The Deep

by Rivers Solomon

In the remembering, Yetu was not herself. She was possessed by an ancestor, living their story. Not-Yetu reached out for the comb in the sunken woman’s hair and noted the smallness of her own fins, the webbing between the more stable cartilage finger limbs not yet developed. She was a young child. Old enough to be eating fish, shrimp, and so on premashed by someone bigger, but still young enough to need mostly whale milk to survive. The little hand grabbed the comb, then Not-Yetu was jamming it into her mouth to stimulate and soothe her aching gums. During such rememberings, Yetu’s loneliness abated, overcome with the sanctity of being the vessel for another life—and in a moment like this, a child’s life, a child who’d grown into an adult and then an elder, so many lifetimes ago. Yet here they were together, one.