I remember, when my mom was young – I don’t know how young – she had heard a story about the singing rock the way my grandfather told it. He visited an island during the war, and stood on the rock as so many had, listening to the islanders tell their stories. But one day, and for the first time, my mom said she wanted to hear the story from the islanders themselves.
Early that day, before sunrise, my mom and I took a ferry to the small island on Lill Lake. It was my first time going on a ferry. My mom dressed me in black stretch pants and a jean jacket. In the mirror I watched her tie back my hair, fastening my bangs with some red hair pins.
“It’s awful windy on the boat,” she said. “And you don’t want those in your eyes all day, honey. There’s a lot to see.”
She wore jeans, some white flats, and a beautiful blue wool jacket she got while on a tour in Ireland, when she was still single. She had eaten only pickles for a month to save enough money for her trip, she said.
We had ridden our bikes to the dock. Seagulls hovered above us, fighting the wind, as we locked up our bikes to an old, rusty stop sign. Surely, they thought we had food for them, but we only had ourselves.
Standing at the bow of the ferry, the wind was colder, even though the sun was shining. My mother held me close. She had one arm around me and the other on the railing. Now and then I told her I wanted to go inside where it wasn’t so windy. But whenever I spoke, she’d lean in to whisper in my ear something about the island.
“They have their own kind of snake, you know,” she said. “You wouldn’t find it any place else in the world.”
“What does it look like?”
“Well,” she said, “it’s black...and blue...and it floats on the water.”
She drew out her words, rubbing her lips together. Some stray blonde hairs clung to her eyelashes. The sun beat on her face, her eyes fixed on a speedboat passing by.
“I saw one when I went swimming once. Grandpa took me to the island, remember? It came up from behind me on the water.” She turned away from me, clasped the railing with both hands, and swung her body from side to side. It felt natural to mimic her.
“I was alone, too,” she said. “It was pretty scary seeing his little head sticking up out of the water.”
We caught sight of the rock when I was just starting to get hungry again. It was black, and its top was smooth and round from the waves that had crashed upon it, hundreds of years of waves. My mom had heard that some islanders gathered on the shore each year before they harvested the grapes, when a crescent, butter-colored moon surfaced in the sky. They’d sing a tune with instruments made of maple wood and leather. The men danced around the large crackling fires while the women poured wine that came from their own vineyards. The children would toss dried roses petals onto the rock.
It was the island ritual. And my mom wanted me to see it.
The wind had turned the lake into a sea by the time we reached the dock on the island. A young couple – they looked as if they missed each other – started kissing in front of us, caressing each other’s foreheads and cheeks. They got into a Jeep, scurrying off as the tide grew.
We ate lunch at a small, but elegant restaurant on the island. While we waited for our server, I asked my mom why the tide got bigger. She said it was from the wind or a storm that was coming. I asked her whether the big tankers on the lake could make the waves.
“Only little ones,” she said.
The waiter brought us hot wash clothes to clean our hands, along with a pitcher of cool water. I put the moist cloth on my face, even though I knew I shouldn’t, and that is when I noticed my ear hurt. There was a strange ringing inside it, a pretty ring, not like a bell, like a whistle. Mom said it was from too much wind, and she assured me it would go away while we were inside.
With our soft bread, which we dipped in a bowl of sweet cheese and olive oil, we ate poached fish with asparagus. The flavor of lemon made the ringing in my ears louder, I thought, but I didn’t tell my mom that.
An old man was eating alone at a table next to ours. He had a greasy, tan, wrinkled face, and he hovered over his plate between bites, keeping close to his food. He didn’t know I was staring at him, but his long, brown beard grazed his mashed potatoes a few times. After each bite, he would look at the painting hanging on the far wall.
“That’s called The Milkmaid, darling,” my mom replied when I asked her who the woman in the painting was. The maid wore a cream-colored bonnet, which framed her face in the sunlight, and she was pouring milk into a bowl. I wondered then what the woman was thinking.
“Was she going to make some bread?” I asked, holding my mother’s hand as we left the restaurant. She didn’t hear me. Her grip got tighter as we passed some islanders on the road. She asked them about the ritual, and found out that some islanders were meeting at the rock in the evening.
It was about a three-mile hike to the rock from the restaurant. We stayed on a gravel road next to the shoreline. I wanted to stop, to play on the beach; there were so many other rocks to find, little ones I could take home. She let me stop for a few minutes to pick up some rocks on the shore. Together, we fed the seagulls with some bread we had taken from the restaurant. But she didn’t want to stop for long. We had to make it to the rock before dark, she said. Even though we were walking, my legs were cold from the wind. My arm hurt as she pulled me along.
I’d look at her sometimes to tell her my ear was ringing again. I wanted her to look at me, to see the expression on my face that had all too often won me my way. But her eyes were focused on the rock ahead of us, her hair charged and flying in the wind.
“Hurry, now,” she said, gripping my arm tighter. “I can see it now, just up there.”
Her voice was higher, almost whiny, but I thought it might just be the ringing in my ear fooling me.
When we got to the rock, she let go of my arm. Some islanders were already making the fires. They had set up a long row of empty wine bottles on the shore to collect the lake water from the waves. The necks of the bottles poked out of the sand, like the backbone of some half-buried sea creature.
“We catch the water from the waves, and mix it with the wine,” one man said. “It’s good luck to drink water that has touched the rock.”
“How fascinating,” my mother said, her eyes on the man’s chest, which bore a tattoo of a mermaid.
“And when does it sing?” she asked. “The rock, I mean.”
My mom’s face looked fleshy and pale. I reached out to grab her hand.
“We never know,” he said. “Only one person can hear it at a time.”
As the moon appeared in the sky, more people began arriving at the rock. My mom and I had gone barefooted and huddled together next to one of the fires. Some of the islanders began singing, carrying bottles of the lake water to the newcomers.
The young couple I had seen on the dock walked to a fire nearby. They had tied bed sheets around their thin, white bodies. Their arms were interlocked to keep each other balanced.
An old, wrinkled woman who sat in front of me had hair that came down her back in one long, loose braid. Ribbons were tied to the end of it, which sometimes hit my face. I tried asking her about what was happening. But she sat there like my mom, her eyes on the man with the tattoo.
It wasn’t long before the man walked towards the rock. He proceeded out to stand on the smaller rocks among the waves and, turning toward us, told the story.
“There was an Indian woman who sat upon the rock, when the moon could still be seen in the early morning,” – he pointed to the sky with his staff – “and sing to the lover who had left her. She was called Gulda. She sang to the waves and the seagulls above, as she sat on this rock. Her little bare feet would dangle above the tiny waves, which would grow during the day and crash upon the rock while she slept at night.”
The man then pointed to the rock with his staff.
“One day, Gulda sat on the rock, holding her infant.”
He was yelling now. The wind was stronger and it hurt my ears.
“The waves grew more fierce that day than they had in centuries. While the infant drank her milk, a wave overcame Gulda and took the baby from her arms.”
A mother in the crowd held her two children closer to her chest.
The old woman next to us gathered up her braid and twisted it into one large bun. She lifted her glass full of wine to the tattooed man.
“Let us drink to this, our holy drink, and our holy rock,” he yelled.
The islanders didn’t drink wine the way my aunts did when they visited our home, when they told my mother about the restaurants they’d tried out east without her, and the wine-tasting excursions that made up most of their holidays. The aunts always drank as though they wanted attention. In the living room, the three of them would swirl the liquid as they tipped their glasses, carefully holding them at the stems. Then they’d dip their noses deep into the glasses before taking a sip. My mom called this the “dip and sip,” but she never said that in front of them. They’d lift their noses so slowly, tightening their thin lips. We’d listen to their finespun chatter as they told my mom just how they could always tell the good wines from the bad.
But at this moment, my mom couldn’t have been thinking about them. She drank the wine as if it were milk.
When the tattooed man left the rocks he approached the crowd.
“Who will listen to the song?” he said. His belly looked larger now that he was closer to us.
“Who will get on the rock and listen for us?” he yelled, planting his staff in the sand.
My mother pushed me forward until I was before him. I looked at the tattoo on his chest: the mermaid’s breasts were full and round.
“Get on the rock,” my mom whispered into my ear. “Listen.”
To the rock I was led. My ears were thumping as I climbed atop the dark, hard mass. I turned around to look at my mom, but I couldn’t find her in the crowd. The young couple was already running back to the Jeep, each holding a bottle of wine.
“Stay there!”
I heard her voice in the crowd and smiled.
The man stood in the waves below me. He lifted his arms in the air and slowly chanted the ritual’s words.
“Rock of the moon, the waves, the tears, you stand were Gulda cried.”
He lifted the staff above his head. Words were coming out of his mouth, but I could not hear. He beat his staff on the rock. When the staff split, splinters of wood flew on the wind and landed in the waves.
“Release the song!”
The crowd joined in, “Release the song!”
My head felt hot as I stood there with my feet far apart, trying to keep my balance on that rock. I lifted my arms, and when I closed my eyes, I thought I might fly into the sky. My stretch pants were wet against my skin; they were almost part of my skin.
“Can you hear it?” my mom finally screamed from the shore.
My ears were ringing, as they did in the restaurant, only louder this time. And there was a flapping sound, a light vibration that seemed to lift me higher, like birds’ wings, hummingbirds that drank from the feeder outside the kitchen window at home.
“Yes, I can hear it singing. It’s beautiful,” I yelled to her.
I lifted my head to the sky and looked at the crescent moon. I saw a tiny scrap of lemon skin up there instead.
In that instant, a wave came upon the rock, and I fell.
I remember how it felt under the waves, when the water cooled my head and the pulse of the tide cradled me. I remember the bright lights in the hospital room, too. My mom was there, her face and hair softly aglow.
“Is this a dream?” I asked.
She told me that all was right, that I had passed out in the water.
“It’s a mild ear infection,” the nurse said. “Too much exposure to the wind, probably. She’ll be okay at home.”
That night, after we made it home, my mother poured me some milk, watched me drink it, and put me into some clean clothes. She held me for a few minutes in the rocking chair in my room before putting me into my bed.
I could not open my eyes, so heavy and dry they were.
“I’m sorry I made you go out there,” she said.
“That’s okay.”
“You’ll be better in the morning, after some sleep.” She kissed my cheeks, which were still warm.
The wood floor cracked under her feet as she headed for the door. She turned off the light. I could feel that she looked back on me in the darkness.
“Honey, did you...” she whispered. “Did you hear anything else on the rock, I mean, besides the ringing sound in your ear?”
I turned onto my side and pretended to already be asleep.
Lying in bed that night, I could hear my mom working on her typewriter in the little library down the hall. She was recreating the story we had heard on the island, one about a singing rock.
Sometimes, I heard her put a clean piece of paper into the machine. Other times, if I held my breath, I could I hear the ice fall in her glass. Asleep, I dreamed of the rocks we found on the beach that afternoon, and the seagulls hovering above as we tossed them bits of bread.
(The author acknowledges the Pelee Island legend of Hulda’s Rock)