EELS

On the beach in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, my daughter and I watch an eel being tortured at the hands of a group of terrified, sandy children. They are holding the edge of their Styrofoam boogie board, with the tapered edge pointing down, frantically gouging at the eel. The eel is gaping, gasping for water, recoiling from the scalding sand. It is bleeding from an open wound in its back. Sand is sticking to its body. I approach the children and speak sharply: “Stop! Why are you doing that?” A heavyset girl looks up, terrified, and exclaims, “But they’re poisonous!” I tell her they are not, that they’re harmless, and to leave the eel alone. Just then a very fat man in a bathing suit strides over to the children. Using two sticks he picks up the eel and turns to walk away. My daughter and I inhale, preparing a sigh of relief – the eel has been rescued! – but instead of taking the eel to the water, the fat man in the bathing suit suddenly turns and disappears into his beachside condo, brandishing the crucified eel. My daughter and I stand gaping in disbelief.

We walk back slowly to our hotel. What could we have done? I am distraught and blame myself. My daughter does her best to find comforting words. We walk past the chain link fence with the sign that says Save the Turtles! past the four story condos under construction with the line of frigate birds perched and waiting along the arm of the crane (odd, we say to each other, to call that machine a crane) and we return to our rooms to get ready for dinner. I feels harsh and bitter, my thoughts tasting of bile. I find myself weeping, shocked at my distress. The fact is, it was a small Holocaust and we did not do enough to stop it in time. I burn a bit of sage to lift my shame, and whisper an apology in the form of a prayer. It seems as if the birds outside the window hear me sobbing as the sage wafts through the screen door, carrying my longing out over the ocean waves where I imagine a tiny wisp of it dropping into the water. I see it drift to the ocean floor like a smoky leaf and wonder if the eels feel a tingling on their shiny black and silver flanks.

The next day we walk along the shore again, as we do several times each day. We prefer it to the overblown town, choked with traffic and restaurants. Day by day we feel the place enter us through the soles of our feet – the colors of the sky and the countless greens of palm fronds, the shadows of birds and the iridescence of ancient stones ground to sand. We go to the water’s edge. I drop to my knees in the shallow surf where the waves ripple to shore, and as the water washes over me I ask it if it recognizes itself.

On the morning of the third day, May 8th, we make our way to the water after breakfast. Although it is early morning, a group of people is already drinking and smoking cigarettes. A perspiring waiter carries trays of sweating plastic cups filled with margaritas. Meanwhile, it seems the eels have selected a messenger. The eel, the snake, the edges of the giant clamshell, trace the liminal space between the worlds, the openings and pauses in time. The eel calls across this scalloped space to other worlds and toward the opposite shore, to the living and the dead.

My daughter and I are on our way to swim, but as we approach the water we hesitate: a black and silver eel is lying motionless on the sand, barely moistened by the waves. He has come to the edge where air and water meet and there he waits. We stare in disbelief, looking from the eel and back to each other, and again to the eel. We fear he is in trouble. Kyra quickly removes her sandal and walks toward the eel, thinking to nudge him into the waves. Just then, he coils into himself looks directly at us. He lifts his head out of the water, entering the air we are breathing. Kyra sighs, I gasp, a sudden outlet and intake of breath, and it is done. We have received each other’s inadvertent offering. The eel twists himself into an 8, an infinity, then straightens himself and slips back into the sea. We remain standing, afraid the slightest motion will break the spell. Just then, the waiter walks past, balancing his tray.

“Excuse me,” I say. “But what kind of eel was that?”

The waiter looks puzzled of course, and answers, “What eel?”

“The eel that was there in the shallow water,” I tell him. “It was right there, for a very long time. There was another one the other day up the beach.”

“I’ve worked here for three years,” says the waiter, “and I’ve never seen an eel. We don’t have eels here.”