Jemma in the Sea
Flash-fiction - by Belinda Whitney
On Mondays Jemma laid her soul out to dry, stretched on the pale sand beneath the rocky cliffs. She would wander along the shore, picking up a broken shell here, tossing a smooth white stone there, searching for something just beyond memory.
By Tuesdays her soul was clean, the color of salt, of dried shells. Jemma would shake it out, letting it fan in the breeze. She didn’t know why; it became no cleaner, no drier. When she held it in front of her the sun shone right through it, casting the faintest line of shadow at her feet. Then she’d tuck it back deep inside and feel the welling of a hollow sadness, like the tide being sucked out to sea. In that moment she almost longed for the delicious ability to cry. But instead she would skip along the beach and look for an idle sailor to tempt or villager to taunt.
On Wednesdays Jemma joined the others like her, dancing in the waves or sitting on the craggy rocks jutting up from the roiling blue-green waves. The sea women combed their hair with polished bones of fish, dyed red and blue and green. Jemma’s hair had been long and wavy and red, but since she came to live in the sea it needed constant reviving. She would prick her finger and a single drop would fall, like a tear, into her waiting palm. She’d rub her hands together and pull them through the wild drying husks her hair had become. Then her hair would darken back into the thick rich red that had once been so lovely.
Up on the ragged cliffs a man would sit, watching. As Jemma tossed her newly reddened mane, the man would stare, long and hard. Then he would sigh and lower his eyes.
By Thursday Jemma was always bored. She would venture farther and farther from the others, to the edge of the beach where the bramble grew. The man was always waiting there. He beckoned to her then, coaxing her as if she were a puppy or a skittish colt. Jemma would begin to run away, but she felt a strange fascination with the man. So she’d dance about, delighting herself at the man’s delight in her. Until he spoke. At the sound of his voice, Jemma would stop her taunting and flee back to the sea and the brisk, slicing cold waves.
Fridays were good days. Jemma had spent the night thinking about the man. She would dash to shore, to the spot where he had been, and find him waiting there. Sometimes Jemma had a momentary thought that she had done this before, that they both had done this before. Perhaps many times. That the gray around his temples, not washed away with blood, had not been there the first time she ever saw him. She would laugh and tease until he rushed forward and threw a red shawl about her shoulders, tying it tightly. Then she became docile and followed him, not walking on sand but on soil, right past the woods, past the great green meadow, through the town. Past townspeople stopping and shaking their heads, all the way to a pretty little house. Every Friday evening she crossed the threshold into the pretty little house. Every Friday she spent the night there.
Saturdays were a cacophony of laughter in the little house, of penny whistle and drum songs, of the steam of food simmering on the stove, of games and skinned elbows. There were children, showing all they had done in the week past. They called Jemma a sweet name, one she feared she would forget beneath the waves. And there was the man. Begging Jemma to forgive him, saying it should have been him in the cold surf with the sea people instead of her.
Jemma didn’t understand. She couldn’t imagine leaving the warm house with the man and the children and the fire crackling and the aroma of baking bread. She wished she could stay forever. Yet still, every Saturday evening Jemma tore the shawl from her shoulders, rushed to the briny shore and flung herself back into the foaming waves.
Then came Sundays, with the peal of church bells. Their tolling bore into Jemma’s ears, into her mind. She remembered about the sea women with their empty, slippery song, how they stole her husband, and her children too. How she broke the bargain by throwing herself into the sea, taking their place. How she came to have a dry mermaid’s soul with a hollow yearning beyond memory, like the wail of a seagull along a deserted shore.
Then, with that brief remembrance, Jemma would cry. Tears upon tears, wave upon wave, filling up her soul until there was room for not one drop more.
But Mondays always came again.
And on Mondays, Jemma laid her soul out to dry.