Page 75 of Tell Me Softly
I remember my brother and sister shouting.
I remember the fear, the glance out the window, the realization that we were falling straight into the ice-cold water of the lake.
When the car hit the surface, I struck the dashboard. We’d plunged more than thirty feet. For a moment there was silence. Life holding its breath, preparing for what was to come next.
I looked over.
My mother was unconscious.
I looked back, gripped by terror.
My sister was crying hysterically, but I couldn’t hear her. It was as if someone had hit the mute button on life. My brother’s eyes were opening and closing quickly. Then he screamed, “Thiago, we’re gonna drown!”
That was all my brain needed to finally register what was happening. My sister’s wails reached my ears, my brother’s terror, the fear that we were going to drown. All of it. Even my mother’s silence.
“Mom! Mom!” Taylor kept shouting.
I looked out. The water was surrounding us. It was pouring in through the air-conditioner vents and the cracks in the door, dragging us to the bottom of the lake. I looked around frantically, trying to find something that would break the glass. Mom still wasn’t moving. I pounded the glass, tried the door handle, and––nothing. We were trapped.
“Tay!” I screamed. “Push down the seat! See if you can get the tire iron.”
He was hysterical, and I had to stay calm, even as the water had reached our waists.
“Tay, listen to me. We have to break the windows or we’re going to die. I need you to try to reach through to the trunk and get the tire iron.”
He did, I struck the glass, and the water rushed in like an avalanche. I opened my eyes and did the thing I should have donebefore: unbuckling my mom’s seat belt. Unable to talk, I tapped my brother’s shoulder and pointed to Lucy. Then I grabbed my mother by the shoulders and pulled her out of the sinking car. I remember taking one last look at it as it descended and I swam to the surface. Only then did my mother regain consciousness.
“Where’s Taylor? Where’s Lucy?” she screamed.
I didn’t even respond before diving and swimming downward with the most powerful strokes I could muster. I reached the floor of the lake and saw there was no air left in the car. My brother was trying to get Lucy out, but her seat belt was stuck. I looked at her and saw her tiny mouth opening and closing, her innocent face stricken with a terror that will chase me to the end of my days.
I pulled Taylor away. He was paralyzed. It took every ounce of strength I had to drag him out. There was barely any air left in my lungs, but I knew if I went all the way back up before descending again, she’d die. So once I saw my brother was all right and swimming away, I dove again. Her curls were floating; there was desperate hope in her tiny eyes.My big brother will save me.That must have been what she was thinking. I tugged and tugged at the belt, but it wouldn’t budge. I was crying. I could feel it, even as my salty tears mingled with the fresh water of the lake. Sorrow gripped me, despair as I let go of my four-year-old sister’s hand, leaving her all alone… But I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t breathe.
My head broke through the water, and I heard my mother screaming. The next time, she went down with me. We swam together to the car. We reached it, and I looked for one last time into Lucy’s lifeless eyes.
Mom tugged at the belt, I helped her, and we finally managed to disentangle it. She grabbed Lucy and swam back up with her. When I came up again, I saw a group of people on the bridge gathered and watching. Two men had jumped in and wereswimming toward us.
“Call an ambulance!” my mother screamed. Taylor was already on the shore––someone had jumped in to save him. I watched my mom swim toward the men. Looked at my sister. Lifeless. Unable to take a breath.
We reached the other end of the lake. Bystanders were there to take our hands and pull us out. I remember one of them, a big man with a kind face. I begged him to do something. “Please,” I said. “Please save my little sister.”
He took her from my mother’s arms, laid her carefully on the grass of the shore, and did CPR. I’ll never forget the image of it. That little girl I loved so much. More than anything. Just four years before, she had come into our lives to fill them with joy. Her with her pigtails, her stories about princesses and unicorns, the little hearts she liked to draw all over everything.
She used to follow me everywhere. If I did something, you knew she’d be imitating it soon afterward. She always told me she couldn’t wait till she was big so she could climb the tall trees in the woods with me.
I remember those giant hands pressing down on her tiny body—Stop, you’re going to hurt her!I wanted to shout, but the man was doing everything he could to get her heart, her lungs to work again. It had been too long, though. Her lungs were full of water. She’d never shout, cry, shriek––she’d never sayI love youagain.
There she was, in her waterlogged Cinderella costume. How she’d smiled a few hours ago when she’d unwrapped it and asked Mom to help her put it on, so she could be a princess for a day.
The ambulance wailed as it pulled off onto the roadside. I looked up and saw two paramedics hurrying down with a red trauma bag. The first thing they did was take out a pair of scissors and cut open her dress. That’s when I started to cry. It wasn’t her motionless chest, wasn’t her limp body lying on the cold ground—itwas seeing that costume she had wanted so badly get destroyed.
“Please don’t let her die,” my mother said desperately, tears streaming down her face.
They did all they could.
For twenty minutes of sheer agony, of panic I can’t even describe, they tried.
And when they stopped, there was a weird sense of relief.They were leaving her alone, I thought. They’d stopped touching her, pushing down on her chest, trying to blow air into her lungs. That’s how out of it I was.If they leave her alone, she’ll be OK, I told myself.
