When the Tides Held the Moon

by Venessa Vida Kelley

I would tell him that remembrances of his kind loveliness are all that calm my tremors of late, if only he could bear to hear me say it.

Janitor. Blacksmith. Hired hand. Of all the hats I’d collected since leaving my island, there was one I had yet to declare, and I bet it would wind up on my headstone. Here lies Benny Caldera, Puerto Rican Fraud.

“‘Acercate más, amante del mar,’ dijo las olas de agua cristal,” he sang—in a voice so rich and resonant it stopped my breath. “El ritmo que sientes, la tentación fluvial, el latido de mi corazón es tu cantal.”

And if anything were to happen to him, neither pride nor dignity nor the condemnation of my ancestors could prevent me from using my voice to beg for death.

“Just because she looks at you does not mean she sees you,”

“What would become of me without you? Where would I be without my Barnacle?”

“I cannot take your burdens,” he went on. “But if you let me, I can bear them with you for a while.”

“Come to me.” Río lifted his other arm. “I will catch you.”

“Boy Named Kind,” he said softly, “when was the last time someone showed you kindness?”

“I dream of you.”

“’Cause the prettiest girl in Brooklyn wants me, but my heart wants someone else. Someone who knows me better than any human alive—including me. And I don’t even know his name.” Tears were forcing their way into my eyes again. “All I know is that he misses the moon. If I could, I’d ride a roller coaster to the sky just to steal it for him.”

“Your emotions are not madness. Nor are you broken. Everyone else—the cowards who taught you that keeping your heart safe meant caging it—they are broken.”

“What if nobody taught me how to keep my heart safe”—my eyes drifted to the dark ribbon of his mouth—“from you?”

“Your heart in my keeping,” he whispered, “would always be safe.”

But I was one of Río’s seashells in his hands—treasured, precious, apt to shatter if pressed too hard.

“Río,” I whispered, out of breath, and not from wheezing. “You make me feel like I’m kissing the tides.” “Benigno,” he whispered back. “You make me feel like I am holding the moon.”

“I think you’re even more beautiful underwater than you are in my dreams.”

He tastes of sky, this tender man who sings of the sea and named me river before he had ever heard of the Currents.

“Brother, I am far more concerned about what Sam’ll say when he finds out the merman who’s been giving him the cold shoulder since day one is playing Romeo and Julio with the hired hand.”

“Just because this country sold you the same thumper they sell everyone don’t make you an idiot.”

“Yeah, well, Río makes me feel free,” I said. “Like I don’t gotta prove anything—because he thinks I’m enough as I am. When I’m with Río, I feel like maybe all my dumb decisions weren’t so dumb if they brought me to him.”

But there ain’t no being free on the outside if you ain’t free on the inside, and that starts with accepting reality.

I’d never wanted someone like this. Like a drought was inside me that a kiss alone couldn’t quench.

My stunted heart had become another foreigner in a sea of extranjeros, but when I was with Río, it seemed to come back home. What would become of it if Río left?

“I see someone brave and beautiful and too noble for a world as unjust as mine,” I said in Spanish. “With a heart as wide as the ocean if it was willing to bring a lonely, broken thing like me into it. You saw a man starved for air and tenderness and gave him both. You are so much more than a fool like Morgan could ever comprehend.”

“From the moment I first saw you, I knew you were a miracle.”

“Te quiero, Río.” I reached into the water, found his hand, and lifted it to my chest. “You call me the moon, but it’s you. You’re the beacon. Dios mío, I’ve loved you since the moment you touched my hand through the glass.”

“Benigno, surely you know,” he breathed. “You are my heartsong.”

“Two rivers converged,” he whispered. “Two breaths made one.” His caresses traveled farther down. “A union most sacred.”

I ran my thumb across the seam of Río’s mouth. His eyes fluttered closed. “Then your soul would bind to mine. And mine”—he firmed his iron grip around my waist—“to yours.”

“My soul is yours. If you want it.” His swallow sent a ripple across my lips. “Neptune knows how deeply I want you. But . . .”

If Río’s soul was an ocean, then I’d found the sea floor.

The part of me climbing to the surface ever since we’d met had been searching my whole life for exactly this—for a love that didn’t burn, but flooded, until all I could see behind my eyelids was the sea spread out in all directions, as boundless and blue as Río’s eyes.

Between his tank and this theater, we were both caged. And my hands had crafted our prisons.

I felt the whole of the Atlantic sing in his heart for me. His love is so sublime I thought it might turn me to foam.

“Your love has been a shield and sustenance to me. You revived me.”

“You would like the ocean, I think. Can you imagine it? A liquid universe, infinite in its mysteries, and still it holds you as though you are its most precious star. A place where, no matter which sea realm surrounds you, you are always home.”

“The condition of my spirit does not match the body that houses it any more than yours does.”

“My whole life, I’ve never loved anyone like I love you,” I whispered.

Surviving was easiest when you had no one else to save but yourself.

Río’s last recourse for survival was to do what I’d become an expert at doing my whole life. Comply.

I’ve learned just being human in this lousy, jacked-up world, it’s that love and hate—they got something in common. They put blinders on you, so’s you can’t see nothing but whatever it tells you to see.

The Brooklyn waterfront’s got more fairies than Neverland.”

“I can’t breathe without him.”

“My aunt used to say, ‘Hay una infección sobre la humanidad.’ That humanity had a disease. It took meeting Río to figure out what it was. It tricks folks into thinking the only way to survive a lifetime getting pissed on, is to piss on somebody else. It locks a person in jail or some other institution for being different unless they’re willing to get on a stage and let folks pay three jitneys to call ’em ‘freak’ to their face.”

“You all know what it’s like to beg, so here I am, begging. I can’t do this alone. I love him.” I glanced back to make sure Río was listening. “I love him,” I repeated. “And he loves me. And I don’t care if that makes me the wrong kind of freak. I can live with losing the job and the warm bed and the only family I’ve ever had in America. But I can’t live with myself if he dies, and neither should you. ’Cause this world ain’t worth a damn if he’s not in it.”

“Ain’t no being free on the outside if you ain’t free on the inside.

“It’s like Saul used to say,” added Lulu, “‘Sometimes a show’s gotta sink’—” “—‘before it can be saved,’” finished Madam Navya.

“We plan escape for merman?” He raised a finger. “I get the vodka.”

Humans. Complicated creatures of earth and light and shadow, just as merfolk are as varied as the waves.