A rare midday when she wasn’t with Grandma May or Uncle Ted or Cousin Murray or Red Ned or Little Keisha, when she wasn’t caring for someone in her extended family, who had been burying toes in the yellow Virginia Beach sand since this land was unnamed and her people were dragged onto its shore. They’d lived their whole lives at this beach Yvette was raised down a dirt road merely two miles away. A white man next to her, his shoulders red, his stomach a round, thick beach ball, held out a phone, recording the sight as if this weren’t the end of the world, as if when this were said and done there would be anyone around to retweet it. Its silhouette solidified the higher it rose. Yvette couldn’t determine the kind of ship, but knew it was ancient. Water fell away from it as if it were being pulled from beneath the sea by an invisible hook in the sky. She hoped her daughter’s added weight could keep her anchored to the world she’d known for the last thirty-two years.Ī shimmering gray ship emerged from the sea. The ground shook, and Yvette lifted May into her arms. Unlike the child she was a mere hour ago, the four-year-old didn’t speak, built no sand castles that could stand.
A towel whipped Yvette’s ankle, smacking coarse and wet against her inner calf.
Their skin hot from the burning sun, and now the wind throwing shovels, tossing red and blue plastic buckets around as if toys in the hands of children.
This short story was first published in The Rumpus on October 16, 2019.
0 kommentar(er)
