Behind them, the sun is rising.
They’ve been crammed in the car for hours. Jimmy and Josie shouting about castle building and crab finding and wave jumping and ice cream eating, their voices a cacophonous wave from the back seat as baby Cal stared, wide-eyed, between them. Ben, next to her in the driver’s seat, cringed at their every shriek, his fingers tightening around the steering wheel. The white bump of his knuckles only loosened when she’d stroked a calming hand over his shoulder, when he’d tipped his head and brushed his cheek to her fingers. In contrast to the too close, too-loud journey they’ve just undertaken, the beach is chilly, quiet.
The only other living creatures on the beach when they scramble from the car, are an old white man and his dog. The two perform the old throw and return dance, their tracks marking a woozy line in the sand, telling of a meandering journey to where they currently stand. As normal a morning as there could ever be. Helen spots it first. Even from a distance, she sees the exact moment the man catches sight of her and her family. There’s a pause. Then the man and dog move as one, their once loose gait tightening into something sharper, into something with intention, heads raised as though sniffing the air and then lowering as they catch the scent. Helen holds her breath. Beside her, Ben notices, stands rooted, hands balled into fists. Behind her, the children are silent statues, clasping buckets and spades to their chests. Little Cal burbles happily at her feet, oblivious as the rest of his family stare at the man and his dog. After a few strained moments the man leaves, whistling for his dog to come and disappearing around a bend.
With that, they’re alone on the beach. As one they all breathe out a sigh and resume their beach day set up. The kids pile up their supplies, loud once again. Helen stretches out the long car journey, the unexpected tense moment, over now, but lingering in her body. She takes in the empty space. It won’t last, the chill, the quiet, or the emptiness. This is set to be the hottest day of the summer so far and pretty soon the sun will be blasting and the beach will be filled with families. But not yet. As Helen appreciates the momentary quiet, Ben stakes out their spot—their yearly spot from before Jimmy was born—and Josie and Jimmy warm themselves with a game of catch, Cal crawling at their feet.
An hour later and Cal’s just starting to fuss as the first of the families arrives. Helen watches for a second as a couple settles themselves and their newborn baby into the shade offered by the dunes, almost childlike in their happiness. There had once been a time when Helen and Ben had felt assured that their children would grow up better than they, themselves, had. They had been arrogant in their ability to make such a thing happen. Blinking away the memories conjured by the young family, Helen scoops up a grizzling Cal, and declares it, “Swim time!”
She makes her way down to the water, quickly followed, and then overtaken, by Jimmy and Josie, who shed their clothes like they’re on fire, and descend, shrieking, into the breakers.
“Do not go beyond the line,” Helen warns, her words sharp, urgent, cutting through the air and over the shush of the waves. She watches them, poised to call them back, until they yell back an affirmative. Helen collects their discarded garments, annoyed, a feeling not helped by Cal banging his fists down on her shoulder, infuriated at not being able to run around like his siblings. Ben glides past, saving Cal from a scolding by plucking the angry toddler from Helen’s arms and swinging him up onto his shoulders, carrying him the rest of the way.
“Get your clothes off, woman,” he calls back to her, winking. “This isn’t a wade in.”
Helen glares in response but her expression is half-hearted and it breaks like a wave on the shore. She’s laughing by the time she joins her family in the bright blue of the water.
Later, when Helen settles under the shade of the parasol to feed Cal, curling down next to Ben’s prone, snoring figure, it feels like days have passed since the morning. The sun has warmed into a syrupy heat, dangerous almost, a golden lion slinking across the sand ready to bite your feet if you stand for too long. The beach has been full for hours, littered now with families and towels and windbreakers and toys and food.
As Cal feeds, his eyelids lower and lower until only a sliver of golden brown can be seen. Surrounded by the smell of the sea and the sand, her milk, and Cal’s sweet-soft baby smell, a feeling comes. The dangerous animal heat in the air has slunk inside her and is filling her up, settling somewhere deep in her chest. It feels primal. Protective. She nestles a sleeping Cal down between herself and Ben, brushing sand from the toddler’s hair, his face, feeling his skin, so soft, thin. Fragile. Jimmy and Josie shouting from across the beach causes her head to swing in their direction. Helen’s eyes track them as they run in circles, their heads tossed back in screaming laughter. Both mere heartbeats away from adulthood it feels, and yet, her babies still. Always. She can almost see a future—see it clearer than she would like—where they are gone, grown up, grown out, away. They seem half disappeared already; their quicksilver, little bodies like black streaks against the sun, reduced, even now, to memory. Every second; a promise of loss.
She brushes away the tears that prick her eyes and lays back to read her book. Listening to the sounds of her family, happy, safe, breathing, she tries to pretend the feeling isn’t there, taking up all her space. Yet, Helen can’t help but remember the man with his dog from the morning, the look on his face when he’d started towards them—eyebrows low, lips pulled back—and she can’t help the way the animal growls inside her.
She feels like she summons them into existence when they start to appear, their trucks prowling into and around the carpark as the sun begins to kiss the horizon.
Ben, awake now, and still a little soft-headed from sleep, from sun, looks over his shoulder and into the twin beams of the first truck. The engine snarls as it slinks passed. They all watch, children and adults alike, in a sudden moment of quiet, still, as the truck sidles around the curve. Behind them, the waves whisper their retreat into the hush. They all watch as the truck slows, slows, slows, its white lights turning the beachgoer’s shadows into dark stains in the sand, to long streaks reaching for the surf. They all watch as the truck finally turns, continuing up the path and out to the main road. The truck lights disappear over the hill but Helen knows it’s only lying in wait; a predator in the long grass, waiting for the opportunity to pounce.
Ben turns back to Helen. Time to go, his eyes say, all sleep gone from them. Helen nods, gathers the children, ignores their moaning and groaning. Ignores the animal threatening to burst from inside her chest. Around them, other families are doing the same, the brief moment of quiet, of still, forgotten as they hurriedly pack up their children, their belongings and begin climbing into their cars.
As the minutes tick by, more and more trucks start to arrive. By the time Ben fires up the car and they start the drive up to the main road, they are flanked on either side. Faces, white like spectres, stare out from behind windscreens, from truck beds, all of them with the same expression—eyebrows pulled low, lips pulled back—the white bump of their knuckles around baseball bats and tire irons and chains. Their bodies tightened with intention. Ready to swing. Helen looks away.
All the while, the animal inside Helen prowls, slopes around her whole body, noses up to the back of her tongue, she can feel its indignant howl trapped in her throat.
They pass the last of the trucks. They don’t speak. They don’t put the radio on. Everything is quiet as Helen strokes a hand along Ben’s shoulder. She can feel sunburn setting in, his skin warm. Once again, he brushes his cheek to her fingers. As they drive away, Helen catches a last glance of the beach in the side mirror; the water laps at the shore, claiming back the sand that had been theirs for a day, swallowing and washing away any evidence of their visit still left scattered on the shore, a beach towel, a bucket with no spade. Her eyes settle on a half-collapsed sandcastle, all but disappeared by the encroaching breakers and stained red as the sun sets, spending the last of its dying light across the beach. The sign: “Negro Beach Day! April 24 1960!” flutters down to the stained sand and then they turn the corner and their day at the beach is done.
Behind them, the sun has set.
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