In the Hold

by Jardana Peacock

My name means flowing down water. I was born on the Willamette River, a major tributary of the Columbia River in Portland, Oregon. The river was filled with salmon. Ducks floated by our houseboat in the morning. One day, my mother left me alone with my father. “He was always drunk.” My mother vomited her words when I asked about the past.

I never thought to reply, “Why did you leave me with him?” 

He was drunk and passed out. I was one year old and, left without supervision, crawled out the door. I splintered my knees as I moved toward the pier’s lip. The green water was a calm sheet of expanse against a cloudless sky, inviting me closer. Perhaps I thought I could slide across the water, feel the morning mist wrap my small clumsy body in a hug. A neighbor’s hands snapped me up against her chest. 

These are the ways I was unloved by blood and cared for by strangers, a truth I am just now getting used to admitting.

I brought my kids to Deam Lake in Indiana. I lathered them with sunscreen. However, open sky and burnt sand tyrannized their bodies anyway. We jumped over the Canadian goose poop and waded into the cloudy water. The children called it the lake beach. It reminded me of my youth. I submerged my whole body, becoming only a head. Bobbing. 

When I was ten, I mapped my future with my best friend on a hot pink towel at a different lake in Indiana. “I want to travel far away from here, I want to be an actress, I want to be anywhere but here,” I said. A speedboat cut through the surface, and brown water sloshed against the shore. “I want to be a mother,” she said as her seven siblings jumped toward the temporary waves. 

I did not want to be a mother. I didn’t want to cause my children the pain I experienced when I was young. I didn’t want the responsibility of parenting. 

I planned a trip to Nolin Lake in Grayson County, Kentucky. I traveled with my two redheaded children alone. They looked at the green water suspiciously.

“Are there eels?”

“No,” I assured them.

“Sharks?”

“Sharks don’t live in lakes!” The eight-year-old rolled his head back and laughed. He ran the dock’s length, preparing to jump in, but his bravery lasted only a moment. He halted at the edge. He begged me to join him. “I swear, I saw a sea monster,” he shrieked. 

I joined him at the rim and held his hand as we plunged in together. The cold water pushed our heartbeats in our throats in a momentary rush. Thrilling. Watching us, the four-year-old balled up fists at their sides and scrunched up their face. They inhaled, puffed their cheeks, held their breath long before they needed to, and came splashing in next. I treasured being the only three humans in the lake, but I hated being the only one who would remember.

When I was fifteen, my mother took my two siblings and me to Ocracoke Island in North Carolina. Every year my father had become more absent from our lives. Every year I had become more distant from those who said they loved me. I didn’t trust love. I didn’t trust people. 

On the ferry to the island, my mother stood silently leaning over the railing, cigarette in hand. She was a storm or the eye of it, depending on the day. All I’d ever wanted was to feel calm. She pointed out a dolphin’s fin. “Look,” she was an exclamation mark, whole body midair and gleeful. 

I was unsure of my body, leaning against a different portion of the railing awkwardly, lengthy legs and arms still figuring out how to assemble myself right-sized. How to draw the right kind of attention. On the ferry, I readjusted my body and let the salt wind hold me. 

The waves slapped the boat’s bottom rhythmically and I fell into my thoughts. Perhaps I imagined myself a mermaid. Or maybe I imagined myself as a returning island resident. If I am being honest, I don’t remember much from my childhood. This is one effect of trauma. Countless details from years upon years are just blank. 

But I remember the ferry. I remember the unyielding ocean. My siblings were there and my mother was there. I remember that all four of us kept our inner musings secret. We may have been thinking the same thoughts. After all, wasn’t my mother leaning just like me against the railing, gazing at the same spot in the distance? Was she also wishing to be someone else, somewhere else, or maybe even just right there in the wind’s hold? Yearning to collapse? To breathe? Maybe I was more like her than I’d thought.

I brought my kids to a tributary of the Salt River in Kentucky. The creek flooded sometimes. There was a slide carved into a hill from children’s bottoms. A groove. My kids loved this place. I loved it, too. The water wrapped my ankles gently as I balanced on the algae-covered rocks. 

“Be careful not to slip,” I called to the youngest. I slipped several times.

My oldest inserted himself in between rocks where water gushed. He had organized a few children to help him contain the water. They laughed. The creek abolished every attempt.

I stood in the middle of the creek alone watching my children and wondering: Is this parenting?

 “Come on,” the youngest called. They had moved to the place their brother had abandoned.

I’ve told my kids about their grandfather, my father who died when I was seventeen, how I built a fire with him one weekend and watched the Ohio stars in silence for hours. I told them how he drank too much. I’ve shared with my kids about their grandmother, my mother, who raised three kids on spaghetti and shepherd's pie. How we never had any money but were always playing in a forest, a creek, a lake. How my parents taught me to love the natural world. I reminded my children to pay attention. I told them, listen. Learn from the water. 

I admitted to my children that I was still learning how to parent.

I laid my whole body in the creek. I gave my whole body to the water. I felt the whole creek around my body. The afternoon sun glistened off every ripple. My children waded over to me and sat beside me. The water pushed against our hips. Our hands slid over smooth river rocks. The current carried us. The water’s hold was certain, steady.

Published March 13th, 2022