Cave Dwellers
The first time my sister and I ever stumble into a cave, I am approaching seven years old and my sister is trying out eight. My mother plows the car into a field of high grass and we take a bumpy ride down the edge of a bluff. At one point I think her minivan might flip tail pipe over headlights, but miraculously we land with a deep thunk and roil up brown dust; my mother is unfazed. She says this is the spot she was looking for, a place off the path, miles away from the Camelot Motel. This is a secret place to fish. She’s rifling through the glove box, possibly finding a gun to bury or a bankbook to burn. With her you never know. None of the stories ever add up and the elusive details always change.
A stream flows across rocks and fallen trees. We stand at the trickling end, twenty feet before the water opens into a dark green lake. There is a cave full of frogs in every imaginable color, in shades of frog I’ve never seen. Yellow. Orange. Blue. My sister and I place one frog at a time in our hands, pet it, call it froggy, and give it a lemon tart kiss. We stand in that cave, ribbits echoing, and the frogs jump across our toes and up to our knees. This is not a dream. I can count the frogs’ eyes and I can feel their slimy webbing.
I don’t know how my mom gets the van back on the road, but she does and we haven’t caught any fish. We didn’t bring our poles. That night, the three of us swivel on maroon seats tucked around the thick leather bumper of a sticky bar. We order from a menu with a fat friar in a brown robe standing above the word: Cocktails. And inside there is a list of appeteasers—cheese sticks, potato skins, water chestnuts wrapped in bacon. We eat greasy onion-cheeseburgers in the smoky pub with pinewood walls. I can still smell frog on my hands. Wet leaves and dirty pennies.
The second time we are on an Adventurers Camping Trip, for junior high students. We are spelunking in Mother’s Cave and the Crystal Caverns. We are wearing kneepads and helmets. A male tour guide is leading the way as we begin to crawl and our bellies and our sweatshirts and jeans gray with sludge. I’m third in the wriggling line, right behind our troop leader, Pam, who has her hair tied back in two long braids. She’s not wearing any makeup and her cheeks naturally blush and I think she’s pretty without mascara and eyeliner and glossy lips, just a natural beauty.
I’m eleven and I’ve already started burying myself in Covergirl and Coty liquids and blushes and giving my face an unnaturally orange tint. My mother tells me to stop. She throws out my makeup, even the more expensive Mary Kay that my sister buys from her friend’s mom out of this cute catalog we’d read together, saying the names of colors out loud, wondering how cotton candy pink would look on our lips. All of the bottles and compacts get swept into a black trash bag during one of my mother’s fierce tantrums. My sister cries and I try to soothe her and tell her to just buy more. Dad’ll give you the money. “That’s not the point,” my sister says. “She destroys everything.”
I can’t see my sister, she’s three kids behind so I ask Kathy & Burton & Ricky to press to the side and let her come up ahead to be with me. She is a year older but I’m leading and I grab her hand and we get to a point where we can’t even kneel. There is only a foot for us to snake through on our bellies and everyone is giggling and yelling hey, you kicked my hand or get your shoe out of my mouth. And then the passage gets really tight and I see the boxy hole swallow the tour guide and Pam and I push through and feel the air cool and sense there is more space here, enough for me to push up and sit Indian style. My sister squeezes in and I grab her hand, guiding her and letting her feel my knees and I tell her to cross her legs. My knees are touching her knees and Pam’s knees and when another body tries to push inside, all of our knees knock together and my sister says, “No. There is no more room.” She pushes Ricky’s head back and he says, “Let me in.” The guide says, “No. She’s right. We’ll have to go back.”
The guide is turned around, this is not a cave we are supposed to explore. I hear him fumble with his silver flashlight and I search for my small pocket light buried in my jeans. The light pops on and I hear Pam gasp. I follow her upward gaze, looking above my head, looking up at the ceiling. It is approximately 18 inches above my eyebrows, which isn’t the problem. It’s the hundred or so bats dangling upside, lining the ceiling. In the sudden flash they look like rows of pinecones. The guide quickly turns off the light. My sister and I can hear the adults’ heavy breathing and the panic in their throats but we don’t know any better, we don’t know that we’re supposed to be afraid. The guide tells us to stay very quiet and scoot backwards out of the passage, back through the square hole, back to where we came from. My sister wants to pet them, she wants to wake them up. I tell her to back the hell up. This is their home, not ours. Around the fire, everyone is jealous that we got to see the bats, everyone but Pam who keeps chewing on her nails.
The third time we are alone, separated. I’m in a blue grotto in Malta. The boat can’t fit all the way back and the group goes as far as it can, the metal sides scraping, and up ahead the walls open up again and the cave glows like a mammoth piece of sea glass casting a shade of pale blues and greens. I’m with five other people and they all jump into the water, splashing and laughing in their bathing suits. I will not go in the water. I can’t see what lives in this mysterious space. I rub my hands up and down the walls, feeling the crevices and bumps and whispering to myself, remember this, remember these traced lines they hold secrets. I’m certain the ridged rocks are feeding me mysteries of anchor-eyed sailors and parti-colored mermaids. I start to cry because of everything the cave tells me. I shouldn’t be so dangerously close. I stay at the foot of the cave, not moving further ahead. Voices call out, “You should see this!” You should see this, I whisper. I’m alone in the boat. Where’s my sister?
She is on an inflatable canoe, with two men, headed to a cave somewhere near James Bond Island, maybe the Talu Cave, maybe not. Somewhere with ice blue waters and whale sharks. The boat rocks in front of the cave’s mouth. The guide says, “I deflate boat and we lie on backs.” There’s a promise of stunning beauty once through the tight passage; on the other side there is a magical wading pool and a mangrove, if they can only make it past this low wall. My sister jumps out of the boat, taking her chances in the ocean, ready to kick away the jellyfish. They go ahead without her and she stands there waiting, preferring not to go into the dark. “I couldn’t do it,” she says. “They said it was beautiful that it would’ve hurt my eyes.”
“I know,” I tell her. “Me too.”