It was a hot summer night, you know how it gets here in LA late in August, you got the ceiling fan going full blast and no covers on top of you but you still got sweat dripping all along your body like rain and your pajamas are soaked and you toss and turn all night and you're half the time dreaming and half the time thinking about work and problems and worries and you can't even tell where one leaves off and the other begins. And so that's why I thought it was a dream at first. I was there on the waterbed only something was moving under me. The bed was rocking a little and I thought that meant Sondra had gotten up or just lain back down or something, only it kept rocking and I could hear her breathing and she was asleep, and then I felt something bump into me. From below.
Like a fish in the water, a big fish, it bumped me hard. I was awake right away, only I wasn't sure I was awake, you know? How you're thinking that you're dreaming that you're awake, only maybe you are awake, only you know that it's still part of the dream? I felt something start pummeling me from below. Like fists punching straight up at me, pounding on my back from inside the waterbed. Hard enough to almost hurt. Little fists. And I got this picture in my mind of a mermaid trapped inside the waterbed, pounding on me to get me to get off and that's when I woke up, or anyway that's when I rolled over and got off the bed, and I was thinking, This dream's too much for me. I got up and went to the bathroom and took a piss and got a drink and I was kind of shaking from the dream, it was so real, and then I thought, I gotta look in on the kids, and I knew it was dumb but whenever I felt afraid from a dream or a noise in the night, even if I knew it was nothing, I still had to look at the kids and make sure they were all right.
The boys were fine, the four-year-old, the two-year-old, breathing steady and soft in their beds. And from the door of Tamika's room she looked fine, too, in a jumble of covers, only then I thought, how can she stand to have so much blanket on her in this heat? So I went over to see if she was maybe sweating too much and I ought to pull off the covers and she wasn't there. Just her pillow and the covers all wadded up where she must have kicked them in the night and a damp area on the sheets where she'd been sweating and dreaming just like the rest of us.
She must have gotten up to go to the bathroom, I thought.
Only I knew it wasn't that at all. I knew right then that I hadn't been dreaming. All the times Tamika had wished she was a fish in the water, tonight somehow she'd dreamed her way or wished her way into the only pool of water in the house that was big enough to hold her and she had somehow realized where she was and knew it was me sleeping right above her and she'd pounded on me to wake up and save her and what was I doing still standing here in her room feeling the sheet when she was drowning?
I knew I was crazy — that's why I started calling her name, just shouting it, even though I knew it would wake up the boys and wake up Sondra, because I was still hoping I was wrong, that she'd hear me and she'd call out to me from the bathroom or from the kitchen, "I'm in here, Daddy, what's wrong?" only she didn't make a sound but I keep on yelling her name so maybe there in the water she can hear me and she'll know I'm coming. I run into the kitchen and open the high cupboard where we keep the sharp knives and I get the big heavy meat-chopping knife cause I know I can get that one through the rubber of the waterbed and then I'm heading back to my bedroom and Sondra sees me coming with this big knife shouting Tamika's name and I don't know what she's thinking but she grabs me and tries to stop me and I just flung her away, that's why she had that cut on her head, I didn't hit her, I was only thinking, don't slow me down, my baby's in that water and I've got to get her out.
So the boys are crying and Sondra's crying but all I know is, Tamika's been under there too long, the whole time I was peeing and getting a drink and looking at the boys and checking her bed and getting this knife, she's been under there alone in the dark scared to death and trying to hold her breath. She could hold her breath a long time, but who knows how much air she had in her when she found herself under there? It's not like diving in when you can take a deep breath.
That was all going through my mind while I'm pulling off the sheet and the pad and I raise up the knife and I think, I can't just jab down into this waterbed, I don't know where Tamika is, I don't want this knife to go right on through into my baby. So I press down on the corner and make sure she's not under there and then I jab with the knife, and that mattress skin is tough, it just shies away under the knife, it's not till the third time that I get that knife through and the water starts gushing out and I'm pulling the blade through the mattress, ripping through and now it cuts real smooth and Sondra isn't crying anymore, she's saying, "Where's Tamika? Where's Tamika?" Well I cut about a five-foot slice along my side of the waterbed and there's water sloshing around, a real stink from the algae and the chemicals, it's like the filthiest industrial pond and I'm thinking, My baby's in that muck, I've got to get her out. So I plunge in my arms up to my neck, some of that stuff sloshes right into my mouth and I spit it out but I can't feel her under there and my first thought is, Thank the Lord, it was just a dream.