On the day I was born, the doctor handed my father the scissors to cut the cord. I was dressed in a blue striped hat and placed with love on my mother’s breast. Her caring hands lowered me into the plastic bassinet in the sterile birthing suite. I did not sleep, I stared up at the room listening and taking in the new world. The room was that particular anemic shade of pink that is unique to hospitals. My father had left and I listened and waited. My mother’s breathing became deeper and more regular. She slept, flushed and proud. I climbed down from my plastic cage. I said goodbye to her. My first few steps were a little clumsy. My archless feet smacked like a duck’s against the speckled linoleum. I didn’t fall. Clumsily, I walked out of the hospital room. I walked down the corridor, nurses did not see me. I took the elevator down to the street and I took my first steps out into the early summer air.
The sun in my eyes made me sneeze. The air was salty and seagulls cawed over me. Hot and humid, the wind filled my mouth with the familiar taste of seawater. It was a nice day. I needed some money. I was hungry. I needed bus fare. I wanted to go to the beach. I should have taken a twenty out of my mother’s pocketbook. I didn’t have pockets but I figured nobody would notice me. I walked around for a little while, I waited for people to stop on benches and set their bags down. Eventually, an exhausted looking woman sat her messenger bag in front of the museum to scold her poorly behaved son. I carefully extracted four bills from her wallet and turned to scurry away. Her son looked at me. He looked me right in the eye. I smiled at him and he nodded and looked away.
I walked by the river. It must have been mid morning, there were not a lot of people out in the streets. Nobody noticed me, nobody paid me any mind. It was warm and comforting outside. A fish crow by the waterfront squawked at me, and I started for the bus station. It wasn’t far and when I was on the 45 bus to the beach I crawled under a seat and just thought about being outside. I wasn’t expecting the smells. The wind smelled salty and fishy and there was gasoline and factory in the air. Everyone who walked by on the bus had their own smell. A lot of them like cigarettes. I only really liked the smell of the salt. The bus voice kept naming places closer to the beach. I didn’t know what I would do at the beach. I needed to get something to eat first.
I stopped at Cumbie’s before I went to the beach. The cashier didn’t see me, I walked out with captain’s crackers and a club soda. I could hear seagulls screaming and I followed them to the water. I ate my crackers on the way, birds flying low over me. I got closer and I could taste the distinct salt-fish-sulphur smell of the ocean. I passed the mostly vacant parking lot. A few people wearing swimsuits and coverups were unloading beach chairs and beach balls and tote bags and coolers. My fleshy, untoned hands were empty and I didn’t have a swimming costume. I just wanted the water. I followed some nice looking people into the beach.
Walking in the sand was difficult. It felt good between my toes, hot and supple. I liked the way it gave ever so slightly under me. The Atlantic shone at me, reflecting every thought I had back at me on its surface. A huge trawler crawled across the horizon, a few sailboats weaving in between the two of us. A few people were in the water, mostly older people. A teenaged lifeguard sat in the guard chair with a radio and a soda, listening to a baseball game. A few scattered families were playing, children building sandcastles and digging holes while their parents tanned. I walked along the beach for a long time. I dug my toes into the big sloppy piles of kelp on the shore. I picked up the shells, I put a limpet in my mouth. I saw a jellyfish in the sand. Every so often a bird dove into the water and returned with a medium sized fish.
I didn’t have a towel, I didn’t have a chair, I just laid myself out on the sand. The sun on the back of my neck burned, it felt good and I stayed in the sun for as long as I could. The sun was in my face, I was sweating. More people were in the calm, glittering water now and I wanted it too. I walked as fast as I could to the edge of the water. The shells hurt my feet. I didn’t know if I could swim, I just needed to know what it felt like. I let my toes touch first. It was cold and intimidating, but I kept going. I gasped when I was up to my shoulders. Closing my eyes and my mouth, I dipped my head in and let the cold water wash over me. It moved me with it and felt safe. I stayed there for a long time. Moving in and out of the waves, bobbing up and down.
Instinctively, I leaned my head and shoulders back and kicked up my feet. I floated on the surface of the water. I stayed like that for a moment until I started to move towards an older woman who was doing some sort of exercise. I nervously put my feet down and moved away from her. I leaned back and rose up to the surface again when I had found a more isolated area. With the sun on my face and the gulls shrieking overhead, I closed my eyes. I closed my eyes and I floated on the water. I stayed on my back and I floated away, letting the tide take me in and out, out, out, out until I was well past the buoys. Well past the sail boats. Well past the giant trawler. I floated away until I let the ocean blot me out.
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Ursula Carroll is a writer in St. Louis. Her work can be found in Had, Washington Square Review, Bruiser, and elsewhere. She spends most of her time taking pictures of vanity license plates and thinking up knuckle tattoos.