BY KELLENE O’HARA
Bad water flows out of rusted pipes. In protest, the pipes moan and rattle. It soaks into my skin like vinegar, that sour smell. It burrows into my veins like formaldehyde. I watch the sediment settle at the bottom of the tub. My hand hovers above the surface of the bad water.
I want it to permeate my skin – to cross the membrane. The threshold.
What would it be like to absorb poison?
The faucet groans and spits out copper-colored water.
I expect acid to eat through my skin, but it doesn’t. Not yet.
I expect something to happen now, but it doesn’t. Not yet.
I am waiting for the collapse, for the point of no return. It is not yet.
It is only when the water turns to mud that I decide to leave. It is now.
When I was younger, I traded stars for skyscrapers. To the woods, I must return.
At sight of the first pine tree, I open my wallet and deposit the woven fibers of currency into the root system. I am not hiding it. I do not intend to return to dig it up later like a pirate. I know I will not need it again. I am leaving it.
I decide to also leave my metro card and a credit card. It becomes harder. My driver’s license. It’s the last thing in the world that has my image, my name, my birthday, the weight I lied about. It is the last thing to identify me.
No one needs identification out here. I know that. But I tuck it into my sack. I can’t part with it yet. It’s the only confirmation of myself.
In the woods, the water is plentiful. Cascading down rocks. Snaking through the trees. I see it everywhere…I hear it everywhere. The siren call of falling water. When I was younger, I trusted water. I ate freshly fallen snow by the fistfuls. I slurped from water hoses in the backyard. I didn’t know water could kill.
I come to a fast-moving river. I am so thirsty, but I’m not certain. Is this water safe?
Keep moving, keep moving.
Another day, another creek. I am tired. I touch the water. It feels cool. It feels wet. It feels…and I am drinking it, sucking it down. I cannot stop.
My belly becomes full and I turn onto my back—the water sloshing inside me as I roll.
I cry.
If this water is bad, it will kill me—like all the others in the city.
Because I was weak, I am condemned to death. A punishment for my gluttony. I wait for death.
But I don’t die.
This water hasn’t killed me. Not yet.
I keep walking, further and further.
Typically, I would wait until I was nearly dead of dehydration before taking a sip from a river or a creek. But, now, I drink water all the time. None of it has killed me.
I go deeper into the woods.
I have seen bears and deer. They drink the water, too. They are okay. They are alive.
An arrow. An ambush. Looking past the taunt string of the bow, I see a rugged beard.
“Are you from the city?” the beard asks.
I haven’t spoken to anyone since I left.
I have forgotten what a conversation is and remain silent.
“Are you from the city?” he repeats.
A conversation requires a response. “No,” I lie.
My voice is dry. I need water. “Are you sick?”
“No.” The truth. “The water isn’t bad out here.”
“No,” he confirmed. “It’s not.”
His name is Hudson, he says. He asks if I want the new world, the one away from the poisoned waters of the cities. The one in the woods, with the good water.
What do I want?
“There are others?” I ask.
“Yes.”
So, I reply, “Yes.”
Tarps and sticks hold everything and everyone together.
This makeshift campground is their home. In time, it will become mine.
“What’s your river?” a little boy asks me.
I think of the people I’ve met in this peculiar place with their peculiar names: Hudson, Potomac, Mississippi, East.
“Your names,” I say. “They’re rivers.”
“Yes,” Hudson says. “What’s your river?”
“My river?”
“Pick a river – that’s what we’ll call you.”
Later, they clarify. It didn’t have to be a river. A stream or a creek would do. It just has to have a name. And it has to be water—running water. No repeats. And no mentions of our names before. Those are the rules.
By the fire pit, I watch water boil. “Better safe than sorry,” a woman says, stirring.
I think about the city.
I think about the metropolis turning into a necropolis.
The city made us sick.
This, here, is the cure.
“Have you decided?” Hudson asks me, pouring clear water into a cup.
“Yes.”
They take me to the river for the ritual. It is a baptism, a rebirth. When I emerge from the water, gasping for air, they smile at me.
“Welcome,” they say. “Welcome, Aroostook.”
And then it echoes, a current in the air—“Aroostook, Aroostook.”
I hike to the highest ridge, overlooking the valley. Mountains appear pulled into the river, the heart of the ravine. On a tree, at the cliff’s edge, I bury my license into the soil. I’m not her anymore.
I think about the wide river of my youth and the fresh pine trees on the banks.
The Aroostook River was the most beautiful river I had ever seen.
In school, we learned the river’s name comes from Miꞌkmaq. I look out across the gully, and the mountains, distant and hazy, turn blue from green. What does Aroostook mean? How does it translate?
I think for a moment longer and it comes to me:
Beautiful water.
Kellene O’Hara is currently pursuing her MFA in Fiction at The New School. Her writing has been published in Ab Terra Flash Fiction Magazine.
Process Note: It starts with a sound, an echo that repeats in my mind over and over until it becomes a word which becomes a sentence which becomes a paragraph. When it’s over, I look down at my thoughts translated into symbols. I call it writing…or something like it.