Page 25 of What It's Like in Words
I lowered the dusty window and watched the world unfold and fall behind the car. It was like reading a book I hadn’t read in years only to find that it wasn’t exactly as I remembered. The colors were duller. There were more buildings. And the potholes were making me feel sick. Dad used to drive over them at speed and I would giggle while Mum held her stomach, the way that I was now, and accuse him of aiming for them to spite her. But there was an occasional smell of something in the breeze, I didn’t know what of, but something so familiar that I had to pinch my arm to stop from crying.
He put on the radio and scanned past the static.
The road became smoother the farther we drove from the airport, but the sickness in my stomach remained. When we reached Gede, we turned toward the ocean and drove through Timboni. The buildings were bright colors, and there were stalls selling vegetables,plastic toys, mitumba clothes, shiny party dresses, and kitchenware. Everything was busier than I remembered. The town looked twice the size. I told him that, and he said, withering, that it had been nearly two decades. The final stretch was quiet until we arrived.
Okay, this should be it, he said, turning in. You have the instructions for the keys, yeah?
WE OPENED THE DOORto the beach house, and it was instantly familiar, but then it changed and became unfamiliar the way that a word does when you focus on it. It looked like a sketch artist’s impression of the house that we used to stay in.
He charged ahead but I remained in the doorway, still gripping the handle. There were little red half moons on my arm from where I had been pinching myself in the car.
Enola, you coming?
Yes, sorry!
I pulled my suitcase over the rugs on the sandy wood floors, past a lamp with frayed tassels and a collection of ornate dogs in a cabinet. There were three bedrooms, and the sofas in the living room had mosquito netting too. The house was meant for a family.
He was standing in front of the window in the master bedroom with his arms outstretched. The house was dark, and I squinted in the early afternoon light. Everything was bleached and endless, vast and endless, endless.
Right. I’m getting in the shower, then spending the day in that fucking sea, he said, pointing to it as if there was another one.
The way he made a space his own. Like everything belonged to him.
Did you see the weird dogs?
I laughed. I did.
He went into the adjoining bathroom, and I stared out the window as he sung cod opera. The waves broke over the sand and in the ocean over the reef, a marine park of fish, turtles, long black urchins with blue lights in the center and small orange dots, and smaller gray urchins with white-tipped spikes, like hedgehogs. I had trodden onone once, and Dad had pulled the spikes out with tweezers. Near the horizon, white fishing boats had flags showing their catches.
I left my suitcase by the side of the bed he hadn’t claimed and walked through the living room to the outside. The humid air was full of warm, gentle noise. There was a small circular pool and a stout white wall with a wooden gate that led to a path to the beach. Everything wasalmostfamiliar. Memories hung like undeveloped photographs, and I closed my eyes to see them properly:
MUM IS CROSS BECAUSEI haven’t put my jellies on.The sand will be hot, she shouts. But I want to catch Dad, so I run to the gate, to his outstretched hand, and he pulls me down the path to the beach. The sand becomes hotter and hotter, and my feet are burning, and just when I think I’m going to cry from the pain, we make it to the darker, cooler sand and run crashing into the waves.
FUCK, I’M THIRSTY.
I went to the kitchen, but there was no water in the cupboards, and I couldn’t remember if the tap water was drinkable. My shoulder bag was by the door still, and there was a small amount of water left in my bottle. I drank the warm dregs and sat on the sofa arm with my head between my legs. Everything was happening so fast. I wanted to press pause, to be alone somewhere dark and timeless.
Bloody hell, it’s humid.
I looked up to see him holding a blue towel with an orange fish. He was wearing black shorts and sunglasses that I could see my reflection in.
Come on, honey. Let’s get you in one of those slutty bikinis I saw you pack. We’ll go to the shops and get beers.But…
He charged at me and lifted me like I weighed nothing. He carried me to the bedroom and dropped me on the bed.
Wait, I smell like plane!
I don’t care, he said, pushing my arms aside my head.
No, no, I can’t.
Why?
Because I feel like I will burst into tears if you touch me.Just my stomach, I said, from the drive.
It was only a half lie, but I hated saying no to him. He said it was okay because he didn’t want me to shit myself. Then he went to the bathroom and I lay on the bed and tried to regulate my breathing. There were cracks in the yellow ceiling and a picture of a goat in a gold frame above a chest of drawers. I hadn’t unpacked, but his belongings already covered the room. Coveredourroom. Clothes and shoes. Wallet, keys, and notepad. Inhaler for his hay fever. Three books. The air smelled like his aftershave.
The toilet flushed, and he shouted that it was time to go. I put on my black bikini, white T-shirt, denim shorts, and a wide-brimmed hat that I found in a cupboard next to some playing cards. He said that I looked like someone from a television show I hadn’t seen.
