The Seas by Samantha Hunt Page A

head. “I don’t need a typesetter,” he said and, “I’ve got a brand new dot-matrix printer.” Eventually I told him I would make a good endtable or hassock. “Great,” he said. So I curled up on the dirty floor and prepared for work. I waited for some weight on my back but it never came.
    After awhile the captain said, “Come on now. Get up, sweetheart.” Which scared me. If there wasn’t going to be a legitimate trade he was probably going to steal something from me. But he didn’t. Instead, he gave me some ice cream and told me I was a brave girl. Still after the ice cream, I continued working and soon I was a hassock asleep.
    My mother always tells this story whenever she meets someone new. She thinks it is funny now. It embarrasses me sometimes because the person my mother tells, for a moment, thinks of me as sea captain’s furniture, which, I believe, most people consider out of date or made from oddly colored Naugahyde. Though it seems like a truthful representation of me—oddly colored, out of date—I still am embarrassed.
    The three thousand foreign forms of aquatic life introduced daily into unfamiliar ecosystems usually don’t survive but, more commonly, float to the surface and get burned by the sun.
    When I was returned to my family I continued to work as a hassock around our house, and sometimes my father would actually use me, resting his feet while he watched the television. I liked the job because it reminded me of the sailors I had met on board.
    *
    In this hospital I am embarrassed. Jude looks peculiar here. His paleness is awkward against the maize-colored walls. My mother and grandfather are both too pink and healthy to be here. I’m embarrassed because I want to look foreign here, as they do, and float to the top, get burned by the sun. I want to not belong here. I’m a mermaid. How can I belong in a hospital on dry land? But the gown I have on matches the sheets and there is a label around my wrist saying, “This is where you belong.” So I tuck my head and curl into a ball waiting for weight—something hard or sharp from Jude, a fist or a scream. But it never comes. He sits quietly, uncertain of what to say.
    “I’m thirsty,” I finally tell him.
    Jude has not said anything. He pours me a glass of water, but while carrying it to the bed it falls from his hand. The water explodes out of the plastic cup and Jude immediately slips on the water. His head nearly smashes on my mechanical bed.
    “Shit!” my mother screams because she is completely on edge.
    “Hahaha,” the water says and it sounds like my father.
    “Did you hear that?” I ask. But they ignore me. “Jude, the water is coming to get you,” I say and then the three of them exchange glances of the saddest kind. My mother looks down at my hands as if to look in my eyes would make her start crying again. She looks at my hands as though I am strange to her.
    “Jude, are you all right?” she finally asks. She bends to help him.
    “I’m fine. I’m fine,” he says and has a seat in a Naugahyde hospital chair and we sit for awhile in silence.
    Eventually I do get more visitors. The men in blue. The men in white. And my grandmother Marcella. She is somewhere in between them like a beautiful horizon line. My grandmother Marcella doesn’t say much but holds up her finger to make a division.
    Wet. Dry.
    Sea. Sky.
    Dead. Alive.
    I have to stay at the hospital for three days. I’m required to undergo evaluation. That “undergo” is the word I keep using, as it somehow suggests a passage or secret tunnel to the doctor’s office. There is no secret tunnel though.
    In his office the doctor looks at my chart. “Huh. Had some eye trouble, I see,” he says.
    “I don’t. Not very well.”
    “Now this eye trouble, it says here, there’s nothing physically wrong with your eyes. How does that make you feel?”
    “I’m thirsty.”
    “I see.”
    “I don’t. Not very well.”
    “Let’s talk about what happened in