Song for a Whale

by Lynne Kelly

A rescue group came to the beach and tried to save the whale, and they called her Iris. Grandma asked my parents to give the name to me, too, since I’d entered the world as the whale was leaving it.

Blue 55 didn’t have a pod of friends or a family who spoke his language. But he still sang. He was calling and calling, and no one heard him.

One night, when he awoke to float to the surface for a breath, he found himself alone. After so much time, with so many songs unheard, his family had left him. He called out Where are you? and What will I do now? knowing no answer would come, knowing the sounds held meaning only for himself.

As much as I loved feeling sound from a radio speaker, vibrations in my throat annoyed me, as if they didn’t belong there.

For me, listening to the radios was never the point. Each one of those sitting on my shelves was a reminder of something I’d done right.

I couldn’t stop thinking about how many years it had sat quietly collecting dust and how close it had come to being thrown in the garbage because no one thought it was worth listening to.

Why Blue 55 sings when no other whale answers back is an even bigger mystery. Maybe he just likes to sing, and it doesn’t matter that it’s an unusual song. A lot of people think that Blue 55 is lonely. But I wonder, do we believe that because we’re the ones who are lonely?

“It’s a big difference for whales.” He was right—it didn’t feel like much of a difference. Less than a foot apart on the keyboard, but it separated Blue 55 from all other whales. I thought back to my visit with Grandma and how we sat right next to each other on the couch and couldn’t think of what to say.

I didn’t know how to answer him, how to explain that this whale swam in an ocean surrounded by other whales he couldn’t talk to, that there was no pod or single whale who understood him—not even his own parents—and that I wanted to create a song that would let him know he wasn’t alone.

“He keeps singing this song, and everything in the ocean swims by him, as if he’s not there. He thinks no one understands him. I want to let him know he’s wrong about that.”

They had heard. He knew by the way they glanced back. With time, maybe they would understand just one sound, the smallest ripple of his song. And that would be enough.

I thought about how whenever I was with another Deaf person, we’d take forever saying our goodbyes. It annoyed everyone else as they stood in the doorway waiting for us to finally say goodbye and mean it. We’d almost get there, then think of something else to tell each other. If you don’t know when you’ll get to talk to someone like you again, you don’t want your time together to end.

I was like Blue 55, shouting into the void of the ocean, at a frequency too high for anyone to reach.

People who were desperate to communicate always found a way. I’d find a way.

Maybe another star pulled it onto a new orbit, and it’s in that solar system now. Maybe it even has its own moons circling it. Or it’s still out there on its own, flying past everything, on the same path Jupiter knocked it onto.” He shrugged and looked away. “I know this is dumb, but sometimes I wonder about that planet. If I had a way of finding it, I’d go.”

When she saw me watching her, she signed, “It’s freezing!” So she had noticed it, but hadn’t backed away. I took a step toward her, then stopped. I’d leave her with this moment, face lifted before the rushing waterfall, drops of glacial water sliding down the lines on her face. I wondered if she felt like Grandpa was there next to her, feeling the cold water too.

Watching Grandma reminded me of the humpback whales that leaped out of the ocean. The symphony players. If someone could write Grandma’s signing on sheet music, every color would be splashed all the way up and down the musical scale, and off the page.

“Time and distance smooth out the memory of what was lost.” I didn’t know anymore if we were still talking about the iceberg, or about 55 and me, or my family, or Grandma and Grandpa. Maybe it was all those things.

Anyway, I was just thinking I’m kind of like that planet. I was on one path, and something knocked me onto a new one. I’m still going.

Dear Iris, Scientists figured out that the other giant planet used to be there because of the effect it had on everything around it. The other planets and their moons would have different orbits if there hadn’t been something else that size pulling on them. Our whole solar system would be different. We wouldn’t have seen Jupiter that day you were at my house because it would be in another part of the sky. Even though that planet has been gone a long time and it’s really far away now, it still affects the planets it used to share space with. Come back soon, Iris. It’s not the same here without you. Wendell

“I’ll meet you at the sanctuary. Run to that whale.”

Blue 55 wasn’t so far away yet. I wouldn’t see him up close, but wasn’t I doing this for him? Maybe Tristan had been right all along, and I was really doing this for myself. I was the one who was lonely, and I’d wanted the whale to hear me. But right then, all I wanted was to let him know I heard him, that he’d connected to someone.

Just let me see you. Let me know this wasn’t all for nothing. No, not nothing. I touched the origami whale in my jeans pocket. At least I’d brought Grandma to the sea, and it washed away the drizzly November in her soul. She’d navigated her way through her grief. My weird, funny grandma, never content to stay in one place, who knew from the start that I should have the name of a whale. She’d never be an ordinary grandma. She was the kind who would take your hand and join you on an adventure, who had to break free like those bubbles trapped under the glacial ice. Life would never be the same without Grandpa, but we’d be all right. Grandma knew that now too.

I’m sorry. I did everything I could. I’m here now. Then I saw it, out in the waters ahead. A gray-blue whale, swimming toward me. Maybe it was another whale. There was no way to tell from where I stood on the dock. But then, after a column of spray from the blow spout, the whale’s back arched. The crescent of the dorsal fin rose above the surface, followed by the broad fluke. There she blows. And there, I jumped.

I’d found him. He’d never know what he meant to me, but that was okay. I didn’t speak his language, and he didn’t need to be fixed. He was the whale who sang his own song.

You’re a poem, did you know that?

Your music sailed through the ocean and over the land and carried me here. Sing your song. I will never write down the poem. It belonged to this whale, and I’ll leave it here in the sea, where it will live in the space above and below and all around him.

And after all the years of calling and searching, after so much time and loneliness, so many calls left unheard and unanswered, the whale thought that maybe, finally, someone was listening.

“Grandpa would want me to do for myself what I did for the whale.”

“I think it’ll be hard for you, starting over with so many new people.” “Every day is hard.”

‘It is not down on any map; true places never are.’ Where we traveled together isn’t on any map, and I’ll get to keep it with me all the time.”

The last picture was of Grandma performing in the karaoke bar. I tacked it to my wall. Whenever I felt sad about Grandma being away, the photo would remind me that she was where she needed to be. Not a place on any map.

A sound can move anything if it’s strong enough. It can shake walls or break glass. It can knock a whale onto a new path. It can pick someone up and carry her far from home where she doesn’t know anyone. The vibration of the whale song would stay with me always. Blue 55 had found a new home. Maybe some friends. I would too.