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Sand and Water
She can smell the sunscreen as her mother rubs it on her nose and faintly freckled cheeks. It smells like sunshine, and like the beach from home, mixed with the little grits of sand that stuck to her skin after she would get soaked in lake water. Usually, getting soaked in the waters of Lake Michigan was not of her own intention-more often than not her brother would grab her by the shoulders like a fisherman grabs a net and at once dunk her under. She did not mind the sand, and the way it stuck, but the way her hair felt afterwards-like straw and seaweed-made her shudder. Here, though, she was far away from the lake-she was in Venice, surrounded by the salt water ocean. Last night, or, yesterday afternoon, she thinks, local time, they had been driven to the little island on a motorboat. She will find out tomorrow that the people of Venice have hung signs over their balconies, proclaiming “Nessuni motoscafi!”-“No Motorboats!” She will feel rather guilty when she thinks back on how much she enjoyed skidding across the water, taking in the choppy blue flatness with the city poking up on the horizon, like a pop-up book. Now, she is dragging her feet across the soft carpet in the hotel, eyelids falling than whipping open, trying to stay awake, for her mother had said that only way to prevent jet-lag was to torture oneself for a bit by staying awake much longer than one would like. In theory, one would be able to enjoy oneself much more, just a bit later.
The next day, they are preparing to explore Venice for the day, and her mother has been chattering about seeking out areas without tourists. Her brother makes cynical comments about how they are tourists, and by being tourists they will make wherever they are touristy. Especially with those tennis shoes that Mom’s wearing. The girl does not really see the point in trying to find any ‘real’ Venetian bits of Venice. She thought that anywhere worth going was going to be touristy, after all, the man on the motorboat had said that Venice gets millions of tourists a year, and the girl thinks that so many tourists would make every last corner of Venice touristy, without exception. Her mother is trying to smear sunscreen on her shoulders now, and the girl pushes her hands away.
They walk outside, finally, and the sun nearly blinds her. Her mother chastises her for forgetting her sunglasses on the airplane, but the girl thinks that she can see better without them anyway. They were just a cheap, way-to-dark pair from the drugstore with ugly frames the color of dirty ice.
Her brother is hanging the camera above her head, filming her as he asks her mock interview questions. For just a moment, though, he fails to keep a tight grasp on the straps, and she manages to snatch it away from him; as soon as she does, she feels relieved, and in control. She now can decide exactly what gets recorded as well as what will be remembered on their journey. She presses down on the button with the small red dot and fixates on the folded out screen, and can feel a smile form as she zooms in on her brother’s face, getting close enough to his eyebrow, his eye, his nose, his ear, and then his scoffing mouth so he looks like a giant. As the scoffing giant mouth relaxes into a bored giant mouth, and then tenses into an irritated looking giant mouth, she quickly flips the camera shut and skitters away before the device is twisted out of her hands. She begins taking care to remain several paces in front of her brother and mother, and decides to film the little details, the tiny discoveries yet to be made, hidden in the streets, in order to occupy herself. The cobblestones, the decorative stone detailing that skim along the outside walls of buildings, the floating moss in the water. She can discern no detail too small or mundane; everything must be recorded, and remembered for years and years to come. She begins filming masks, too, zooming in on the jovial mouths, the gold and blue hats, the empty eyes, waiting to be occupied with someone else’s.
As her mother stops to talk to a gondolier about taking the three of them back to their hotel, she wanders around the corner and spots another cluster of masks; she thinks they must be the most appealing masks yet. Quickly, she begins her now-formulaic process of zooming in on each piece, starting at the top. As she gets to the middle, towards the side, she realizes she has discovered a mask with a set of eyes behind it. And a mouth. A moving mouth, slowly twisting into a grin. Startled, she jumps back, banging the back of her heel on a cobblestone. A man appears with a wide grin, cartoonishly enough so so that his face could be a mask by itself, begins chortling; his chortling is the deepest laugh the girl has ever heard; it sounds indistinguishable from a sort of gurgling. He mutters something in Italian as he sits down on a stool. She realizes, after several seconds that he must be the vendor. Just a vendor. She calms a bit, but wonders if it is worth staying to film the rest of the masks, as the man has not stopped that gurgling. Everything about his face seems to be gurgling and rippling once it is revealed in the late afternoon light; instead of the ice smooth silver and gold curlicue mask he was hiding behind, his black mustache is made of strangely twisted whiskers and grows straight downwards, and mimicks the way the hair grows on his head. The folds and creases of his face, too, seem to quiver with the gurgling, and seem far too numerous for a man with thick jet black hair and mustache.
She apologetically points to the masks, and her camera, and realizes she may not be making sense, and worries she might somehow be offending the man by letting him think she is going to make her own masks by stealing his designs. She does not want to offend this man, whose appearance, she realizes, looks as though several bits of him, at different ages, were hemmed together. She sheepishly, awkwardly, gives him a thumbs up, hoping he understands that she likes the masks, but would never ever steal his designs, and runs back to her mother, still absentmindedly wary of not allowing the camera to swing within in reach of her brother.
The gondola passes the grey streets like a dull day at school. The girl tries to forget the bad trick played by the Gurgling Man, by reviewing the delicate details she had so diligently recorded. On the camera playback, she watches her feet, barely covered by pink plastic flip-flops, walk over the cobblestones for a few moments, before breaking into a jog, and suddenly coming to a stop over a damaged stone, with moss spilling out of a tiny crack. With her toe, the girl had removed a chip of the stone from its place, and expertly flicked it away. The image on the camera begins bouncing up and down once more, and the camera shows the end of the sidewalk, where the canal begins, several feet below. The image inches over the edge to show the watery plants growing down the side of the canal, long, black and wavy. It zooms in, and the girl slams the camera shut, as the image of the Gurgling Man and his mustache rushes back into her mind.
The next morning, she awakens at the hotel with the earliest beams of sunlight reflecting over the water. She is able to sneak out of her room early and steal a biscuit and a pocket of strawberry jam from the breakfast table near the lobby. Using her fingers to spread the jam on, she walks out onto the brown-red terrace at the back of the building and steps down onto the beach. The sun is still rising as she frisks down the cool sand and plops down under one of the cabanas. It occurs to her then that it is her thirteenth birthday in just about a month...she counts on the fingers of her hand not holding the biscuit...just twenty-six days! She giggles to herself at the enormity of that number. The first real ‘-teen’ she will be...maybe unlucky too, but still, a technical teenager. She sucks the last bits of jelly off her fingers, satisfied at her revelation.
With an uncomfortable wrench in her stomach, she remembers why she could not sleep, and why she has awoken so early...the Gurgling Man. She had imagined he would come to her window in the night and slip her out of bed and drag her into the ocean, and then he would turn her into a sea creature and she would have to become his bride.
She wills the goosebumps away. She is turning thirteen in tweny-six days and she will not allow herself to think like such a child anymore. She decides then she is going to prove there is nothing to be afraid of, and forces herself to walk with sturdy steps and shoulders back towards the ocean. Rolling up her pajama pants, she treads into the water a bit, and a wave crashes against her calf and splashes water on her face. She pulls her hair back into a knot, to keep it dry.
Suddenly, she hears a race of feet pressing in the dry sand. Phsh phsh phsh phsh. She knows it is the Gurgling Man before she even turns around. She braces herself, knowing any minute she will be pulled underneath the surface, and her hair will be wet and seaweedy for the rest of eternity. She feels him, a brute force, collide with her own body, and the wet sand is in her mouth, her eyes, and her scalp-she thinks in the very back of her mind that the sea creatures must have to fill her with sand before they can take her away. The salt water, too, stings her skin like the lake water from home never could and she manages to spit out enough sand to cry out.
Suddenly the force is lifted, and she turns over, expecting to be hurled into the ocean. No!-it can’t be. Worse than anything, it is her brother, standing over her, laughing. In his left hand he holds a ball of sand that he pelts onto her leg. Suddenly, he stops, and steps back, and she can tell by the warm water streaming down her face just why. She tries to, but she can’t hold in an audible sob as she gets up and walks away, hunched over, leaving tiny footprints behind her.
She gets to her room, receiving a mix of pitying and irritated looks from the hotel staff, who will have to clean up the dry sand falling off her body onto the scarlett carpet. She tiptoes back into her room, past her sleeping mother, and sits by herself for a while. She thinks about taking a shower, but does not, and she thinks about brushing the sand off herself, but can't bring herself to lift an arm. She pouts for a bit, and feels another wrench in her stomach, remembering that she thought there was actually a sea monster, and feels sick at how she thought that it would want her as a bride. She falls asleep feeling like a very stupid, silly child.
She wakes up later to her mother’s knocking and her brother muttering in the background. She hears something about him wanting to apologize. She looks down, and remembers that she is still wearing the same sweatpants and tee shirt, but most of the sand has dried now and is sticking to the sheets and pillow. She takes a pinch of it between her thumb and ring finger, and rubs its between her fingers to watch it fall back onto the bed into a tiny pile, and she thinks of an hourglass, and the way the dry sand trickles down so smoothly.
“I’m waking up, Mom!” the girl shouts. She likes how her voice sounds, when she shouts. Loud, and clear. And commanding. She picks up a bottle of sunscreen and spreads the salve on her face, so she won’t get sunburnt when she swims the ocean later.
