Martha Southgate - The Taste of Salt

THE TASTE OF SALT

ALSO BY Martha Southgate

Another Way to Dance
The Fall of Rome
Third Girl from the Left

A NOVEL BY
Martha Southgate

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
Workman Publishing
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

2011 by Martha Southgate.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Limited. Design by Anne Winslow.

Island from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston
Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, Associate
Editor, copyright 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used by
permission of Alred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., and
Harold Ober Associates Incorporated.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions
and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and
incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used
fictitiously.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Southgate, Martha.
The taste of salt : a novel / by Martha Southgate.1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-56512-925-2
I. African American familiesFiction. I. Title.
PS3569.O82T37 2011
813.54dc23 2011024615

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
First Edition

For Ruby,
who always makes herself heard

The cure for anything is salt water
sweat, tears, or the sea.
ISAK DINESEN

My mother named me after Josephine Baker. I think she was hoping Id be more artistically inclined. The sort of woman who would sing as she swayed elegantly through the streets of Paris. The sort of woman who would have many men at her feet. The sort of woman men would write songs about. Didnt work out like that, though. Im kind of tall, like Baker, and medium brown, like her. Cant sing, though. And I dont look too good in a skirt made out of bananas. To my knowledge, no one has ever written a song about me. Everybody calls me Josiethat feels more like my right name to me. My brother is nicknamed Tick, because when he was little, he was such a fast and efficient crawler that my father said he was just like a little watchticktock, ticktock. That got shortened to Tick and it stuck. Thats what everybody calls him. His given name is Edmund after the poet Edmund Spenser. That was Daddys idea, too. He could not get over The Faerie Queene. That was one of his favorite books. Ive never read it. Looks too complicated to me. I was raised to respect booksthe house was full of them. From the time I was little, it was drummed into our heads that books were almost the most important thing in the world, second only to getting a good education. So Ive read a lot of fictions greatest hitseither I had to for school or I felt like I should or Daddy told me to read them. I even enjoyed some of them. But theyre not what Im drawn to. When I read, I want it to be something that I can use. So mostly I read monographs. I read texts. I read science and history. Mostly, I read about whats happening in the ocean. Thats enough to fill your mind for a lifetime.

Im happiest when Im in the water. Since weve been working at Woods Hole, I dont get as much ocean time as Id like. Its nothing like Oahu, where we used to live. The water here is murky and green. I dive to keep up my chops, but it cant match the pure blue pleasure of the Pacific. Sometimes I feel a little heartbroken to have left that behind.

My field of study is the behavior of marine mammals, which, let me tell you, is not easy. The ocean doesnt just offer itself up to you. Heres a typical situation: Im suspended in the bluest water you can imagine, an entire universe flitting past my ears. Something comes up behind me. Its big, its black, it moves through the water like a dream, no earthly impediments. Its gone. What was it? Thats what people dont understand about marine biologyhow extraordinary it is that we know what we know (and given all that we suspect is under the sea, believe me, we dont know much). How can you study something that you cant observe at length? How can you track data on a creature you didnt know existed a year ago? How can you truly get to know an environment that you cant live in, that you have to have all kinds of equipment even to spend time in? Its the miracle of my workof our workthat we are able to know anything at all. The life beneath us is so unfathomable, and we treat it with such disdain. This Woods Hole job is a good oneI couldnt say no, and neither could my husband, Daniel. They offered us both these amazing fellowships, and this is Daniels hometown. But how I miss the warm silence of that part of the Pacific, the things that would surprise me when they swam past my waiting shoulder.

THE WAY I GOT into this work was through my love of the water. Ive always known it was where I belonged. Given that I was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, home of one of the least inspiring of the not all that interesting Great Lakes, Ive had to work pretty hard to get to where I belong. But I did it. Right after college, my Stanford marine biology degree in hand, I got an unpaid internship at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago working with the marine mammals. I worked in a Starbucks at night and ate a lot of ramen noodles for those five months but I was the happiest Id ever been. It was a lot of hauling heavy objects around, a lot of cleaning up, and a lot of tank maintenance, but I got to work with the dolphins sometimes and touch their smooth gray skin. They felt like heaven to me. And then, the miracle: When my twenty weeks were up, one of the full-time animal trainers quit and they asked me to stay on. This job allowed me to get to know the dolphinstheir personalities, their quirks, everything about them. I loved them. I really did, almost like the way youd love a person. It was easier to love them than to love a person.

The Shedd is spectacular. It was built in 1929. The ceiling is like that of a cathedral but its covered with images of sea life instead of Jesus: simple, earnest paintings of starfish and turtles and whales. There are seashells in bas-relief and pillars everywhere; the whole building has that templelike grandeur that public buildings of that era have. Every day I walked in looking up over my head, open-mouthed, like a little kid.

The greatest thing about the job was getting to be in the water nearly every day. My favorite part was after I had all my dive equipment on. Rolling in backward and letting the water close over my head. The air coming into me from the oxygen tank on my back so that I was buoyed up and breathing even though there was water all around me. I would cut through it and the fish would swim up and hover around me like jewel-colored birds or butterflies over a field. I love breathing underwater but still being safe, held, protected. I love the weightlessness. I never feel that the rest of the time. Life weighs a ton. Thats why I love the water. Nothing weighs anything there.

ALL THE OTHER WOMEN who had the gig were white, and they only had to snatch their hair back into messy ponytails before they dived. I had cornrows at the time; I hadnt yet seen that I had to cut off all my hair and let my head be free. It took me a year to realize it and to get up the nerve to deal with my mothers disapproval. But I finally did. After my first trip to the barbershop, I never looked back. I looked like a sculpture, a beautifully shaped piece of wood. I started to wear big earrings all the time when I wasnt divinginexpensive silver hoops and flashy teenage-girl sparklers. Now I buy earrings at this shoppingmall chain where Im usually at least ten years older than anyone else in there. I cut my hair myself once a week with clippers. Sometimes I run my hand over the short, assertive bristles up there and it makes a little shiver go down my legs. Im never growing it back. Never.