Second Degree Joy
Shemaiah Gonzalez
My mother loved the sound of the sea. Listening to its rhythm subdued memories that shifted in her heart and soothed pain she carried in the present. There weren’t many books on our shelves at home but there were bits of the sea: sand dollars, bleached white in the sun, starfish and coral with their neon colors and iridescent abalone, mementos from childhood vacations. The conch shell, a smooth ballet slipper pink ear, was my favorite. My mother said you could hear the ocean in it. I thought of it as some sort of game of tin-can telephone and couldn’t understand how someone could hear the ocean all the way to Pico Rivera.
Any chance she could, my mother would pack up our green Ford Pinto with her three girls and blankets and buckets and a blue Igloo full of sandwiches and take the 605 freeway out to Seal Beach. In the back seat, my little sisters sucked their thumbs, while I tried to read signs from the front. Even at one year old, my youngest sister knew to hold her breath when our mother merged onto the freeway. My mother’s hands shook, and she called out for Jesus as if He would move the other cars from her path or, at least, instantly make her a better driver. Any peep from us would heighten her anxiety, so I created a game with my sisters. We held our breath until our mother had safely merged. Sometimes I heard my sisters gulp for a second or third breath of air, but it was enough for our mother to keep her composure.
It took forever to walk through the sand with my chanclas, but if I took them off, the sand burnt the bottoms of my feet. We played for hours, digging deep holes to fill up with water, carving out magical sandcastles with our buckets and shovels, but what I wanted to do most of all was play Black Stallion. My grandpa had taken me to see the film, the story of a friendship between a young boy and a horse. I imagined if I ever met a horse, we would have the same sort of connection. In my favorite scene in the film, the Stallion runs along the beach, his long black mane waving in the wind. Sometimes it looked as if he were dancing when he side-stepped his hoofs to splash in the sea. I shook my red hair out of its braids and let it flow, wild and free to caper in the waves. There are few times in my life that I can remember being that joyous. On the beach, I was glorious.
So too, was my mother. She laid on the shore, eating sandy sandwiches and laughing freely as my sisters ran from the waves. I don’t remember her playing with us. She was content to watch, to sit there, her skin slick with baby oil she slathered over her body. I never remember her in a bathing suit. She laid out in shorts and a tank top, careful not to be too attractive, too sexy. By midday, she was dark enough to be Mexican again. I wanted to be Mexican too. I imagined one day, maybe when I was older, my skin would know it was Mexican. Maybe I’d get so many freckles that there wouldn’t be space between them, and I’d look darker.
By the time we got home, we’d realized it had happened again, my pale skin scorched and sore to the touch. Even the part in my hair was burned. Peeling my bathing suit off for a rinse in the shower proved painful. By morning, blisters the size of quarters appeared on my back and shoulders and my body shivered with a fever of 101. I couldn’t eat and was drained of energy. I could not lean back in a chair or sleep on my back—the pain was too much. But I knew the drill. Don’t touch the blisters. If they popped, the revealed undeveloped skin would be even more raw, more tender than the blisters. Each trip to the beach would mean days in bed for me, waiting for my skin to heal enough to peel off in huge translucent chunks.
Neglect became a condition for my mother’s joy; my burned skin, a symptom. These symptoms multiplied into an empty stomach, waiting for a ride that would never come, an empty house, an empty heart.
I was tender the day I married. Love leaves you raw. Love was embarrassing. I was embarrassed to be beautiful in the beaded empire waist dress, that cost as much as my first car, that my husband had bought me. I was embarrassed to be the center of attention. I was embarrassed at the lavish location and delicious food my husband had arranged just for me.
I was embarrassed to be cared for.
I didn’t invite my mother to the wedding. I thought she might seize my joy, claim it as her own. Or sabotage it. My husband understood. He had seen the raw tender parts of me. He took my freckled hand in his dark brown one and asked me to jump. Our photographer captured this image: my husband’s arms outstretched in delight, his feet a foot off the ground and me, my dress cinched up in one hand, my bouquet in the other, my veil flowing in the breeze. We were glorious.
Shemaiah Gonzalez is a freelance writer with degrees in English Literature and Intercultural Ministry. She thrives on moments where storytelling, art and faith collide. Published in Loyola Press, Busted Halo, America Magazine, among others, she is pursuing an MFA in Seattle where she lives with her husband and their two sons.