"Turning Into the Wind" by Anita Goveas

Turning Into the Wind

The Points of Sail

The first few lessons are close to dry land: points of sail, boat positioning. Saira’s face becomes smooth and expansive like a calm sea, or the face of a little girl who hasn’t seen too much.

The headmaster, a slight man with frizzy hair, says there’s nothing he can do. A complaint has been made, no contrary evidence has been offered, there’s the question of the fees. He looks at a mark on the wide mahogany desk during the whole breath-stealing interview. Saira strides out the narrow gate briskly, as if it’s not her last day.

Not learning to swim was never a problem until lying in the bath meant having the head forced under water, lungs burning, breath pushing violently against delicate membranes and thudding eardrums. Trying not to splutter so it wouldn’t happen again. It didn’t leave a mark, externally.

The text messages start. They’re only letters contained inside a screen, small black marks, no substance in the real world. Apart from the knowledge that he has already done all those things.

Getting Underway

Leaving the dock always brought tension and release. The sailing lessons were saltair / clearbreeze / spacetobreathe. Saira’s face fresh-scrubbed of worry, her small hand warm against skin. Of course, they were taken away.

The doctor purses her lips. The side of her face has a constellation of moles that form and reform as she squints at the screen. She smells of lavender and antiseptic. At the top of the record, a red triangle blinks. Concerns have already been reported, about erratic behavior and possible alcohol misuse. They cannot be erased. She doesn’t type anything during the appointment, not about the threats, not about the tears. Nothing about the bruises.

Saira’s face goes grey before the child contact. Face buried between crooked elbow and curve of waist, she mutters I don’t like it when daddy makes me lie down to take photos. The stomach roils like a sucking vortex opening up on a glass-like lake.

After the court-ordered mediation, there is so much shaking there has to be a place to hide. In the toilets, there’s a poster — 1 in 4 women are abused by their partners, but perhaps the thinnest dock line to safety could exist.

Steer with the Tiller

This lesson is supposed to be steering, leaning into port or starboard. Having control about the direction the boat goes, despite how hard the wind pushes back. There’s too much time to watch Saira giggle, with the breeze shifting her hair into a jaggery-colored halo, to consider how far can a small sailboat go. The wind catches the sail, the boom swings round as if the universe has answered.

The woman on the helpline says leaving the abuser doesn’t stop the abuse. For the first time, coercive and controlling behavior is described, and it’s not just fists that leave marks.

There’s no sailing this Saturday. There’s no sailing any more. Saira curls up on a scratchy, over-stuffed cushion on the floor and flicks through blaring cartoons. The flare of the screen brings back the head slammed against the wall, the hand pressed down on the mouth so hard the teeth pierce the bottom lip. The whispered threats so fierce the eardrums vibrate. Tell anyone about me, and you’ll never see Saira again. Shut your mouth in court, or I’ll stop paying for your precious sailing lessons. It becomes difficult to sit still, there is pacing. The crack is the oval, brass-framed mirror smashing, there must be a culprit, but no-one is visible in the fractured glass. Saira doesn’t even flinch.

The lawyer is late. When she arrives, she’s someone different, a tall brunette in clicking kitten-heels, with papers spilling out of a very shiny briefcase. She whispers a few instructions, something about sitting up straighter, chin up.  She walks like someone who’s never been called a whore.

Turning Into the Wind

Today, it’s jibing, turning the stern of the boat through the wind. The boom will shift, there’s need to be aware of position and space and time, so no-one is knocked off the tiny vessel bobbing in a vast turquoise sea into freezing waters deeper than they can control. Today that might be absolution.

Another helpline call, another woman. The phone is heavy in your dry palm. She says, but you didn’t jump overboard, you came up for air, you’re the parent holding your child in mind. Would you like to talk through your options?

You lie back in the ceramic bath and list all the ways he has power — money, a new partner, you never reported it, he told the doctor you drink. Lukewarm water laps against your eardrums, sucking your head under, a kind of freedom in feeling the pressure on your face. The balance on the scale against him is one child, who has started to wet herself, and a dozen text messages that are only threats because he knows how to make you shrivel.

His lawyer makes accusations of ridiculous threats, of midnight hang-ups and broken car windows that mend themselves before there can be proof. Somehow, this reflects on you, that someone with expensive, sandalwood aftershave thinks you’re capable of this. The judge’s rumpled face is unreadable, which sucks the air out of the room. You keep your eyes ahead, but you’re aware of every shift in the currents around you.

Sailing Downwind

You’re holding your child in mind when you call, her fresh little face, her brisk walk away from troubles, her curling in on herself. There’s no chart to help you when you ring social services to tell them what Saira has told you, but it’s something you will do together.

You don’t really need the pink-elephant armbands now, but they make Saira giggle, and the little eddies of happiness help you float. It’s chlorine now, and slapping feet on cold tile, and the bobbing heads of strangers, but somehow worries still become submerged.

Anita goveas

Anita Goveas is a British-Asian writer based in London, who is fueled by strong coffee and paneer jalfrezi. She was first published in the London Short Story Prize anthology (2016), and more recently in Okay Donkey, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, and Bending Genres. She’s on the editorial team at Flashback Fiction, an editor at Mythic Picnic’s Twitter zine, and tweets erratically @coffeeandpaneer Links to her stories can be found at https://coffeeandpaneer.wordpress.com.

Headshot: Steve Riley

Photo Credit: Staff