<\/span><\/p>\n She\u2019s not surprised he won\u2019t join her at the dolphin centre. Do your thing<\/em>, he\u2019d say. I\u2019ll do mine<\/em>. Maybe separate honeymoons would have been more appropriate. Maybe waiting to marry him, would have been better. Lexi smacks the guard railing with her palm. How much does he know about the first thirty-seven years of her life before they met this past winter? They\u2019ve known each other for four months; anything before February is discovered through stories, questions seeking truths, soft-bellied lies.<\/p>\n She and Tophe disembark last from the ferry, stand awkwardly on the dock. Lexi knows Tophe wants to go in one direction, she in another. She kisses him on the cheek. \u201cMeet me here in three hours for lunch,\u201d she says, breaking the silence. She expects Tophe to sigh with relief, but instead he kisses her on the mouth.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll come with you,\u201d he says, but she sees the glint in his eye, like newly minted money. He craves consumerism, obsessive behaviours, gluttony on a grand scale\u2014not his own, but as a voyeur, quietly observing, making notes.<\/p>\n \u201cLunch will be good,\u201d Lexi says, smiling, feeling a momentary sense of release. She waits until Tophe has disappeared into the Clocktower Mall with its single-armed high tide clock, and wanders amongst deserted limestone buildings instead. Tophe is patient with her; she acknowledges his kindness. He understands this about her\u2014her aversion to being around large groups of people; her need to explore a new landscape alone; her fear that anyone who comes too close will be in danger, too.<\/p>\n When she slid into Tophe last February on Tunnel Mountain in Banff, tumbling through the trees to the switchback below, she had just sidestepped a large group of hikers snowshoeing down the path. Tophe was trekking ahead of fellow business professors, and she literally knocked him over, his body breaking her fall.<\/p>\n They climbed together to the summit, stood in silence, awed by the mountains rimming the valley, as if tucking it in for the winter, at the view of the Banff Centre below them where they were both staying\u2014Tophe for a conference, Lexi for a sojourn in one of the Leighton Studios where she was working on a translation of a Russian play. Empowered by the exhilaration of falling, of climbing back up the mountain, of this boyish forty-year-old man standing beside her in cinnamon brown gortex, Lexi consciously boxed the last ten years of her life, condensed them into a few words, and offered them to Tophe, omitting the earlier twenty-seven years. She told Tophe about living in Montreal where she translated novels, plays, and collections of poetry from Russian into English and French, rarely leaving her brownstone.<\/p>\n \u201cI knew I recognized you! You don\u2019t live on Richelieu?\u201d Tophe asked, \u201cnear Mount Royal?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes.\u201d She felt exposed, raw. Too much information given to a stranger. She stepped away from the cliff\u2019s edge, retreated towards the protection of trees.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m on Crescent,\u201d he said, following her. \u201cYou shop at l\u2019\u00e9picerie Manon,<\/em> yes? I tried to speak to you once\u2014in front of the eggplants\u2014but you turned away.\u201d He dug a hole in the snow with his boot, leaned against the tree shaped like a horse with a long neck. \u201cI teach marketing at McGill. I\u2019m taking French classes so I can keep my job.\u201d He grinned. \u201cI was supposed to be fluent a year ago. We\u2019re given five years, but apparently, I\u2019ve received an extension. I\u2019m getting good, though. Quite good. I\u2019ve learned a lot of useful lines, like\u2014Comme vous avez des beaux yeux\u2014et des jolies chevaux. <\/em>Completely appropriate for the workplace.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Lexi smiled at this man\u2019s teasing compliments of her eyes and hair\u2014horses, <\/em>he\u2019d mistakenly said. She unstrapped her snowshoes and climbed into the tree, where she sat as if riding the trunk side-saddle. Tophe had been within her reach for over five years. She liked the relevance of them both having to leave their homes, venture half way across the country to meet each other for the first time. She thought of the picnic she\u2019d packed in her knapsack: a thermos of mulled wine, Brie, a baguette, a Bosque pear, several squares of dark chocolate. She wondered if maybe she could trust this man, enough to sit in the snow and share food with him.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve heard that in northern Siberia,\u201d she told Tophe as they ambled back down Tunnel Mountain after several hours of talking and eating, \u201cthe Chukchi women have no \u2018r\u2019 sound in their language.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBut the men do?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYes. The women aren\u2019t allowed to make the \u2018r\u2019 sound; they must say \u2018ts<\/em>.\u2019 It\u2019s softer\u2014more suitable.\u201d She waited, feeling this was a crucial thing to say to the man she\u2019d decided she was fated to marry.<\/p>\n \u201cRrreally?\u201d he laughed.<\/p>\n \u201cRrrrrreally,\u201d she said, relieved.<\/p>\n \u201cAll I can say is\u2014too bad for the Chukchi men\u2014they\u2019re missing out.\u201d He kissed her then, just as a group of high school students appeared on the path. She ignored their snickers and remarks as they tramped by; like a child she had closed her eyes and believed she was invisible to them.<\/p>\n \u00a7<\/p>\n Lexi takes a left, ambles past a fish and chips restaurant, up a deserted street towards a building perched high on the hill. The road is narrow and when several trucks rumble past, Lexi flattens herself against the rock face. She knows this feeling well: the need to disappear, dissolve unnoticed into the landscape. For over a decade she\u2019s hidden behind other writers\u2019 words, opinions, creativity\u2014searching for nuances, subtle exchanges in meaning from one language to another.<\/p>\n She reads an information plaque secured to a rock wall, about the hill-top building being Bermuda\u2019s high security prison until 1994. The uppermost level was filled with over ten feet of sand and rubble, supported by arched brick vaulting called \u2018Royal Engineer Brickwork,\u2019 designed to protect inhabitants from piercing mortar. She traces the words on the plaque, wonders at the openness of acknowledging one\u2019s defences.<\/p>\n She turns abruptly and hurries back down the hill towards the marina as two men leer at her from a truck on their way by. She glances at her bare arms: she\u2019s too exposed here.<\/p>\n Without a map, Lexi feels giddy-drunk, lost, even with plaques labelling the limestone buildings, as if naming rocks shaped into architectural structures could really ground a person, attach her to place. For ten years, Lexi has needed a visual confirmation of You are here *. <\/em>The little star a code, a tether, a safety net attaching her to the brownstone in Montreal, to the little grocer\u2019s down the street, the video store on the corner, the post office where she mailed her completed manuscripts. But when these parameters were violated, her door kicked in, her possessions fingered, selectively looted, she knew no mental map could protect her anymore, that it held no more power than the strength of her door. She fled to the mountains, to the sanctity of a tiny cabin spiralled like a shell, forest-sheltered at the Banff Centre.<\/p>\n With Tophe, she feels like Thomas Hurd, an early naval hydrographer, might have felt, after searching the waters around Bermuda for years, trying to find a safe passage through the reefs that tore apart so many ships. Decades later, ships still travel through the channel he discovered. She thinks of Tophe as her safe passage, not towards <\/em>land, but away, into unchartered waters.<\/p>\n She had suggested Barbados for their honeymoon, but Tophe said no, they\u2019d never get any privacy with her family spread out across the island. He wants to meet them, though, and after they have two weeks together on their own, they\u2019ll fly to her mother\u2019s home country, spend a week with her aunts and uncles.<\/p>\n He\u2019d asked: Why not Russia? <\/em>She\u2019d shuddered, turned from him. How could he know what had happened to her? She had studied Russian and French in university; after graduating she went to St. Petersburg for three years where she lived with an elderly couple, distant relatives who treated her as their daughter. She knows they blame themselves, that the incident was in some ways far worse for them, than for her, because it happened behind their home. They still have the landscape surrounding them: concrete reminders of memories they can\u2019t forget. No. She cannot go back to Russia.<\/p>\n She knows what Tophe\u2019s doing, slowly, landmark by landmark\u2014he\u2019s erasing the map of familiarity, adding experiences to her life like pins on a globe. He wants to break her of the fears she won\u2019t divulge, that wake her in the night in the form of Russian words pouring from her mouth as if from the mouths of a gang\u2014hungry, hollow words that pierce and stab; guttural punches to the stomach, the mouth, the brain. And Tophe can only back away, let her flail against the rage trapped inside of her own body. He has no reference points as to what the words mean.<\/p>\n \u00a7<\/p>\n She glances at a plaque on a high limestone wall announcing the Victualling Yard, and enters a grassy courtyard with rows of palm trees, surrounded by brown and white stones walls interspersed with arches and columns. She looks closer: the walls are the remains of two buildings, one, its roof long gone, is a jumbled mass of fallen stones where once food was prepared and stored.<\/p>\n Standing in the middle of the yard, on an ordered path of square stones, surrounded by neat rows of squat palm trees, she feels the futility of trying to maintain control over the land. Eventually wind and rain will erode buildings to ruins. She spins around quickly, warily. The air is so dangerously bright, someone could find her here. She senses a change in the light breeze, a sudden calm, like a violent thunderstorm hovering, with this enclosure, its eye. The stillness seems absolute in the courtyard, as if the white-hot sunlight has desiccated sound, reduced breath to an internal murmur, encapsulated all living things within a motionless barrier. The silence terrifies her and she runs to a wall, sinks down low, gasping for breath.<\/p>\n Too familiar, too brilliant. The sidewalk that afternoon was blinding, disorientating. She had too many books as usual\u2014her dictionaries, the collection of Russian poems she was translating, a French novel she was reviewing for a magazine in Belgium, several poetry books she had signed out at the library where she worked on her translations every weekday. Her weight was unbalanced, her thoughts distracted. She should have noticed them, the boys with the shaved heads, the Doc Martens, the black jeans, the mean mouths. Should have ducked into the butcher\u2019s shop a few blocks from her host family\u2019s home, waited for the bus instead of walking the rest of the way.<\/p>\n She always entered the house from the back, slipping through a gap in the fence, so she could smell the flowers and vegetables the Alekseevs coaxed out of soil so poor, their neighbours could only grow weeds. The boys ambushed her from behind, pushing her through the fence, ripping her blouse and scattering her books across the lawn. Her jaw broke as she landed full-force on the ground, her mouth a font of blood spurting in their faces as they turned her over. Days in the hospital, waiting for her body to grow back together, her jaw to mend, and she could not erase the look in the boys\u2019 eyes\u2014anger, hatred, yes, but something else. She\u2019d awaken to the blue light of the moon spilling across her bed, the answer almost within reach. The day she arrived back at the Alekseevs\u2019 home was the day before she left Russia for Canada. She stood in the backyard, forcing herself to remember the moment, and it was then that she sensed what had scared her the most about the attack: if they\u2019d hated her so much, why did they want to touch her so intimately? She was vaguely aware of explanations of power and control and humiliation, but they had exposed themselves, penetrated their skin into hers, been vulnerable, too, despite their malicious intent. Not until she had spent a month recuperating at her aunt and uncle\u2019s in Barbados did she think that maybe what she had detected in the gang\u2019s eyes, was elation.<\/p>\n \u00a7<\/p>\n The limestone wall shows signs of two hundred years of erosion: stained and pockmarked by weather and history, rough against her back. She breathes deeply, calming herself, then stands, trying to put the memories of a decade ago, behind her. Focuses on the wall. She wants to read the latent stories with her hands, the way Tophe tries to decipher her body at night, wondering at the jagged pink scar splitting her body in two, the reason why she can\u2019t completely close her jaw. She has offered lies, half-truths, accidents. She will not have him grieve her.<\/p>\n A month of healing along the east coast of Barbados; hours spent sitting on the craggy rocks, hearing nothing but the crashing of waves, Lexi allowed her body to unfold, to accept rain and sun and wind to caress her skin. She shied away from human company, avoiding the men who searched for sea urchins along the shore, shucking their spiny shells into heaps along the sand. Lexi only joined her relatives late in the evening for drinks and stories on their lantern-lit porch. Her mother\u2019s sister never questioned her, instead, let her hoard her secrets in the concealed crooked line upon her skin, in her skittish reaction to visitors, crowds, anyone she didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n Eating fish cakes and cou cou at the shore, Lexi remembered being with her grandmother many years before, watching the tiny woman\u2019s gnarled hands mixing okra and cornmeal with peppers and her own hot sauce, her voice a lullaby of love for her family, for her gift of food to them. Standing by her grandmother\u2019s gravestone before she left the island, Lexi felt her presence encircling her, empowering her, willing her to look forward, not back. Several of her grandmother\u2019s ancestors had been brought to Barbados from Ghana in the seventeenth century, surviving the horrors of the Middle Passage, only to endure slavery on a sugar plantation, a legacy passed down for generations.<\/p>\n We\u2019re free now, <\/em>Lexi\u2019s grandmother used to say, her arms sweeping the expanse of her large porch overlooking the ocean. I don\u2019t look back, <\/em>she once told Lexi, but where I\u2019ve come from is in here\u2014<\/em>she thumped her chest\u2014and I\u2019ll never forget who I am.<\/em><\/p>\n Lexi blinks back tears, aching for the warm scent of her grandmother\u2014cooking smells and salted air\u2014for the strength of the lithe woman\u2019s arms around her, for her voice murmuring Lexi<\/em>, reclaiming her.<\/p>\n The walls in Dockyard cast shadows that are too hot for so early in the morning. Lexi wipes at the sweat forming on her brow and imagines the men who built Dockyard: black slaves and white convicts. Wonders what it would have been like sailing on the British Sea Venture, <\/em>heading towards Virginia but shipwrecked on Bermuda in 1609 for nine months. Discovering the uninhabited island wasn\u2019t haunted, like the Spanish believed, but ideal for colonization. Strategically located near America, isolated enough for a penal colony, for slaves and convicts to bear the brunt of the work.<\/p>\n Lexi runs her hands along the stone wall as if reading Braille, slips her fingers into the holes, not hearing the sound of men\u2019s voices calling or singing or grunting with effort as they construct the fortress that will keep them imprisoned, but instead, she hears her grandmother telling her how in Barbados in the mid-1700s, slaves weren\u2019t allowed to play musical instruments, horns, drums, anything that might act as a means to pass covert messages from plantation to plantation to other slaves who spoke different languages. \u201cDidn\u2019t always stop them,\u201d her grandma would laugh, jabbing the air around Lexi\u2019s head as if performing a spell. \u201cCan\u2019t stop people from communicating, from seeking freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFreedom,\u201d Lexi says aloud to the wall, to the clouds in a sky so blue it hurts her eyes, \u201cis arbitrary,\u201d she adds and leaves the yard.<\/p>\n \u00a7<\/p>\n She\u2019s touching the peeling paint on a pair of weathered doors near the old water storehouse when a voice behind her says, \u201cInto restorations?\u201d<\/p>\n Startled, she thinks it\u2019s Tophe, but the man behind her is shorter than her husband, about forty-five years old, his blond hair thinning. He\u2019s wearing a pink polo shirt and the ubiquitous Bermuda shorts with high knee socks.<\/p>\n Lexi smiles at him. \u201cI don\u2019t like the crowds.\u201d<\/p>\n He tilts his head to the side, studies her for a moment. \u201cWould you like to see the inside of one of these buildings?\u201d<\/p>\n She nods, knowing her expression is overly eager, but it\u2019s too late, he\u2019s already signalling for her to follow him. Since meeting Tophe, Lexi\u2019s been taking chances, acting on impulse, as if she\u2019s making up for her lost decade. He\u2019s made her feel reckless, open to exploring beyond her safety zone. She follows the man around palm trees that look as if they\u2019ve been peeled into rectangular pieces and glued back together again with all of the pieces pointing skyward.<\/p>\n He leads her across a deserted parking lot sun-blanched white, behind another building, then up a wide set of stone stairs to a small landing. \u201cI\u2019m Jerry, by the way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLexi.\u201d Don\u2019t go in. What if he\u2019s a rapist? What if he lures single female tourists into this building and there is a whole gang of men lined up for a turn? \u201cSo, how come you can get into locked buildings?\u201d She tries to make her voice sound casual, confident.<\/p>\n \u201cI work here. I\u2019m an engineer.\u201d He opens the padlock with one of many official-looking keys, gives the door a shove with his shoulder, and hot air bursts out from the room, as if he has just opened a furnace.<\/p>\n Lexi feels sweat pooling in her armpits, on her forehead. She steps through the doorway after Jerry, relieved when he leaves the door wide open. Inside, the air is stifling, smelling of salt and rotted wood, the enclosed memories of bodies sweating in the heat.<\/p>\n \u201cSo where is your husband today?\u201d Jerry asks, nodding at her conspicuously diamonded left hand.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the mall. What is<\/em> this place?\u201d The expansive empty room spans the length of the large building, its hardwood floor rough and scarred, exposed limestone walls, charred. Huge windows flood the space with rectangular light. Overhead, exposed beams criss-cross and disappear at one end where what looks like an enormous metal box or room with square holes cut into its side perches oddly on metal posts.<\/p>\n \u201cThis,\u201d Jerry sweeps his arms out, \u201cwas a sail-making room. See over here,\u201d he leads her over to a wall and points out a large metal ring embedded in the stone, \u201cthese were used for stretching the sails. And that,\u201d he crosses the floor to the raised metal room, \u201choused the projector when this place was turned into a theatre for a while. The movie room is metal, because forty, fifty years ago, films sometimes caught on fire.\u201d He turns around, looking pleased with this tidbit of knowledge.<\/p>\n Lexi shivers as a rush of wind coming through the door carries the barely audible sound of voices talking, and for a moment she sees the expectant dark before the movie starts, the men in their uniforms, maybe a few women\u2014spouses, girlfriends, mistresses\u2014among them. She conjures the blue curl of cigarette smoke like the ghosts of the sail-makers hovering above the crowd, silver dust particles dancing in the projector\u2019s stream of light. Imagines the screen flickering, the crowd leaning back, relaxing, oblivious to all but the story unfolding before them.<\/p>\n \u201cJust think of what this room was like,\u201d Jerry says, stepping away from her and extending his arms wide at his sides. \u201cSails stretched out. People stitching seams that would defy the winds from ripping them apart.\u201d<\/p>\n Lexi stares at Jerry, nodding.<\/p>\n \u201cKind of strange how the ships were built by slaves, then were used by the Royal Navy as anti-slaving ships.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDoesn\u2019t surprise me,\u201d Lexi says thinking how often ships were named and renamed during their years of service, much like land claimed and reclaimed by countries, fought over for proprietorship.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you okay?\u201d Jerry asks.<\/p>\n Lexi nods, stares out the window at the blinding parking lot and building across the way. Lexicon Rubric. <\/em>For a long time after the attack, she couldn\u2019t think of herself as having a name, an identity, as if they had bled out of her that afternoon in the Alekseevs\u2019 yard. She\u2019d write L. R. on all correspondence with the publishers, unable to claim more than initials. The day she returned home to find her brownstone ransacked, odd items like yogurt and milk, a book on Nietzsche, an aloe vera plant, her Bladerunner<\/em> Director\u2019s Cut DVD, and her running shoes, stolen, she stood in her kitchen amongst the clutter and realized how nothing taken, nothing remaining defined who she was. All were replaceable.<\/p>\n The next time she sent a manuscript back to the publisher, she wrote her full name: Lexicon Arrow Rubric<\/em> under translated by.<\/em> No one could ever give her back who she\u2019d been before the garden attack, she thought, only she knew where that girl was hiding.<\/p>\n Last Saturday, she hadn\u2019t changed her name, taken Tophe\u2019s family name in marriage, not only because Quebec law forbids it, but because she didn\u2019t want to alter her identity, press a veneer of someone else\u2019s heritage and ancestry over her own. Her father\u2019s name had already been changed, anglocized, when his father arrived in Canada from Russia in the early nineteen hundreds. He\u2019d opened a barber shop soon after settling in Montreal, and when he saw the sign saying Rubric, <\/em>the sign maker simply shrugged and told him he was in Canada now, he had better fit in.<\/p>\n She imagined whole cultures lost, appropriated, crushed beneath the weight of a husband\u2019s name, but, marrying in Kingston, Ontario, Tophe had taken her last name. His official name change will require a new birth certificate and will take between a year to a year and a half, they\u2019ve been warned by government officials. Men just don\u2019t do this. No simple signing of their next cheque or driver\u2019s licence renewal in their married name, the way women did after their wedding day. Men weren\u2019t supposed to fill in the box for maiden name<\/em> on official documents\u2014nowhere did bachelor name<\/em> ever appear.<\/p>\n Tophe had been the one to suggest taking Lexi\u2019s name, wanting to forget his family, and she\u2019d accepted him into hers. Somehow, his willingness to have part of her identity stamped onto his, has made her feel more confident, more sure of his commitment to being with her.<\/p>\n Feeling her way along the wall, Lexi touches one of the large iron rings secured to the stone. The metal is warm, as if someone has just been holding it. She imagines the smell of cloth, linen perhaps, woven into durable canvas, the sound of stitching, like wind caressing new leaves, the heat of the room unbearable, the wooden floor watermarked with sweat, pooling in unreadable genetic codes, in salt outlines leaching from bodies, until beneath the workers an archipelago of their efforts formed.<\/p>\n \u201cYou staying here long?\u201d Jerry calls over to her. He\u2019s back at the door. He\u2019s going to close it<\/em>, Lexi thinks, hurrying over to him.<\/p>\n \u201cTwo weeks. Thanks, Jerry,\u201d she says, squeezing past him to the landing. \u201cI really should go. My husband\u2014\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIs waiting. Yes, of course, go. I\u2019ll lock up. It was my pleasure.\u201d He extends his hand and they stand for a moment staring at each other. \u201cEnjoy your stay,\u201d he says cheerfully, raising her hand and kissing it.<\/p>\n \u201cThank you. You\u2019ve been very kind\u2014this,\u201d she waves at the room behind her, \u201cmeans a lot to me.\u201d She looks back at the room, wishes she could stay longer, linger over the floorboards, close her eyes and listen to the memories of the sail-makers. Sense their desire to be free from enslavement, wind against their bodies, skimming over water so wide no land, no other human being, could trap them again. \u00a7<\/p>\n Lexi follows a curving road, finds the former naval Keep, now the site of the Maritime Museum and Dolphin Quest. She enters the courtyard, notices a rusty sign announcing the work of engineers from Bath, England, 1926; then a lone canon aimed at the ocean. She heads towards the dolphin tanks, anxious for the company of marine life, not the debris of men.<\/p>\n She is overwhelmed by emotion when she first sees the dolphins, there in the turquoise pools, separated into sections by floating walkways. A tiny porpoise is isolated with its mother in one tank. Lexi finds a spot on the grass near the pools, takes a bottle of water from her knapsack and drinks half of it.<\/p>\n She wonders if the dolphins sense the ocean beyond the bars of the Keep. If they strike against the gate, trying to escape, find the natural rhythm of open waves. She looks at her diver\u2019s watch, not for the time, but for the freedom it represents. Tophe\u2019s wedding gift was an invitation to remember a part of her life she\u2019d buried. Yesterday she dove with a dive company, over shipwrecks and coral reefs, red shells crushed so fine they\u2019ve become pink sand. In water only thirty to forty feet deep, she became weightless, no longer corporeal. She was compressed air, she was water, she was liquid light. She was a witness to the wreckage of others\u2019 fatal mistakes as she swam over the remaining fragments of ships.<\/p>\n Something in the way the coral encased the ships made her think of her brownstone, how she had hidden behind its walls for a decade, unable to acknowledge her wounds and let them completely heal. She\u2019d been socially buried, falsely believing she was safe, as she fossilized alone. She sat on the ocean floor, watched as her diving partner cracked open a shell and fed it to a parrotfish. She emerged from the water feeling lighter, thinking how shipwrecks belonged underwater.<\/p>\n A Bermuda Longtail swoops low, startling Lexi with its shadow\u2014a fluttering of wings against a consuming brilliance. Tophe is a shipwreck<\/em>. The statement flits through her thoughts, a gash against her belief in his solidity, his reliability. A shipwreck?<\/em> She glances around, wonders if she\u2019s spoken aloud. A young suntanned instructor wearing swimming trunks and a blue lifejacket monogrammed with Jake<\/em>, approaches her smiling, and points out the newborn dolphin, only a few days old.<\/p>\n \u201cWatch how he stays close to his mother, mimicking her fluke movements, her dives, twists and turns. He\u2019s too young to have a group of people swimming with him,\u201d Jake says, looking now at Lexi. \u201cBut if you\u2019re swimming with us, you\u2019ll be with Khyber, Cirrus, and Nimbus today.\u201d<\/p>\n Lexi nods, fascinated by the way the mother dolphin is rolling to the side to check on her baby.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re here for the ten o\u2019clock session, you should go register,\u201d Jake gestures in the direction of one of the buildings.<\/p>\n \u201cWait! Do they ever get out?\u201d Lexi calls as he\u2019s walking away.<\/p>\n \u201cYou mean to the ocean?\u201d Jake says returning. He and Lexi look at the open water, visible through a barred archway in the thick outer wall of the Keep spanning the width of one of the tanks. \u201cOnce, during a hurricane.\u201d He pauses and stares at her intently, before leaving. \u201cThey all came back, though.\u201d<\/p>\n After paying for her one-hour session, Lexi changes into her bathing suit in a cubicle behind the main building. When she emerges, Jake is waiting for her. \u201cCome choose a lifejacket,\u201d he says, and by the way he smiles at her, she wonders if he sees something in her that she is only just beginning to feel.<\/p>\n Lexi joins a couple in their late fifties and a man with his teenaged daughter who are waiting on a bench near one of the tanks. Jake leads them through a discussion of dolphins and the environment, but all Lexi can think about is touching a dolphin, looking one in the eye. As soon as the group is seated on a submerged corner bench in one of the tanks, Lexi squirms with anticipation, grinning like a child. She puts her hand on Cirrus\u2019s back and closes her eyes. Rayon. Grey skin like rayon. And here, like silk. Cirrus rolls over at a command from Jake. Lexi touches the dolphin\u2019s smooth pink stomach, the small belly button. Rubber. Supple rubber.<\/p>\n \u201cDo dolphins sleep?\u201d the teenaged girl asks.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, researchers believe they function on only half of their brain at night and hover near the surface in order to continue breathing, about every seven minutes or so. They are voluntary breathers and can\u2019t go to sleep completely or they would drown.\u201d Jake gives another command and Cirrus rolls upright again. \u201cDolphins can live up to twenty-five years in the wild; up to fifty in captivity.\u201d He pauses, his expression playful. \u201cCirrus is thirty years old, and is a former navy dolphin\u2014whose work is still classified.\u201d<\/p>\n Another dolphin swims up to Lexi, looks her in the eye. He has clear brown eyes that remind her of her grandmother\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s Khyber,\u201d Jake says. \u201cWould you like to dance with him?\u201d<\/p>\n Lexi nods and swims out a few feet, and on Jake\u2019s command, Khyber lifts himself up so that he appears to be standing in the water, his flippers exposed. \u201cHold his flippers near his body, at the top. That\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n Khyber rocks side to side, and Lexi can\u2019t stop grinning, ecstatic. She hears a click of the camera. Another instructor is snapping photos that will be available for sale afterwards.<\/p>\n One of the men, the father of the teenaged girl, reeks of cigarette smoke and Lexi can\u2019t help but think that Nimbus, who hasn\u2019t left his side since they entered the tank, is trying to save him, touching his chest repeatedly. Lexi\u2019s throat constricts and her eyes grow hot, as she wonders about the type of knowledge dolphins comprehend, whether they can detect heartbreak in another\u2019s skin, loss in the voice of one who\u2019s been damaged. She remembers reading about sonar testing causing haemorrhaging in porpoise brains, consistent with extremely loud noises. How dolphins have been washing up in the Bahamas, their sensitive minds overloaded with man-made sound, reacting as if to brutal beatings.<\/p>\n Khyber circles Lexi, dives and nudges her feet, and she follows him, swimming under the legs of the other people, unable to believe the feeling of euphoria pulsing through her, re-igniting a passion for dolphins she experienced years ago as a young girl, when she was still whole. When she surfaces, Khyber is smiling and clicking at her. He moves slowly towards her, submerges, nudges her belly, surfaces, grins and chortles, tossing his head to the side.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat?\u201d Lexi says, placing her hand on his head. He catches her gaze, gently turns his head again towards the tank where the newborn is swimming with his mother. \u201cYou want me to see the baby? Are you the father?\u201d<\/p>\n Jake calls from the side. \u201cNo, he\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n Khyber submerges and touches Lexi\u2019s stomach, again. When he surfaces, she strokes his head, touches his dorsal fin, feels him moving away. Instinctively she holds onto his fin and Khyber pulls her forward, towards the back of the tank and the iron gate, and beyond\u2014the ocean. Would there be room, to slip out between the bars, disappear? Up until a few months ago, before Tophe, Lexi often thought of vanishing without a trace. Not now.<\/p>\n She takes a deep breath as Khyber plunges below the surface. A sensation, like being rocked, seeps into her body like a mercurial liquid, thick and undeniable. Her scar resonates, receiving sonar waves from Khyber, the third degree skin responding, tingling, as if nerve-connected. Lexi is certain Khyber is releasing her pain to the ocean, allowing it to escape beyond the bars of the Keep, beyond the frame of her body.<\/p>\n Khyber traces a second arc by the gate, and that\u2019s when she feels it: a belly-spiralled warmth, like a shell unfolding. Khyber circles back, and as if knowing she can\u2019t hold her breath any longer, he surfaces near Jake who is watching from the edge of the tank, a bewildered expression on his face. Lexi leans forward, presses her lips to Khyber\u2019s smooth skin, and slips from his back, almost certain her scar will have faded, replaced by new growth burrowed deep within her.<\/p>\n \u00a7<\/p>\n Later, when Lexi is dressed and taking one last look at the dolphins, Jake appears and hands her a large envelope. \u201cA memory\u2014Khyber never lets anyone ride on his back\u2014not even me.\u201d He kisses her on the cheek, then turns and saunters back towards the dolphins, whistling and clicking in their language.<\/p>\n Lexi is stunned, elated. She walks uphill, away from the dolphin tanks, towards the canons still aimed at the ocean, and sitting down, takes out the photo of Khyber and her dancing. She is awed by the intelligence in Khyber\u2019s eyes, and how from this angle, her own face looks so much younger, stripped back into innocence.<\/p>\n She shields her eyes with her hand, squinting at the distant whitecaps. Perspective alters everything. She imagines viewing herself from the sky, just a speck of flesh on rock. Not remarkable really, not with so many other specks dotting the rotating planet. From this distance, features are indistinguishable, colour a blending into grey. All memories, languages, emotions, pasts\u2014unreadable. Identities obscured. Meaning disappears. So easy to dismiss.<\/p>\n If she wants to, she can dismiss her own life this way. Every action taken, every emotion felt. Sweep away her identity. She thinks of her grandmother, her warm bulk enfolding her when she was maybe six or seven\u2014before Epic was born\u2014murmuring how much she loved her Lexi, how so many people had to be born just to make her the way she was. \u201cNever forget, Lexicon, how you living will keep everyone else before you alive, too.\u201d<\/p>\n What about Tophe? Lexi leans back against a stone wall, her hands linked over her stomach. Who came before him? Why has he dismissed them\u2014erased them\u2014from his life, by cloaking himself in her name? She didn\u2019t want to know before today, before Khyber sensed what she couldn\u2019t possibly yet know: that she is pregnant.<\/p>\n She\u2019s hidden so much of her life from Tophe, and he from her. She imagines former wives, fatherless children, tyrannical parents-in-law, bitter siblings\u2014random strangers resembling Tophe appearing on their front steps demanding admittance through a locked door. What lies between her and Tophe is the unsaid, the buried, the remains of shipwrecks.<\/p>\n \u00a7<\/p>\n Lexi waits for Tophe near the sailboats, away from the crowds, at five minutes to noon. When he comes into view she is taken by how confident he looks, his silver hair glinting, his tanned skin darker than hers. People turn to look up at him, watch him as he searches the marina for her. For a moment, she wonders if he\u2019ll miss her, but he begins walking purposefully her way.<\/p>\n \u201cI want to leave,\u201d Lexi begins the moment Tophe is close enough to touch.<\/p>\n \u201cMe?\u201d Tophe\u2019s voice falters; his face crumples.<\/p>\n \u201cNo,\u201d Lexi laughs and pulls him to her. \u201cHere. I want to talk with you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll tell you on board the ferry,\u201d she says, tiptoeing to whisper into his ear.<\/p>\n When they\u2019re on deck, and Dockyard is but a speck behind them, Lexi stands at the stern of the ship, allowing the wind to rush around her. Tophe is behind her, holding her close, his hands resting under her shirt on her paling scar, on the child hidden from him for now. Soon, she\u2019ll turn to him, begin to tell him the story of the scar, what the Russian words tattooed into her dreams mean. She\u2019ll tell him why she can\u2019t trust crowds, why she\u2019s afraid of sunshine, why she wants to name their child Trilogy. She\u2019ll segue in tangents through her past, knowing how her life will overlap his, how she\u2019ll want to hear stories about the random scars on his body formed from childhood mishaps, sports injuries, missteps.<\/p>\n She presses her hands over Tophe\u2019s, feeling him curve closer, like wind rising at her back. A sensation like being unfurled, set free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Afternoon of the Sail-Makers Dockyard Port comes into view from the ferry, like a jagged stone scar against blue sky, bluer water. Lexi looks over her shoulder to see if her husband has noticed, but he\u2019s facing the other way, watching the scattered groups of people on the upper […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":796,"parent":148,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-150","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":684,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/150\/revisions\/684"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/148"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue13\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nDockyard Port comes into view from the ferry, like a jagged stone scar against blue sky, bluer water. Lexi looks over her shoulder to see if her husband has noticed, but he\u2019s facing the other way, watching the scattered groups of people on the upper deck with them. Probably planning his next marketing paper, Lexi thinks, turning to view the land. He\u2019ll spend hours at the tourist enclaves, chatting up shop owners, observing consumer likes and dislikes, leaving Lexi free to explore the former British naval base, swim with the dolphins.<\/p>\n
\n
\nThey circled her, kicked her several times, as if testing for tenderness, and when they talked, she realized they\u2019d been watching her, targeting her for weeks. They stripped her then, pushed her face-first into the ground, raped her while her mouth filled with dirt. They swore at her, taunted her, wrenched her to face them while they slit her from pubis to sternum with a cracked liquor bottle. They would have cut every inch of her skin, gouged her eyes, she\u2019s certain of it, had her host father not appeared behind them swinging a board from the fence, flattening one boy\u2019s face and scattering the gang with vicious blows.<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\n