The Ghost in the Lagoon

by Isa Mari De Leon

When the sunset crests the top of the hill, the light retreating like peeling tangerines, Rosa tosses orange slices into a lagoon. She stands in the shallows, the waves just grazing her bare ankles. The water is so dark that it devours sight; she cannot see her toes or the coarse sand she stands upon. Her rolled-up jeans cling to the fat of her calves. The rush of night air harries the skin of her arms, blows her brown, brittle hair around her shoulders. She ignores the discomfort and continues peeling, throwing, disturbing the surface with rhythmic plops. As she does, the juice sticks to the ends of her fingers, so she bends down to clean them off in the biting water.

When she stands again, there is a child, no older than twelve, sitting cross-legged on the surface of the lagoon. “They’re not sweet this time,” they say.

“Are they not?” Rosa lifts one of the slices to her mouth, bites down. The skin of the fruit gives, and the taste is cloying, lingering in the sides of her mouth. Her face pinches. “You sure about that?”

The orange slices float along, untouched. “Pretty sure.”

The child, a ghost, appears with wet hair cropped around the neck, a soaked shirt and shorts, skin gray-olive and sallow. Even after almost a year of meeting, Rosa is unsure if the child is a boy or girl. Their high-pitched voice and small frame make it difficult to tell. It doesn’t matter, either way. What matters is that the child’s name is Eden, and when Rosa visits at night, it is to leave fruits to bob on the water for them. Eden cannot touch the food, but they had once said that it sweetens the taste of the lagoon, and the pre-peeled fruit reminds them of the pre-made meals they used to have at school, full of sugar but homey—a sign of being cared for.

“They’re sweet to me,” Rosa says, smiling and eating another. “Maybe we should get your tastebuds checked. I’ll take you to a doctor, later.”

“Yeah,” Eden says. One arm is propped against their knee, chin resting on their hand. The other traces circles on the water with their finger, though the waves do not move around it. They look at a point passed Rosa, avoiding her eyes.

“Hey, you okay, kiddo?” Her voice is soft, as tender as the oranges in her palm.

“Yeah, ‘m fine.”

“Really?” Rosa asks. Eden can be evasive, as children often are—hiding from their parents and keeping their inconsequential secrets. But Rosa knows how to get around it. “Apples next week, if you tell me.”

Eden’s eyes, bloodshot and watery, meet hers. “...Fuji?”

“Of course.”

For a while, Eden is quiet. The whistle of the wind is a harsh song, filling the space. Around them, tree leaves quake in their branches. The trilling of crickets joins; Rosa counts each chirp, gets up to fifty-five before Eden speaks, saying, “The other day, someone dumped a bag of beer bottles here. It’s pretty awful.”

“Oh,” Rosa says, sheepish. She fiddles with the orange peels, then puts them in her pocket. “I could fish them out, if you want.”

“Could you?” Eden asks, insistent. The sound of their voice is usually smothered, wet and perpetually drowned. But there is a clarity, now, in how it carries to Rosa. “That would help a lot, but... Actually, there’s something more important. I need you to do something for me.”

———

It looked beautiful,

which I wanted to be,

so I walked in.

The dancing waves,

mad and cutting,

welcomed me more

than the yelling mother

or the drinking father,

so I walked in.

It was as life should’ve been:

the intake of air,

the rush of arms and legs,

the weight of restful sleep,

but this time, sweetly.

But when the water poured into

the eyes the mouth the lungs

I knew I walked too far.

I cried after each

bottle, can, cigarette,

salt in the once-fresh water.

And yet—

the sweetness comes

back, later, in

mandarin oranges

and Fuji apples.

———

Eden says, “I need you to bury me.”

“What?” Any lightness Rosa feels from visiting Eden is gone. The few orange slices left feel heavy in her hand. Only now does she look closely at Eden. The wavering form, the sunken and dull skin, the fading pupils.

“There’s a part of me, I think, still in the water.” Eden stands, drawing closer. With every step, their body flickers like old lights, blinking back and forth. Approaching slowly, they look every part the lost, begging child. “It’s why I’m still here. I need you to find it.”

Seeing Eden dissolving in and out of focus, Rosa wonders, not for the first time, if they are real. One way to find out, she reasons, is by diving in and searching to see if there truly is something physical anchoring them down, below the depths. She blurts out, “What changed? I thought you’ve been here for... Eight years? What’s different?”

“I don’t know, but–” Eden’s expression strains, eyebrows downturned– “it’s hurting more to be here. Like I’m drowning again.”

Rosa winces. “Does that mean you’ll be gone if I do?”

“I–I think so.”

“That doesn’t scare you?”

“It does, but... ‘m not supposed to be here.”

“Won’t you miss this?” Rosa’s throat tightens.

“I–Of course I will, but—”

“Then shouldn’t you think this through?” She hears the tone her voice is taking: the lecturing parent. Heat rises into Rosa’s face despite the cold, turning her temples red. Already running through her mind are memories of nights blurring together, undisturbed lagoon water, fruits shared, and the ghost at the center of it all. Over time, the supernatural had become mundane—chats with a friend by the face of a lake.

“I can’t make you do it, but...” Eden’s complexion remains unchanged, still pale, eyes set deep into the lines of their face. But their voice ascends above the air’s breeze, the crickets’ calls. They try to make themselves taller, standing fully. The ends of Eden’s lips turn upward into a small, crooked smile. “If I were still alive, I’d be an adult by now. Isn’t it time that I go?”

———

I went to the lake to give up – my baby bottles,
my plastic pacifiers, my darling’s dresses.

I’m stretched too thin. Tears sliding down
the slim sight of my face like raindrops over glass.

Stretch marks threading the skin of my stomach
like crisscrossed barbed wire fences.

I had dumped the bottles when I heard crying,
and thought my new ghost had come to play.

The ghost in the lagoon was not mine
nor new. Not old, but older, and yet –

Still a child among the drifting bottles.
Over time, I poured my loss into peeling fruits,

and the ghost became healing, not haunting.
And yet, maybe, I’m becoming a ghost, too.

———

In the next times they meet, Eden’s burial becomes a topic of argument. At first, Eden would bring it up at the start of seeing one another, in lieu of a greeting, which sours the visits beyond what fruit could salvage. But Eden is smart beyond their eternal age, and they learn to dance around it until the end. They discuss the taste of the fruit; Rosa’s exhausting part-time jobs as a waitress, a mail carrier, a cashier; the few people who don’t visit the lagoon but walk passed it. And always, in the end, Eden looks down at the surface of the lake, holds for a few moments, and looks back at Rosa, eyes blinking and teary.

Whenever Rosa imagines never seeing Eden again, she feels that familiar loss, sharp in the cavity of her chest. But Eden’s place here is becoming dire. Once, Eden complains that the cherries Rosa brings are completely tasteless, then strawberries, then grapefruit. Another time, Rosa doesn’t see Eden—only hears them. It is painful for both of them, like stepping on knifelike stones on the seabed.

“Can you please think about it?” They’ve both told each other this, several times. But in this instance, it comes from Eden. The air is humid, oppressive. Above them is an absence of stars.

Rosa’s shoulders sag. “Are you sure? What if it’s–What if you, aren’t there?”

“It’s there, I know, I saw it.” The impatience bubbles out of Eden in their shaking hands, small and paper-thin.

“You did?” She digs her heels into the sand.

“Yes, just a skull, but it’s there. Just that. Just bury that, and I’ll be...”

Eden trails off. Rosa presses her hands against her abdomen, feeling the heaviness of a womb once full, drum-tight—then hollow.

“I know it’d be hard for you,” Eden says. Their eyes follow the movement of Rosa’s hands. “I know that. But with me, you could say goodbye.”

“What?” Rosa’s eyes, brown eyes, tremble.

“I’ve thought about it. It could be good for you, too.”

“You say that like it’s easy.” Like goodbye isn’t the heaviest thing Rosa carries and refuses to put down.

“It’s not,” Eden says. “But it hurts us both, I think, to stay here.”

———

From the evening I hear a cry My

to the night in which I wade shade

between waves, stones, and fishes, wishes

at last I step offshore for

and into the waiting deep. sleep.

It was hard to come by, My

that friendship in the nighttime, time

and we had been alone, but closely. only

Asking me to bury temporary

you, to spend that final hour Our

digging into the dirt and grime, time

is burying part of myself, not small, all

to make sure you got as you wished. cherished

Beyond the lake, under the ashwood Good

is where my love will ossify. bye

———

The lagoon is supposed to flood. Rosa acts before then. The water is a grim blue-black, enveloping her body in the way that lungs hold oxygen. In the depths, Rosa sees Eden passed the goggles she wears. Their eyes glow white, but their skin is so translucent it seems crystalline, reflecting the waves. They say nothing; Eden points to an outcropping of rocks at the lakebed. Small fish avoid them as they dive forward. There, just as Rosa’s chest feels as though it would collapse inward, she sees the skull. For a moment, she considers holding onto the rocks at the bed and digging her limbs into the clay beneath, joining Eden. But the child sees this and jolts, furious, trying to shove the skull into Rosa’s hands. Eden’s shoulder-length hair whips around in the water. Their mouth opens, letting out a garbled scream. Seeing Eden’s distress, Rosa takes it.

The skull is graying, full of holes and breaks. As Rosa swims up, she feels the large spaces where the eyes once were, the delicate roundness of the jaw. Part of the skull is caved in. When she breaches the surface, she coughs the water out of her throat and heaves for breath.

“Thank you,” Eden says. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Rosa says between breaths. “I’ll be fine.”

The grave is set in a nearby glade, a garden, but far enough that a flood won’t disturb it. Each shovel of dirt is a hurdle. She thinks of Eden’s gentle features, shaped around the skull resting near the grave. She thinks of loss: a baby’s clothes being thrown away, a little one’s life drowned. She thinks of love, too—the easy kind, peeling fruit for another and seeing them every week. In the grave, she places the skull and, beside it, a Fuji apple.