The Black Kids(95)

That first night, as you lie awake in the middle of all those unfamiliar sounds, you’ll think of Harrison and Mom and Dad and Lucia; your thoughts will drift to Latasha, and to Grandma Shirley. In that moment, the jail will briefly remind you of the gymnasium after the wildfire, all those people breathing, snoring, and being, all that life pumping all around you like an organ.

One woman will cry and one woman will laugh, and their voices will echo off the walls so that you won’t be sure which one of them is doing which. That’s it right there, isn’t it? you think.

Mostly, you’ll stare out at the handful of stars that manage to shine through the smog and city lights, the ones that beg to be seen, that push their way through. You’ll look at the brightest and think of me.

And across town, I will think of you.





CHAPTER 26


THE HOT SAND feels almost ancestral. There’s a picture in our house of a very young Grandma Opal and a bunch of pretty black women in two-pieces, their arms wrapped around one another, their brown legs planted like flags in the sand.

“That was three months after I arrived in California,” Grandma Opal said when I asked her about it. “Santa Monica was still segregated then.”

“What?” Jo and I said in unison. “Here?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

“None of it ever did,” Grandma Opal said, and shooed us off so she could nap.

This land is your land. This land is my land. This beach is your beach. This beach is my beach. Today this beach is ours. For now, anyway.



* * *




LaShawn wears socks with Adidas slides, and I don’t know why he’s wearing socks to the beach, but I’ve noticed it’s a thing a lot of black dudes do, like they’re afraid of their toes.

The skateboarder’s hair is sun-bleached, shaggy, and almost as long as Lana’s. His lips look chapped. If we were in the Natural History Museum, this would be his natural habitat behind the glass.

“Sorry, dudes!” he says as he skates past an overflowing trash can.

Gutter punks lean against each other on a small grassy knoll, faces tattooed so that they look like lizards, with their one-legged pit bull and a sign that says, NEED FOOD FOR THE DOG… AND ALCOHOL.

I place a dollar in their empty open guitar case.

“Thanks, sis!” the scariest-looking one replies.

We march past the gutter punks with their mangy dog and the skateboarders who nearly run us over and the families with entirely too much shit to stake our claim. LaShawn’s slides fling sand all over everything with each step until finally he takes them off, socks too, and I see his toes, which aren’t scary at all.

When we decide on our spot, LaShawn plants the umbrella in the sand like he’s Neil Armstrong or Buzz Aldrin.

Aldrin’s first words on the moon were, “Beautiful view.”

Then Armstrong replied, “Isn’t that somethin’? Magnificent sight out here.”

Which is exactly how I feel right now.

Lana and I drop our stuff in the sand, peel off our land selves, and trudge toward the water’s edge. We squeal at the cold and push in farther, LaShawn tentative steps behind us.

“I… I can’t swim, you guys,” he says.

“We won’t go too far,” Lana says.

Lana and I close our eyes and dive into handstands, only to get pushed and pulled by the tide. LaShawn stands awkwardly at the water’s edge.

“We won’t let you drown,” Lana says. “Promise.”

LaShawn comes closer and closer to us until finally he submerges himself for a one-two count and then pops back up with a primal scream. The three of us splash around in the water until Lana leaves to go use the restroom—number two, so she can’t just pee in the water, she makes sure to tell us. Then it’s the two of us amid the seaweed and the salt. The waves push LaShawn farther out, until it’s harder for our toes to reach the ocean floor.

“Maybe we should go back,” he says.

“Not yet,” I say. “Try this.”

I show him a basic breaststroke. It’s simple enough, I tell him, like making a heart with your arms and then breaking it, over and over, but the heart is what keeps you afloat, keeps you going. He starts to do it, his hearts getting stronger and stronger still, until he dips his head briefly underwater and comes back up sputtering, but with a big grin.

“I got you,” I say.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I say.

He turns around and faces the city. “It’s so different from here, isn’t it? Somehow, out here, it’s like nothing happened at all.”

A big wave knocks against both of us, and we push our limbs and chests and hips against its force.

I think about the dried-out husks of buildings I saw when we were volunteering with Tarrell and Julia. What’s gonna happen to all the vacant lots like weeping wounds when everybody’s moved on to the next thing? What’s gonna happen to the people who live among them? You can already feel it in the air—the rest of the city beginning to forget.

“It’s kinda like the riptide or current or whatever they’re always warning you about on the weather reports. Everyone around you can be playing, having fun, all oblivious and shit; meanwhile, you’re getting swept out to sea,” he says.