He says he loves how my new brown skin makes my hidden parts so visible in the dark, how the white triangles make them easy targets for his fingers, his tongue, his cock. Of these things I am sure. They are what they have always been. They are reliable. As he puts each inside of me, I feel them reminding me of how sure the world can be.
***
With the prior day’s sun and surf causing us to sleep until the time that is called brunch, the mornings become afternoons, the afternoons become evenings, and the evenings in-between — a place neither here nor there. It’s an unsteady place and it’s then that I find myself leaving Frank’s side, heading down the staircase to count the starfish in the hallway. I know their number. I know it will not change, should not change. I hold their consistency with a grip that frightens.
Sand sticks to my bare feet when I pass the lip of the entryway. I am careful not to look. I know the beach towels are lurking there, damp in the darkness, waiting to be something that can scare me.
I finish counting and start again.
33.
***
Before we know it the sun gives up on us and we’re back at the entryway which has accumulated a small dune. Frank sighs and says something about a cleaning deposit before placing one foot on its grade and then the other. He asks, “Who’s first?” and they begin to fight for position; claws jab and then lock, jab and lock. The sand shifts and Frank begins to slide towards them. “Break it up, guys!” he orders and their chaos dims and breaks. I step back, and watch them grab and climb; hands now, in his. They slide down the other side and call for me with words bubbling thick and coarse. I know I can run but I don’t.
I climb.
***
At the table, mottled beaks open wide revealing teeth spirals that wind crooked in rows upon rows and I know it’s not food they want. It rots before them piled and stacked hiding sailboats, crabs, and coral. I think it might be me they want, but even that I am not sure of. Nothing tender has come from them. I have not seen it. Have not looked for it. Have not given it.
The children, they are my children, don’t stay awake for their baths anymore. Their forms collapse, a caress on soft surfaces. I make Frank carry them. I say I am too tired. I do not say I am afraid. I do not tell Frank that whenever I try to settle them, they strike back with tentacles telling me NO MOMMY. I do not tell Frank that when I retreat their laughter sounds like the scream of a kite string cutting the wind.
Frank has given up on me knowing anything I used to. I tell Frank I am too tired. I tell Frank I want to be carried. I tell Frank I do not want to be washed and could he please close the windows because, once again, the sun has given up on us. The cold has crept in while we were busy pretending things were the same. His hands reach up, grab the sill and slide it home. The curtains lay flat and Frank slides under the blanket and between my legs. His tongue laps three times, he smacks his lips and says, “Mmm…salty.” He buries himself again and the more he eats the more the sound of the ocean fills my ears. I let it take me, I hold its tongue, I choke on how it is consuming me.
When I come, the scream of gulls.
***
We cannot get into the house. The entryway now contains an entire dune. Beach grasses pop out of the side windows. Frank has to break a bathroom window to get us in.
The children are quiet and dry for once. They won’t eat grapes. They won’t eat crackers. Their skin runs from pinks and reds to greens and brown blacks. The smell is there, but more putrid and infected. It peels my walls even thinner. They look wilted, withered. I want a box big enough to put them in.
This time, I am the one to carry them to their beds. I brave myself and dress them in sleepers soft with puppies and bears — furry, gentle, four-legged things this place has made me forget.
As they wriggle themselves between the sheets, they retract everything that they know frightens me. I run my fingers through their hair and realize I have forgotten so much more.
Downstairs, I don’t tell Frank how brackish seawater trickled from their mouths when I tried to kiss them good night.
***
In the morning we have to free them from a tangle of kelp. Their skin is corpse pale and pruned, wet and cold. They ask us to bury them in the sand and we do — every tentacle, every fin. The heat of the grains cocoons them and we hold each other hoping they will heal. We lie next to them under the sun on towels sewn with bright seascapes.
Frank points his eyes at the writhing sand lumps and asks, “Is it time yet? I’d like you to be a mother again.”
The waves crash and the sound of it stirs me moist, the scream of gulls builds inside my ears.
I want to tell him yes.
Because Seven Ate Nine
The sun stoked the fire in the air and we all sat around breathing it. David Bowie tongue-kissed the silence. I pictured his mouth opened wide, all tonsil and tongue.
She asked, “Is he saying, ‘fame’?” and I said, “Yes.”
He said, “You look like a completely different person with your fingernails painted.”
I wondered about that, waved my hands around my face, asked, “What about now?”
He said, “Yes.”
I did it again. “Now?”
“Yes.”
She said, “I agree. Completely different person.”
I thought about it some more. I held my arms out. Wrists bent. Hands pressed against the air. Ten red ovals.
I wanted to say, “But I ate a fried egg this morning,” “But I wiped enough times until the brown was gone,” “But I put on mascara and thought about how today I probably would feel less happy than the day before.” I wanted to say, “Look at my dry elbows.”
But I didn’t.
I sat there in my skin while they looked at me. So new. Now blonde and well-kempt. Now speaking French. Now petting Great Danes.
They just nodded.
I Wish They Knew
I came out and saw them lying there in the dark and their legs were splayed like their arms were splayed like bird shit splatter across a store window but completely beautiful and easy to hurt, in that, I could do anything to them if I wanted to.
I did not hurt.
I wanted to touch them but I did not.
I wanted to lie on top of them and trap their warmth against my own.
I did not do that either.
Instead, I threw blankets. The bent whites of their limbs turned to dark. None of them stirred.
I wish they knew I did that. I want them to feel like I love them more than their own mothers.
Things I Could Tell You
There are things I want to tell you. As you know, they stir. If you are not here, I cannot fill you with them. These past four days do not have a feeling of being watched. I cannot sense you. I do not feel your eyes on me, peering upwards from the dark underneath of the couch, from the shadowed must behind the billow of the drapes, from the belly of the porch light. Still, I come and go with them, unsure. I have no choice but to tread in the ghost of you.