I awoke suddenly to the tremendous cacophony of my entire world crashing down around my tousled head. Had I realized in that moment, as I stared dumbly for at least a full five seconds at the events unfolding before my eyes, that, ten years later, I would not yet have begun to recover, I might have taken more decisive action. I have been nothing, if not decisive, since that moment. Not that it’s ever done me any good.
There was the time my only and favourite niece, the sole living being on earth that I Loved ‘til that day, fell overboard from the lower deck of the ferry to Staten Island. You’d think that I’d be haunted y the sight of her frail, pre-teen body flailing for what you’d expect to have seemed, to me, to be an eternity in mid-air, as she cried out for me in a piercing shriek. A shriek so heart-wrenching, you wouldn’t be very surprised to know that it echoed to this very day in the deepest part of my soul. In fact, it doesn’t. nor did her fall freeze time for me. Would that it had; I might have reached her.
I knew her voice. Knew every quirk of her lilting, melodic speech. I knew when she was hurt, and hiding it. I knew when she was scared, and afraid to show it. I could tell when she was communicating a secret to only me, through some cleverly devised double-entendre, or a guileful mispronunciation. I knew, before the first syllable was out, that she was in trouble, and as my head whipped instinctively around to my right, I saw her before her right foot had yet slipped below the plane of the starboard guard rail.
She was the cleverest of girls. She was not wise enough to go in head first. She got her feet under her more deftly than any cat, bending at the waist, twisting her body, and waving her arms like a trapeze artist catching his balance. She straightened herself vertical just as her pointed toes touched the water, and the life jacket slid over her head as if it were meant to.
Perhaps it was meant to. Perhaps the most intelligent girl ever to draw breath was destined to suck filthy, New York seawater into her precious lungs and die. Perhaps the most beautiful of souls ever in existence was predestined to depart that lithe, little frame moments before it was torn apart by a 400-horse-powered rotor blade. Or maybe, she blinked. As her feet parted the surface of the deep, her resolve wavered, and the bravest child in the world bent her head forward at just the wrong time, to sea what was coming to get her. Thirty-one and a half feet of desperate effort for nothing.
When her head was snapped backward by the seemingly solid water, I was already upside-down, parallel with the hull of the ferry, and thumbing loose the second of three buckles running down the front of my own life vest. As her unconscious body sliced into the water like an expertly thrown dagger into my chest, I freed the final clasp on my vest, straightened my arms behind me, as if to fly, and pressed my chin against my chest.
I expected the plumb dive to carry me more than a dozen feet down, but I was instead swept back against the hull by an unforeseen cross-current, then sucked toward the aft by the still-spinning rotor, sped along by the ferry’s slow but inevitable momentum. By the time I’d gotten my belly against the barnacle-laden hull, arched my back and craned my neck, there was already blood in the water.
My beautiful girl was now in three pieces, her left arm having been severed mid-humor as the rotor blade ripped into her chest to slice her heart in half before cartwheeling her body around, and claiming also the last part of her to have touched the world of men. With the skill and determination of a pro surfer, I pushed myself away from the ferry bottom, planting my feet quickly and kicking as hard as I could, to move myself out of the path of the blade.
My body spun uncontrollably in the turbulent wake of the enormous ferry, and I had to release my air to find which way to swim. When I finally struggled free of the ocean’s insistent grip, I opened my mouth and lungs for air, only to have them filled with gallons of the whitewater whipped up by the ferry’s passing. As I fought to control the hacking coughs and vomitous heaving required to expel the coppery water from my lungs, the crowd on the ferry deck was just reaching the aft guard rail.
If you thought a rescue team comprised completely of trained ferry staff, given ten minutes in which to prepare for the exchange of pleasantries, as they lifted me out of the churning sea, would be capable of an ounce of professionalism, you’d again be dead wrong.
“Did you get her?” asked the first, echoed by a second and third, as if they were singing in rounds. The fourth was only slightly more logical.
“Are you okay?” he queried. Then, as if to clarify, “Are you hurt?”
Ignoring the peanut gallery, I assessed the scrapes and cuts along my chest and legs. My knees and hands were the especially bad; my right nipple felt as if it had been sliced off; and as I slouched on the edge of the boat, I could feel my shoulders open wide to the sun and salt water. I drug my right forefinger along the worst gash in my stomach, & sucked the blood from it, tasting it carefully. Then I leaned over the side of the life boat, eliciting much alarm from among my rescuers, who assumed I’d lost my mind and was diving back in after her.
Having lost my own, I paid them no mind, as I submerged my head in the water and drank as much as I could. I was promptly and courteously offered a bottle of water, produced from an emergency rescue kit, with which to quench my thirst. The stares of bewilderment I received upon informing them that I was not thirsty, thank you, were equally courteous and prompt.
Back on the ferry, it was inquired whether I was the “Uncle Best,” for whom the doomed child had called. I was, I said. Was Best my real name? I questioned the relevance, and the matter was dropped.
The eyewitness accounts, forced upon me by eyewitnesses as if I’d not eyewitnessed the event myself., are in fact the only reason that I know she called my name. My nickname. Of course Best isn’t my given name, though I now give it as my name, in her honour. I hadn’t had the luxury of listening to what she’d said, busy as I was, taking decisive-though-futile action, and all. For that reason, her cry cannot resonate through my bones n the dark of night. But I can still taste her blood, mixed liberally into the filthy, New York seawater.

--07APR06