The Annotated Church of the Old Mermaids

Two-1

Two

Go with the flow—and watch out for waterfalls.

Sister Sophia Mermaid

Gail helped Myla unload her table and boxes in front of Antigone Books.1 Then she left. Myla set up the old card table on the sidewalk near the far end of the bookstore picture window. She smoothed a blue oilcloth with red and yellow flowers on it over the table. Pietra rolled out a comfy chair from the bookstore for Myla.

“Good morning, Myla,” Pietra said.

“Thank you for this wonderful chair, Pietra!” Myla said, as if it were the first time Pietra had ever brought her a chair. “It makes the day much more pleasant.”

Pietra smiled. “What goodies do you have this morning?”

“We shall soon see,” Myla said.

She put one of the boxes on the chair, took the top off, and began pulling out items and arranging them on the table. Near one corner of the table, she placed a broken kitchen tile with a peach at its center. Next to it, she put a red piece of cloth, then a small white feather, a half blue marble, a baseball ticket from a Mariners game on June 5, 2001 (Section: 113, Row: H),2 an empty orange plastic lighter, a red brick, a yellow T-shirt with the word “Who?” on it, several glass bottles without labels, a smashed beer can, and a few other odds and ends. Closer to her, she laid out the items she had found today.

When the first box was empty, she opened the second box and took out the old pieces she had not sold yet but was not quite ready to throw away. In the middle of it all, she placed a small wooden sign with the words Church of the Old Mermaids and Myla Alvarez, Novice painted on it in yellow. On the far side of the table, she set an old cigar box with an orange-tailed mermaid painted on the lid.3 The mermaid held a sign over her breasts that read: donations. Myla put the empty boxes under the table, then sat on the chair.

“It all looks fine,” Pietra said. “And I could use one of those bottles actually. My sweetie Ellie brought me in a yellow rose this morning, and I don’t have a good vase for it.”

Myla picked up a tall empty bottle.

“You might try this one,” Myla said. “I found it near where the old kitchen used to be in the Old Mermaid Sanctuary. I can’t be certain, but I believe this was the one that used to have a place on the window sill in the kitchen. It had a teardrop-shaped stopper. Oh, it was beautiful, that top, but it was off as often as it was on because you’ll never believe what precious liquid was contained in this bottle.”

Pietra said, “I would believe it if you said it was so.”

“Ahhh, well, no one can know for sure, but they say it was filled with water from the Old Sea where the Old Mermaids made their home before it dried up. And before it all went away, Sister Bridget Mermaid had the presence of mind to fill a couple of empty bottles they found along the shore with sea water. This one they put in the kitchen. Sometimes when the Old Mermaids were aching for the Old Sea, they came into the kitchen to gaze at the bottle, sometimes hold it. When the longing became too much, they took the stopper off and smelled the sea and remembered their lost friends and the life they had had to leave behind. They would even dab a drop behind their ears and on their wrists, as though it were perfume, and of course, it was, to them. Sometimes their grief overwhelmed them and they wept as they held the open bottle. That was why the bottle remained full for a long time, no matter how often they used it or how much time went by.”

“Why?” Pietra asked. By now, two women and a man had walked up to the table and were listening.

“Because the tears of the Old Mermaids fell into the bottle and kept it full,” Myla said. “And no one ever knew the difference because Old Mermaid tears are really sea water. Gradually the Old Mermaids realized they carried the Old Sea within them, always, just as you and I do. Did you ever notice when you cry, the grief begins to subside once you taste your own tears? That’s because that sea water reminds the deepest truest part of you that you are always home, you are always with yourself, and that truth is comforting, even in the darkest times, even when you feel as though you are far from home, the way the Old Mermaids felt.”4

Myla held the bottle out to Pietra, and she took it.

“A gift,” Myla said. “For the chair.”

“No,” Pietra said. “I want to help out the church.” She pulled a five dollar bill from her pocket. “This feels so inadequate for a bottle that once held the tears of the Old Mermaids!”

“I’ll give you ten dollars for the bottle,” the man said. The other woman elbowed him and smiled at Myla.

“It’s his first time,” she said.

Pietra lifted the top of the cigar box and dropped in the money.

“I gotta go to work,” Pietra said. “Thanks! It’s just what I needed.”

Myla nodded.

“What did I do?” the man whispered. “I thought you wanted the bottle.”

The woman shook her head. “This is my husband, Bob. He’s not been before.”

“It’s all right,” Myla said. “I love having novices. As you can see”—she pointed to the sign—“I am a novice5 as well. We generally don’t barter at the Church of the Old Mermaids. Each gift of the wash—and therefore a gift from the Old Mermaids—is exactly what a particular person needs and he or she leaves an exhange.”

“Are you a nonprofit?” Bob asked.

Myla glanced at the woman with Bob. Then she smiled and said, “Do you mean have I registered with the government as a nonprofit and filled out the paperwork? No, I have not. No paperwork on anything here. Except maybe that baseball ticket.”

Bob looked down at the ticket. He stared at it for a moment and then looked away. The woman picked up an amber glass bottle.

“You said Sister Bridget Mermaid filled a couple of bottles with sea water?”

“You have a good eye, Dolores,” Myla said, remembering the woman’s name as it came out of her mouth. “The bottle you hold is one of those bottles. Of course, it was lost for a long while. Sister Bridget Mermaid put the one bottle on the kitchen window sill, and she hid this one in the pantry, way in the back so that no one would find it. She figured it would be there should they need it one day. As it happened, Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid decided to make a pot of chili. She got anasazi and pinto beans from the Old Man who lived with the Old Woman in the mountains. Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid talked to the beans all the while she cooked. She always talked to the food. ‘Beans, beans, we’re Mermaid Queens. Make this stew a healing brew.’6 She stirred in various chiles from the garden, along with fresh tomatoes, and onions and garlic. She added a pinch of this and a pinch of that. Then she tasted it. It didn’t quite taste the way she wanted it to. Didn’t quite have the spark she wanted. So you can guess what happened. She went into the pantry and looked around for something special to put in the stew. She found that bottle you’re holding. She thought it was beer. Who can blame her? It looks like a beer bottle. She smelled it, and it didn’t smell bad. It didn’t exactly smell like beer, but she shrugged and dumped the sea water into the pot of chili.

“There are plenty of stories about what happened next. Some say the chili began boiling and bubbling like a great witch’s brew. Others said it began thundering and lightning outside. That seems a bit silly to me, doesn’t it to you? Why would it suddenly start thundering and lightning7 because Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid poured a little Old Sea water into the chili? Then again, why wouldn’t it? One person even claims the earth trembled. Someone else said that the birds on the kitchen tiles flew out of the tiles to get nearer to the pot of chili because everyone agrees that the chili gave off an aroma that woman or beast could detect for miles. And a funny thing happened. All sorts of animals and people began showing up at the Old Mermaid Sanctuary. And they were all hungry! The Old Mermaids began feeding everyone from that pot of chili. Not the animals, of course, since the Old Mermaids knew it wasn’t good for wild animals to eat people food. The wild animals didn’t seem to mind. They wandered around for a while, watched what was going on, and then left and began eating each other, as is Nature’s way.

“The interesting thing is, the chili did not run out. Not until every last person had a bowl, including the Old Mermaids who ate after everyone else had eaten and gone on their way. The Old Mermaids sat in the kitchen eating the chili and looking out at their garden. All of them wanted to know what Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid had done to make the chili taste so good.

“‘It was that old bottle of beer in the pantry,’ Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid said. ‘That really made it perfecto.’ She put her fingers together and kissed them. Sister Bridget Mermaid got up, went to the pantry, and looked for the bottle of sea water. As we know, it was not there. She asked Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid to show her the bottle of beer. ‘But it’s empty,’ Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid told her. Sister Bridget Mermaid insisted. So Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid went to her bedroom and got the bottle. You see, she had dropped several dried sprigs of lavender into it and then set it on the table next to her bed.

“‘That was not beer,’ Sister Bridget Mermaid said quietly. ‘It was the last of the water from our Old Sea. Now it is empty.’

“The Old Mermaids got very quiet. Especially Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid. Then she apologized profusely. Sister Sophia Mermaid gently took the bottle from Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid. She put the bottle up to her ear. Who knows why? You know how Old Mermaids are.”

The small group of people listening laughed.

“Then Sister Sophia Mermaid said, ‘It is not in my nature to be contrary,’ she said, although they all knew it was in her nature to be contrary. ‘But this bottle is not empty. I can hear the sea.’ And she passed it around to all the other Old Mermaids. They were astonished and so happy. Mother Star Stupendous Mermaid nodded, as if she had known it all along, and she said, ‘Of course. It is good you emptied the bottle, Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid. Because of the emptiness, we are now able to find again what we lost.’ All the Old Mermaids nodded in agreement, even though not all of them understood what she meant. The Old Mermaids were not hierarchal, but they were respectful. And Mother Star Stupendous Mermaid was older than many of them. Sister Sophia Mermaid liked a good discussion, however, so she said, ‘Was it because of the emptiness that we heard the Old Sea or because of the bottle? One could argue that in order to hear what we long for in the emptiness, we need a container. Like this bottle. Or our ears.’”

“She has a point,” Dolores said. “Without the bottle, they wouldn’t have heard the Old Sea.”

“Unless they went to the ocean,” the other woman said.

“So what did Mother Star Stupendous Mermaid say?” Dolores asked.

“She didn’t say anything,” Myla said, “for the longest time. She went down to the wash—the wash where I found all of these treasures—and she listened and listened. She heard the wind through the bushes and trees. She heard the woodpeckers tapping away on the saguaros. She heard the beating of her heart. She heard the rivers of blood within her pulsing, washing through her body. As the sun went down, she thought she could hear it sizzling in the west, as though this giant ball of heat was dropping into a vast ocean. She heard the quail and the owls and the coyotes at night. She followed this routine for many days.

“Then one morning she took the bottle with her out to the wash. This time she put the bottle—the one you are holding—up to her ear and listened. She heard the Old Sea, or something which sounded like it. She went back to the Old Mermaids and said that Sister Sophia Mermaid was correct: a container helped. Just as the chili pot contained the chili. ‘Just as our bodies are containers of the sea we lost,’ Mother Star Stupendous Mermaid said. ‘In our grief over the loss of the sea, we sometimes forget that our bodies are containers of that sea. Our bodies are home.’ The Old Mermaids agreed that this was a good thing to remember. By the way, everyone had pretty much forgotten about Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaid dumping out the last of the sea water into a pot of chili. The Old Mermaids ate dinner, jumped in the pool, and life went on as usual. That was the way they settled their differences.