the water reached her knees.
She said, “Maybe I’ll get my shorts a little wet.”
Mikey said, “Might as well.”
Now when Sally took a step it was in slow motion, because the effort of lifting a foot out of the soft muck was so great. It felt weird, and exciting. Soon, the water was at her hip. The mud was above her ankles.
She suddenly noticed that Mikey was struggling. He was no longer laughing; his face had changed. He gripped the back of one knee with both hands as though to pry it up and out.
Sally said, “Are you okay?”
“I’m stuck,” he said. “I can’t move either of my feet . . . and I think I’m sort of sinking.”
As soon as he said this word, Sally realized that she, too, was stuck, and nearly sinking.
“Okay,” Sally said. “Here, let’s . . .” and she tried the same move, pulling on her hamstring with both hands, but this did nothing.
Mikey said, “Here, why don’t we . . .” and he struggled mightily, finally releasing one of his legs. He splashed backward into the water. With one foot out, he was soon able to finagle the other one out, too, and he paddled over to Sally. He reached into the water beneath her with his hands, trying to help. She held on to his head for balance. She felt him clawing at her legs, but before long, Mikey had gotten himself stuck again. The mud was crawling up Sally’s legs like a snake coiling up a tree. The water suddenly looked as thick and black as ink.
Mikey said, “Don’t worry.”
But Sally could see that he was starting to panic, too. They held one another’s arms for combined strength and balance, but the more they worked to free themselves, the faster they sank.
The water was past Sally’s waist. They called for help, hollering back toward the lot, but their little voices were lost in humidity that was as thick as a pillow.
Then the water was at Sally’s ribs. It smelled hot and raw and bad in her nostrils.
Sally said, “I don’t want to die!” She sobbed into the crook of her elbow. She thought of her mother and the possibility that she could come rescue them, and realized her mother wouldn’t even notice her absence until sundown, much later than that if she was out with a boyfriend. And even if her mother had been right there with them, it occurred to Sally, she had little faith that her mother would know what to do. Her mother was not the most sensible person. Then Sally thought of her father, way up in Canada. Even though she didn’t know him much at all, had never even met him face-to-face, she was almost certain he’d know what to do. But he was so far away—sometimes her birthday cards from him arrived three weeks late, that’s how far away he was. Given how difficult it seemed to get in touch with her father, Sally wondered now how long it would take someone to get ahold of him to deliver the news that his daughter had drowned in mud. She wondered if he would cry. For some reason, the thought of her father’s tears sent a strong and fast pulse beating straight to the private place between her legs.
Mikey said, “I’m going under. I’m going to find my shoes with my hands, untie them, get my feet out.”
He disappeared under the surface of the water.
Bubbles rose above him, and a bloated Frito drifted by.
Then Mikey burst upward, coughing, eyes round and wet-lashed, hair darkened and plastered to his head in spikes. He let out a sharp, barking cough. “I got out!” He emerged from the mud.
He dove down again, beneath Sally. She could feel him scratching at her left ankle, excavating, gripping her foot. She could tell it was going to work. She felt a sweet, glorious swell inside of her, an uncomplicated and unprecedented sense of reprieve. She was going to make it! Her mother would not have to come looking for her after all, would not have to pick out a funeral dress. Her father would not have to maybe cry.
Once they were out of the water, they panted and trembled and laughed in high, soft pitches. They rinsed the mud from their legs and hands. Sally pulled a small twig from Mikey’s hair. They opened the Twizzlers. Sally’s knees were starting to grow a little hair on them, and she noticed now how the fuzz shimmered in the sun.
They walked back up the trail, which was covered in acorn shells and stickery brambles, then walked up Lakeshore under a punishing sun, through ditches when the gravel on the shoulder of the road became too hot or too sharp.
By the time they reached Ingram Street, their feet were brown and bloodied and they were exhausted, weak, sunburned, out of water. They stopped in at Bakery Sczcepanski, which shared a parking lot with the Clean-Machine Laundromat, Benny’s Liquor Store, and Gary’s Grocery & Delicatessen. The woman who owned the bakery would give the children free baked goods that had expired that day if they caught her before closing time. They called her Babcia (“Grandma” in Polish). The skin of her face was as crisscrossed with lines as an old cutting board. Her bakery was decorated with framed photographs of dairy farms in Poland that had all faded to bluish gray.
On this day, Babcia provided Mikey and Sally with water and sesame cookies, and she scolded them for losing their shoes.
When they finally reached home, they drank grape sodas on Mikey’s back porch, put Band-Aids on their feet, then sacked out on the couch. Mikey fell asleep five minutes into an episode of ALF. Sally looked around the room. Mikey’s house was so clean and quiet it was like a tomb. Sally wondered if Mikey’s dad ever brought girlfriends home. Mikey had said something very strange at one point on their walk home. He had fallen quiet for a long while, then said, “My dad might’ve been gladder if I didn’t make it out of the mud.”
Sally said, “What? Why?”
“I don’t think he loves me very much,” Mikey said, and Sally noticed that Mikey was nodding as he said this.
Sally stared at him. “He has to,” she said. “It’s a rule of being a mommy or daddy.”
Sally didn’t know how she knew this, but it seemed like a true thing.
Mikey said, “Okay,” and he continued to nod.
Sally watched Mikey’s sleeping face now and realized how many times over the years she had slept next to Mikey on the bus—
because she slept more soundly on the bus than she did in her own home—how often Mikey had seen her sleeping face. Yet this was the first time she had ever seen his. His expression was as empty as the moon. The tiniest droplets of sweat decorated his nose, his cheeks were the color of bubble gum, and his dime-size cowlick, as always, invited a little clockwise swirl of the finger. It seemed inconceivable to Sally that this was the face of the person who had saved her life.
Chapter 5
It was the third week of January, and the crust of yellowy-gray snow that had encased the city of Buffalo earlier that month had received a dusting overnight, an inch of fresh crystal powder. The air was clean and quiet and wondrous, the sky a pale bowl. It was Sunday. Mikey arrived at St. Mary’s Cathedral thirty minutes before Sally’s three o’clock service.
The lobby was dark and smelled like the inside of a sweaty old baseball cap. Mikey hung his coat and brushed snowflakes from his hair. There were a dozen people in the lobby, older folks, friends of Sally’s mother, Mikey guessed. In the low light, grim and tucked within layers of black clothing, everyone there looked
