Lessons in Drowning

by Stephanie Gutierrez

Margaret stands alone, on the back of a swaying yacht, debating if jumping into the water would quell her gut-wrenching seasickness or if it would just announce to all the starving fish and scaly sea monsters that she is in the market to be eaten. They would swim upwards, gleaming at the invisible badge engraved on her legs that broadcasts: “My father worked as a fisherman, I am free game!”

She picks at the dead skin on her lips. Disregarding her lanky frame, she looks exactly like her father unfortunately, inheriting his dull eyes the color of wet sand after a storm, his avoidant personality, and an aversion to anything colored green. If the sea creatures below have a photographic memory, they might confuse her for her father wearing a scraggly wig.

She forces herself to pry open her eyes and glance into the ocean. The sweet lullaby of the deep blue waves overlapping, merging, entices her as much as it scares her. The ocean waves her forward, whispering the sweet promise of remedy from her sickness, a siren’s song of relief. 

 Her thoughts shatter through the trance, picturing all of the sharp-toothed creatures swimming below. Hunting below, waiting for her to leap into the water. She squeezes her eyes shut and prays to no one in particular. 

An angry wave slaps the side of the boat and launches her onto the floor. She caresses her scraped knees and concludes that there are no Gods.

Margaret only wants to survive the return to land so she can feed her cat, Butters, who is locked in her studio apartment. She unwillingly asked her grumpy neighbor if he could feed her cat while she was away; he grabbed her extra key with a huff and slammed the door in her face. Margaret assumed that was a yes.

Margaret pushes herself back up and holds onto the railing, thinking of ways to distract herself. She focuses on the shrieking squeals of the seagulls above, flying ahead to still land. Their unorganized symphony of squawking is drowned out by the rhythmic beating of the waves hitting the side of the barnacle-rimmed yacht. Margaret thinks she spots the splash of a whale’s tail in the distance, dread and ocean mist seep into her pores. 

Focusing so intensely on the scenery only reaffirms where Margaret is, stuck on a boat with people whom she does not care to know, showing off pictures of stiffly posed families and children she wishes to never have. Earlier, when she climbed up to the 2nd level to get a drink, a wealthy, clean-looking couple shoved their phones to Margaret’s face, revealing a picture of their family photos from their “holidays” in Switzerland. Their poses reminded her of the mannequins in the front of Old Navy stores she used to work at, holding the same uncanny smiles and lifeless eyes.

The boat lurches sideways and her stomach somersaults in unison. Margaret curses under her breath and shakily attempts to walk over to the other side of the boat, knees threatening to buckle. She didn’t fully realize what she signed herself up for when she impulsively entered an all-expenses-paid two-day whale-watching giveaway online, let alone believe she would win. She only dared to apply after reading an excerpt from a self-help book about facing your fears, reinvigorated by the promise of becoming a new, braver person.  

Margaret stares at the water. She is not a new, braver person. She is, in fact, the same nervous and horribly frightened woman that she has always been. But it is too late to do anything about it now, at least without causing a scene. She forcefully represses the emerging tears threatening to fall. That’s the last time she listens to a book, she tells herself, let alone read one. Another wave of nausea flips her insides and she grips the railing tightly, swallowing saliva to quench the bubbling nausea, and presses her spinning head onto the germ-covered railing. 

She wonders if any of the people above would worry for her, stroke her head, and warmly pur “I remember how seasick I got as a child when my father first brought me on his yacht, let me call over my private jet.”

Margaret has never enjoyed being in the ocean or the beach. She’s never understood the appeal of sunburns and swimming out in open waters with the knowledge that any slimy creature could be right under you, a few seconds away from biting your foot or swallowing you whole. Although she despises the ocean, she never imagined she would get seasick. Her father worked in the sea for the majority of his life, proudly claiming that he was born a seaman. Margaret hoped that whatever prevented her father from getting sick was genetic. Clearly, it was not.

When she was younger, Margaret would lie awake, wondering what her father felt like when he was at the ocean, what made him feel more at home in open waters than in the two-bedroom house he bought in Alaska. Even now in his retirement, her father could not stand being on land, so it was no surprise when he called Margaret that he would be on a six-month-long cruise with his girlfriend and would not be able to answer any of her calls. Not that he ever did. 

A gust of wind blows her tangled hair in front of her eyes and into her mouth, along with the stench of salt and fish. 

Heavy footsteps clomp closer on the polished deck, demanding her attention. “Thought you said you don’t get seasick,” the man she begrudgingly made small talk with earlier said. His white polo shirt doesn’t fit well, potbellied stomach poking underneath the hem. With the money he was flaunting, she assumed he could afford to buy properly fitted clothes. “I don’t like liars,” he says and pokes her with his finger. She stays quiet.

 He pokes her again. This time she shoves his hand away.

“Wow, a feisty one aren’t you?” he chuckles. 

She glances at him and sees the wheels of his mind turning, clicking, calculating the best method to prod her open to say something. He places his hand next to her, and his golden wedding ring glistens with the sun, blinding Margaret momentarily. 

She pictures him holding a tight unshucked oyster, painfully attempting to pry the shell apart with a knife and accidentally stabbing himself in the palm with an awkward twist of the hand. A small puddle of blood stains the floor it drips on. He doesn’t bother to heal his wound, instead focusing on slurping the contents of the oyster in one gulp and then tossing the empty shell.

What a waste, she thinks, gripping the railing tighter and making a mental note not to try the oysters the workers were handing out on the second floor. 

“Come on, don’t be boring. Just talk to me, doll. We were all having such a good time together up there.” She refuses to face him, but even without looking at him, his disappointment in her unresponsive state leaves a thick, syrupy anxiety coating her tongue and making the air taste stale. “Usually you cheap girls pounce on me. An ugly urchin like you isn’t going anywhere in life,” he spits, “The sooner you realize that, the better.” He glares at her, waiting a few seconds for the message to sink in, and stomps away like a petulant child.

A raging wave strikes the side of the ship and the boat juts sideways, throwing Margaret forward. She plunges into the painfully rigid water, mouth agape, swallowing gallons worth of seawater. 

The current pushes her body down into the boxing ring of the ocean’s tides. She is shoved down, sideways, back up for a fleeting gasp of oxygen, and shoved back down, headlocked in the ocean’s disabling waves. She musters up her strength, forcing herself to tread above the water.

Margaret hears a laugh from up on board. A wave smacks her face and she chokes on the water. There’s no more sound besides the sloshing of water and the whirling of the ocean.

Margaret struggles to stay afloat and shakes her wet hair from covering her eyes. She wonders if she imagined the laugh, or if the people above believed that she was there for their entertainment, and her fall was a calculated move that had been orchestrated by the captain to occupy their attention until a whale is sighted. Another wave envelops Margaret, and unable to tread the water, she allows herself to slip into the ocean’s embrace. 

Slowly sinking, she stares at the bottom of the boat, only now regretting not wearing a life jacket. Margaret acknowledges that this may be her final moment of consciousness before her body becomes decayed by the rough salt water and slowly consumed by whatever hungry predator stumbles across her bloated body. So instead of pondering over her mental list of regrets, she focuses on the feeling of her soaked clothes weighing her down with the cold water she loathes.

She doesn’t try to swim up anymore, but her body’s useless survival instincts force her to gasp for air, even though her brain knows all she will do is swallow more water that will inevitably fill her lungs and other vital organs. Her mouth and nostrils burn with each inhale of seawater, her throat now dry and raw. She keeps swallowing, body gulping more and more the further Margaret is pulled towards the cryptic depths of the sea, anxiety chewing through her nerves. 

 There’s no air entering her system, and realistically, she should be dead, drowning, but somehow she is still gulping salty seawater. Still conscious, she replays alternate outcomes, wondering if it is worse to drown or be graphically consumed by a shark. The Jaws theme song plays in her mind. She tries to shake the song out of her head, repeating a statistic she read online that lawnmowers cause more fatalities than shark attacks yearly. 

She breathes in, adjusting to the strange thickness of water infiltrating her nose. There are no sharks nearby, or other sea creatures for that matter. She worried for nothing. Margaret’s thoughts fade like fog from her mind after feeling the light pressure pull her down. Margaret has felt so lost, so directionless. The pressure mimics the weight of a hug, and she willfully allows her body to be directed down into the sea, savoring the ocean's small comfort, giving her one less decision to make.

She gulps. 

And sinks. 

Gulp.

Sink.

She feels like a fish at a pet store being fed for the first time in days after being forgotten on the back shelf. She remembers staring at the dirty fish tank full of ignored fish, how they opened and closed their mouths, fighting to consume morsels of fishflakes until there was nothing left to devour. She looks up at the shadow of the boat she fell from, now blocking the sunlight. How tiny the bottom of the boat has become, and notices there are no shadows of lifepreservers or lifeboats thrown overboard for her rescue. Had no one noticed her?

Two skinny yellow fish swirl ahead of her gaze, graciously swimming among each other. The fish are entranced in a dance, swirling and weaving across the sea next to one another, unfazed by the sinking human. They swim, circling above her head, and she can feel them gently graze her scalp with the tip of their fins.

To any onlooker, it would appear that Margaret has a halo of swimming fish.

Margaret looks up, watching the circling fish, and the fading light fragmenting along the waves. Her jaw mechanically opens and she gulps both fish down. She grabs her throat with both hands, wincing as the fishes try to dance while traversing down her throat. She hiccups and covers her mouth, afraid of vomiting. Margaret had never been very fond of eating fish, but these slippery swimmers hadn’t tasted very fishy at all, nothing like the soggy fish sticks she was handed in elementary school or the gas station sushi that gave her food poisoning for three days. She tries to avoid looking at her stomach and hopes the fishes are still dancing together without realizing they are imprisoned within the cage of her stomach. 

She takes another gulp and turns her gaze to encounter a school of small white fish, where they collectively stop swimming to stare at her with their bulging eyes and gaping mouths. She takes another gulp of water, refusing to make eye contact with the stilled group of fish. She wonders if they have a special fish council where they gather to discuss the recurring problem of their fellow fish friends being consumed and if they would report her to an underwater crime force. She lowers deeper into the ocean, feeling the pinpricks of their stares until they’ve become a speck in the distance above.

Margaret surveys her shoes, ignoring the dark blue nothingness underneath her feet. A trembling, deep groan reverberates through the water and her head snaps up. In the distance, two whales are gliding seamlessly across the blue expanse. She holds her breath and hopes the blue whales don’t find her appetizing. Whales don’t eat people, she reminds herself, only half believing the fact. Margaret watches them swim further and further away, and rubs the goosebumps that rose on her arms long after the distant whale calls echod away.

Margaret wonders if the people on the yacht ended up seeing a whale. If they clapped and hugged one another, forgetting that a passenger had gone overboard amid an overpriced whale-watching tour. If they didn’t see a whale, she wonders if they’d be envious of her, insides boiling with jealousy, wishing they were the ones to delve aimlessly into the ocean. She wishes they all fell instead of her, disregarding the fact she doesn’t know how to sail a yacht.

She's reminded of a passage from the self-help book she planned to throw away. How did it go? She digs through her mind, there is healing in awareness and perspective? Awareness doesn't help at all. Why does she want to be more aware of how helpless she is? She huffs, bubbles coming out from her nostrils.

Distracted by the itch to sneeze, she gulps and inhales a handful of knotted seaweed floating above a field of kelp, gagging as the long, slimy, thick grass slowly slides down her throat. She grips a corner of the tangled rows of seaweed that is sticking out of her open mouth, fingers slipping on the cool strands, but her body forces her to take an even bigger gulp of more water, and so the remaining clump of seaweed is sucked into the vacuum of Margaret’s stomach. At least this will leave the fish in her stomach something to eat.

She cringes at the feeling of the residue left from the strands of kelp grazing her skin. She kicks the brown leaves to prevent the kelp from sticking to her limbs, but they become more entangled, wrapping around her body.

If Margaret needed, she could slowly eat her way out. She could slurp on the strands and rip off the leaves to use the stalks as floss for her teeth. Her stomach clenches. She’s had enough seaweed for a lifetime.

She could stay put. That’s also an option. She could accept her fate, becoming one with the wavering seaweed. She wouldn’t have to make any decisions, wonder what to do next, how to get back to her apartment, or what to do after that. Nature has chosen for her. Finally, Margaret thinks, she is free from the chains of decision making.

 Her shoulders shake. 

She’s crying, she realizes. She misses Butters. 

She tentatively bites and pulls at the leaves, ignoring the urge to vomit, and wiggles out of the kelp. She swims forward, escaping only to find herself amid a bigger, deeper trench.

Across the trench, Margaret sees a corroding ship covered in rust and gloom on the verge of dangling off the edge of a cliff. It would be dangerous, but returning to the kelp is not an option. She uses the little amount of energy she has left to swim forward. Halfway to the ship of sunken dreams, as Margaret named it, a person in 1950s deep sea scuba diving gear slowly emerges on the rotted deck. The diver holds a modern underwater camera and aligns it to take a picture of Margaret. The camera flashes, and the diver puts the camera down, freezing to watch her.

He motions for her to come forward. Maybe this mysterious diver can help her, but her arms burn with each stroke forward. She wishes she practiced swimming more like her dad suggested.

Margaret’s arms quiver from the exertion, and she’s forced to stop. She tries to speak but bubbles and a hideous gurgling sound escape her mouth. She’s not sure how she would explain how she got there to the scuba diver, and he wouldn’t be able to talk to her, so she shakes her head and waves goodbye while she sinks. The shocked scuba diver – who is safely keeping his distance from the broken railing that leads to the trench – waves down to her until she is out of sight. At least now she knows she isn’t alone.

When Margaret hits the bottom of the trench, she takes a small gulp and relishes the feeling of the steady, rocky ground beneath her feet. She looks closely at her fingers, now wrinkled like dried plums. 

She takes off her boots and lets her feet feel the rigid ground. A giant sea snail grabs her discarded shoe and makes her leather boot into its shell. Margaret laughs at the sea snail, the bubbles escaping her throat and tickling the roof of her mouth. Butters used to sit inside that boot when she was a kitten, her small head perched on the collar of the shoe. 

Margaret looks down at her other discarded boot. She hopes the boot will eventually be a good home for another sea snail, the same way it was for Butters. She smiles at the memory and looks forward, remembering that her self-help book said to take life one step at a time.