She led me into the water and soaped up her hands, running them over my skin. When I was clean, she washed herself. Her hipbones poked out, and I counted every rib.
“Didn’t you eat while I was sick?”
“Not really. I was afraid to leave you.” She rinsed and then helped me to my feet. “Besides, you weren’t eating either.”
She held my hand and we headed back to the house. I stopped walking.
“What is it?” she asked.
“That boyfriend you had must have been a complete dick.”
She smiled. “Come on. You need to rest.”
Taking a bath wore me out so much I didn’t argue. When we reached the house, she helped me into bed and stretched out beside me, holding my hand until I fell asleep.
I didn’t have much energy for the next week and Anna worried about a relapse. She constantly checked my forehead to see if I had a fever and made sure I drank plenty of water.
“Why do I have so many bruises?” I asked.
“You were bleeding from your nose and mouth and apparently under your skin. That scared me the most, T.J. I knew you could only lose a certain amount of blood, and I didn’t know how much.”
Hearing that freaked me out. I stopped thinking about it and concentrated on nicer things, like kissing Anna and pulling her T-shirt off.
“You really are feeling better,” she said.
“Yeah. You might have to be on top, though. I don’t have the strength for anything else.”
“Lucky for you I like being on top,” she said, kissing me back.
“Lucky’s my middle name.”
Afterward, when I held her I said, “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“What did you say?”
“I said ‘I love you, too.’” She snuggled closer and laughed. “You heard me the first time.”
***
In June of 2004, Anna and I had been on the island for three years. We hadn’t seen any more planes since the one that had flown over two years before. I worried they would never find us, but I hadn’t given up completely. I wasn’t sure if Anna could say the same.
***
“This is the last of the soap.”
Anna held a bottle of shower gel in her hand. Only a few ounces remained. The shampoo and the shaving cream were long gone. She still shaved me, but we were on our last blade and it was so dull it took a toll on my skin, drawing blood no matter how careful she was. We rubbed sand on our scalps – our version of dry shampoo – and it sort of helped. Anna talked me into burning off some of her hair. I torched the ends and doused her head with water, shortening it by eight inches. The smell of singed hair lingered for days.
We didn’t have any toothpaste either. We used sea salt to brush our teeth, scooping water out of the lagoon and waiting for it to evaporate. The chunks of salt left behind were rough enough to clean our teeth but nothing compared to toothpaste for making our mouths taste good. Anna hated that the most. Now we’d be without soap, too.
“Maybe we should divide this into thirds,” Anna said, studying the bottle of shower gel. “Wash all our clothes, wash our hair, and wash ourselves. What do you think?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
We took everything down to the lagoon and filled the life raft container with water. Anna squeezed some shower gel into it. When all the clothes were submerged, she washed them thoroughly. I was down to one pair of shorts, a sweatshirt that didn’t really fit me anymore, and Anna’s REO Speedwagon T-shirt. I went naked a lot. Anna had enough to wear but I sometimes convinced her to have a naked day, too.
***
I turned twenty in September. I started getting dizzy when I stood up too fast, and I didn’t always feel the greatest. Anna worried a lot and I didn’t want to tell her, but I wanted to know if she was getting dizzy, too. She said she was.
“It’s a sign of malnutrition,” she said. “It happens when the body finally uses up its stored nutrients. We aren’t putting enough of them back in.” She reached for my hand and looked at my fingers, running her thumb over the brittle nails. “That’s another sign.” She held out her hand and examined it. “Mine look like that, too.”
We braced ourselves for the approaching dry season and the end of regular rainfall. And somehow, we kept on surviving.
OceanofPDF.com
Chapter 33 – Anna
I threw up my breakfast one morning in November. I was sitting on the blanket next to T.J. eating a scrambled egg, and the nausea came out of nowhere. I barely got three steps away before I puked.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” T.J. asked. He brought me some water, and I rinsed my mouth.
“I don’t know but that was not staying down.”
“Do you feel okay?”
“I feel much better now.” I pointed at Chicken who was walking around by us. “Chicken, that was a bad egg.”
“Do you want to try some breadfruit?”
“Maybe later.”
“Okay.”
I felt fine the rest of the day but the next morning, right after I ate a piece of coconut, I threw up again.
In a repeat of the day before, T.J. brought me water, and I rinsed out my mouth. He led me back to the blanket.
“Anna, what’s wrong?” he asked, a worried expression on his face.
“I don’t know.” I lay down and curled up on my side, waiting for the nausea to subside.
T.J. sat down beside me and smoothed the hair away from my face. “This is going to sound crazy, but you’re not pregnant are you?”
I looked down at my stomach, nearly concave since I hadn’t gained back the weight I’d lost when T.J. was sick. I still didn’t have my period.
“You’re sterile though, right?”
“They said I was. That I probably always would be.”
“What did they mean by probably?”
He thought about it for a minute. “I remember something about a slight chance fertility could come back but not to count on it. That’s why everyone wanted me to bank my sperm. They said it was the only way to be sure.”
“That sounds pretty sterile to me.” I sat up, feeling a little less nauseous. “There’s no way I’m pregnant. Between the two of us, it’s probably impossible. I’m sure it’s just a stomach bug. God knows what’s living in my digestive tract.”
He took my hand. “Okay.”
Later that night, right before we fell asleep he said, “What if you were pregnant, Anna? I know you want a baby.” He wrapped his arms around me tighter.
“Oh, T.J. Don’t say that. Not here. Not on the island. The baby would have horrible odds for survival. When you were sick, and I thought you might die, it was almost more than I could take. If we had to watch our baby die I’d want to die, too.”
He exhaled. “I know. You’re right.”
I didn’t throw up the next morning, or any mornings after that. My stomach stayed flat, and I didn’t have to worry about having a baby on the island.
***
T.J. walked up to the house carrying the fishing pole.
“Something big just snapped my line.” He went inside and came back out. “This is your last earring. I don’t know what we’re gonna do when I lose this one.”
He shook his head and turned to go, heading back to the water to catch enough fish for our next meal.
“T.J.?”
He looked over his shoulder. “Yeah, sweetie?”
“I can’t find Chicken.”
“She’ll turn up. I’ll help you look for her when I get back, okay?”
We searched everywhere. She’d wandered away before, but never for very long. I hadn’t seen her since early morning and she still hadn’t come back by the time T.J. and I went to bed.
