A Frog Girl
by Michael Loyd Gray
Well down the river from crowds of people and especially my parents, I stopped abruptly to gawk at bubbles erupting in the water. It was the oddest-looking sight. Maybe it was just a fish doing whatever they did all day. Or a big old turtle. Did fish and turtles fart? I had no idea about things like that, but there was a hell of a lot of bubbles. Maybe it was a humungous fish – maybe even Moby Damn Fish. Or the Godzilla of the turtle world. The mother of all river monsters.
The bubbles moved toward me, a growing trail of them, and they suddenly became effervescent. The water seemed to boil as a goggled head broke the surface and a girl in a body suit, air tank, and flippers emerged and duckwalked to shore. She pushed the goggles back on her head. Water cascaded off her and she spat some out. When she shook her head, water sprayed off long dark hair. I judged her to be about my age, nineteen or so. Pretty, too, with luminous blue eyes.
“Don’t worry,” she said, smiling, “I’m really not the creature from the dark lagoon.”
“Well, clearly not,” was all I could manage to say, but I did at least know the old movie reference.
She stepped out of the flippers, slid the tank off to the ground, and sighed with relief.
“That’s better.” She rolled her shoulders and arched her back a few times. “I always miss being weightless once I’m back on dry land. Everything’s heavy again.”
“Okay,” I said, “but are you truly weightless down there?”
She looked at me skeptically, like suddenly I’d become the creature from the dark lagoon.
“What a thing to say,” she said, shaking more water off her head.
“What I meant is, doesn’t gravity still work, even underwater?”
“Well, yeah, it does. For sure. But the water gives neutral buoyancy. Know what I’m saying? You feel weightless.”
I thought briefly of the latest argument with my parents over what I should do now that I was out of high school -- college or the military. My old man had served in the Navy and said it put iron in a man’s backbone, but he was just a cook on an aircraft carrier. I was still bagging groceries at Burton’s Market and living at home in the tiny apartment over the garage and that seemed about as dead end as it could get.
“Okay – yeah, I suppose it would be,” I said. “But what does weightless feel like?”
“It feels good.”
“Yeah? Well, define good.”
“There’s nothing like it. That’s why I dive. Down there, I don’t have any weight on my shoulders. I’m just free.”
“But then you have to come up again.”
“Sometimes,” she said, “I let the air tank run out and then hold my breath as long as I can before I give in and come back up.”
“That’s kind of cutting it close, isn’t it?”
She looked back at the river.
“Well, we’re all living on some kind of edge, don’t you think?”
I nodded. I could relate.
“Yeah, and some days more than others.”
She offered a wet hand, and I hesitated but finally shook it. The water was cool and felt surprisingly good. Her grip was cold but firm. She made me wonder what it was like at the bottom of the river. A whole other universe we couldn’t see, flowing past us every day. A submerged mystery world.
“I’m Clint,” I said.
“Desiree.” She pulled wet strands of hair behind her ears. “So, is Clint short for Clinton?”
“Yeah, but I don’t ever go by that.”
I wanted to head that Clinton stuff off right from the get-go. She nodded.
“I get it,” she said. “Clint sounds cooler.”
It had been some time since I thought anything about me might be even remotely cool.
“I don’t remember you from school, Desiree.”
“We just moved here.”
“From where?”
“Over by Placerville.”
“Well, this ain’t a step up from Placerville.”
“It’s temporary,” she said. “Life is full of temporary. Don’t you think so, Clint?”
“I suppose. I don’t know. What does permanent even look like?”
“Beats me,” she said as she fiddled with the gauge to the air tank and then put on her flippers and slung the tank onto her back. “Well, unfortunately, I’m parked on the other side of the river.”
“Then why’d you come out on this side?”
She shrugged.
“I just wanted to see what’s over here. You know -- perspective.”
That sort of tickled me and I grinned.
“Hey, maybe I see you out here again some time, Desiree.”
I liked the sound of her name. Just saying it made me feel – daring.
“Maybe you will,” she said, winking. “You just never know about some things.”
“Desiree is a nice name. I mean, it’s beautiful, really. I’ve never met a Desiree before.”
“Well, now you have. But you can call me Dez, if you like. People do.”
She smiled, pulled down her goggles, put the oxygen mouthpiece in, and adjusted it.
“The creature from the dark lagoon,” I said.
She gave me a thumbs up and duckwalked into the water and disappeared under the surface. I watched her bubbles slowly cross to the other side. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. I’m not sure how much time went by. It really felt like time simply stood still. When she emerged on the other side, she waved, kicked off her flippers and trudged up over the bank out of sight.
I didn’t think to wave until she was gone.
In our gleaming, ultra-clean kitchen, a strong antiseptic smell in the air, my mother was in standard skeptic mode: hands on hips, her head cocked to the side, her eyes slightly narrowed.
“A frog girl?” she said abruptly.
“Well, yeah.”
“I do declare I’ve never heard such a thing.”
“Well, I guess now you have.”
She shot me a wicked side glance, put the last of the dishes in a cabinet, washed her hands again in the sink, and dried them with a fresh dishcloth.
“Just what in the world was this girl doing out in that dirty old river?”
“Feeling free and weightless, so she said.”
“More like ingesting botulism or some other creepy thing in that water.”
“I don’t think there’s botulism in the river, mom. Wouldn’t we have heard about it by now?”
“They don’t tell you everything, the government,” she said. “Did you go in that murky old river, Clinton?”
“I’m not a diver.”
I felt sad saying it.
“Well, that’s probably for the best,” she said.
“Yeah? How come?”
Her eyes narrowed to slits.
“It’s dangerous, for one thing. What if you got stuck in some old car?”
“Do you think there’s many cars down there?”
She nodded and examined a glass she’d just washed and dried.
“There could be all manner of awful things in that river. Bodies included. Just what’s this frog girl’s name anyway?”
“Dez.”
My mom looked startled, eyebrows arched.
“She told you her name is Dez? Just what kind of name is that for a girl?”
I shrugged.
“Beats me. But she said Dez was okay with her.”
“I swear to heaven -- l’ve never heard the like of it.”
“What’s wrong with Dez?”
“It sounds like a boy, for starters, Clinton.”
“Well, she’s not.”
My mom rolled her eyes.
“Oh, noticed that, did you?”
“I’m not a little boy anymore, mom. And Dez is short for Desiree.”
I felt a little bit of a thrill in saying it out loud.
“Now that’s a pretty name for a girl,” she said. “Miss Desiree should just stick with what’s proper.”
“Just what’s proper, mom?”
“Well, I can tell you that traipsing about some dirty old river in a wet suit isn’t all that ladylike -- now is it?”
I shrugged.
“It’s pretty brave, if you ask me.”
“I declare – she must be some kind of tomboy. I never much cared for tomboys. Your Aunt Clara was a tomboy and now she’s just a drunk.”
“Well, maybe I’ll become a diver,” I asserted, knowing it would be as welcome as a fart at the dinner table.
She sighed heavily and sagged against the counter.
“In that scummy old river, Clinton?”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Really? Is that the best you can come up with, diving in a cesspool?”
“Maybe I’d be a diver in the Navy.”
Here eyes brightened.
“Well, that would certainly please your father.”
“And we must always do that, right?”
“Careful with the impertinence, young man. It doesn’t suit you.”
“Maybe more than you realize.”
“The Navy,” she said slowly, “would steam that attitude right out of you, buster brown.”
“Or maybe I’d become a civilian diver instead. Dez could probably teach me.”
“Mercy me,” she said, her voice high-pitched. “Now I need a cigarette.”
She fumbled around in her purse for a Pall Mall, lit up, and exhaled blue smoke out an open window.
“Talk about scary stuff,” I said. “Do you know how many awful chemicals are in cigarettes?”
But she didn’t turn around. She smoked and exhaled and stared out the window at the yard.
“Time to mow the lawn again, Clinton.”
I showered after I mowed the lawn to get the fresh-cut grass odor off me, a smell I’ve always hated, and put on clean Levis and a black t-shirt. I scrubbed the green grass smears off my Converse basketball shoes and even slapped some cheap cologne from Walgreen’s on my face.
Maybe it was a longshot, but I hiked along the river anyway, thinking that surely Dez would be there. It was just a feeling, but a strong one. Even like a premonition. My dad once told me if you can visualize something you can eventually make it happen. He called it harnessing fate.
When I reached the same spot in the river, where it widened and there was a bend just ahead, I looked for Dez but didn’t see her. The far bank was too high for me to see over, to look for a parked car. Feeling dejected, I sat on a white boulder half in the river and watched the green water flow by.
After a while, I slipped off my Converses and socks, rolled up my pants legs, and eased my feet into the cool water. It felt good. The water didn’t look dirty to me. I doubted that my mom had ever been by the river at all. There had been some rain recently and the river looked like it was higher on the banks.
A large limb from a tree floated by, bobbing in the current. It reminded me of a book we’d read in English class my senior year: Huckleberry Finn. It was an old book. Ancient, really. I didn’t understand it all that well except that the boy in it was running from things. That I could relate to.
That had been just a year ago, but now it felt like an eternity. History. Thinking I’d wasted my time walking all the way out here, I got up and looked up and down the river for a moment, scanning the far bank, and then I shoved my hands in my pockets and turned back toward home.
But that feeling came back to me, the notion of visualizing a reality and making it come to life. I stopped and looked at the river. Soon I saw them, a trail of bubbles coming my way. A flash of heat surged within me when Dez’s head broke the surface. She slipped the mouthpiece out and pushed the goggles back on her head and smiled. Just her head was above water. It was kind of creepy but also beautiful. I knew my mom would never be able to understand it.
“The creature from the dark lagoon,” I called.
“A mermaid, you mean.”
She swam to shore and climbed out and slipped off the tank. She squeezed water out of her hair.
“Yeah – a mermaid for sure,” I said.
“I figured you’d be here,” she said.
“Am I that transparent?”
She shrugged.
“Mermaids know everything.”
“I know about mermaids. They live in two worlds.”
“And we can grant wishes, too.”
“How many have you granted?”
“Well, maybe you could be my first.”
I looked at the flowing river and then at her.
“What are we talking about?”
“Magic,” she said. “Do you want to see some magic, Clint?”
“What magic?”
She slung the tank back on and reached for my hand. I hesitated and looked at the water before I took her hand. She led me slowly into the river.
“I’ll show you the magic,” she said. “Are you ready for it?”
I don’t have an air tank. Or even goggles.”
“We’ll share the air, Clint. Can you swim?”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t be afraid. I’m a mermaid, remember?”
“I’m not afraid.”
I believed it.
She gave a thumbs up and then we submerged together. I held on to her waist as we descended, holding my breath, but not panicking. I felt safe. She handed me the mouthpiece, and I breathed in oxygen -- life. It was easier than I expected.
My eyes quickly adjusted. We reached the bottom and shared the air again. It was sandy on the river bottom and much clearer than I expected. It wasn’t that dirty cesspool my mother claimed it to be. Plants shimmied gently as the current nudged them. I saw fish – bluegills and smallmouth bass -- and a turtle, too. They appeared to accept us as fellow river creatures.
The turtle swam right in front of me. Its tiny snout swiveled my way for a friendly look. I reached out and touched its smooth shell as it paddled by. Dez gave me a thumbs up and I nodded. She pointed at her watch and then toward the surface, but I shook my head. Wavy shafts of light from the sun penetrated the water, casting the sandy bottom in an orange tinge.
