The Sea and I

Each night that winter, I watched the dark sea. Twilight sands still clung to heat, warming my toes when I walked through the hotel and down the beach, all the way to the in-between place where the water tugged at the shore. The overlap. There, I stood, and there, I watched the sea. 

Some nights, I watched it long enough that the opaque shimmer of its surface seemed to distort, a twisted cousin of the Vegas mirages I would sit and stare at while my mother gambled. This late, everything became something else. The moonlight was teeth, glimmering; the peaks and valleys of waves were great, undulating movements of a thousand dark bodies; the fog over the water was a poison gas, a ghost, a phantasm.

Some nights, I wished the sea would swallow me whole. Others, I wanted nothing to do with it, planting my feet securely in the warm sand. 

Every night, though, I watched it. 

The summer before that winter was the longest I’d ever lived. It was the worst season for sea-watching. Tourists swarmed the beach like huge, white flocks of seagulls, cawing and snapping and scrounging, and even in the small hours made it impossible to let the sea-spell wash over me in solitude. Some late-night trespasser was always there; runaway teenagers, drunk adults, lone, lost people. Some nights, they distracted me enough to warrant stories. The lone walker would become a disillusioned businessman, contemplating leaving everything behind to move to the shore. The sneaking teenagers became children of unfathomably wealthy parents, hoping to escape their shadows. The drunk adults became modern bacchantes.

You know who they are, the sea whispered to me.

You know best.

You’re right.

That had summer stretched and grasped with outstretched fingers, warmth sticking into sunset even as the earth pulled it gently away. 

Eventually, though, fall came. The tourists fled like butterflies to warmer climes, and the hotel emptied but for businessmen and travel gurus hoping to catch the town on the off season. The weather turned gold and crisp, the sand cooled earlier into the night, and the mangoes hardened like lava. 

The beach was still balmy, and tourists were still plenty, but the fall made them shy. A few braved the midnight sands, but a fraction of those who did in summer. Fewer stories, uneasier gaits, and they fled the beach earlier into the night. Most nights, I was alone by three.

And so the dark sea pulled on me. Each time the ocean inhaled, I did, stepping forward over finally-cold sand to stay as close as I could to the receding tide without touching it. With each exhale, I released air slowly, like a balloon, and backed away, letting the water almost touch my toes. I couldn’t not move with the sea. 

In the deep night, I could hear its heartbeat, that secret rhythm; it was my own. The sea whispered to me what I already knew, and what I would forget once I left the shore. The sea affirmed me, and the sea denied me. It drew me in, and it pushed me away. It loved me, and it hated me.

“What are you doing?”

The crashing waves, the push and pull, the rhythm—all of it just stopped. I whipped around. 

A woman stood, hands on her hips, squinting at the moonlit water past me. The same light cast her fair hair and skin silver, vanished into her fathomless black cover-up. 

I retreated a step, and shoved my hands in my back pockets. She looked like me. Identical hair texture and color, though hers was shorter, and that same cocked-hip stance, same flinty eyes. 

A little less blunt, and she could have been my older sister. 

“Why do you care?” I asked, and my voice was harsher than I intended. 

She frowned. Shifted to the other hip. “Dunno. Looked like you might have been seeing something interesting—a whale, or a mermaid, or something. Anything out there I should know about? Sharks?”

Despite myself, a stunted laugh burst out. “No, no sharks. Just watching the water. And you? Hotel nighttime hours start at eleven-thirty, you know, and we own this beach.”

An eyebrow. “We own this beach? I didn’t think we were affiliated with this place.”

“I’m not affiliated with anything.” My mother was. My mother with the strange past, with the ex-husband she refused to elaborate on, with the men—all of the nameless men—and the gambling.

“Then what qualifies you to send me away?”

“I’m not. Qualified, that is. I don’t care what you do.” A lie. I’d rather she leave now, that she would let me fall back into the sea.

“Guess I’ll stand here and stare at the water with you, then.”

“Whatever. I’m not your boss.”

“Great.” She shuffled decisively through the sand in a way that made it clear wasn’t used to it, and settled beside me. 

Silence smothered me. My ears rang, and the rushing of the waves felt muffled, far removed from the place my mind was floating up into. The woman came, and now everything was wrong. I couldn’t hear the waves, the water turned mild, and the moon’s inescapable vacuuming disappeared. The dark sea knew I’d invited in someone who did not understand it, and it cut me off from its magic.

I lasted a minute, maybe two. I couldn’t tell time here unless I counted the waves, and the waves were too faint to count, the sand over my feet a distant sensation. 

“You need to leave,” I finally said. I didn’t turn, didn’t look at her. Don’t do it. You won’t like what you see.

“Why?”

I shrugged. “This is my spot. I would rather be alone, and I was here first.”

I could hear the arched eyebrow in her voice. “We just went over this—you can’t own a beach. It’s illegal.”

“Fine. I’ll leave, then.”

“Fine.”

I waited a breath in and a breath out, hoping she’d move. Hoping she’d say something, anything. 

You can’t ever tell Mother. No one can know. You can’t know.

But I wanted to. So badly, I wanted to know.

But she didn’t speak. 

I gave up and followed my own footprints back up the beach. In the one backward glance I spared, I glimpsed a narrow frame holding herself, slumped, rocking forward and back with the lull of the tides. 

She looked far too much like me.