Portion of the Sea Read Free Page A

time to herself and I thought about whether I should bolt from this stranger, the strangest stranger I had ever encountered and that was pretty strange. Living in Chicago gave me daily opportunities to pass by, say hello, exchange eye contact with, or walk right by strangers, and sometimes they’d mumble something my way, and once it was about the end of the world coming, but none of them ever told me anything like this. Not even anyone I knew ever told me I could be and do anything that I wanted, and I wondered whether or not I should believe her. Believing her would bring options and possibilities to my life that I never knew I had, but then again, she was only a stranger, and it would be stupid of me to listen to what some stranger had to say.
    “I don’t believe what you’re telling me,” I said, standing up from the driftwood. “I don’t believe anything you’ve said.” I walked a few steps away, knowing I should keep going, that my father would go ape if I didn’t return soon.
    “Then what do you believe?” she asked.
    I shrugged my shoulders. I believed one day I would get married and have babies and those were my only options. I never believed anything other than that. I never gave it any thought.
    “Do you believe you can build a snowman here on the beach?”
    I turned and laughed. “You’re crazy,” I said.
    “Oh, no. I’m not. I’ve been called many things—dramatic, eccentric, fun, but crazy I am certainly not.”
    “How can anyone build a snowman here on a beach in Florida? It’s impossible. There’s no snow.”
    “If you believe, you can achieve,” she said, jumping up from the driftwood. “Now get down and help me build a snowman.” She dropped to her knees and started digging in the sand. A moment later she looked up and said, “C’mon, join me, and I’ll show you.”
    I didn’t want to get my new pink sailor dress dirty, but there was somethinginside me that wanted to believe; so, I joined her on my knees and started scraping my hands through the shell-fragmented sand, and she started humming. We were close enough to the shore that the sand was damp, and it packed nicely into a mound. I noticed her fingernails, long and beautiful, painted in mauve, and I felt the pressure of sand building behind my own nails, short in comparison. Her humming grew louder, and I dug harder until broken miniature shell pieces pricked the tips of my fingers. I no longer needed my sunglasses, so I took them off and tossed them aside.
    “What are you humming?” I asked.
    “A lullaby my mama used to hum.”
    “Oh.” We dug and packed some more, and when I looked at her, I noticed the scarf around her face loosening and falling to the ground. There were white bandage-like wraps covering her nose, and she caught me staring.
    “I was born with the long, curved beak of a White Ibis and wanted the nose of a woman,” she said, stopping to retie it. “I always imagined how beautiful I might look with a more womanly nose; so, I just recently got a nose job.”
    “Oh.”
    “I blame it all on my great, great grandmother. I got my nose from her.”
    I smiled, wondering whom I got my nose from and also what a nose job was. I hadn’t ever heard of that kind of a job before and assumed it meant she got paid to smell stuff like food or cologne. Or maybe a nose job meant she worked as a nose model. Hers was perfect enough. And maybe it’s why she wrapped that scarf and gauze around it, to protect it from the sun and air and from catching a cold and becoming red and runny, I thought as I dug in the sand until my stomach growled, reminding me it was almost dinner time and my father would be upset if I wasn’t there.
    “Why don’t you start making the middle ball now?” she said standing up, leaving me to dig alone.
    I scooped two handfuls of sand and smacked them atop the first ball, but it all crumbled down the side. I hoped the erosion might remind her we’re on a beach with sand, not snow.
    “Oh,