Tarpaulin Sea
By Nikki Williams
Of course the world was her oyster; she’d been too long trammeled by a shell she contrived. Freedom seemed far or made for the unhinged and Marie had settled into feeling like she’d been put on ice.
She was fond of the woman—a love that breathed and burned bone deep—so she knew all too well she’d never have her. Not in the way she craved. Not yet, perhaps? No. Things were no different in this limitless land or near the cloudless coastline of another. No. The soul she sought was chimerical, the keeper and the kept. Her fortitude had faded; the woman was free.
That stubborn charm was siphoned into convincing Tony and Demi to take down the help wanted sign instead. In response, she’d gotten the once over and Tony’s blessing—a head toss toward depleted displays. Demi’s drilling was concise: staples, periodicals, dos and don’ts. A jump-start in shelf control. And to think she’d always believed stocks would be in her future. She’s near-automated now, filling out Gondolas in a flash, reflexes from arduous years pinning out linen, wringing emotions, plucking tawny sapodilla.
GED pending, she cajoled the pair once again, did not gain traction, did not dishearten; her current schedule sufficient for scoping out the red Oasis anyways.
The car was on everyone’s radar for reasons as factious as night and day. For folks as unbothered as they’d been about commissioning, her superiors were awfully high-strung about the crew from La Casita.
Demi’s cousin dropped in a few days before, during one of their rendezvous. Nearly leaping out of her pink skin, she slinked around rubbernecking adorned lobes and limbs, language even more colorful, a spotless driver’s license. Her Bible-thumping began when the door swung, crow’s feet flaring at “them hotheads from Say-ten.” Something about consecrating their this and thats, Tony’s hushed answers to her appraisal.
Marie hoped the woman was right, about him anyway, chewing on possibilities, popping stale grape gum. When they blew through the place at gale force, electricity pinched her pores. He would ignore her radiance, again, for his knockabout cluster outside, fried onions and nicotine wafting. She would deny his goldfish tattoo rebounded through her cerebellum too long after he’d gone.
His is her unspoken question, why thoughts and things of merit—classes, practice, blahs—are snared in sweet apocalypse. She languished at steam unspooling from store decaf, musing ad nauseum over snaking traffic. Sometimes, she tried gauging whether he or heavy ocean air stirred worse pangs, which was more deserving of her happy hope.
Deflecting before her April moods grew grim, she skulked off to new nowheres; daydreaming ways to forego gravity, about her own slice of the sky.
She didn’t sneak out, per se, that night the brawl erupted at La Casita. A sweeping moment that blighted her vanilla views, bodies skittering across predawn peaks and valleys. It was perfect chaos, a haze of hubris and fractures—windows, will, bones. Half-truths and 180s wipe shadows off the floor. The scene is flagged in her mind, bathed in beams of red, blue, white; driving home the point about the flash of light, sending souls uniformly into that good night.
________
Two minutes have gone by since Mr. Crocker started his monologue about the deplorable midterms. Rising exactly when she knows he will for dramatic effect, Marie motions to the door, grabbing the hall pass before protest is possible.
The hallway is clean and vacant, save for cherry red lockers kissing high gloss terrazzo. Her sneakers scratch the silence all the way to the first floor bathroom. Checking under stalls, she’s stoked the fourth one is empty like she prayed; it has the least graffiti, used tissues, invisible sophomoric air that lingers like an old faith. She’s not in here for small fry sentiment.
With a flip of the lid, she slumps into a pigeon toed perch, exhaling sharply, bailing into blindness.
That morning, as the bus steered the Rimrock Road bend, the St. John’s United slogan caught her eye: “So Much Life To Live.” A handpicked phrase. A pensive harvest. It stuck with her beyond where the road forked, cirrus clouds over campus to the right, infinity of scrublands on the left. The wilderness winked; there, logistics don’t escrow lonely landmarks, haven’t soiled greener pastures.
She sculled along tussocks and scenery, visiting trails beneath skies ablaze in amber and ochre. Where she first witnessed wizardry—mango cheeks scored into sun-fed regiments, pomegranate whacked into seedless submission.
Where sunrays played games at her grandma’s front door—no one else dared—or filtered softly, as if knowing Elaine could never.
When cow-itch vine ruptured Marie’s tiny hands, Elaine sat her down, stopped the clock: sapodilla seed paste for the rash, warm milk and biscuits for the rest.
Her grandma was an epic poem, her aura shamanic. She wore fire like a ruff, did everything with spry, would never tell you why, or how. Never left her homeland, a ruler moored in majesty on an arterial road in the heart of town. Broad-minded in her blue velour armchair, basking in the garden haul, tea leaves, lemonade.
“Taínos thought bats were spirits you know,” she’d said once, cradling Marie’s sated face, wiping chin-bound guava juice. “They’d come out and feast on guavas at night,” she continued, tweaking the girl’s nose, muttering something low and cruel about certain haunted mammals and their nighttime exploits.
She wore her flame loud, lived and lived until the sunrays ceased their gamboling.
Her green thumbs had glided over the black beads, gold spring ring that never left Marie’s arm. A glint she’d seen among the tchotchkes, dreamed of, was really hers. A joy as big as Christmas. A vow to keep it close. It seemed void of vanity even then, a gesture more obligatory than obtuse.
Marie heard her mother’s voice warning her time and again against folklore, against fact. Marie heard her mother’s voice, still Elaine was seldom wrong, as if she already knew the straits ahead of westward prospects.
When it was Marie’s turn to traipse to the Treasure State, she touched down in a swirl of relief and dread. Burying the graveness under weekends, worry, weekdays unearthed a new soul, one that didn’t mind the dusty familiarity between strangers. Cold one day, hot the next, unlike the Big Sky forecast. That much always read like a Marvel log line: pregnant clouds on thin horizons, android guardians with chips on their shoulders.
________
Crocker disapproves of her memory lane placebo; he “would like a word after class.”
Marie is sure she wasn’t gone that long, this time, although she missed the recap, and the extra credit topic is already up in his confident scrawl. “Anacondas Explained: How These Snakes Become the World’s Largest.” No expert on giant snakes, she’s certain her rattling, cautionary tales would outdo National Geographic.
Marie is dour, but Crocker’s coda is amusing as always. Today, he is nerd ninja: black hair, black moustache, twirling graded essays like nunchucks over, around, behind listless seniors filing out. When he gets to her combo desk, the ninja goes desperado, placing her B+ face up, guns blazing.
Missives barrel into her ribcage.
“...full of potential…”
“a sensible young lady prone to…”
He seems disappointed.
One barb lodges in the point blank skirmish. Marie lowers her eyes, her vision dims. She can see shoes: Chucks, Vans with mileage, Crocker’s box calf Derbies. Outside her periphery: the smatter of test sheets, a perfect cylinder in his crossed arms, the parsing gaze above his pause.
She won’t match his wasted breath, cover up like the spectral shimmer her mother’s absent eyes perceived her to be. Won’t scream dreams or swear jars, hours she made her own burning stars, spinning in hot joy. Won’t fill the teacher in on the wad of American words that could conjure recipes, labels, table talk, never what was amiss.
Her eyes are swimming; a dumb drop hangs like a berry on a stem.
The last extra credit clue quest went peering into blacked out windows. “Alligators Can Regrow Severed Tails, Surprising Scientists.” In the hours-long drop down the Google rabbit hole, a delicate gem floats from the depths. Her body compresses, salt stings her throat: “Crocodiles are easy. They try to kill and eat you. People are harder. Sometimes they pretend to be your friend first.”
She flicks off the light, faces darkness, tenuous from being tethered to deadweight.
In her dream, there is a bayou, flotsam and failure from seventeen years on the spinning Earth. Most of the debris is unrecognizable, the reason for their existence long desiccated. Other scraps lap dank and decrepit at her ankles. In the copper water are the bloated faces of her friends, none of whom are really her friends.
One faceless figure was once someone dear. “Cosmic twins” her mother said, raving about their shared birthday. Damned lies, Marie thinks. Theirs was a volatile link, the trippy type of yarn that unraveled as time tugged, taking along everything upright.
The reckoning came when they decided on a joint birthday cake. The baker didn’t mollify his humor, couldn’t have fathomed his foreboding. “...so the chocolate cake and [checks note] vegan matcha green tea mousse don’t really go together. Er, it’s the material, texture, one’s way more dense, it just wouldn’t fly. We’ll deliver if you wanna get ‘em separate…”
And so it was.
Demi, Bottle Washer & Closet Diplomat, saved that shapeless day with unlimited chocolate shakes on the house.
Marie had spent her whole life poring over points and edges. She’d come to know that sweet stoked sour, that love leaves. She’d started to trust in coming away pruned from every drenching storm.
But the dream brings with it a stifling heat. Marie looks and weeps over the wild life, the tidewrack, the mucky miles.
________
Some days her thoughts don’t crystallize. Stoutly, she calls after those slippery rays, bidding them sneak through space to her heart of glass. Deliberate fingers trace dark, dainty beads, grief unleashed into wet heat. Snaps of wind rush across the blue-black canvas tickling her cheek, sending her one-way speak skyward. Watching from her plush window nook, she’s sure there’s a sated face inside the neon moon.
Tuesday night catches her scarfing down nachos & salsa verde from La Casita. Waiting on slow burn broadband to start on Crocker’s paper, she’s slathering piquant sauce on chips and digits, licking the tart mess, checking the screen. There’s still some green on her thumb when she scans the fully loaded page, the golden opener of Annie Roth’s four-minute read: “Every species, from bacteria to humans is capable of repairing wounds or trauma through regeneration.”
She flicks off the light, faces darkness, falling away like scales before match-strike morning.
Nikki Williams is a multi-faceted Jamaican creative who wishes she was fluent in Spanish. Nikki’s past experience includes editorial, blogging and digital news media. Her work appears in The Citron Review and Ellipsiszine, and she accepts commissioned projects. She is an active shutterbug and trail mix enthusiast when not busy writing. She tweets: @ohsashalee / See more: linktr.ee/writenowrong