Staring at the Water You Broke (for Jose Fernandez) by Christopher Louis Romaguera
Fiction Editor Esperanza Vargas Macias on today’s bonus story: In this tribute, Christopher Romaguera's careful and affecting prose vividly paints Jose Fernandez's most heroic moment, allowing us to know and define him beyond his death. I find myself returning to this short again and again, and each time it ends it feels like I'm breaking water too, finally coming up for air.
Staring at the Water You Broke
For Jose Fernandez
She is going to die unless you wake up.
You are on a raft. You and your mother. You and other dreamers like you. You sleep, hoping to wake up to another dream.
You had fallen asleep at night, constellations poking little white holes of dead light into the sky. You had hoped the day would pull the dark curtain of the night away, to reveal your new home, but day comes with no new home.
So you cook in the sun. The crash of breaking water shakes the raft, shakes you, but you still dream. You dream of pitching no hitters against professional ball players that had every advantage you didn’t; you dream of hearing your mother’s voice curve around the walls of a house; you dream of clinking glasses of rum as ‘Salud’s fill the air; of connecting your locket split family; of repairing your heartbroken mother’s heart; of making your own personal La Habana. You dream of a home.
You wake up to the echo of the water breaking. You feel the tension, others already awake. You unkaleidoscope the image. Seven silhouettes where there used to be eight. Seven startled dreamers woke up to the nightmare.
“Se fue.”
She sinks toward the sea floor, like the Jesus statue that scuba divers swim around, circling their savior like vultures. But unlike the rest, you do not stick in the sun, you do not merely circle. Before you can even hear the echo of your fallen mother’s call, you break the water, too. You swim down to her.
You keep pushing yourself to her, as she sinks below you, beneath you. So you keep pushing, as if the world sinks her before you, on purpose, to ruin you. And you keep pushing, as if Ochún placed a gentle hand on your back and moved you forward, faster, to be able to catch her. And the waters get darker, as if spirits cast all their spells and shadows over you, your head gets heavy, pressure increasing, tightening the vice. Your heart keeps pumping, your mother raised you to be all heart. It pumps, because it is all that it knows how to do. You feel yourself moving slower as the salt piles on you. Each grain ticks off time. Each ounce, drowns and dehydrates you. You keep pushing, as your bubbles float higher and higher to the world of dreamers that you can no longer see, bubbles that burst against the plane farther and farther away. You keep pushing trying to get to the beautiful soul that sinks, to scoop her up and save her, like as a child, when you’d break the water to show your eroding mother the beautiful shell you have uncovered from beneath the sea.
And you reach her. You follow the air bubbles up, each one carrying an almost lost memory, an almost lost dream. Little by little the balsero’s silhouettes return to your eyes. You then break the water again.
“Jose.”
You saved her.
I play these moments over and over again, like ESPN highlights of your strikeouts. I play these moments over and over again, as I stare into the night, sitting in an empty lifeguard station at the beach, thinking of you dancing on the mound like a shaman. I cry in rage thinking about the grandstanding politicians who circle your death like sharks do the wounded, as if the cocaine in your spilt blood negates you being a hero. I cry in rage thinking of the statue they deny you, a real Miami hero, while they clutch their pearls and powder their own plastic noses. I cry thinking that none of us saved you when it was your turn to fall, how none of us could break the water for you, none of us being able to find the beauty against the erosion like you did. I cry looking at all the lights from buoys that shine on the water where you crashed against the rocks, a constellation in the sea, letting us know where our hero fell. I cry and I tell your story all over again, knowing you get to live a bit longer, as long as we keep breaking the water and breathing life into your story, breathing life into our hero.
Christopher Louis Romaguera is a Cuban-American writer who lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was born in Hialeah, Florida and graduated from Florida International University in Miami, Florida. He has an MFA in creative writing (fiction) at the University of New Orleans. Romaguera has been published in New Orleans Review, PANK, Louisiana Literature, Santa Fe Writers Project, Catapult, Massachusetts Review, and other publications. He is a monthly columnist at The Ploughshares Blog and is the Poetry Editor at Peauxdunque Review. Romaguera is a VONA alum. He is a 2023 Periplus Fellow.
If you would like to show your appreciation for the author’s work, you may send tips via PayPal under Christopher Romaguera (email: c.romaguera004@gmail.com) or @Christopher-Romaguera on Venmo.
