Whispers of the Infinite Sea

Pooja leaned against a tarnished railing aboard a ferry, watching ocean waves curl into themselves. Close to her chest, she held a pewter urn containing her mother's cremated remains. She breathed deeply, the taste of brine caking her tongue like damp ash. The midday sun reflected in droplets that quavered on the balusters, then trickled down like little rivulets, only to reappear from the periodic spray of waves breaking against the prow. Other ferry-goers chattered around her, though Pooja was only vaguely aware of them. Her thoughts were on the last conversation she had with her mother. All this time out on the ocean, chasing fish —

“Mommy, do you think we’ll see a whale today?” asked Priya, a little girl in polka-dots and a wide-brimmed straw hat, her voice somehow cutting through the din.

“I hope so,” her mother replied, dressed in flowy linen pants and wearing lipstick the color of strawberries.

The oversized straw hat reminded Pooja of a cowboy hat she tried to wear when she was young. It was oversized too, and quickly made her forehead sweat. It would shift down over her eyes as she galloped around the house, pretending to be a rancher, or cowboy, or sheriff chasing after an outlaw who was always a beautiful woman who smiled deviously, smoke curling from between her teeth, bullet holes perforating her own rawhide cowboy hat, an image that caused Pooja to grow warm and jittery and, inevitably, trip or bump into a wall, a table, her mother’s legs.

“Take that thing off,” her mother had said.

“But I’m a cowboy!”

“Cowgirl. And cowgirls don’t need to wear boys’ hats like this. Take it off, I’ll buy you a prettier one.”

“But I like this one. It was daddy’s.”

With a serene smile, her mother gently lifted the hat away from her head, and Pooja will never forget the noiseless way she turned, almost perfectly on an axis, as though a steel wire ran through her core connecting her floor-to-ceiling, or the white of her knuckles she crumpled the hat into the kitchen garbage can.

The little girl in the polka-dots bumped into Pooja's leg accidentally; her straw hat fell atop Pooja's feet.

“Oh my gosh, I am so sorry!” her mother exclaimed.

“It’s okay,” Pooja replied.

“Priya,” the woman said, turning to her daughter, “say you’re sorry. We can’t go around bumping into people, especially not on a boat.”

“I’m sorry for bumping into you on a boat,” Priya said, looking down so her tangled mass of curls covered her face.

Pooja knelt down and retrieved the hat, handed it over to Priya. “You know, I used to have a hat kind of like this. It was a little too big for me, so I’d run into stuff all the time. The trick is you’ve got to angle it up, like this.” She placed it on Priya’s head slantways, the front brim almost perpendicular to the sky. “Plus, if you keep the brim away from your eyes, you can catch sight of a whale better. Around here, you’re looking for a gray whale. They leave big splashes that you can see from miles away, so watch the horizon. Or sometimes they’re sneaky, and do this thing called spy hopping, where they’ll just peek their heads out enough to see where they are. Watch for that too.”

Priya’s mouth gaped. “How do you know so much about whales?”

“I’m a cetologist — a whale scientist.”

“That’s so cool! Mommy, did you hear that?”

“I did,” she replied, her voice lilting as her gaze lingered on the urn Pooja cradled.

“Well, it was nice meeting you, Priya. Keep your eyes open, there’s bound to be some whales out today.”

Priya said thanks and returned to her mother’s side, who mouthed thank you, then parted her strawberry lips as though to give condolences, but decided better, and instead smiled with crinkled eyes that said sorry for your loss as she turned and meandered further along the railing, pulling her daughter close to her side.

Echelon. That’s the supportive position a mother whale takes with her calf while swimming, to reduce the water drag. This means, of course, the mother must take on excess water drag. Pooja looked down at the urn, sunlight glinting off its smooth edges. Her mother had loved whales — cetaceans, as Pooja now thought of them. Her mother’s favorite was the gray whale, in fact. She had known little to nothing about gray whales, however; the preference was purely sentimental. She’d tell Pooja she went whale-watching with her father on the happiest day of her life, pausing for effect before delivering her coup de grace: that it was the day she found out she was pregnant. She said this often enough that Pooja could recite the second half of the phrase, rhythm, inflection and all, and would do so with rolled eyes, much to her mother’s chagrin. As a cetologist, Pooja knew that the average gray whale was approximately forty-five meters in length. She knew they weighed between thirty and forty tons, and that they were bottom feeders, turning laterally to skim the ocean floor, sifting stirred up sediment through their baleen, keeping the food and sieving out the rest. She knew their lives revolved around two things: one half of a year was spent gorging themselves, hopefully storing enough fat to make the long migration south, where during the second half of the year they would mate and rear their young. Once the calf was grown enough, it was time to make the treacherous journey back north. Had her mother known all this, she may have loved them more — or disliked them. Similarity breeds either camaraderie or resentment, there isn’t really any in between. Pooja’s mother had devoted her life to supporting her daughter, never remarrying, always working, and always, always keeping her in echelon. It’s part of what made their last conversation so difficult to stomach.

“Mommy, look!” Priya cried.

Pooja saw it too — something gray and sleek, gliding just beneath the waves, not far from the bow. Her heart leapt; she leaned over the edge, taking care to redouble her grip on the urn. Was it a porpoise? No, too large. A whale? The size was right, but this was unlike any whale she’d ever studied. Whales lumbered. This, this shot through the water like a torpedo. After a moment, it disappeared abruptly into the depths, like a dumbbell dropped into the ocean.

Pooja shook her head in disbelief, peered closer to be sure nothing was there.

“Mommy, where’d the whale go?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’ll come back up! Let’s keep watching.”

“But where did it…”

Pooja had no idea what they had just seen, but she knew it was no whale. Her breath quickened as the slap of the waves against the prow and the conversation between Priya and her mother"