San Bartolo

CW: Accidental injury

Tata's driver dropped us off at the top of the hill.

The sun glints off the metal inside the car had burned my eyes.

I blinked hard and fast to get rid of the blinding red afterimages.

Outside the car was better.

I looked straight out and saw the gutter of the sapphire sky and the seamless flat green of the ocean.

No whitecaps, just rare lone rollers coming from infinity.

Squinting I could saw white patches of boats standing still in the distance.

It was just a short walk to our family's bungalow in San Bartolo, Peru.

The gravel crackled under my dads shoes as he and I and my sister held hands.

Our bungalow sat in a small harbor next to a pier that had a build-up of barnacles and great green globs hanging from its footings.

This was not my favorite beach, the sand was too pebbly with tiny shells that hurt your feet.

I was 8 years old.

We called bedrooms, threw our bags, and ran to find the buckets and shovels.

You wait for me before you go, my dad said. You guys stand on the balcony. Wait. Also make sure you drink juice before you go.

There was a carton of papaya juice waiting for us in the fridge.

This was everywhere we went.

We gulped it down from the container, the coldness hurting our heads.

My sister, who was a year younger than me, waited on the balcony with me all smiles.

We had on swimsuits and towels and plastic beach toys and started rubbing the lotion on our dark brown skins just to hurry up.

It smelled like summer and beach.

My dad was on the phone, trying to find my mother.

At that time, there were only landlines, no mobiles.

It was easier to get lost, then.

He was calling her home, his parents home, her sister. Noone knew.

My sister and I both smiled quietly at each other.

I tried putting on my sisters pink goggles, but they wouldnt fit me, her head too little.

She said my weird head looked like a melon.

I put up one orbital to my eye.

The world looked pink.

She put on my goggles easily around her head.

They were black and were better sunglasses.

We always had a good time with my dad, my mother made everything intense.

My parents were both from Peru, and flew us back here every other year.

It refreshed our spanish, and we got to know our grandparents and network of aunts,uncles and cousins.

From the balcony I looked out and watched the families playing and walking on the beach.

Sometimes the waves here were big and scary.

They had picked me up and thrown me around a few times, which was fun and terrifying.

I had gotten a lot stronger and bigger in the past two years, I wanted to see if it would still happen.

I didnt know at the time that this area was world-renowned by surfers.

Last time we saw blond haired people on surfboards out beyond.

Never close to our family's little house.

But today the sea was calm, and peaceful. No surfers.

There were already a number of kids wading out, couples hand-in-hand.

Finally my dad walked out into the balcony in his bathing suit, closed the screen door behind him, beach bag in hand and towel draped over his shoulder.

Wheres Mama, I asked.

Dios sabe, he said. It'll just be us today.

My sister and I lifted our arms in a quiet celebratory cheer.

I lifted the latch on the balcony gate and my sister and I sprinted down the wooden stairs in our flipflops and out onto the beach.

I raced to a good spot on the beach that was close but not too close to the waves and I started digging furiously.

I had resolved, for the past year, that I would dig a hole that was at least 100 feet deep.

I reckoned, in my imagination, it would take most of the day.

At the end of the day, when it was time to leave, I would climb down and they wouldnt find me and the police would have to rescue me by rope the next day.

But first, my dad had a tradition where we would walk with him about a hundred yards down the beach.

After making sure we had enough lotion on our backs and behind our ears, he grabbed our hands as we started walking.

He lectured us on the dangers of the ocean, the deadliest place in the world.

He told us about rip currents that killed strong adult stupid swimmers.

He told us about urchins, that nestled on the sea floor, that would impale your foot with giant spikes.

The worst of the lot were the jellyfish.

If we stayed close to shore we would not encounter them.

But we would find them dead on the beach, and I would spend time poking them with sticks and trying to turn them over.

There were different types too.

There was one kind that looked like a pinkish whitish blueish blob that would have a single long tentacle.

But the most common kind of dead jellyfish were those that looked like plastic bags of brown jelly.

They wouldnt hunt you but they would release toxins that itched your skin something fierce.

After that, my dad laid out on a cot under an umbrella and a hat and sunglasses and read a book.

My sister and I would lose ourselves on the beach, and time would disappear.

I tried digging my hole for a while. It was hard with this pebbly sand. I got bored and tired.

My sister and I played games with the waves where we would see how far we could follow a retreating wave and then outrun the waves as they crashed to shore.

We played that the water was acid and we dissolved if the water touched us.

After a while she made sandcastles and I wandered off into the water.

The water was not cold, and very salty to the taste.

I like to walk slowly into the water, dipping my head into the water periodically with my goggles on to make sure I saw no urchins.

When the water got up to my chin I would float on my back.

By just barely moving my feet and hands, I could float forever and look up at the sky and see the occasional seagull calling.

If I put my ears underwater the world went silent.

I could stay like that for a long time.

I could just be.

I thought of Maria, my Tata's house-maid.

She was an indian, which meant she was an Inca.

For me, an Inca was something magical, like being an Elf.

She was young, had a broad smiling face, a thick mane of black hair, and she was very kind to me.

She always greeted me with smiles, laughter.

She was really warm and safe and claimed to be a hug monster.

She had been part of the family and had known me since I could remember, since I was a baby, before I, as I knew myself, had begun.

She was more precious to me than any parent or aunt or uncle and grandparent.

I was secretly in love with her, and would dream of kissing her.

She had a smell to her that was just her, never did anyone else have it.

She wrote a few letters to my sister and I during the year, and we sent back postcards of South Bend, Indiana.

Once, my father told me he had met my mother when they were both young and he was in med school and she was really pretty and quiet.

All their dates had been chaperoned.

Thats what you did in Peru back then.

He said that after they got married, they moved to the states so my dad could be a doctor.

He said it only took a month to realize he had made a horrible mistake.

But it was too late.

She was already pregnant with me.

So we stayed.

I started to feel itchiness and pain in one leg.

After a while I couldnt pretend it wasnt there, it got worse.

Then my penis and balls started to hurt too.

I scratched myself there but it just hurt worse.

I swam back to shore and ran to my dad.

Me pica, me pica mi pierna.

He had me stand in front of him and he dropped my bathsuit and examined me, asking me to point where it hurt.

Did anything take a bite of you out there, he asked.

No. I dont think so.

A lifeguard blew a whistle then.

Everyone was instructed to come out of the water because jellyfish had been spotted.

We went back inside and my dad put cortisone lotion and I took antihistamine.

My dad called for Tata's driver who picked us up and drove us to get sandwiches and sweet breads from a local bakery.

It ended up being one of those golden days of childhood, one that lives unnoticed in your head until you reexamine it on your deathbed.

I only found out much later as an adult that it was the first time my mother had left us.