“Matter of fact, Seychelle, I just dropped a boat off at Lighthouse Point Marina, and I was on my way out to see how you was doing with that sunk Haitian boat, and it turns out you ain’t even there.”
Much as I hated to ask, I didn’t see that I had any other choice. “Perry, I was on my way out to tow in Outta the Blue, but something’s come up. Could you go pick Mike up for me? He’s on this same frequency,” I said, as if Perry didn’t know. “Mike, you there?” I called.
“I’m here.” I could hear in his voice how he felt about this. Mike had about as much fondness for Perry as I did, and in just those two words I could tell that he was furious at my handing him off like this.
“Okay, you guys work out the details, and this is Gorda clear and going back to one six.”
I felt bad about it, but I had a problem that was going to take most of the rest of my afternoon. I’d be lucky to make it back to Hillsboro Inlet in time. After I set my radio back to the emergency frequency, my hand paused as I was about to hang the mike on the side of the receiver. By law, I was required to call the Coast Guard right about now. I looked at the skinny kid collapsed on my deck. I watched her chest rising and falling under the white cotton as she took short, shallow breaths. Reading the papers about boatloads of immigrants getting sent back home via Coast Guard cutter had always irked me, but never enough to do anything about it. But this was different. This was personal. I’d found her, and somehow that made her my responsibility.
I grabbed a bottle of water out of the ice chest on the wheelhouse floor.
She appeared to be closer to ten years old when I examined her up close. I offered her the sport bottle. She looked at the top but didn’t move to accept it. I leaned my head back and squirted the water into my mouth, showing her how, and the first little light appeared in her eyes. She took the bottle and drank eagerly, the water dribbling out the sides of her mouth as she gulped at the stream. Her arms gave out after about five seconds of holding the bottle aloft. The plastic bottle bounced to the deck, and I grabbed it and righted it before too much spilled.
“That’s okay,” I said. It didn’t matter if she couldn’t understand what I was saying. I was talking mostly just to soothe her. “You’re not supposed to drink too much anyway. You have to go slow. We’ll see if you keep it down.”
During my seven years as a Fort Lauderdale lifeguard, I had treated many drowning victims, but never an exposure victim as severe as this child. I had been trained as an EMT, and I knew the victim needed to rehydrate slowly. The girl’s large brown eyes were sunk deep in their sockets, and the skin on her forearms was a dark reddish mahogany. Her upper arms showed a distinct tan line, with the skin peeking out from under her sleeves a much lighter shade of brown. She probably had second-degree bums over a good twenty percent of her body and was suffering from heat exhaustion. I couldn’t see any blistering. Her legs were shriveled and bleached-looking from the long-term immersion in salt water, and that might have contributed to keeping her overall body temperature down.
I tried to remember some phrases from my two years of high school French. “Comment tu t'appelles? You know, your name? Ton nom. What’s your name?”
She pointed to the water bottle, and I squeezed another squirt into her mouth. After she swallowed, she licked her lips and whispered something. I couldn’t understand her at first.
“What was that?”
“Solange.” Her voice was a little stronger and, from the name and the pronunciation, I’d clearly guessed right in trying French first.
“Solange?” I asked with my voice if I had pronounced it correctly, and she nodded, again that faint smile flickering in her eyes.
I patted my own chest. “Seychelle. Je m’appelle Seychelle.”
Her lips moved, shaping the word, but no sound came out.
At that point I’d about exhausted what little I could remember from two years with Mademoiselle Goldberg. I pointed at her. “You, Solange, Haiti?”
She nodded and said, “Haiti,” her voice louder now and pronouncing the name Hi-yee-tee, as though correcting me.
The next question was awkward, but I had to know. I had been about her age when I saw my mother’s body on the beach after she had drowned, and I had only recently started to come to terms with that event in my life. And I hadn’t had to spend days in a boat with the body. But I had to know. I pointed to the woman in the boat. “Ta maman? "
She shook her head and reached for the water bottle. I let her drink a little more but stopped her after a couple of mouthfuls.
The dress she wore had been hand-hemmed with tiny little stitches, and the lace around the collar had been added by hand as well. But either she had lost weight during her time at sea, or the dress had been made for a much larger child. I wondered if it had been her First Communion dress. The thin fabric fell in folds off her shoulders and the skirt nearly ripped as I began to wring out the dirty water. The waistline of the dress could have enclosed two little bodies her size.
She licked her lips, swallowed and pointed toward the swamped boat. “Name Erzulie.” She closed her eyes after she spoke, as though the effort had depleted the last of her energy.
“The woman? That’s her name? Er-zoo-ly?” I tried to pronounce the name as she had with that musical rhythm.
She nodded. “Yes.”
I reached for her arm. “Oh my God. You speak English?”
She nodded, every movement an effort. “Papa Americain.”
A white American, I guessed. That explained the light skin.
Her thin arm reached toward me, and I thought she wanted another drink, but she wrapped her small hand around my fingers. “You help me.” The effort of saying those three words completely did her in; her eyelids drooped again, her mouth opened, her breathing came fast and shallow.
I entwined my big fingers with her tiny brown ones and squeezed softly. “Yes,” I said, my throat constricting so this time I could barely croak out the words. “I’ll help you.”
I saw a small twitch at the corner of her mouth. It was almost a smile.
III
Holding her arm, I helped Solange to her feet, but her little legs collapsed beneath her. I scooped her up and carried her toward the pilothouse. She was tiny, couldn’t have weighed more than fifty pounds. I could feel her eyes watching my face, and then she rested her head against my shoulder. Her salty braids brushed against my neck, and I touched the top of her head with my chin, cradling her tight to my chest as we passed through the door. I felt as though a fist had grabbed hold of all the organs in my chest and was holding them tight. I didn’t want to let her go.
When I got to the bunk that ran along the rear of the small compartment, I set her down and straightened her dress around her scrawny knees.
“Stay here,” I said, motioning with my hand because I wasn’t certain how much she understood. She curled up on her side and closed her eyes. I covered her with an old beach towel.