IX. Silent Scream

A Memoir in Animal Encounters

Welcome to Chapter Nine of my life story, as told through incredible animal encounters ranging from coastal Massachusetts to the plains of Africa to the Alaskan tundra.

Every week I write and release a new chapter in this unfolding narrative, and I am often as surprised as you are by what comes out on the page. If you’re new here, and would like to catch up, you can find the previous chapters here. However, each one is presented as a stand-alone story, so you can also just dive right in- I trust you’ll put the pieces together on your own.

I have no business having even one of these ridiculous encounters in my cache, let alone several dozen. I know, I know. Alas, this is my life, laid bare for you.

January 2007, Catalina Island, CA

When it finally happened, my skin came alive like sheet music in the hands of a conductor. It had been sleeping for so long- my skin- that I wondered if it could still be stirred to waking. It could. It did. It was better than I thought it would be.

What a delicious, dangerous surprise.

The tension of waiting made it more charged, of course. I wondered what it would be like to nudge our friendship into intimacy for over a year. A year of sharing our favorite grassroots indie artists- heads bent over our shiny iPods on the dive deck- while we smiled or somberly closed our eyes at the same lyrics. A year of witty, surprising banter, a year of hiking in the hills and diving in the bay and sitting on my shitty brown couch and feeling for all the world that we saw everything around us with a different color palette than the rest of our peers. His eyes were always the ones I would connect with when someone unknowingly said something absurd or tone deaf, his lips turning up at the corners almost imperceptibly while his eyebrow shot up, letting me know he was in on the joke.

He had a girlfriend in a different state, which was a relief to me in the beginning. I was weary of all the hookups that happened inside of our small community- a couple dozen twenty somethings marooned on an island with super charged libidos had created a dizzying contra dance of “swing your partner round and round, weave to left, weave to the right, do-si-do and partners swing!” I couldn’t keep up. I tried to jump in at first, but wasn’t able to casually move down the chain, as they say. So, I stayed still and became the person who everyone told their secrets to over coffee the next morning.

He wasn’t interested in the dance either, being spoken for by a cute little pixie of a woman in Connecticut, so our friendship felt like an escape. It was a safe little tent on the perimeter of the dance floor where we could comfortably take it all in, making predictions and cracking jokes to the arcane soundtrack of Eliott Smith and The New Pornographers and Beirut.

But one night, sitting on my bed after having escaped a party at the precise moment everyone had started slapping the wine bag and drinking right from the spout (nothing ever good happens after “slap the bag” begins, believe me), he confessed that he and the pixie had broken up the week before.

We looked at each for other a long time without speaking, and a whole conversation played out in that silence.

When it happened, it didn’t feel like a reckless “to hell with it” decision, a cannonball off a high cliff. It felt like holding hands, slowly wading into ever deepening water, savoring the increasing weightlessness of each step. It felt deliberate. I had never known such presence in intimacy. The safety of it felt totally terrifying. The tenderness burned.

We agreed the next morning to keep it under wraps. We didn’t want to be plunged into the fishbowl of public opinion. We’d be discreet. I didn’t think that would be hard- we already spent so much time together, and I was the coffee-talk girl, not the do-si-doer. No one would suspect a thing.

I was going overtown (the local lingo for going off-island) that afternoon for a week, so we resolved to keep the conversation going over email and figure out what was next while very much not under the scrutiny of our friends.

The ferry ride from Avalon to Long Beach was dreamy and disembodied. I wrote volumes in my notebook. I rented a car and drove all the way to Arizona, listening to Plans by Death Cab for Cutie on repeat for a full seven hours on I-10, greeting the saguaros as they finally came into view, leaning into the internal and external sense of homecoming.

For the first few days, the messages between us were rich and snarky and hopeful, loaded with inuendo and playfulness and possibility. And then his responses trailed off, until they stopped altogether.

I gave him the benefit of the doubt. He was working, I reasoned, and too busy to write. I’d see him in a couple of days, and we would figure things out. I tenderly held a blooming flower cupped between my palms, promising to keep it safe, even though my hands were beginning to shake.

---

Back on the island, fresh off the boat, I looked for him, trying not to appear obvious or overly enthusiastic. He was just about to take a group out on a snorkel- I could see his familiar silhouette on the beach leaning over to tighten a long line of fins in the sand.

I wanted to catch his eye, to casually wave, but I wondered if that would make me look too eager. I was aflutter with nerves. Get a grip. I looked down at the wooden planks beneath my feet and hurried off the pier.

I popped into the office after dropping off my bags at home to get my assignment for the day. Once a week we all rotated through the “tech” position, which included a lot of lifeguarding but also random projects like repairing holes in kayaks or testing the hydraulic system in the climbing wall or clearing debris from hiking trials.

“Tharpy my Harpy! Welcome home!” Jeff greeted me when I pushed through the door. (My maiden name is Tharp… it was either this or “Tharpagawea” that year).

“What’s up, Jefe?” I said, hugging him.

“Follow me.” He said, “I’ve got a special project for you.”

He led me down to our outdoor shark lab, pointing at the new, fancy touch tank we’d just purchased. He asked if I could do a series of paintings on the base of it. Twenty or so white panels circled the circumference, each about one square foot. I had full artistic reign to paint what I wanted, as long as it had to do with the subjects we covered during the lab.

“Sure, I’ll do my best.” I said, crouching down to look at my canvas, already brimming with ideas. This was perfect. Painting always got me out of my head.

“Cool. Let me know if you need any new paints or brushes or anything and I’ll pick them up in town when I do the mail run later.”

I gave him a thumbs-up and smiled to myself.

Look at me, being an artist. I felt a little like an imposter but shrugged it off. This wasn’t the Sistine Chapel, I’d be fine.

I was sitting cross-legged on the ground, lost in my first panel, painting a transparent egg case with a fetal horn shark curled up inside when I heard someone approaching from behind.

I turned to see one of my closest friends walking up. “Hey!” I greeted her with a smile.

“When did you get back?” She asked, crouching down and giving me a side hug.

“Just a few hours ago.”

“That’s amazing.” She said, nodding at the painting.

“I’m trying,” I said, squinting my eyes at the image. It looked flat to me. I dipped my brush in the white paint.

“Hey, I’m about to go surfing, but do you have a minute?” she asked.

“I have all the minutes,” I said, gesturing at the pavers next to me. “Mind if I keep painting while we talk?”

“Yeah, of course.” She said, settling down on the ground. “Ok, the weekend was craaaaazy.” She said dramatically. “You’ll never guess who I hooked up with on Saturday.”

“Do tell!” I said, eyebrows raised.

I thought for a moment about sharing my own news but thought better of it. I was keeping my cards close for now. I wondered who her new tryst had been with- an ex or a newbie? Most likely an ex, there were very few newbies left. She was, after all, the most sought-after dance partner on the floor. She was an itty-bitty bisexual mermaid, with perfect beachy hair and a surprisingly throaty laugh. What wasn’t to love? She was also a masterful flirt; the kind of girl that others instantly wanted to protect or possess. I didn’t begrudge her any of this- honestly, good for her- she was my friend, and I genuinely enjoyed her company. She felt everything deeply and insisted that each new paramour was “the one” before changing her mind a few days or weeks or months later. I cheered her on through all of the tempestuousness. Better to have loved and lost and all of that. At least she was putting herself out there.

I just wasn’t expecting her to say his name that morning.

I went still, my pulse loud in my ears. My brush froze halfway to the panel.

She didn’t notice. She just launched into the story. Something about being alone in the kitchen after they had taught squid dissection, and how he told her he’d broken up with his girlfriend, and how they’d kissed and how hot it had been.

“Oh.” I said dumbly when she finished.

“I think I might really like him.” She confessed. “I’ve had a crush on him forever.” She searched my face.

This was news to me. I still couldn’t find my voice.

“Have you talked to him yet?” She asked. “Did he say anything about me?”

Oh, right. Because I was his person. The kind of person he’d talk to about hot hook-ups in the kitchen.

“I have not.” I said, forcing a smile.

Someone called for her in the distance.

She squeezed my arm. “Tell me if you do?” she asked, smiling brightly, unfolding herself and standing up.

I nodded, “Sure, of course.”

She turned on her heel and ran up the hill, towards a group of people loading surfboards into a van.

I opened my palm and imagined the flower floating towards the pavers.

Stupid girl, I thought.

---

You don’t know this until it happens, but when the man you think you are falling in love with tells you that it was just a kiss, and that he’s confused and so sorry and still figuring things out, and that he doesn’t want to be with anyone romantically right now, you will believe him, even though something cracks right down the middle of you. Even though there is a part of you of you that doesn’t believe him at all. Because the alternative means losing him.

You will try to go back to the way things were, before your skin woke up, but the rhythm will be all wrong. Your skin is singing now and it’s throwing off the old tune. There can be no harmony between knowing and pretending.

When, weeks later, a friend tells you that he has been coming over to her house every night since you’ve been home and sleeping with her roommate (the itty-bitty mermaid), and that they have sworn her to secrecy because they don’t want to hurt you, well. You will feel very small, and very much like an idiot. You will feel something like rage rising up within you, and you will push it down, because nice girls don’t give in to anger.

---

The morning after I found out, I agreed to kayak down the coast with all the other instructors who were off that day. I very much wanted to stay in bed, but my roommate pulled me up by my arms and pressed a mug of coffee in my hands and opened the curtains and told me I had ten minutes to get myself together. I knew enough not to argue with her.

I almost walked right back up the hill when I saw him dragging his kayak towards the water, but I didn’t want to give him another reason to feel sorry for me. I imagined the two of them side by side, tangled in the sheets, talking about how they really should break the news to me because they both just loved me so much. They would feel so big-hearted, confessing how tortured they were by the cruel necessity of hurting someone they cared so much about.

What a convenient character I had become in their unfolding love story. I was the pitiable obstacle in their plot, a conflict to resolve that would make their happy ending richer and more hard-won.

I had naively thought I was living in a different story, and the shifting narrative tasted bitter in my mouth. I didn’t want to be cast in the role of the woman scorned, nor did I want to be the helpless victim. I would lavish them with grace. I would give them my blessing and I would be kind and understanding. These things happen. I’m happy for you guys. They would be moved by my benevolence.

“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that crushed it.”

The Mark Twain quote rose into my consciousness. It was one of my favorites. I had long thought it profound. It fit so nicely into my Christian narrative about selflessness and martyrdom.

Now, digging my paddles into the sea with much more force than necessary, I realized that I hated the image of a smashed flower bestowing blessings on the foot that destroyed it.

Why did I have to be crushed and also magnanimous about it?

I passed his boat. I was locked inside my mind, present to nothing other than my pain. I dug and dug, the rocky coast passing by in a blur, until a terrible smell assaulted my nose, and I blinked and scrunched up my nose and came back into my body.

At least two hundred sea lions lay on the shore about fifty feet from me, most of them asleep, bodies flung over one another, shifting clumsily in the sand. I could hear them snorting and slapping and sighing.

I stopped paddling and heard the awe-filled gasps and murmurs of my friends as they pulled up behind me. We had no idea there would be so many. We contemplated our next move. We decided to haul out our boats in the adjacent cove so as not to disturb the group.

We wanted to observe them, to be closer, and we thought it would be less intrusive to swim over towards the rookery rather than gliding past it on our boats. One by one we put on our masks and fins and slipped into the water.

We silently swam into the adjacent bay, popping our heads up to observe the sleeping group. This was a colony of females- the larger males would soon arrive, and a mating frenzy would ensue and later this beach would be a birthing site. For now, they looked peaceful and at ease.

Until all at once, without warning, they arose from their slumber and charged the shoreline. It was as though one of them had counted backwards from ten and then fired a starter gun- it was that sudden and coordinated. It turns out they had very much noticed us. Two hundred sea lions crashed into the water at the same time and the deafening sound of bodies slamming into the surf made me freeze in place. What just happened?

If I wasn’t in my body before, I certainly was now. I wondered if they would attack us. Sea lions generally are more curious than aggressive, but this was not a typical encounter. I looked down and suddenly there were dozens of bodies below me, twisting and turning and gliding every which way. The water was only about twenty feet deep. I lifted my knees to my chest to give them more room, my breath coming fast. I instantly felt like I shouldn’t be there.

Photos from that day, Tully Rohrer, 2007.

One female broke off from the group of ballet dancers below me and circled me, close. I floated facedown and tried to remain perfectly still. She swam directly underneath my body and then twisted so that her belly was nearly touching mine. My eyes were wide behind my mask. I held my breath and tried not to look directly into hers. Then she opened her mouth as wide as she could, her incisors inches from my face, and she silently screamed at me.

I can’t describe it any other way. A flood of bubbles flew out of her mouth and rushed over my face until I was blinded by her rage. She was a furious, beautiful creature. I stayed still, resisting the urge to flee, so as not to further upset her. Then she abruptly stopped, closing her mouth and fixing me with a look before arching her back, her belly gliding past my face, flicking her fins as she returned to the boiling mass of bodies below.

I was in her territory, and she had let me know in no uncertain terms that this was a boundary better not crossed.

I choked back a sob, and then I let all the anger in my body rise to the surface. It felt like fire. I welcomed it. This wild creature had unloosed something inside of me. I dove under water, the sea lions stirring up a swirling current around me, shadows and figures dancing both above and below, in front of and behind me, and I opened my mouth and screamed, bubbles flying out of my mouth. The flame inside of me erupted, turning my insides into ash.

I was furious, and beautiful.

When I surfaced, my chest heaving, I felt porous and potent. I lit the crushed flower in my palm on fire, and I watched the petals curl up and burn.

I don’t know what forgiveness is, exactly, but I think sometimes it starts here, in the fertile ashes of anger. Later, there would be succession. But right there, in that moment, the ground of my being was still smoking- too hot to tread upon- and this too, was holy ground.

Sometimes healing begins with a silent scream, an erupting flame, the primal calling-out of our pain and heartbreak.

Only then can the wildflowers move back in. And their fragrance will not be for the heels that crushed them— one final act of benediction in death—it will be for the whole wide world.

That’s where you’ll find me: laying in a field of flowers after a burn, having screamed myself back into quiet repose. That’s where forgiveness finally takes root.