The grown-ups got me out, tugged me up by my arms, gasping, back into the world of sun and solid concrete. I wept but wasn't yelled at,buy inflatable christmas I was a celebrity. She knew what to do, she knew exactly what to do, they said. I was wrapped in a white terry cloth robe and placed on a full-length lounge and given handfuls of Kleenex and a necklace of yellow candy beads which I was suddenly too sleepy to care about. My whole body felt pleasantly heavy, my eyes were closing by themselves, and my palms and the soles of my feet tickled, as if something were leaking out through them. She knew exactly what to do, the grown-ups kept repeating, surrounding me in a circle with their lounge chairs, and they sounded oddly proud, as though I had passed an important test. I tried to stay awake to hear what else they would say, but the sun kept pressing me further down and away from their voices, the distant splashes and shouts and the scrapes of chairs playing faintly on in my ears, a reassuring soundtrack to a dream I was starting to have, perhaps an early dream of you.
You couldn't have been far from me that day. I imagine you down near Cape Canaveral, still underwater yourself, the rushing of rocket engines echoing in your unformed ears, the anticipation of countdowns crackling invisibly all around you as you waited to be born. But yours is a peaceful generation, more patient and careful than mine, and you were probably just floating, hanging out, probably holding so still even then that your mother had begun to doubt her own senses, to wonder if she had imagined your very existence inside of her. And even if you did hear me go under, somehow, by radar or however babies know what they know before they're born, even if you made some heroic kick or twist to try to get to me, it's probably just as well that we didn't meet at that particular time, for I was an only child, and babies gave me the creeps, reminded me of mushy little aliens.
I myself was an early baby, but not early enough. Four days earlier and I would have made it. As it was, I arrived in a bad year, a year of the Fire Horse. (I learned this decades later from a placemat at Happi Sushi.) I imagine myself trying to kick or dig my way out in time, get myself out of the fire, so to speak, and almost making it, but my mother, a no-nonsense woman with strong stomach muscles, was probably as usual doing everything she could to hold me back. But she couldn't have known about the Fire Horse. People born under the sign of the Fire Horse were basically doomed, the placemat said. Illness, unhappiness, and bad luck follow these individuals and all those close to them, it said. Women in Asia born under this sign used to find it simply impossible to find mates. (I've taken great strength from that "used to"—stored it away and carried it around like a roll of Lifesavers in my brain.) At any rate, once I was born there was no turning back—only forward to go, always forward, and with only the ghost of a promise that you or some version of you might eventually catch up with me.
But you were running behind right from the start, a late baby, I'll bet, refusing to budge or show your face for weeks past your due date and driving your poor mother nearly insane. So it's no surprise that the second time we met we were still out of sync; really, it's a miracle we met at all. I was on vacation again, always on vacation when I ran into you, always somewhere hot and tropical, never in the cold dirty city back home.
Actually, now that I think about it, there was a boy I met once for five seconds at a Chicago Old Town School of Folk Music Winter Singalong that might have been you. I hated those events: crowded, steamy, smelly affairs where we were given the sheet music to songs no one ever heard of about children in other countries doing humorless, inexplicable things. And what was the point of singing if we had to read the words as we went? All I cared about was the juice and cookies afterwards, but I was allowed only two when I could easily have eaten many more—I was like the Cookie Monster when I was supposed to be more like Grover, who was sensitive and worried about things, but Grover got on my nerves.
This time, I was wearing a new necklace I had begged for and actually received, an extremely realistic-looking plastic squirrel that fit perfectly in the palm of my hand, strung on a genuine rawhide cord. The squirrel was clutching an acorn the size of his head, but he wasn't eating the acorn, just holding it against his white chest. His enormous brown-black eyes were wide open, and he had just a tiny smile, as though he was very satisfied. I was stuck in the damp noisy crush of grown-ups and children trying to get close to the cookie table, but I was occupying myself with my squirrel, when I sensed someone watching, breath against my skin. A little brown-haired boy was standing right there, nearly on the toes of my sneakers. He was staring at my squirrel, and he did not appear satisfied at all. He looked as if he was about to cry. His eyes were as big as the squirrel's, but darker, much darker, just impossibly dark. I gasped and grabbed automatically at my chest, but my hand hit the squirrel instead. And then it was as if I had no choice. I had to give it to him. It was going to kill me to give it to him, but I had to give it to him. I pulled it off fast, as I would with a Band-Aid so it wouldn't hurt as much or for as long, and pushed it into his hands. He looked startled, even terrified, but his hands were holding onto it tightly and he didn't say anything, and then my mother was suddenly there and I was led away. She did not seem to have seen the boy, and she never asked about the squirrel, so I wondered later if I had imagined the whole episode. I'm still not sure. But maybe that wasn't even you—I really didn't see him long enough to know.
I'm positive about the other time, though, the tropical vacation. It was Easter, and I was with my parents in Cancún, Mexico, before people knew about it; we were always going places that were going to be big someday but only we knew about them. The island was just a strip then, hotels and discos on one side, wild land and water reservoir on the other where my parents could go look at birds through binoculars. I was twelve and found that hobby boring, pathetic, embarrassing, and pitiable. Nature had become slightly disgusting, unnatural. Our room at the El Presidente filled with appalling bugs each night, some the size of small animals. I did not think it unreasonable to scream at the sight of these, but the third or fourth time I did it my father actually began shaking me, gripping my skinny shoulders and yelling, "Do you need a psychiatrist!" He let go after a moment, not seeming to expect an answer, and I sank into tearful, rattled silence. No one had ever talked about psychiatrists before. I did not want a psychiatrist. I wanted a tan, a true, sinister tan and all that went with it, all they could not begin to comprehend, all that would bring me closer to you.
Don't overdo it on the first day, my mother warned, but I ignored her and took my raft—not the same raft I'd had in Florida but a silvery rubber reflector one designed to tan my hidden crevices without my having to expose them—out into the Caribbean.custom Sumo Wrestling Suits The day was brilliant, the sun larger and hotter than it had been in Florida or ever was up north, the waves small and salty and easy to negotiate, and the further out I got the shinier and more beautiful everything became. Nothing was required of me, nothing scrutinized. I slept out there for hours, dreaming of nothing at all.
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