By Harold Taw

For my niece, Maya Hong Surratt

She saw the glow of the ferry terminal floating closer while the familiar recorded announcement informed passengers that it was time to disembark. Their island high school team had won the football game—a pleasant surprise—and she was returning home to the mainland with her commuter classmates on the late ferry.

“You sure you don’t want to join us?” one said. “The chicken-fried steak is amazing!”

She shook her head. “I promised my dad I’d come straight home.”

She walked with her friends down the ferry dock, talking about everything and nothing, and they parted when the others boarded a bus to The Junction.

A buzz alerted her to a text. “Tell me what the restaurant is like,” Dad wrote. “You’re getting dropped off, right?”

She dashed off a reply. “Yup, you don’t need to pick me up. The chicken-fried steak is the best!”

She felt a twinge of guilt but pressed send before she let it get the better of her.

The next ferry was more than an hour away, so no cars were queued in the empty parking lot. A terminal worker in a bright yellow vest put cones in front of a ticket booth, then turned on a radio. In the open air next to the open water, it sounded tinny, playing the kind of rock, or country, or country-rock that her dad called “real music.” She acknowledged the worker’s jaunty wave, then slipped down the path that led to the beach.

The tide was neither high nor low, the crash of shore breakers muffling the music drifting down from above. She picked her way around seagrass and driftwood until she found the perfect spot beneath the pier: a flat rock like a jagged stool. It sat where the water met the sand, next to a wooden pillar encrusted with barnacles that smelled moist, salty, and alive.

She ignored the dampness that seeped into the seat of her jeans. She hugged her knees to her chest and waited, her eyes searching the black expanse of water that undulated in the reflected light from the terminal. 

Was she waiting thirty minutes? An hour? She lost track of time. But at last, she made out the dark wedge swimming in from the sea. It seemed imaginary at first, perhaps driftwood bobbing above the swells, before it coalesced into a reptilian head, its obsidian eyes both reflecting and absorbing light.

She knew better than to wade into the ocean to meet the turtle. She might get caught up in a current and, in attempting to regain her balance, bash herself against a pillar or a rock. She waited until the giant sea turtle reached the shore, arms and legs rowing in the sand, hauling its immensity close to her. 

She threw herself onto the turtle, pressing her cheek hard against the turtle’s shell. The shell felt like wet bone scored by time and weather; it smelled of ocean depths and sunny beaches she had yet to visit. She hugged the turtle with all her might, knowing that no matter how much pressure she exerted, the carapace would not bow or bend.

Gazing into the turtle’s liquid, black eyes, she felt as if she were falling into them and yet could see her own reflection there. At last, she was no longer hugging a turtle but her mother. Not her mother as she’d been in the last weeks of her life, hair shorn away by chemotherapy, arms and nose attached to tubes, breathing in ragged, raspy intervals. It was the mother of her childhood, black hair wrapped around her chin, skin smooth and clear, a smile playing at the corners of her lips.

She hugged her mother as tightly as she could, knowing she was unbreakable.

“Dear,” her mother said. “This is the last time I’m going to come to you in human form.”

In response, she blinked back tears and smiled, the kind of wide-open smile she had been unable to muster for weeks, the kind of smile that reminded her of snuggling in bed, of yelling at each other over unfinished homework, of adopting their bashful and now valiant puppy together.

“I know, Mommy.”

She kneeled in the sand and watched as the turtle clambered into the water and swam seaward. Fifty yards away, the turtle took a last gulp of air, then submerged, dissolving into a plume of ash that drifted away, stretching into a long, hazy arc that rippled in the water.

As she made her way back up to the bus stop, a smile still touched the corners of her mouth. Her phone buzzed.

“Are you having fun with your friends?” her dad texted.

“I’m on my way home,” she replied. Then she added, “I love you.”

As she waited for the bus, she listened to the music playing on the radio. It was some rock song, probably recorded long before she was born, but rather than sounding shrill, it was comforting. The singer sounded like he was chanting a hymn:

May your strength give us strength.

May your faith give us faith.

May your hope give us hope.

May your love bring us love.