Julie Nelson

Whelking

The beach is empty this early in the morning. Flocks of brown and grey pelicans skim over the rowdy water, flying low, making dramatic plunging dives, plucking fish from the sea. They fly in unison. When one rises, they all do.

Freya is alone. She walks barefoot on the chilly sand of late September, her arms swinging by her side. A thick sweater blocks the wind, a sweater Wyatt knitted and gave her as a thank you. A thank you for coming out to care for him now he is too sick to do it alone. The sweater is a good weight and keeps her warm. She thinks of him holding knitting needles in his frail hands. At the breakwater, she stops and watches as waves, frothy from an overnight storm, crash against the pilings with a rushing sound that gives her peace but comes with an ache. For the first time since she got here, she lets herself sob.

Kaposi's sarcoma. Hard to spell and hard to say. What Wyatt had. Has. Has been diagnosed as having. At this moment, the virus is sailing past the threshold of potentiality, moving swiftly downstream to being full blown what it is, a powerful current shaping its own course inside his body. Arriving at the destination they have been dreading, what will be the last part of the journey. AIDS. What will kill Wyatt before the year is out. 

Wyatt seems to think he will not succumb. But this is 1984. There is no cure. Many people have already deserted him. Their father, Wayne, says Wyatt is dead to him already, and he does not help, does not visit. Does not tell people his son has been diagnosed with AIDS. What none of them can know is how nearly forty years later, Wayne will die in another pandemic in 2021, lying on his stomach on a ventilator in a hospital with no one around him. For now, Wayne’s absence is breaking Wyatt’s heart.

They came here as kids, Freya remembers. She and Wyatt. To the shore. Dad wanted to be here to have family time in summer. They came and looked for whelks. Freya is looking for them now, not realizing how automatic searching for them is, from the old days. She longs to find and hold one in her hand, breathe in the briny smell, let her fingers trace the swirling, tapered exterior, and look with one eye to see if a chubby snail is curled inside. She might find one, she thinks, at low tide. Something to give Wyatt later on, when she gets back to the beach house where they are staying, and will stay, until the end, the place where he wants to die.

Yesterday Wyatt said, as a statement not a question, Am I a person. Freya cannot stop thinking how her brother said it aloud. The doctor was careful to say to Wyatt, You are a person who has been diagnosed with HIV and AIDSinstead of I am HIV. Positive. When the doctor explained how language would matter when talking with others, all Wyatt responded was, Am I a person. That he even asked that way bothers Freya. Freya can still feel Wyatt’s damp hand in her own as the doctor told him he is entering the end stages. Wyatt could not stop shaking. With blurry eyes, delirious and feverish, Wyatt calls out for his partner, Mack, who himself succumbed to the virus about a year and a half ago. Now, Wyatt’s body is covered in brownish, purplish spots up and down his legs which are now pressing on his intestines causing him to suffer from diarrhea. Like a snail in a shell, his legs swell and cause him pain so he can hardly stand. He spends the day under a mountain of heavy blankets, drifting in and out of consciousness. The doctor explained what to expect. But Wyatt cannot hear what the doctor says, and neither can Freya. Wisps of words. More medicines to keep track of. She knows she will have to go back this week and ask for the doctor to write everything down so she can remember.

A conch rolls up from the sea and lands at her feet. It is empty inside. The hollowed center holds the sounds of the waves as Freya holds it to her ear. Wasn’t it that the air trapped inside the shell's shape vibrated in such a way it seemed like ocean sounds or waves? It sounds eternal to her, wherever it comes from, as she watches the pink-grey sky brighten with the rising sun. It occurs to her the rich eternal sound comes from having empty space to create an inner music. Sandpipers skitter back and forth with the rolling water. Freya realizes whatever happens, she is here now for Wyatt when no one else was, and because she is here, Wyatt will not die alone. And a feeling of hope comes over her as she makes a discovery about herself. 

She is the kind of person who will never be lonely.

Julie Nelson is an educator, counselor, and creative writer. She has hiked in the Green Mountains of Vermont, swum in two oceans, advised undergraduates at four universities, lived in five states, and published stories and poems in literary journals. “Whelking” grew out of a previously published short story, “Plotting,” with Freya as the central character. Julie is currently writing a novel about Freya, a 40-year-old mother of five, who, in the 1980s, becomes the care giver for her brother who is dying from AIDS.