"We All Saw Clouds" by Octavia Bell

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Mybrother has been dead seventy-three hours when I drive to the lake, on the daya village of ice-fishing houses is set up on the ice. It’s just after four andless than an hour of daylight remains. I don’t mind. I like what dusk does toobjects, rubbing their edges soft, leaking their shadows across the snow. Ipark my brother’s car in the lot and turn off the ignition, survey the lakethrough the windshield. It appears as it did the day my siblings and I detachedfrom one another, as if winter has stuck around for fifteen years. 

Igrab a pair of skates from the backseat, watch my breath form clouds in the airas I cross the asphalt. On either side of the boat ramp, two rock barriersstretch into the lake like arms reaching up, signaling for help. I walk throughthe cove they form, take a seat on the last boulder and wedge my feet into theskates. Crisscross frayed laces around metal eyehooks. For some seconds, I seemy sister’s hands performing the task, red with cold and moving with the easeof an eldest daughter. She pulls the ends tight, double-knots the bow. I standnow, yank my hat lower. That belonged to her once. The gray wool coat didn’t—Igot it my first year in New York. It’s too thin for Minnesota Decembers, but atleast it’s something that’s only ever been mine. 

Ihear the crunch of boots on snow, whistled notes crystalizing. A man, stockywith layers, emerges from the direction of the parking lot, heading towards thevillage at the lake’s center. He drags a child’s wagon behind him, weightedwith buckets, a fishing rod, a long spiral drill. Puckering my lips, I spit outsounds too fragile to hold a tune. My brother would laugh if he were here, allteeth and teasing.

Not like that. You’re trying too hard. He could whistle me to tears.

Islide one foot forward, then another, blades cutting rhythms into ice. Ahead ofme, houses the size of refrigerators distinguish themselves from one another.Smoke curls out of pipe chimneys. The wind smells of fish. I angle left,tracking the good ice.

Lakes don’tfreeze smooth, they’re not still enough for that. Wait for a warm spell to melta skim of standing water. My brother’s observations bubble up unbiddenin my mind. When the temperature dropsagain—that’s when the good ice forms.

 Izig-zag between patches of snow, my own obstacle course. Myriad patches ofwhite on the ice around me look like clouds. My skates glide across the sky.

*

“I’m flying,” I say, seven years old andstill halfway ethereal. “See the clouds under us.”

“You look like a penguin.” On the other sideof my sister, my brother skates into a crouch, free arm lowered. He swipes mymitten off the snow without needing my sister and me to slow down. He’s twelveand nothing is difficult.

“Okay. I’m a flying penguin.” The arm not linkedwith my sister’s pinwheels me upright.

“Penguins can’t fly.” My sister is ten andknows everything. My brother catches the order she sends with a flick of hereyes. He passes her my mitten with his left hand and spins inward so she canface me.

Wrestling a mitten onto someone else’s handis not an easy feat when you are nearly fused at the elbow to two differentpeople, but my sister is skillful.

 “Idon’t see clouds,” says my brother. We unfold into a continuous line again. Hesurveys the lake’s surface with the attentiveness of a mapmaker assessingterrain. “I see continents.” He points with the arm that’s not linked with mysister’s at a strip of bare ice between snow. “See the river?” He moves hisfinger. “And an ocean there.”

A gust of wind sends particles swirling through the air.My sister shoots forward, stretching one leg out behind her. My brother and Iare pulled along by our elbows.

“I see snow,” she says. A mist of movingflakes catch in hair she refuses to cut.

I frown, shuffling bumpily to keep pace.“Last year we all saw clouds.”

*

I shake myself back to the present. I amalone. The air is getting colder and last dapples of sun shift around myskates. The ice has been silent so far, but the temperature is dropping. I keepskating, drifting from one foot to the other. As I glide parallel to the curveof the shore, I listen. And there it is—a sharp, short pulse, trailing into amusical resonance. One, then another. Then behind me, three bursts in quicksuccession.

*

I am seven again and certain I’m about todrown. With each blast, I feel tremors through the blades of my skates.

“The ice is breaking!” I shriek. I imaginethe thin line in the surface between my legs growing, widening, inches intofeet until my body is caught in the center and I fall, plummeting intobottomless depths. I feel water in my lungs, rushing, bubbling. Then a tuggingon my left elbow, the force of it pulling my arm above my head. I’m rising up,up through the water. My head emerges, I gasp and sputter, inhaling oxygen.

“Stand up, stupid.” I hear my sister’s voicesomewhere above my ear. Feel another tug on my elbow. “You nearly made us fallover, sitting down like that.”

I blink open my eyes, squint in thebrightness glinting off the ice. I am sitting on my butt, legs out in front ofme. My left elbow is bent, fist resting on my collarbone, so my sister can faceme in a crouch. On her left, my brother squats too out of necessity. Aconcerned wrinkle digs a crevice between his eyebrows as he looks at me.

I peer down at the crack like a marker lineon the ice. It has not widened at all.

“I thought I fell in,” I said.

My siblings glance at each other and laugh.

“I was about to drown,” I say louder.

“Silly, that could never happen. Not as longas we’re connected,” my sister says, her nose inches from mine. “Think aboutit. If you fell in, we’d pull you right back out by your elbows.”

My brother nods. But then another boom. I jerk my sister,in turn jostling my brother.

“There it is again! Don’t you hear it?” Myeyes shift back and forth between their faces. Neither of them is showing thenecessary level of alarm. “The ice is breaking!”

My brother pats my knee with his right hand, forgettingmy sister, whose left arm gets thrust forward too. She scowls sideways.

“The ice isn’t breaking,” my brother says inhis cartographer voice. “It’s expanding.”

I stare at him. He smiles back.

“She doesn’t know what that means.” My sisterinterprets my look for him.

His explanation of hydrogen bonds does nothelp.

I squeeze my eyes shut. The crack iswidening, I’m certain this time. The piercing tones all around me areinterspersed with a low musical hum. I’m about to slip between sheets of ice.

I feel my brother’s hand on my shoulder. “Youcouldn’t ever get far with us attached.” There is a funny note in his voice.Like he doesn’t believe all the way that this is a good thing.

I am about to cry. My sister understands.

“Look at me,” she says with the authority ofa sergeant. I do. “That’s not ice making noise. That’s the whales.”

The wrinkle between my brother’s eyebrows is back. He makes that throat noise people make when they are about to say something. My sister looks at him.  

“Yes,” my brother says. He nods. “The whales.”

I remind them that whales live in the ocean. My brotherlooks at my sister. She shakes her head.

“Most whales do. But there are lake whalestoo. They are small and very rare, but they sound like ocean whales and cansurvive under ice.” She stands, pulling my brother and me up with her. Theydust the snow off my legs.

“Remember the whales on Animal Planet?” mysister asks. “How they made those funny little high sounds, just like the oneswe are hearing?” She waits for me to nod. “Listen to the lake whales sing.”

I listen. She is right. The noises don’treally sound like ice. In the Sunday comics, ice goes CRACK. This sound is closer to brrrowPOWwweershhheePOWOROPOWeeeoo.

“Whales sing,” I repeat tentatively.

My sister nods like a fortune telleremphasizing the accuracy of a palm reading. My brother looks off somewhere pastmy head.

I stare down between my skates. If Iconcentrate, I think I can see a shadow passing by where the layers of ice end.There’s another echoing boom traveling upwards, followed by a series ofhigher-pitched notes. I close my eyes, see a round gray body with a flippertale. Its back skims the bottom of the ice that spreads over its head like anendless roof, or a frozen sky.

I forget for a moment that I am on top of theice and not beneath it, and I coast on the wake of the lake whale. I whooshalong, my legs trailing behind me, arms at my sides. There is no one at myelbows. To my left is a whole swirl of lake whales, singing all differentsounds. I want to go there. I start to underwater dog-paddle in that direction.But I’ve forgotten the wake, shuttling me forwards. Try to swim out of it butthe edge of its current catches me, slides me back to center. I reach towardthe flurry of sound and motion and fins again, then give up. Let myself bepulled by this whale’s constant, comforting wake.

“What are you doing? Come on, let’s skate!”My sister pulls at my elbow. My brother is turned away, watching something. Myhead whirls as I remember where I am.

I look down at the ice again. It is still. Noshadows pass by. The ice has gone quiet. I am upset that I did not get to jointhe cluster of whales. I am upset because I was never under the water with thelake whales. I did not see any lake whales at all.

I frown at my sister who is wigglingimpatiently. “Are you sure there arelake whales?”

She sighs loudly. It is the same sigh shemakes when the three of us are playing cars and I sit on the highway and drivemy truck the wrong way. “Yes, I am sure there are lake whales.”

I look to my brother for affirmation but hedoes not notice because he is testing which direction the wind is coming fromwith his finger, like Robinson Crusoe.

“I don’t believe you.”

I have surprised my sister. She blinks at me,silent.

“I don’t believe you,” I say again. This timeI mean it. “When I was five I would’ve, Maybe six. But I’m seven.” I feel bigall of a sudden. “You made them up. You’re lying.”

As soon as I say this, I wish I could take itback. Wipe the words away fast like dry-erase marker on a whiteboard. Mysister’s cheeks, red from the cold, are getting redder.

“You think I want to spend my time sheltering you?”

My sister hurls the sentence like a snowball.I want to put my arms up, protect my face, but she keeps her right arm rigid soI can’t move my left.

“Lookat me, help me, I’m drowning. Give me a break. You can’t keep real andimaginary straight, ever. He and I could have skated the whole lake by now, butno. We’re standing here, making stuff up to comfort you.”

“But, but. But he’s not.”

“Yes he’s…what?” My sister trails off. Shemust feel the wind brushing against her left elbow. She follows my finger,turning her head inch by inch, as if taking time to steel herself to see whatshe already knows. 

The faint, gently curving lines etched byblades in the ice are our only tether to our brother, who is closer to the icefishing houses than to us now. His green jacket that will soon be my sister’sand then mine, sways from side to side with the purposeful strokes of hisskates. His arms swing free, propelling him forward even faster. Perhaps hefeels our joined bewildered gaze on his shoulder blades because he looks back,drags one blade to slow himself to a halt.

“Come on!” he calls. He beckons with hisright arm. “Let’s go to the village!”

We do not answer. We stand perfectly stillwhere we are, elbow to elbow. 

I turn my head and watch my sister watch ourbrother. For a moment, my sister actually seems ten. Light wisps of red-brownhair twist in the air, catch on her eyelashes. Her bottom lip disappearsinward, tucked under her front teeth.

“It’s okay,” I whisper. “You’ve got me.”

At the sound of my voice, something awakensunder her skin. A vibration runs through her body. Her shoulders shift back,her lip reappears, returns to position. The brainstormer, the negotiator, thesergeant is back.

 “Areyour skates still tied?” she asks, eyes on our brother.

I check. “Yeah. I have both mittens too.”

“Good. Let’s skate then. Show him he’s notany faster than us.”

I look up at her again, studying her face andtone for any leftover anger at my disloyalty regarding the lake whales. To myinexpressible relief, I find none.

My sister glides forward and I trip unevenlyafter. The ice is bumpier here.

“Turn your hand so you can wrap your fingersaround my wrist,” she instructs. “You’ll be steadier.” I do what she says andkeep tight to her side as she navigates around patches of snow until ourbrother’s laughing smile is clear and close. 

*

His face fades. I brush my hair out of myeyes, look around. I’m at the center of the lake now, at the edge of thevillage. That’s what we called the collection of corrugated metal shacks. Madethem feel less lonely, less like displaced telephone boxes. Less temporary. Butthey are, like me. It’s been four years since I’ve stayed in Minnesota for morethan a few weeks at a time. Sometime in high school, I vowed to myself that Iwould choose a college my siblings hadn’t, major in something they knew nothingabout, surround myself with friends to whom they were strangers. Friends whodidn’t know I’d spent a childhood drafting off my siblings, letting myself bepulled along by their wake.

In the last four years, I’d seen my siblingsin snatches—a week at Christmas, a few days of overlap in some city, acoordinated trip to see grandparents. I thought it was just time, or rather thelack of it, that made it that way. But I don’t know. The identity I’dconstructed, grown accustomed to in the spaces between our reunions, began tounravel the longer I was with them. Maybe I always cut our time short because Iwasn’t sure that if I stayed, I wouldn’t fall back into who I was before—thechild who needed someone to invent creatures to make her feel okay. The shadowof two people who never wondered if their identity relied on other people tomake it whole.

Before I left for the East Coast at eighteen,I nestled in cardboard boxes everything they’d passed on to me—sweatshirts, aceramic lamp, Pokémon cards, ice skates—and pushed them under my bed. What wasleft fit easily in my suitcases.

I’d forgotten about the boxes until I wentlooking for my skates only hours ago. I picture taking the skates back to New York,searching for a lake rather than a job.

Hasn’tbeen cold enough there for that, my brother would say, if he were alive. The ice would snap under you. I don’tknow what my sister would say.

I hear a clang of metal on metal, catch mybalance. Most of the ice houses are padlocked shut, pipe chimneys iced over.The sun streaks them orange. One door swings on its hinges. Skating closer, Ihear the same whistle from earlier. Parallel with the doorway, I make out theman’s profile, crouched within the floorless shack. His rod spasms, alive. Hepulls up the wire in careful increments. There’s a glint of silver, the lash ofa tail, a fish writhing in pale hands.

*

My sister and I have followed our brotherinto the center of the village. The sun is still high in the sky and men withbeards covering their faces and thick rubber boots move in and out of thefishing houses, hauling buckets, throwing a few words back and forth to oneanother. Nobody minds that we are here.

Our brother asks two of the bearded men ifthey non-ice fish too. They say yes. He gets them to describe their boats. Heasks if they’ve fished in the ocean. They say no.

“I want to sail in the ocean,” our brother informs them. “I want to make mapsfor areas of water people haven’t explored much, maps for sailors. Chart wherethe good water is and the bad, mark networks of islands, the best coves to moorin.”

One of the fishermen has a dog, golden andwavy. It runs up to my sister, wags its tail. She finds where it likes to bescratched, behind the ears, a little lower down. When her left hand gets tired,I have to drop my elbow so she can reach the spot with her right.

My focus is on the ice right in front of anopen shack a few yards away. Something is moving there. Flopping about. Grayblending into white, its wetness glistens. I locate an eye, tiny and black. Thefish’s flops devolve into spasms. I pull my linked arm to get my sister’sattention.

“Look.” I tug again. She looks. “I think thefish is dying.”

“Definitely,” says my sister. The dog licksher hand. “Don’t watch, it’s awful.” She turns back to the dog, who is notdying.

But I can’t stop. The fish’s pinched mouthkeeps opening and closing but no sound comes out. I wonder if fish ever makesound. It flips its tail, up, down. Up, down. The man steps halfway out of theice house. The new fish in his hand looks at me. The length of my forearm, itpulls against the hook, trying to shake free. The man slides the metal from itsmouth, lets the fish drop onto the ice. It doesn’t make a smack because itlands on the body of the first and slides off. This second fish thrashesvigorously as the first one waves its tail like a signal flag, then dies.

I jerk my elbow again to jostle my sister’sarm.

“What.”

“Will you tell the man in there to stopkilling the fish?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Pleeeeasse?” I hearmy voice twist into a whine like a balloon losing air.

“If you care so much, you go tell him.”

One of the fishermen our brother befriendedhas produced a map. Our brother holds it inches from his nose. He is sayingsomething about isles and straits to the fisherman, eyes roaming wide-openseas. He doesn’t notice me willing him to notice me. My sister talks to thefisherman belonging to the dog. She’s going to be a trainer, she tells him. Adog trainer, horse trainer, tiger trainer. She will also be an instructor.Instructing people how to treat dogs, horses, tigers. The fisherman looksimpressed. If I tug her elbow I know she’ll sigh at me again.

I turn back to the fish. It is stillthrashing about. Its mouth opens and shuts. Its body shudders. This is what Iimagine drowning looks like. The fish’s eye stares into me. Only me. I steadymyself on my skates. I’ll be the only onewho has saved a fish. The man’s back is turned. He is fiddling around withthe rod. Only the fish looks at me. There are pauses between its flops now. Idig the toe of my blade into the ice. Lean forward.

It takes five skate strokes to reach thefish. It slips in my hands. There’s an opening between the man’s legs and theshack’s doorframe. I can see the black of the hole in the ice. A few moreseconds and I will drop the fish and the man will turn around. I push myshoulders into the gap. Stretch my arms out, loosen my fingers. The fish drops,twisting into a dive.

What follows is a blur of sound and movement.In making my escape, I forget the blades on my feet. I wait for the tug of mysister’s arm against mine, for her resistance to catch me, pull me back toupright. But she is not there. My elbow scrapes across ice.

I hear blades, the heave of breath. Handsgrip me, grasp under my arms. My brother’s hands. They lift me up.

*

I skate into a crouch beside one of thelocked fishing houses, let my gloved fingers skim the ice. It would’ve beenaround here where I fell, where my brother picked me up. Go, he had called to my sister. I remember her flying past with theintensity of an Olympic athlete. I’d never seen her skate that fast, thatgracefully. She couldn’t before, with her arm through mine, because I wasn’t—fastor graceful.

My brother had bent forward, coaching me as Istruggled onto his back. Hurry. Climb on,that’s it, he had said. I came to know that tone well over many summers asmy brother guided my hands over the sailboat’s wheel as the boat jibed, calledfor me to loosen the mainsheet as I scrambled back from the bow. I only reallytreasured those times later, once he didn’t need me as deckhand anymore.Skippered ships to places with names I couldn’t pronounce. I didn’t know backthen, at eleven, twelve, thirteen, that the boat he taught me to sail would oneday take him away for good.

A cabinfilled with maps. What the coast guard saw days ago, on findingthe boat.

I straighten up, survey the ice. It is easyto feel him here. I remember my hands on his shoulders, his on the backs of mycalves. I clung to him, chin by his ear. I can still feel the rhythm of hisstrokes, right foot, left, hear the skid of blades on ice, the huff of hisbreath, dynamic yet steady. I watched the snow like clouds slide by beneath us,white lines etched in the wake of his skates like the smoke trails ofairplanes.

I remember at eighteen and caught within myfirst panic attack, someone told me to go in my mind somewhere perfectly safe.I returned to that moment at seven years old, piggy-back on my brother. Islowed the frantic rise and fall of my chest to match his breaths as he glidedacross the lake, eyes on the horizon, even as a fisherman hurled curses at ourbacks.

I keep skating, leaving the ice houses behindme. I let my mind fall backwards again, fifteen years.

*

My brother lets me go at last, lowers myskates back to the ice. He turns to me, laughing. “That was sick. Wasn’t thatsick?”

“Little fish thief.” My sister has loopedback. “He never saw you coming.”

I look at her, the length of my brotherbetween us. I try to make sense of the look on her face but I can’t. Not evenif it’s good or bad. Maybe it’s both. My hands are slick with fish. I can stillfeel it jerking in my hands, see its dark eye looking into me.

“It wanted to have control,” I say.

They laugh, though I didn’t mean to be funny.

“I’m the only one who has saved a fish,” Isay. They don’t hear. They have already skated away. It’s okay. I am the fishrescuer. “The only one.” I whisper thisover and over, the sentence’s rhythm and that of my skates melding into anindistinguishable echo. 

*

My blade catches on snow, I wobble back to balanced. There are too many divots in the ice, splintered wood, drilled fishing holes, to keep eyes off the ground for long.

That’sthe thing about lake skating. There’s so much space, it seems you can doanything. But really, the snow and rough ice determine your path. Mybrother’s voice glides back into my thoughts. I quicken my pace instinctively,as if, were I too slow, he would skate on into another hemisphere. See how we made those loops without realizing?

I remember the itch in his voice. Therestlessness. I remember it in mine too, twisting my words into a whine onlyquiet contained. Both of us felt a pull toward the unknown. Him, to documentthe blank space, turn it into lines and names. Me, to inhabit it. Mold it intopoems. Find myself in its stories. Our sister is different that way. She hasalways claimed the ground right under her feet. She never felt the need to run.To a forest, a city, filled with autonomous, singular lives. To open water, noshore in sight.

Sometimes I still play the scene over andover in my head, of my brother setting me down on the ice, of looking up as mysister slides to a stop, arms poised, untethered. I hold her face in my mind. Iam still trying to decipher how she felt then. I have guesses—relieved. Hurt.Proud. Apprehensive. Not about herself. She wouldn’t have doubted she’d bealright. I think she had a sense, even then, of what would occur eventually.

I wasabout to drown.

Thatcould never happen. Not as long as we’re connected.

I look over my shoulder. I can trace my routeby the patterns of dark ice. Facing forward, I know where I’ll go next. Leftaround the fishing hole, right around the snow drift, carve some circles in theoval of ice beyond that. I stand still and squint. The oval of ice looks ratherlike a giant head, and the arc around the fishing hole is the shape of a bonyshoulder. I link the shapes on the lake’s surface into an outline of mybrother. Into an outline of me. It could be either of us.

While my sister and I wrestled over the rightto be angry, my brother slipped away.

But it could’ve been me too. We both let go.Neither of us had to let go.

I circle back to the village. The whistling man lifts buckets onto the child’s wagon. He shuts his ice house door, locks it. I watch dusk wrap around his shoulders as he plods towards shore, leaning into the wagon’s weight. The two ice houses farthest from me have lost their edges, their doors. Little more than spaces of solid in the empty air, they could be anything. A sister who knows what to say. A brother wanting me to grasp how things work. They balance on the blades of skates, waiting for me to catch up.

Youcan’t keep real and imaginary straight, ever.

I suck my bottom lip under my teeth, let go.The lake’s surface is darkening. The snow shifts to a soft blue-gray. Pinpricksof yellow light surround the lake. Lights switching on. I pull my scarf up overcold-burned cheeks, then wend my way along channels of smooth ice in thedirection of my brother’s car. I reach the boat launch area with its pair ofarm-like rock barriers, locate my boots where I wedged them between stones. Isit down to untie my skates, study the cove. Maybe the arms aren’t signaling. Maybethey’re ready to haul the lost to shore. I hear the pop and moan of iceexpanding. Hydrogen bonds doing something. I still couldn’t say what.

I wrap my stiff fingers around the phone inmy coat pocket, slip it out. Tap on a name. The ringing sounds metallic anddisjointed against my ear.

“Hello?”

I try to pick out the familiarities in mysister’s voice. “It’s me. Have a minute?”

A pause. Then, “A minute. Horses to feed.”

“I just wanted to say. Wanted to say,” I lookout at the desert of ice, nearly too dark to see. “Thank you for the lakewhales.”

I listen to my sister breathe. I listen toher listen to me breathe.

“You’re at the lake?”

“Yes.”

 “Doyou hear them?” Her voice is steady. I know it infinitely. “Singing?”

I pull my knees up to my chest, close my eyes. Sharp pulses reverberate in the January air, trail into resonances, like echoes of laughter. Under feet of ice, lake whales carve wakes in the water.

“Yes. Yes, I do.”

*

Octavia Bell studied creative writing and sociology at Vassar College. She grew up in rural Minnesota with goats and chickens, and now resides in Brooklyn, where she works as an assistant at a literary agency.

Artwork by Adeet Deshmukh: Winterfell. Woodstock, Illinois, 2017. Digital photograph.​​

Adeet Deshmukh is a New York City based photo editor, photographer, and designer. His images capture the interplay between light/shadow and emotion/composition—in the streets of Manhattan and Mumbai, in the faces of family and strangers, and in the fields of Iceland and the Midwest. Adeet has had shows in Chicago and New York, and his work has appeared in various print publications. Most recently, his photography was featured in a group show at the CUSP Gallery in Provincetown.​​ Find more of his work on Instagram or at his website.