“Ty, I’ve got to go down to the station.” She was pulling her coat on. “They said they found something—some evidence. I told them she’s here, but they said . . . Never mind. I’ll be right back, I’ll call you.” She spun and raced down the stairs. The front door slammed.

Tyler stared at the girl. “You’re not Mandy.”

She lifted her dripping nightgown and pulled it off over her head. She dropped it on the floor, in the puddle at her feet.

Her naked skin was blanched, a lacework of blue veins showing through the damp translucence. Her breasts were tipped with blue bruises, hanging over the prominent ladder of her ribs. Her sex was hairless, the color of India ink. Dark blood oozed from an open wound at her navel, where a stump of chewed cord dangled.

Her palm pressed against his chest, soaking her handprint through his shirt.

“I’m your daughter,” she gurgled, and pushed him back into the steaming bath water.

She climbed on top of him, straddling him, pinning his arms to his sides with her knees. Her limbs grated his, coral-hard and heavy as rock. She sealed her cracked lips around his, her hips thrust against him as her muscles rippled in peristalses that arched her back.

Water poured from her mouth, into him, filling him. He felt his stomach swell, straining to burst at the tide rushing in. His lungs filled and convulsed against the current, trying to push back the weight of so much water. She heaved again, and the water filled his throat, pouring out of his nose. Salt burned his eyes. Her hair hung around them, clinging to his face and then falling into the water around him, crumbling into sand as more water poured into him.

As the spasms in his lungs grew weaker and his vision darkened, her skin hardened, scraping him, crumbling away.

With one final thrust, a rupture seared deep within his gut, bursting against the flood, tearing him open.

She shattered, a million sparkling grains of broken shell raining around him, filling the water that filled him, burying him in silt and dark, foaming water.

***

Sleep with a current in your mouth

Eyes like glass

Tumbled to sandpaper clouds.

Tall Grass, Shallow Water

TALL GRASS, SHALLOW WATER

Mothers say “Stay clear of the water.” At least the good ones do. The kids say “Dip a toe in and Genny will grab you.”

Maybe some Gennies grab. Maybe some Gennies have to. But my Genny never did. All her daughters were gifts. All her girls were given.

The other mothers say nothing; they put their daughters in the water.