hippie 60’s slang. Her friend, Sam, would collect the treasured words on summer vacations in Atlanta and bring them back to Sissy. By osmosis, they became a part of his dialogue as well, often without his knowing their meaning. After all, f’ing-A wasn’t in his dictionary.

Wait a minute! This was written at Christmas of ’65, only a week before 1966. He puts the diary down and finds the spiral notebook labeled 1965, eagerly opening it.

Photo-journal One, Page One:

Date: June, 1965

Name: Sarah Josephine Hester (Sissy)

Age: 11 ¾

Home: a big old house on the Lockwood Folly River in Pearl, North Carolina

Best friend: Samantha Idalski (Sam)

Favorite song: Ticket to Ride by the Beatles, of course!

Favorite movie: To Kill a Mockingbird

Favorite color: blue (see page 2)

Favorite activities: sailing with Daddy, bicycling with Mama or Sam, and taking pictures of New Boy (see every page)

Secret call with Sam: Hi-lo-inny-minny-ki-ki-um-chow-chow-eee-eee-wow-wow, a-d-i-d-o-d-yooo-hoooo! (I put it here because we almost never use it anymore, and I’m afraid I’ll forget it.)

New experience, writing to myself. Maybe it will eventually feel natural. Eventual is too slow. Mama says my teeth will eventually fit my face. She has visions—says she can see me as a woman, and she promises everything will be the right size, and everything will fit. Of course she also sees my four dead brothers, all born before me and all gone before their first birthday. And she cusses God for taking them. In fact, she has an on-going conversation with God. Me too, but not out loud, and not in anger. Sometimes she says the smartest things and seems normal; other times, not. Daddy has built a protective cocoon around my beautiful butterfly Mama. One day, maybe she will fly free. Hope some of her beauty rubs off on me.

Surprised by the revelations of her own self-image, he turns the page and gasps. Photographs—pictures in blue, every shade, tint, and mix of blue: white sailboat below Carolina blue sky; silhouette of a pelican on piling, surrounded by indigo water; Sam and Sissy holding hands in navy t-shirts, blonde ponytails, sapphire and hyacinth eyes; and, last of all, a boy on a dock, hands in denim pockets, looking out at the fading ultramarine horizon. Blue.

In searching for Sissy he has found himself, as she must have found him so long ago, through a lens that framed and isolated his essence of loneliness and despair.

What did she think when she saw me there? Was I just another wounded creature to capture and care for until healed?

For her entire young life, hurt and frightened animals as well as people had been drawn to her like a magnet. And she had fiercely held, nourished, and defended each one of them before setting them free—free to stand or fall on their own. He shakes his head in wonder as memories flash by and realization arrives… the falling always initiated a new beginning.

What a time to be a child, trying to make sense of the world: Vietnam, racism, hippies, the Beatles, demonstration and revolution, peacemakers and protestors, music and mania.

Outside, in the graveyard of the small church on the bank below his home, the last mourner from Marjorie’s funeral stands beside a marker with one name engraved on it, watching Paul through his kitchen window. She looks up at the sky filled with stars, a bright moon, and a path to infinity.

He is home, in Pearl. Everything is finally right. And as Paul’s head bends to the notebook, Sarah’s memories travel back in time, intertwining with his.

Journal I

Chapter 1

June 19, 1965

Dear Me,

This is my first photo-journal. Began by spreading my pictures on the bed, arranging them by subject and then by color, gluing at least one shot of New Boy on every page while the Beatles wailed Eight Days a Week. Finished with the seascapes and then the pictures of Mama’s wildflowers: Liatris, Baptisia, Lilies of the Valley, Wind Flowers, and my favorite, Fire Pink. She brought them here over twenty years ago from the Blue Ridge Mountains.

My last photo is the latest one of New Boy. Afraid to ask his name or show any interest, knowing Daddy wouldn’t approve. There isn’t a biased bone in Daddy’s body, but he stays—as he puts it—within the boundaries of social acceptance. He says that’s because he’s a merchant and public opinion affects his business. New Boy is Mexican.

This photo reminds me of the first time I saw him.

Every year, on the last day of school, my best friend Sam and I take off our shoes and walk home barefoot. This year, it’s especially hot, the tar on the road melted soft from the sun. Our shrieks of laughter and pain fill the air as we look for patches of grass—without sandspurs—to jump to and cool our blistering feet. As River Road curves and we see the bay, we also see the boy. We slip to the side of the road and watch from behind a twisted live oak.

He’s standing on the dock across the road from Saint Angelica, the stucco Catholic church Mr. Santino built. Townspeople call it the Alamo, but not to his face. Behind the church is the home he built where he lives with his wife, Miss Elena.

The tall boy’s hands are in his pockets, and his shoulders sag as he looks out at the overcast sky reflecting on the water beyond, a puzzle of blues that always latches onto my eyes and makes me smile.

Dibs, I whisper as I drop my shoes and satchel and pull out my camera.

You can have him, Sam laughs, plopping on the ground to lean against the tree. He looks Mexican. Mama said that when a Mexican man puts his arm around you, he gets so hot he can’t stop.

Stop what? I focus, snap the picture, then lower the camera to look at him through my own eyes.

You know!

Dear me! I giggle. That sounds exciting.

Sissy! If your daddy could hear you—

He’d bust my behind—or threaten to. I slide down the tree to sit at its base beside Sam whose face turns serious.

I’ve learned my lesson! Mama doesn’t just threaten. Last night, she took me to dinner at The Emporium in Wilmington to celebrate the end of school. Dad’s picking me up this evening, so we had to do it a day early.

That’s cool.

No, it wasn’t! Sam says, swatting at a mosquito. Our waiter was a Negro boy, a teenager… with the sweetest face and prettiest smile I think I’ve ever seen.

Oh, no, Sam!

Oh, yes! I completely lost my mind and said, ‘Wow, he’s sort of a hunk’, as if I was talking to you instead of my mother.

Oh dear me, what did she say?

Nothing! She slapped me so hard I thought my teeth would fall out.

In the restaurant?

Yep! Sam pauses like she’s reliving the sting of the slap and her embarrassment. She apologized later, said she had to do it in case anyone heard me. She said her reputation would be ruined if she didn’t punish me right then and there. I don’t even remember what I had to eat. So anyway, be careful about who sees that picture.

Maybe you’re right. Daddy develops my film in Shallotte. He never looks at my pictures before me. I’ll make a private scrapbook or album or something.

Yes! That’s so romantic! Oh, Sissy, I’m going to be bored to death in Atlanta all summer. Daddy has a new girlfriend. I hate breaking in new girlfriends. You’ll write, won’t you?

Of course, Sammie.

I keep meaning to, even think all the words in my head, but never write them. I’ve been too busy following New Boy.

Today I’m watching him repair his uncle’s fishing net. I carefully frame him on one side with a branch of the tree I’m hiding behind and on the other side with his shrimp boat, the Bonita. Leaning out too far, I lose my balance and fall, rolling down the bank. Aw jeez, he sees me! I act nonchalant and walk back up to the tree, slip behind it and kick it, blushing and swearing. He continues to work on the net, pretending he didn’t notice.

This evening, my parents surprise me with his name.

Santino’s nephew has moved in with them. He asked me how to enroll him in school this fall, Daddy says.

What’s his name? I ask, acting casual and uncaring.

I don’t know.

What grade will he be in? I can’t leave it alone.

I don’t know.

Well, how old is he?

Daddy stops eating and looks at me. I … don’t … know! And why are you so interested, young lady?

Just curious about whether he’ll be in my class. We already have one Mexican kid that can hardly speak English. It might be good to have another so they can at least talk to each other, that’s all.

As usual, Mama is muttering to one of my dead brothers. She stops and looks up with interest. It’s hard bein’ the new kid, harder if it’s a new country an’ a new language. I remember how lonely it was when I first come here to the flatlands, a full-grown woman, not a child. It’s nice of you to be concerned, Sissy.

Afraid of what my face might reveal, I study my empty plate, feeling terrible about keeping something from the man who has always given me everything. Rising and moving to his chair, I encircle his thin chest with my arms and kiss his cheek.

Thank you for the telephoto lens, Daddy.

You’re welcome, Sissy girl. Take some pretty pictures for me. In fact, you know that old cypress out back by the water? There’s a nest of Wood Ducks in its hollow. They should be coming out soon. That would be a great picture for your old dad.

How many hours of waiting would that picture take?

Mama and Daddy both bust out laughing at the image of their daughter being still for even a moment.

How come we’re so different, Daddy? You could sit still for a week.

And you can hardly sit long enough to finish supper, Daddy laughs. You’ll have to be ready, and you’ll have to be quick. The day after they hatch, they leap from their nest. When they hit the water, it triggers something in them, and they begin to search for food. I guess if they didn’t fall, they wouldn’t eat and they wouldn’t survive.

Cool. They have to leap in order to live. So when they hit the water, it’s kinda like slapping a baby’s butt to make it breathe.

Right. Go look at the tree. Plan the picture.

His name is Paolo, Mama sighs, surprising us both. I think Elena said he’s thirteen, but he’ll be in your class ‘cause he didn’t finish school last year an’ ‘cause of the speakin’ problem.

I shrug my shoulders as if it were more information than I care to hear, and excuse myself from the table, wishing Mama had less of a speakin’ problem. But she doesn’t care and few people ever see her, much less hear her talk. I try to shrug off the realization that I’m glad they can’t hear her accent and poor grammar. Am I ashamed of her or for her?

Minutes later, I pass by the kitchen door with my camera and overhear Mama and Daddy.

Marjorie, she’s not even a teenager yet.

Your daughter’s an early bloomer, John Hester. She started her period last week.

How embarrassing! So, of course, I have to hear what else my mother, the traitor to our sex, will tell him.

How could that happen? She’s a baby; she’s eleven years old!

She’ll be twelve soon. An’ she’s a far sight from a baby. I’ll have to get her a brassiere this summer.

Okay, when did mother-daughter talk become mother-father talk?

Woman, there are things I don’t need to know.

You need to know your little girl is growin’ up. Big changes are comin’.

Then you need to keep a closer eye on her.

Mama laughs. John, you know our Sissy. Push her one direction, an’ she’ll light out for the other.

Just like her mountain mother, Daddy whispers as he pulls Mama onto his lap and kisses her. She tosses her dishrag into the sink and kisses him back.

Elena says he don’t talk.

You mean in English?

I mean he don’t talk in anythin’.

"You mean he can’t talk?"

Listen to me, mister! I said he don’t! I didn’t say he can’t!

Well, maybe he has nothing to say. Of course, you women wouldn’t understand that.

It’s not funny, John. He’s not spoke since his parents died.

What happened to them?

Elena called it a political assassination. They’re tryin’ to adopt him.

Oh, boy! Sounds like they’re taking on a big job.

I slip past the doorway and out into the early summer evening to search for Wood Ducks and to digest the words that fill my heart to bursting—words that change my fantasy from New Boy to Paolo. Somehow, now that I know his name, he seems less of a fantasy and more of a reality. But I can’t begin to digest Miss Elena’s story about his parents.

There! The last photo glued into my secret journal—the shot of Paolo mending nets. I find the light pink lipstick Mama bought me a few days ago and put it on, rubbing my lips together to be sure it’s evenly applied. Slowly, I lower my face to the page, carefully placing the imprint of first love’s first kiss on the clean white paper beside his image.

Chapter 2

June 21, 1965

Dear Me,

Don’t know how to feel. The Wood Ducks have changed everything. Words gone."

Daddy told me the ducklings have hatched. So I’m setting up my camera on a tripod stuck in mud, bored to death, when small sounds come from the tree. Camera tightened down, depth of field hurriedly set, focus done, light adjusted … remember to breathe. Waiting is agony, empty time, my enemy. It’s hot! I pull my hair up into a ponytail and splash a little water on my neck and arms and t-shirt to cool off. Still waiting. I play an air guitar and sing, Ticket to Ride. Maybe the words of the Beatles will call them from their nest.

Paolo

There is no work this afternoon. Uncle Tomás has gone to Wilmington for supplies, and Aunt Elena’s wanting is too hard to bear. So I row my uncle’s dinghy upriver, exploring. In the grasses to my left, someone is singing. There’s a click, and I turn to see the loca gringa girl who is always with a camera. I am surprised by the sound but more surprised by her as the camera clicks again. I have seen her several times now, sensing before actually catching a reflection or movement. She is usually at a distance and seems very small and very young. I like having her around. It gives me some distraction from the sameness of my days, of fishing, eating, and sleeping. But she is not as small as I thought—and she has breasts.

Click.

There is movement behind her. A bird falls from a tree—no, a duckling. The girl hears it hit the water and whirls around saying, Ding bat! What is ding bat? The camera clicks as a second duckling falls. She shoots again and again, aiming her camera at balls of yellow and brown fluff that seem to leap from the opening of the tree hollow. Surely they’ll be hurt.

Certain now that the girl is loca, I turn the boat and leave. But in a few minutes, something makes me go back to see if she and the leapers are all right. She has gone and only a beautiful mother duck and five ducklings swim in the water under the tree. A man’s voice and the girl’s, returning. Fast, quiet—paddling away.

Beyond their view, I slow, realizing something has changed. I cough, then clear my throat.

Oh! Surprised by my own voice, I stop paddling. In my head, I have been practicing English for months, knowing my silence is a weakness I must overcome—and before the school year begins. I would like to talk to her, to practice my English on an American teenager. Wish she was a boy. Boys are easier. Would she prefer the news or the weather report? I am a good mimic and can imitate any announcer on the radio, but Uncle Tomás does not own a television, so what facial expressions fit the language? The news is serious and probably should be accompanied by a serious face, and weather by an embarrassed or amused one since it is so often wrong. Thinking today’s weather report in my head, almost smiling, wondering if I can will the words to voice. I know what they sound like in my head, but have yet to feel them on my tongue. Perhaps practice should begin with family.

Aunt Elena whirls in her kitchen when she hears, ¿Cómo está, Tia? And then after an awkward pause, I add, in perfect English, High tide at 11 pm; low tide at 6 am; mild breezes; possible showers tomorrow, ending by noon. What does it mean, ‘ding bat’?

Aunt Elena shrieks and reaches for me, but I back through the doorway and run down the bank to the dock. In the window, she crosses herself and prays. I know that my tragedy has become her miracle—a child to love. But her need is so great, her touch so painful. And she looks too much like her sister … my mother.

In a little while, Uncle Tomás appears, whooping and running out the front door, down the rickety wooden stairs beside the church to the road, and across to the dock. He slows and casually walks the length to the end where I wait. We stand side by side, almost the same height.

So, I understand you speak weather, he says in heavily accented English.

High tide at 11 p.m.; low tide at 6 a.m.; mild breezes; possible showers tomorrow, ending by noon. The pitch in my voice changes in the middle of a word, surprising me. I have heard it in the voices of other boys my age, but never felt it myself. It’s confusing.

This could be very useful. But where did that shit-eating grin come from and why you call your aunt a ‘ding bat’?

I ask her what means ‘ding bat’. You know?

No, but I’ll find out tomorrow. And Uncle Tomás puts his arm around my shoulders, not as narrow as they were when I arrived a few months ago. The nets have given me strength—and time has given me a voice.

You know it won’t rain tomorrow, Paolo.

I know. That is why I grin. Weather man never is right.

Why did you wait so long to speak, my son?

I shrug. I don’t know.

Did your mama teach you Inglés?

I move a step away, away from the mention of her. Yes, written but not spoken. And I listen to the radio.

And learn from the weather man. Perhaps you should listen to the news.

I do. But is hard, and sad.

We will speak English in our home to help you prepare for school.

Gracias … I mean … thank you, Uncle.

You can copy sounds of words you hear. That is good. Already, your accent is not as strong as mine.

Sissy

One day, Mama asks me to go to the Santino dock for some shrimp. Expecting resistance, she is ready with a bribe. If you help out by savin’ me the trip, I’ll have time to make ice cream for dessert.

Ok. But give me the money. Don’t embarrass me by making me ask for it on credit.

Your father always pays Tomás at the shop.

Not this time, Mama, please!

With money in my pocket, I ride my bicycle to the dock. Mr. Santino smiles up at me from the Bonita, and I ask politely for shrimp, secretly