Dying for Chocolate

The Chinese manacles. Arch’s favorite trick. The magician appears to be shackled at the wrists with the ropes, which are threaded back through the tube and drawn tight by one or more assistants. The trick is that a tiny piece of string attaches the ropes. When the trick is done right, the assistant who puts the magician into the shackle breaks the string by appearing to pull the ropes taut. Sissy accompanied the cuffed Arch over to the diving board.

I clawed madly at the dirt to get back around to the fence. Blood beat in my ears. I sent clods of soil flying. God, help me, I begged as I cut as fast as I could. I could not imagine what Adele had used to replace the string inside the manacles.

“I think you need to be over here next to me while I’m doing this,” came Arch’s voice, much closer now. He must have been on the diving board. Sissy said something indistinguishable. “Okay!” cried Arch. “You pull it tight and then I’ll go off the board. Then it’ll look like I get out of them underwater.”

“Oh, all right,” came Sissy’s voice.

I clipped the last two wires and ripped out the hunk of fence just as a splash erupted from the pool. Seconds ticked off in my head—one, two, three, four, five—as I tore up the dirt mound behind the diving board. Sissy, fully clothed, was still standing on the board. I leaped up on the board and pushed her into the water. She shrieked before splashing in.

Arch’s head emerged from the water. He sputtered and coughed. Yelled, “I can’t seem to get them off!” His voice was full of panic.

The water was like ink. I jumped away from the board and Arch’s voice. The cold was a shock. Once in the water, I couldn’t see a thing. Fear seized my body. Arch was thrashing nearby. Sissy was yelling, “Who is it?” but I had no intention of answering. I swam to where I thought Arch was. With my arms rigid in front of me, I dove. I was hoping to reach Arch, but only nicked the bottom of the pool. I brought my legs to the pool floor and pushed upward. Sissy had scrambled out of the pool. I heard her voice but could not see her. A few feet behind me, Arch surfaced and yelped. I lunged for him.

“It’s me, it’s me, it’s me!” I screamed when I had hold of one of his arms.

He was screaming and thrashing in a complete panic. “Mom!” he sobbed. “Mom! I can’t get out of these things!”

I put my arm across his chest. Treading water madly, I pushed up on his head and shoulders so they were above the water. With his arms locked in the handcuffs, Arch’s body was heavy, hard to grip. He thrashed against the constraints and gagged helplessly on the water.

“Hold still! Stop moving!” I yelled. The water raged with his kicking and jerking. I couldn’t hold on to him. My hair fell like cold seaweed over my eyes and I was blinded. A sudden unwanted memory of being caught by the undertow on the Jersey shore rolled over me. The dark water had sucked me down like a muscled giant, and I had had the very clear thought, at age eleven, that I was about to die.

My lungs burned as I heaved up again and caught Arch under his armpits. Come on, honey, come on, I sent my thoughts to him the way I had prayed in childbirth. If we can just get through the next five minutes, I thought, if we can just get through . . .

His slippery body quieted. His cough was still ragged, but he had stopped fighting the water so hard. I began a one-armed crawl to the side. Slowly, slowly, I kicked and pulled and fought off sheer panic. My eyes burned. I swallowed the heavily chlorinated water. I couldn’t see the pool’s edge, but in a minute my head cracked the cement.

“Okay, carefully, carefully,” I said to Arch. He shook loose from me, his hands still bound, and walked suddenly up the submerged concrete steps.

“Goldy, it’s you!” said an astonished, shivering Sissy. “What happened in there? Did you push me in? What happened to Arch?”

I glanced around at my son. Despite the burn from the chlorine, my eyes were growing accustomed to the darkness. He had crouched down to bring his hands close to his feet. Savagely, he tromped on the bamboo pole with its ropes that pinned his wrists. Within a moment the bamboo broke and he wriggled his arms free.

Sissy’s hands were empty. No weapon. “Get a towel,” I ordered her, unwilling for the moment to accuse her of attempted murder or being an accessory thereto. Her face puzzled, she silently handed me a couple of small towels. I wrapped” both of them around Arch, who was sniffling hard and coughing.

“Mom, I was trying to get away from her! I thought if I could get out of the manacles quickly, I’d be able to run away!”

“It’s okay, Arch, it’s okay.” I grabbed a tarpaulin that was covering some pipes, then picked up one of the pipes. I looked around to where Sissy had been sitting. No weapon there, either—nothing but the bag, her flashlight, and her school notebook.