The Ripples of The Comandante

Angela blurted out from the shore of the marsh: “I really didn’t think it was your ring when I picked it from my purse. I-I thought it was just a coin. I’m sorry!” I hitched up my blue dress with one arm. My feet entered the cold waters which I withstood unflinching.

The tone of my voice was contained: “It’s okay. Just come help me.” I couldn’t bear to hear any more apologies. One more of them would make me question my anger. At this moment, I wanted the red ire to wash through my body and make me forget the other parts of the night.

The moonlight barely made its way through the trees so that I could only see the silhouette of what was around me. My hands lurched forward into the water. I felt an assortment of shapes and textures that I would rather my mind didn’t linger on for too long for my stomach’s sake. What mattered was that none of them were small or metallic.

From behind me Angela plodded into the water with both her feet. She cared less of protecting her yellow dress, letting the hemline float around her.

“Ah! Cold!” She shivered. I didn’t care to reply, I kept my hands busy. Were they to stop, I might lose control of them and of myself.

The evening’s promises and possibilities had dusked with the day. Just this morning, I lit up to see my dress adjusted at the tailor’s. The loose parts of the bodice brought back to place. 5 years ago, the hectic to-and-fro of my Festa de Quinze, Brazilian equivalent to the Quinceañera, had withered it down. It was the only dress I had that would be acceptable for the Comandante’s daughter’s birthday. I had tried it again last week and it still fit me. Maybe this second time will remove its bad luck.

I decided to wear the ring my Grandmother had given to me at that same celebration that had a flower made of blue stones on it. I should’ve know better than wearing these two articles of that day. During my 15^th birthday  I had to run from guest to guest forcibly smiling and dancing with them without any food in my stomach. The exhaustion and lack of nourishment took a toll on me that night. I snuck to the bathroom to vomit the emptiness in my stomach due to stress. I felt paraded in a festival that was for all, but for me.

My feet falsely stepped as I miscalculated the deeper part of the bank. My dress touched the water and I let a yelp of frustration. I knew it would be drenched eventually. Somehow, keeping it dry was a form of keeping an ounce of dignity.

“Are you okay?” Angela’s hands readied for aid. I shot up before she could get to me.

“I’m fine, who the heck has a party near a marsh?” I continued staring down, already  back to searching through the dark.

“I’d like to see you find a place here that isn’t near a marsh or a forest.” Angela’s reply revealed again my sense of inadequacy in this town.

I moved to Florianopolis in the South of Brazil to major in Architecture for two years now, and for two years it still feels like I just arrived. I was born in a smaller town in Espirito Santo towards the Southeast.

My parents saw in me, their only daughter, a bright new future, a wealth of possibilities that they could never have had for themselves. They came from humble beginnings, but were able to give me a life that was far from plentiful, but still a leisurely stroll compared to their own. The fact that they could afford a Festa de Quinze  for me was already a sign for them that it was all going better, the type of celebration my mother could only dream in a fairytale. When I was accepted to a university in the South, the first one in our family who would seek higher education, the stars were aligned. I was the new horizon. Too bad that their new horizon vomits in the bathroom and waddles through bog water.

The edges of my fingers felt a metallic cylinder. I pinched it, grasping the thought that this night wouldn’t swim away, ending worse than it began. I passed the object around in my hand, using the dim light to ascertain. Angela noticed the glint.

“You found it?”

A lid of a soda can. My grip loosened. I went back to searching; slower, more hopeless. My mind seemed less frantic at this point.

“Just some trash. Anyways, Angela, what were you trying to do? Why did you just decide to throw the ring like that?” I was finally able to take some time to question her spontaneous action.

“I-I thought it was a coin I had in my purse. They say you can make a wish if you throw a coin in water.”

“That’s in… fountains.”

“Huh, I could’ve sworn I saw that in a movie”

What could Angela possibly have wished for? Maybe for another flip flop in her collection. Tonight might’ve been the first night I seen her without one. She always dressed with shorts, sleeveless shirts and flip flops, not really caring to please anyone with her wears.

I’ve always been grateful for having her as a friend, but I always wished to have at least more than one by now. She was a brilliant student in our university, but so inattentive. I would run after her as she would leave papers behind, or paying for her when she forgot her money for the university’s cafeteria. She still amused me with her impossible to predict attitude. I still remember when she one day rode in with a horse to the university. Everyone was a bit thrown aback, we were in 1976, that wasn’t common anymore. She said a cousin had lent it to her for a day. Next day, no more horse. As amusing as she was, her friendship couldn’t make me feel like I belonged in this new city. I think one single person could never.

When the daughter of the Comandante had given her party invitation to Angela and I, it struck me that it might be finally a chance to meet others. Create a circle of friends, mingle through town, feel like I’m actually living here. It was the chance I needed, albeit not in the best of circumstances.

The Comandante’s daughter was very popular, but I could never trust her father. He was always having her escorted in this solid-black car. The type I would see carry people away mysteriously in the middle of the night, never to return. He never seemed to smile or notice those around him, but would throw an awkward half smile when he saw me. I would avert my eyes and run inside the university building. His position as a commander in the military dictatorship made the invitation from her to have this weird aftertaste when the initial excitement cooled down.

I felt the sludge of the water gripping at the edges of my dress. The cold had my fingers numbed, I could no longer feel the tactile qualities of what I was touching. I could care less, I only need to feel for something small and round.

“I wonder if we’ll find the Cuca in this swamp, she could help us find the ring”

“Angela, stop talking and keep looking”

“I mean, think of it for a second! My grandma used to tell me she’s an alligator-witch that lives in the forest. She’d be the perfect helper”

I felt my hands grip a fistful of dirt from beneath me.

“Can you be serious for once!”

I couldn’t tell if the dirt I had thrown hit her. I just saw her silhouette’s shoulders bow down and turn away from me.

“Sorry. I’ll wait by the bank. I just wanted you to relax.”

Another apology, the red in my eyes turned blue. I felt the corners of them filling up. The events of the party reappeared. Angela’s unexpected mishap and the search for the ring had these recent memories hiding in the back of my mind.

The party full of circles of people that we couldn’t well integrate. A sparse friendly word over here and there was the best we could muster. A multitude of people both from the university and the uniformed officers that worked with her father. I would compare my attire to those around me, feeling childish in my 15^th birthday’s dress. It worsened as I felt my shame surveilled by the army of badges and uniforms.

 Suddenly, I saw the Comandante smiling at me. I couldn’t recognize him immediately without his usual stoic countenance. He approached me, his unfettered uniform making me feel small and ridiculous. I bet that was what was making him smile.

He asked me about school, how I knew his daughter. He would then counteract every academic story of mine with his stories of bravery as he “deterred the communist insurgents.” I tried not to show any disapproval through my eyes or body language, because that could raise suspicions that I didn’t agree for what the military stood for. The mute tones of his suit made my dress feel unbearably blue. I felt like some circus act cornered by these classy people that belonged here.

Then it happened.

I felt his hands glide over the ring on my finger. My hands couldn’t react. I froze. The people around me were a mix of friends of his daughter and his officers. I was stuck in his territory. Was it even his daughter that had invited me? My head was filled with badges bigger than my body, and dark unseeing cars trying to force me inside them.

From my other side I felt a delicate hand grip me. It was Angela. She mouthed something apologetic to the Comandante that was in between “we have to go home” and “ we have to go to the bathroom.” She rushed me to the exit. I ripped the ring from my finger as we exited the doors of the party and put it in Angela’s purse. I didn’t want to feel where he had touched.

Moments later, I would see the same ring flying in the moonlight for a midnight dip as we headed home.

The inching tears subsided from my face. Angela broke my reminiscence as she yelled:

“Get out of there!”

I looked up. From the marsh trees I could see a silhouette inching closer.

Shit! That silly talk about alligator-witches and I didn’t think for a second that there could be actual alligators here. I backed away towards Angela’s voice, my eyes fixed on the figure’s encroach.

It moved gracefully sending ripples that sped towards me. It would be hypnotic if it weren’t terrifying under this light. My legs moved in a quick pace, fighting the dress’ resistance in the water. I was sure of my escape, there was a small distance now. The shore was already so close.

I should’ve known that like the rest of the night, a sort of cohort of the comandante would block my way. My progress to the shore was jolted in the opposite direction. My dress stuck to a branch from underneath. I tugged with my whole body, but would only be pulled back towards the silhouette.

The first ripples of the swimming shadow reached me, more kept approaching. The constant ripples sending me into a terrified trance. The shadow’s form grew bigger in the moonlight.

It had to be an alligator-witch, cursing me to be small, imperceptible, dressed in a mocking blue. The witch could decide to take many forms. The Comandante’s hand brushing on a stone-flowered ring. His nails jet black cars, killing the flower. The same cars that had approached my neighbor’s house when I was little. I never saw those neighbors again, but would repeatedly see those cars in different locations. Even here, the only thing in this town that seemed familiar. My eyes blurred, I couldn’t tell how close the figure was anymore. It melted with the shadows of the marsh around it. Its hand, the branch that grasped at my dress. I was to drown in the Comandante’s mocking smile.

A burning sensation from my armpits arose as I felt pulled up by them. The dress ripped in a satisfying tune. I was dragged up the shore, out of the water. I fell to the ground and felt the softness of a lap. Around me there were yellow flourishes of Angela’s dress. I lay there motionless, drawing back from my hypnosis.

“Are you okay? God, I’m sorry! It was stupid of me. What was I thinking? Coins, marshes and wishes. You’re ri—”

I held her hand. It was the second time tonight that she had pushed me away from the shadows. Her third apology broke me from my stasis of rage and sadness.

“I’m the one that’s sorry. I should be thanking you, Angela. It was a stupid idea to come to this party in the first place.”

I hugged her. Angela laughed and I felt her arms raise. She was pointing towards the shadowy figure.

I looked back and saw the dark silhouette at the clearer light of the shore. The alligator-witch-comandante was just a capybara that was waddling in the water.

We held each other, barely keeping upright with laughter. A yellow and blue flower triumphant in the moonlight.

“Come on, Angela. Let’s go. I think we can still find a place to eat around here.”

“What about your ring?”

“Leave it. It was silly to go after it in the first place.”