What the Water Remembers

The pool sat in the backyard like a collapsed lung, its blue liner cracked and stained with dead leaves. Elena stood at the edge, her mother's Papaya — that was the dog's name — pressing his warm flank against her leg. He was old now, his muzzle grayed, his breath wheezing in the same rhythm her mother's had during those final weeks.

"You remember," she said to him, scratching behind his ears. Papaya thumped his tail once, against the concrete.

Her mother had planted a papaya tree near the pool fence the summer she got sick. It was a strange, defiant gesture — something that might outlive her. Now the tree dropped its fruit onto the dead pool deck, where they rotted in the sun, sweet and putrid. The smell made Elena sick and hungry at the same time.

She was here to clean out the house. To decide what to keep, what to donate, what to throw away. Her brother wanted to sell. Her husband — soon to be ex-husband — wanted his half of whatever money they could get.

But she kept coming back to the pool.

The summer she was twelve, she'd nearly drowned here. Her mother had been inside on a phone call with the hospital, getting her biopsy results. Elena had slipped on the algae, hit her head, gone under. She remembered the water filling her lungs, the quiet, the way her mother's scream had sounded when she found her floating.

Her mother had pulled her out, performed CPR, sobbing between breaths. That night, over dinner, her mother had told her about the lump in her breast. They had both almost died that day.

Papaya barked, a low, arthritic sound. Elena looked down. The dog was staring at something in the deep end of the pool. A flash of orange.

A papaya, fallen from the tree, floated in the accumulated rainwater at the bottom. Its skin was bruised, but whole.

Elena climbed down into the pool. Her feet slipped on the broken tiles. She waded through the knee-deep water, Papaya barking from above, and reached for the fruit. When she lifted it, it split open in her hands, revealing black seeds and bright orange flesh.

She took a bite. It was overly sweet, slightly fermented. It tasted like survival.

"We're not selling," she said aloud. Papaya tilted his head. "I'm going to fix the pool. I'm going to live here."

The dog whined and wagged his tail, understanding somehow that they were staying. Elena ate the rest of the papaya standing in her dead mother's pool, and for the first time in months, she didn't feel like she was drowning.