I like coming to the beach. It’s a few hours’ drive from the city and I always nod off on the journey. Mom says the motion of the car lulls me to sleep; I don’t know what she means by that, but as soon as we hit the highway and I feel the warmth inside the car and nestle into the padded seat, I lose interest in what’s going on outside, I close my eyes and submerge into myself. When I open them, the lowered front windows are sending a blast of humid air right through the car. The surface of the sidewalk next to us almost blinds me, gleaming in the sun. There are fewer cars than in the city, and they go slower, more calmly. I know we’re nearly there because our car is barely moving as we wait our turn to enter a parking lot. I wind down my window as well and watch all the people heading for the beach, dressed in light colorful clothing, and I say to my parents let’s go now, they tell me we need to check into the hotel first; I say at least buy me an ice cream, they tell me no, as always. We finally park up. Dad gets out of the car and returns promptly, keys dangling from his hand, removes a suitcase from the trunk, mom takes out another and I carry my backpack; laden with all these things we go up to the room where a fan circulates the warm air, I lie on the bed and since I’m very hot I say perhaps it would be best if we had a little rest; mom says no, we have to go down now to get the most out of the day. We swing by a store that’s really cold, like a refrigerator, it feels so good; there we buy sodas and chips, beers for dad, and we search the crowded beach for a spot we like the look of. Dad hires a sunshade and struggles to set it up, when he manages to get it open mom tells him he should ask for some recliners too so we don’t get covered in sand. Dad accepts grudgingly, he says it’s expensive and the beers will get warm, he grabs one, leaves and comes back and finally they lie back, each on a recliner, while I play in the sand; I can’t go in the water alone because I’m too little. But dad takes me with him when mom falls asleep. His mouth smells bitter, and his hairy body tickles me; I wrap myself around him regardless, to keep myself steady. I start to release him little by little, still gripping his hand. We do something that’s nearly swimming: we let the water rock us. I feel more secure and start to move my arms, my arms are small and the sea is huge; then a really big wave comes. Dad tells me not to let go of him, but then he lets go of me; I swallow a lot of salty water, I close my eyes but they sting all the same, I can’t see a thing and then everything turns red and I can’t breathe. I’m only able to fill my lungs again when a pair of hands grabs me. It isn’t my dad, it’s another man who grips me hard under the armpits, it hurts. No one comes for me, and I cry and the man won’t let go; it takes a lifetime for mom to appear. We go back to the hotel, it’s nighttime now, the two of them shout and dad leaves the room slamming the door behind him.
The next day it’s like nothing happened and the sun is bright, we go to the beach again and this time it’s better because I have a sister, the two of us make sandcastles, and I don’t have to go swimming. She’s very pretty and very tiny, and she’s brave too, that much has been clear since she was a baby but it’s becoming more obvious now that she’s a few years old: she’s always desperate to get in and swim. I take her firmly by the hand so she follows me as we totter across the sand, wetting our feet; I don’t let go, I have to take care of her, I’m the older sister. We collect pebbles and shells; she likes crabs, I find them repulsive, she grabs one by the leg and flings it at me, I burst into tears as she laughs at me and I think someone younger shouldn’t be less scared than me, but that’s the way it is, she lets go of my hand and walks into the sea and I shout and mom doesn’t hear me, dad neither, and after a while she comes back laughing, saying she only wanted to scare me, I shouldn’t be afraid of the water; then she goes off to play with a boy making sandcastles; I’m left standing there, scared, watching her from a distance. She’s always the one who makes friends on the beach, who plays volleyball with other girls, while I prefer to stay with mom, who’s pregnant again. Mom and I sit and watch the sea in silence, especially her, she doesn’t talk much with the pregnancy, hardly a word. Dad talks, but only to me, I don’t really get it, but I don’t ask because by now I’ve gotten used to them being mad all the time; to dad asking me to pass the towel that’s right next to mom; to seeing her sad and always on the verge of tears; to hearing that silence; to keeping quiet and devoting ourselves to watching the sea, which after a while becomes its own form of entertainment. Dad drinks beer, mom an apple soda, and plain water for me because I’m on a diet.
It’s getting late but not dark, vacations are never-ending and fleeting at the same time. At the start, it all seems too uncomfortable, too hot, we’re just waiting for the holiday to end; then we get acclimatized and never want to go home. I don’t talk to anyone, but I can lie here and read as much as I like, without anyone bothering me, telling me to get up and make the most of it. I listen to music and gaze at the cloudy sky and I turn to look at my sister, who’s next to me, listening to her own music. It’s cold, that’s why she isn’t swimming, I use the cold as an excuse, I’m still afraid of the water. Suddenly dad gets up, I take off my headphones and listen to what he’s saying, apparently he’s been talking to my sister and me for a while and because we didn’t answer he’s shouting now; then mom intervenes and tells him to shut up, she’s tired of hearing him shout all the time. Then I realize that all her silences were covering up a whole bunch of words that are now spilling out quickfire, one after another, and dad isn’t sticking around to listen, he leaves and that’s the last I see of him, I can sense it because I can’t stop staring at the half-empty beer can he’s left on the sand, the cigarette stub still damp with his saliva, and I know I will always associate that image—the cigarette, the beer, the trash on the sand, a hot cloudy beach—with him. After that day mom gets worse, no matter how hard she tries to appear happy her smile is always sad and I ask her what’s wrong and she tells me she doesn’t want to ruin our vacation but she has a sense of foreboding. I gaze at her pregnant belly and kiss it and tell her: it’ll all be fine. Meanwhile, my sister is running on the beach for exercise; that’s what she says, I know she’s drinking alcohol with some strange boy. I’m angry at her for not being here with us, but what I’m really concerned about is the medical report I wasn’t supposed to read. The pregnancy is high-risk and now mom is alone, well, she has us, but there’s not much we can do; despite knowing all this I tell mom it’ll all be fine, I take her face in my hands and kiss it and her tears taste salty like the water I swallow when I try to swim. She cries a lot because my brother never arrived, or rather, he arrived, but not alive, no one ever explained it to us very clearly and I didn’t want to ask, my sister doesn’t ask either and sometimes it seems like she doesn’t even care; we’re sitting on the sand when I reproach her about it and she tells me it’s all my fault, but in the end we decide to make peace for the sake of mom, who’s stayed behind in the city to rest because she’s been weak since the pregnancy; my sister and I keep coming though: it’s a ritual. It’s been a pleasant surprise to discover that we can actually get along with one another; despite being in no way alike we can talk about anything. One day she gives me a puff of marijuana. It’s evening and the sun is sinking into the sea and it’s a red coin, a stain and colors all around it and how does my sister know so much, she’s the one who teaches me everything and I feel like I can’t help her with anything, I can’t do anything, I can’t even swim in the sea even though I come here year after year; I feel like there’s nothing I can do when she says she wants to leave home, all I can think of is to take her hand, it’s hot from all the sunbathing, just like my head, which as it comes back down to earth leaves me feeling sad, I can’t stop thinking about the brother we never had and how I don’t want things to be this way because the water is so beautiful, reflecting the sun with its intense orange, almost red, and it’s so warm and the sand so white, then I change the subject and tell her she should teach me to swim. The sea tastes of mom’s tears. I try not to think about that and focus on my sister looking so lovely. We’re in the water and I support myself on her arms, I use them as floats but I fall in spite of them. The sea tastes of tears and I feel like I can’t, I won’t ever be able to do it because the water rejects me.
The sun is high in the sky again and I flip over to tan my back. My sister wants me to go in the water with her; I tell her no, I’m tired. Anyway, the sea is too rough, there’s even a red flag a few yards away, plunged into the sand. I point it out to her and she tells me she’ll only take a quick dip, I always exaggerate, and off she goes. I feel the sun on my skin and think how nice it would have been if mom had come, but she’s losing all desire to leave the city, at least that’s what she says, and she trusts us to take care of ourselves. That’s what I’m thinking about when a surfer approaches and asks my name. I ignore him but he persists and I give a fake name, not my own. He says if I like I can have a beer with him and his friends, they’ve set up a tent farther along, with a metal frame and a tarp. I tell him I’ll go, although it’s a lie, I don’t even drink. It’s a lie until I see that my sister’s in trouble and I run to ask them to help me get her out of the water, to save her from drowning. I see her silhouette in the distance, drifting toward some rocks and my stomach tightens, I cry or shout or stay silent or everything at once; the guy who offered me a beer drags my sister onto the surfboard, he and his friend take it in turns to push her. I’m thinking it’s all gone wrong, I should have taken better care of her, while a paramedic gives her first aid; immobile, with her eyes closed, she looks so delicate. People are crowding around and they all have the same expression on their faces: someone so beautiful shouldn’t die. Later I tell her it’s all my fault, she tells me to stop tormenting myself, she was the one who didn’t listen to me. Deep down, she thinks I abandoned her, left her to her fate, all her life I’ve abandoned her; I think that’s what she thinks because from that day on she talks less, she turns in on herself and sits gazing at the sea. She doesn’t come back to the beach, at least not as far as I’m aware, at least not with me.
The sand is tickling my whole body and I don’t know if it’s more humid here than usual, or whether with the passing of time and my nerves it’s getting harder to come, to fill my hair, my ears, my navel, under my nails, with sand. The towel beneath me is useless, the sand is getting everywhere and I ask my husband if we can go up to the hotel, he says we need to take a dip first and I shake my head, very slowly; the sea’s calm, look, like a swimming pool, he holds out his hand for me to grab it and stand up. No, I tell him, this time in a firm voice, and it’s the first no of many. Our honeymoon is being ruined by my fear of water, he finds it ridiculous that I asked to come to the beach but don’t want to swim; he loves it, and I don’t know why we didn’t talk about this before, apparently we know nothing about each other. He’s annoyed, he goes to the bar, comes back, and as the time passes my discomfort grows, I’m starting to get tired of this place, I hate the sand on my body, I hate him, and he gives up trying to understand what’s wrong and heads off to swim by himself, then back to the bar and I realize we should never have come here, but I missed this place so much, and we keep coming and our vacations are always the worst part of everything, and at the same time they’re inevitable, just as it was inevitable that my son, my mother’s grandchild, never arrived, and that since then I’ve talked less, hardly a word, just like her.
I walk along the beach hand in hand with my husband, we wet our feet, try to make it work again. The day is slightly cloudy but the water is warm. He throws me a smile and moves closer to the water, gently tugging my hand, inviting me to go in with him, I let go and tell him no, for the last time. I make my way briskly across the beach, I’ve been here so long I’ve forgotten about the sand, I think I must have turned into sand as I advance, plowing deep footsteps that belong to two people in one: my son who never arrived and me. I glance back: my ex-husband gave up trying to reach me long ago. I keep walking, it’s nighttime now and it strikes me that I’ve never understood this ritual, nor do I understand why I came alone, what with the work meeting on Monday and my increasingly long to-do list; I shake those thoughts out of my head because it doesn’t matter, the main thing is that I’m walking with those steps that stay imprinted on the damp sand as though my weight were greater than it actually is: it’s the weight of my entire life and everything I think and remember. What matters is that I’m here, that I always come back.
It’s dawn. Cold. The sea is calm. There are no waves, the tide starts later. Not a trace of warmth. There’s no sand on my body yet because I’ve just left the hotel. I leave my dress and bag in a visible spot on the deserted beach and walk toward the shoreline. I’m trembling, I don’t know if it’s the cold or fear. I’m not sure if I enter of my own accord or something pushes me. The water comes up to my ankles. Now my legs. The waist is always the hardest. I keep going in, I cover my breasts with icy water. Now it’s up to my neck. When I submerge my head I try not to think about mom, and in trying not to her image flashes insistently through my mind. My hair is heavy, it swirls around me and every so often obscures my vision. I inhale the humid air and feel the water moving over my skin. The tide is beginning to move. I take a breath and try to float. I lose balance and swallow water, it makes me cough. Tears. I take a breath and try to float. I’m crying. I take a breath. I lie back on the water and gaze upward. Beneath, the sea caresses me. Above, the sky is growing lighter. The warmth is returning, little by little. Day is breaking.
Translated by Beth Fowler
Original story from Respirar bajo el agua, Sexto Piso, Mexico City, 2025.
Buy books by the authors and translators featured in this issue on our Bookshop page!
