BEFORE SHE KNOWS

 “Her mother stopped picking and said, ‘Now, Sal, you run along and pick your own berries. Mother wants to take her berries home and can them for next winter.’” — from Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

This is ok, right? Bob says we will be fine. The hill isn’t too steep, the weather isn’t too hot. She loves it, right?

Kuplink.

She loved practicing yesterday. Bob got the marbles down from the cupboard.

I couldn’t watch. I was so afraid some uncontrollable, magnetic force — I know, marbles are glass — but that knowledge doesn’t stop me from thinking that when her mouth opened to laugh or to say thank you for the marbles, something like an invisible fairy, as ridiculous as that sounds, was going to pluck the marbles out of Bob’s outstretched palm and toss them into her gaped mouth.

Choking. That’s all I could think about. She was going to choke on these practice marbles, and I would have to do something about it.

I turned away from them and gripped my mug of tea. I shut my eyes. I couldn’t remember, was it a back slap first or a chest thrust?

Then the rushing sound – like a wave caught inside a shell, that I sometimes get inside my head when I need to decide something, but I don’t quite know what yet – made me open my eyes. But the rushing sound was not inside my head.

I turned and looked back at the magnetic field that had no metal, the invisible fairy-tossing, choking scene. But she wasn’t choking. Bob was looking at me, smiling, his palm open. Sally had placed all three marbles ever so quietly into the bottom of her little tin pail. She was sitting cross-legged on the tile, swirling her bucket.

Kuplank.

Oh, good. She’s following along behind me, like we talked about yesterday, picking the shiny blue ones, delicately, between her thumb and finger.

She still has the pudgy baby skin around her wrist.

She cried this morning when I told her she couldn’t wear the dress. Bob said it would be alright, there hadn’t been a deer on blueberry hill in ages, but he couldn’t be here to pick berries with us, and he is the expert at spotting ticks in skin folds, so I’m glad I found that pair of coveralls that the cat kept hidden behind the yellow chair. I’d washed them, of course, but I didn’t have time to replace the missing button.

She insisted on wearing her red leather shoes though, the ones with the fuzzy straps on the underside, fuzzy like a kitten’s chin. She didn’t like that I wanted her to wear socks. I even said that she could wear the frilly ones that she likes, but she crossed her arms and stuck out her lower lip and tears leaked out of her eyes. Bob must have known she wouldn’t want to wear the socks without the dress. He said not wearing socks would be fine. How am I going to look for ticks under those pant legs without taking the coveralls off? I’ll have to strip her naked next to the car before we leave, just in case.

Kuplunk.

Fall is coming. And then winter. And then the long nights when the bay freezes at its edges and we can’t get a boat in, and we eat tinned peaches and tuna fish and evaporated milk over canned blueberries. So many blueberries. Do you remember? Sally ate so many last year she pooped straight blueberry skins for a week! Ha.

Sally?

Kuplink.

Oh. There she is, her curls shining between the dark ridges of the blueberry branches, like blinding bits of light on the water, right before the sun sets, a perfect time to walk on the shore.

I used to love walking the seashore. I would look for a half clam shell with a tiny hole in it perfect to string on a necklace, or a grey tufted feather wider at the tip stuck under the ridge of shells and pebbles lining the edge of the flat, wetter sand where it was pushed up by the waves the night before.

Or I would look for a creamy white sand dollar under that same ridge of pebbles. The way to find one is by noticing its long, thin petals stamped into the center, more oblong than anything else on the beach, an odd, out-of-place-looking thing, but when noticed together, all five petals make the perfect sea flower.

A sand dollar was the only thing better than the unbroken orange scallop shell my brother found just by walking into a wave – he wasn’t even looking for it! – but my mother praised the shell as perfect and my father nodded and crossed his arms behind his back and said, good job, Davie.

But you’ll see. I’ll find something better.

And I raced down the beach, feet slapping over the packed sand, saltwater spray up my ankles and behind my knees…the water goes out, and I think I see something, a black something between the rocks at the edge, where the last wave pushes the sand to the shore and the rocks stay behind.

But it is just algae on a smooth, white pebble. I race the water back in, back out, then toss the pebble along the surface of the water, like flashes of light on a windowpane.

I run on. Around the beach break, to the cove on the other side, never having been this far down the beach before, but knowing this must be the place.

There, in a pool of still, translucent water, a ring of urchin spines pricks the salt air. The ones on the edge don’t have enough room to get under the water completely – the tips of their spines are dull and flaky – they must wait, and be patient, and hope the tide changes soon enough.

There, in the bottom of the pool between the clumps of thin, black points. I reach into the still water – little circles go out from my arm – and I touch its rough white surface. I slip my fingers underneath the disk and remove it from the waters. It is light, it is empty. I rub my thumb over the dimples on the front. I hold it up, a perfect sand dollar.

I turn around.

See?

But they aren’t there.

A lady with bushy hair and a red, white, and blue sweatband jogs past. Her white sneakers have sand on the toes, her white tube socks have brown sand marks on the inside of her calves. A man and a woman walk by holding hands, both naked from the waist up. Then a kid. Then another woman, a girl, a boy, an aunt, an uncle, cousins, surfers, stoners, more joggers, a scientist, a lady with flowers in her hair, a grocery store clerk, four pimply high schoolers with foam boards under their arms, long hair, short hair, green hair. But no Davie, or mom, or dad.

I grip the white disk and run back the way I think I should go. My feet sink into the sand, sucking into the wet. I cannot find a lifeguard. I cannot find our red and white and blue striped beach umbrella. I search everywhere, for anyone.

A grandmother sees me.

She has hair the color of the bay on a stormy day, although I would not know what the bay looks like then.

She clutched the skirt of her black swimsuit dress. The water dripped down her wrinkled thighs.

Perhaps she too would have seen a fairy that tosses marbles in front of open mouths, that snatches them back before they are swallowed by toddlers. If I knew her now, I would ask her that.

She looked down at me. She knew.

She took my hand, the one clutching the sand dollar.

We walked back past the seawall. We started walking up the dune.

My father jogged out from behind the lifeguard tower. My mother followed.

And for a moment, her eyes stayed wide. Her mouth hung open. She knew.

The lady let go of my hand and waved.

My mother ran down the dune.

And it was like a mouth opened in the sand; my knees buckled. Buzzing surrounded my head; I could not hear.

My mother pulled me into her chest – salt, heaving, warmth – and the buzzing stopped.

Pain sliced my palm.

My mother released me, held my shoulders, and looked into my face.

My palm throbbed instead of my chest. Warmth trickled down my palm instead of my cheeks.

I swallowed.

I dropped my arms to my sides; I made my mouth make a smile.

And my mother’s eyes crinkled, and that little dimple showed in the lower part of her left cheek.

She thanked the lady, swung her arm around my shoulders, and walked next to me up the dune.

But before we reached the top, I opened my hand.

Red seeped into the edge of the sand dollar. I could not show this to my mother. I tipped my hand over, and…Sal…She really needs to stop getting blueberries out of my pail. I don’t want to have to remind her again.

“Now, Sal…”

Bear.

Not Sally.

Bear.

Birds stop. The wind stops. The bear stops.

I step away; my feet do not make a sound.

The sky is blue, the clouds white.

And if I squint, I remember. Light danced on the blue shimmering water. I plucked the sand dollar from the water and all the colors, yellows and oranges and reds sprinkled up into the sky. And they swirled and danced, shimmering like a fairy wing. They were the sky; they were the water. And I pointed to the water, knowing my mother would think they were lovely too, and I looked behind me…

Kuplink.

…marbles and fairies and the hum of the ocean inside a shell…a funny sound…

Kuplank.

I have known that sound my whole life, but that is impossible.

Kuplunk.

I have only known Sally the length of her life, not mine.

“Sal?”

Have I made it here in time?

“Mama!”

Krista Puttler has fiction writing and medical degrees, served in the US Navy as a general surgeon, and is working on a memoir of the Mount Pinatubo eruption and evacuation. Her writing has appeared in As You Were: The Military Review, Collateral, and Intima. She lives in Norfolk, VA with her husband and three daughters.