The Black Kids(96)

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To our right, two little blond kids in bright-orange floaties swim by with their mother, who wears one of those water skirts that some women wear when they start being ashamed of the puckers and dimples like little hiding spots in their thighs. One of her kids splashes me in the face as he swims past, and the salt water burns up my nose.

“Sorry,” she says. “Tommy, pay attention to other people.”



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Heather appears, and with her, Courtney. Apparently, Lana told them about our little gathering without me knowing.

“I thought you weren’t supposed to talk to me,” I say.

“I wouldn’t miss your eighteenth birthday!” Courtney says. “Besides, I’m my own person.”

There’s a series of wriggles in her beach blanket, and then finally out pops a head, small and vaguely mangy.

“The shelter gave me a graduation puppy!” Courtney squeals. “I named her Pepper, ’cause she’s a little spicy. Isn’t she the cutest?”

“You better watch out. Bitch pees everywhere,” Heather says, and kisses me on the top of my head.

“Don’t talk about Pepper like that,” Courtney says, and squeezes Pepper closer.

“It was a joke.” Heather shakes her head at Courtney.

“Oh yeah. Duh.” Courtney laughs.

Heather runs her hands along my braids. “You look so different. It suits you.”

I’m about to tear up, but I push my tears back down. Heather, Courtney, Kimberly, and I have celebrated every birthday together since we were six.

Kimberly and I were girls together, but we won’t be women together, and maybe that’s okay. In a few weeks we’ll graduate, and then we’ll go to college and make new friends, and after that maybe grad school and then out into the world, where we’ll accumulate more people to hold on to. We’ll float into each other’s heads and remember how we belonged to each other only once in a while, and eventually maybe not at all.

As we’re hugging, Pepper pees across her tanned leg, and Courtney shrieks, “Bad girl!”

She only means it a little bit.



* * *




A helicopter flies by with a floating ad for beer.

“Kiss You Back” plays on somebody’s boom box. Heather puckers her lips in my direction and laughs. She’s splayed out reading some sort of zine. I thought Lana and Heather would hit it off the fastest, but Lana and Courtney did, surprisingly enough. They giggle a lot, and Lana gives Courtney’s mangy new puppy lots of kisses as naughty Pepper jumps around the beach blanket between them. You’re not supposed to have dogs on the beach, but if anybody notices, they don’t say anything. At some point, Courtney laughs really heartily and puts her hand on Lana’s arm. Then Lana says, “I need more sunblock; can you help me?” While Courtney massages it into Lana’s shoulders, Heather looks up from her zine and raises an eyebrow my way. Heather has dyed her hair and armpit hair bright purple. It suits her, although apparently her mom’s pissed that she didn’t wait until after graduation. I wouldn’t have even thought to dye my armpit hair, if I kept any.

There’s not quite enough space on our beach blanket, so part of my body rests in the sand, which sticks to my wet skin, but I don’t mind. LaShawn’s hand brushes mine, and in his fingertips I can feel the entire summer before us. He turns to look at me and smiles, his skin golden in the sunlight. I’m pretty positive I see the faint outline of a boner in his swim trunks. As if he can read my mind, he flips over onto his stomach.

Candace and Julia trudge through the sand toward us.

“You made it!” I say.

My new friends awkwardly greet my old friends.

“Candace did my hair,” I tell Heather and Courtney.

“Dude! How long did that take you to do?” Heather says.

“About four hours,” Candace says, and plops down next to them in the sand.

“I got my hair braided when I went to Mexico once,” Courtney says.

Candace, Julia, and I start to laugh. Courtney doesn’t know why we’re laughing, and I feel a little bad, but not really. Sometimes there is an us, sometimes there is a them, and sometimes it’s okay to be a we.

We girls do lazy cartwheels in the sand. Maybe next year we’ll be too old for these, but not now. Not yet.

I think outside of myself and look down at us in this moment—our skin browning in the sun, bodies leavening, planes flying overhead. What’s next for all of us? It doesn’t matter. In this moment, there’s ocean in our hair, and we’re awash in the glitter of possibility. We’re girls in neon bikinis laughing. Soon, the world will crack wide open before us, and we will be women. Here we are.

Around us, seagulls squawk. Beach umbrellas sway. On the radio, the DJs are discussing how the cops in Rodney King’s beating are getting a new federal trial. This new federal case will go the right way, though. Those cops will get convicted. The evidence is right there on video for anyone to see. Because things have to get better, don’t they? Or maybe they don’t. But we do.

The DJs banter for a bit, and then they open the lines to callers.

“What you think, fam?” the DJ says, like every one of us in this city is family.