When he was born, Marco swam out of the birth canal hands first, like a diver. The doctor at the hospital was worried when he saw the small wet hands, as if a small replica of the woman was reaching, grasping from within herself. One hand even took hold of the doctor when he was feeling for the head and the baby began to pull himself into the world of light and air. Marco managed to swim. Ruth looked at every part of him, his perfect brown fingers. Then his toes. She laughed. “Well, no wonder, Doctor! Mother, look, he has some webbed toes! Of course he came out swimming.” Webbed feet were not unknown around those parts, but no one liked to admit it. Besides, in Marco’s case, there were only a few. And Aurora had never told Ruth about how she had been born with gill slits. They were a family not bound to land, that was for sure, Aurora told her own sister, who lived farther north. Like the whales who were dependent on land, in many ways they lived in two elements.

One morning after a long silence from Thomas, Ruth sat on her mother’s couch eating a Popsicle. It was an old couch, worn velvet or horsehair—she never knew which—and slightly rough. The lovebirds in their white cage in the corner of the room were cooing. Hoist always watched them with strong alertness and snapped up their fallen feathers. Ruth had her eye on the sea. It misted outside. She was looking toward the ocean trying to see through the mists and drifts of fog when a black car pulled up the dirt road to the drive. A man stepped out with clear plastic covering his military hat. Strangely, Hoist did not bark. When the man knocked, Ruth knew why he was there. “Don’t open the door, Mom.” Ruth went to it and spoke through it to the man she would always call Mr. Death. “No one lives here,” she said. As if that was not loud enough, she said, “Death, you have never heard our name. Go away.”

He, like everyone, was merely doing his duty. “I have a message to deliver. Mr. Just sent me to you.” There were two men. One remained in the car.

“Ruth, don’t be rude. Who is it?” Her mother, with her white hair and dark skin, always gracious, dish towel in hand, opened the door to the stranger. Ruth was already on the floor, fallen as women have done before, so often, some doubled over, some on their sides, some shaking with sobs, some staring at linoleum because at least the floor was not the dread face of human truth.

Aurora, the mother of Ruth, knew why he was there. She pitied her daughter, but she let him in and he removed his hat. “I’m Sergeant Green,” he said. Then, slowly, he bent toward Ruth. “May I?” He looked at the older woman. She nodded. It was clear he was experienced at this and he was strong, as if they only selected men with arms that could hold women, chests that could be hit by them, backs that could lift them. He picked Ruth up carefully, her black hair cascading down, and laid her on the sofa with doilies on its arms. Her beauty was not missed by him. Ruth, as she had done as a girl, cried without crying, water spilling from her eyes, and the man never even had to say, “I regret to inform…”