“Can we get our hair wet?” Erica asked.
“If you want to.”
“Grandmama will kill us if we get our hair wet. We just got pressed.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
When I’d started coming to this beach as a child, it had been free. Now we had to pay a park ranger. He had given us a piece of paper to put on the dashboard of our car. It was an early Sunday morning, right in the middle of the church hour, so we’d been able to choose a quiet stretch without anyone around. I’d brought three chairs, and Mace sat in one of them, squinting. His fishing pole lay untouched at his side.
I took off my shorts, but I was still wearing my T-shirt. My swimsuit was dark blue with an orange floral print. It was impossible for a woman built like me not to show cleavage, but this swimsuit gave me decent support. Even so, I was shy about taking off the shirt.
The girls didn’t have bathing suits, but it didn’t stop them. Their splashing had already dampened the bottoms of their shorts.
“Where’s your bra, Erica?”
“I hate that thang. It ain’t comfortable.”
“You won’t have a choice soon.”
India wobbled, panicking. “You’re fine. Hold your arms out to get your balance.”
Both of them put their arms out like windmills. A seagull swept the water in front of us, rising again with a fish tail dangling from its beak. I watched as India followed the bird with her eyes.
“That’s a seagull,” I said. “It’s pretty, ain’t it?”
India shaded her eyes with the side of her hand.
“Come on, let’s sit down.”
We walked to the edge of the water and sat, hugging our knees to our chests. The water lapped at my feet, the cold seeping between my toes. India dug up shells. I dragged a stick in the sand and wrote out Erica’s name. E-R-I-C-A.
“You know, my mama taught me how to write my name. She spelled it with a k.”
“Spelled what with a k?”
“My name.”
“Has everyone been misspelling your name?” I thought of all the times she had been mentioned in the newspapers, the registration papers for school.
She shrugged.
“How is it on your birth certificate?”
“I don’t mind spelling it with a c. I feel like that other way was just between me and my mama. Not for strangers.”
“But that doesn’t make sense. We should spell it the proper way.”
“I said I don’t want to.” She threw aside the stick I had been using to write.
“Alright, alright.” Mace was right. I needed to accept that they were not a case for me to fix. I had never known that good intentions could be just as destructive as bad ones. Surely this was a family capable of making its own decisions.
Erica’s brown eyes glinted in the sunlight. I had never noticed that her eyes were brown. I just registered they weren’t the same hazel as her father’s.
A wave hit us, and India startled. Erica scooted her pile of shells over to her sister. India took them and began sorting them by size and color. Sister LaTarsha’s influence, no doubt. It was difficult to be around the girls and not want to share in their bond. Their closeness changed the air around them.
“I’m going to go check on your daddy.”
Erica drew letters in the sand with a finger. I-N-D-I-A. “See? That’s your name, India,” she said to her sister.
Mace had settled on a towel farther back from the shoreline. As I approached him, I could see that his eyes were closed.
“You not going to fish?”
“Might.”
I sat in the chair next to him. Daddy had taught me how to swim in this ocean. He wanted me to be comfortable in the waves. He would carry me out until the water came up to his chest. Then as the waves came in, he would jump into them. His comfort in the water taught me there was nothing to be afraid of. Once, he grabbed a fistful of seaweed and held it to my nose. Then he said, You smell that right there? That’s the scent of the Maker. And the Maker loves you and your beautiful brown self. I wiped my wet brow. My daddy’s footprints were all over this sand.
“When I first started coming here as a child, this was a colored beach. It was named after a soldier killed in the Korean War. Rosamond Johnson.”
“A colored beach?” Mace said.
“Umm, you do realize that Negroes are from Africa, where it can get hot enough to fry an egg on the sidewalk?”
Mace’s scratchy laugh sounded like sand was lodged in his throat.
“Speaking of frying, I remember there used to be a fish shack where a man fried fish in a pan over a fire. And a place called the Sunset Riding Club.”
His eyes scanned the beach. Of course, there was no longer any sign of a shack or club.
“The white folks closed it all down. No sign of it now. Now the beach belongs to the government, I guess.”
“I ain’t surprised.”
I wanted to continue with the story, to share with him that my granddaddy had also been a doctor and that he had been friends with the dentist who owned the Sunset Riding Club. When we were young, Daddy would buy me a Popsicle and it would melt and run down my wrist. I wanted to share all of that with Mace, but I could not bring the words up. I worried how it would make him feel. He might not even believe me. Coming from a family of doctors was as far away from his world as humanly possible.
“A colored beach . . .” he whispered again.
Erica turned to us and waved. Mace held up a peace sign with his fingers.
“I got something to ask you,” he said to me. I sat up in my chair and brushed the sand from my feet.
“Shoot.”
He squinted at me. “You think it’s too late for me to learn to read?”
“Read?” I had heard him, but it was the last thing I expected him to say.
He kept his eyes focused on the girls, and I could tell he was studiously avoiding my eyes. He did not repeat himself.
“No, it’s never too late. They got free classes at the library, I think.”
He shook his head. “I ain’t going to no library.”
“Alright,” I said slowly. “You want me to find somebody to teach you?” I thought of the nun who ran India’s school. Sister LaTarsha might know someone. Then there was our church. Surely they had an outreach ministry for this kind of thing.
“I already found somebody,” he said.
“Sure enough? Who?”
“You.”
“I don’t know how, Mace. I’ve never taught anybody to read before. I wouldn’t even know where to start. I can’t even remember learning myself.”
“Forget it.”
“No, Mace, I—”
“I said forget it.”
He rose and brushed the sand from his shorts. Slowly, he took off his shirt and walked down to be with the girls. I had not seen him shirtless since that day at the cabin, and I looked away and then back at him and then away again.
Stop it, Civil. You are at the beach. That’s what men do at the beach. They remove their shirts. You’re the one sitting around with clothes over top of your swimsuit.
Mace expertly skipped a rock over the water. He tossed a second one and it bounced twice before sinking. I tried to think clearly. Mace was the one too proud to go down to the library and stumble through words with the other grown-ups who would be there. That was his problem, not mine. It wasn’t my responsibility to teach him to read. I had done enough for him and his family.