There are Sharks in the Waters

I recently went on a short cruise to the Bahamas with my family.  It was girls only cruise so it was my mom, my sister, her seven year old daughter, my sister-in-law, her three year old daughter, and me.

Since my parents grew up with The Great Depression and WWII looming in their rear view mirror, they started saving money for their retirement somewhere in their late teens. Old habits like reading library books by candlelight give them room to treat their family to fun vacations.  We would gladly pay our own way, or better yet, treat Mom and Dad to fun vacations, but alas, my sister, brother, and I had nothing more inspiring than MTV and Magnum P.I. looming in our own rear view mirrors. Hence, most of the money we save goes to paying last month’s cable bill.   

Couple financial resources with the fact that grandchildren came rather late in our family and you have two little girls who some might call spoiled.  We shy away from this word though, preferring adjectives like bright, talented, and strikingly attractive.

So, we spend much of the time on the cruise ship exclaiming how beautiful, ladylike, and just down-right cute my nieces are.  We talk to them like puppies:  “Aren’t you just the absolute cutest thing in the whole wide world!  Lemee see your little belly!  Look how cute that little warm belly is!” And as that particular little girl sticks out her tanned little belly, she beams as proudly as if she has just won a hard-earned prize for belly cuteness.  

By dinner time on the second night on the ship, my older niece started complaining that the younger niece was getting too much attention.  “Everyone’s always saying how cute she is and how much she always smiles.  But, I’m older.”

She says this last part in indignation and hurt disbelief.  She adamantly believes that the four years separating her from her cousin warrant more attention, more respect.  I get this.  I’m the oldest child and spent much of my youth whining, “But, I’m older.”

I hug her, lavish her with praise, and do my best to keep the truth from her: That this is just the beginning.  Her days of being  complimented for merely existing are numbered.  I’m 44 couldn't tell you the last time someone commented on my cute, warm belly.

It’s probably the Pina Coladas talking, but I lie to her, telling her that the attention her cousin is getting is because people feel sorry for her, not because she is cuter.  


For the record, I would have said the same exact thing to my other niece if the table had been reversed. 


It’s not that I enjoy messing with their heads, or putting little kids down., but I just can’t bear the thought of either one of them being hurt.  Having lived a bit longer, I know that hurt is inevitable.  That it will come in all shapes and sizes, bouncing in and out their lives with the alacrity of a steel ball in a pinball machine.
  

I take her out on the deck, and perched on chaise lounges, we turn our attention to discussing a surprising number of things we both are curious about:

If we were to fall over board would anyone hear the splash or would the engine noise completely drown out our cries?

And, once overboard, would sharks eat us immediately or toy with us for a few moments, bumping us from shark nose to shark nose like circus seals?

We both grow quiet, speculating on the terrors lurking below the warm Caribbean waters, and my mind wanders to another summer, many years ago.

When I was maybe eight or so, my family was living in a small house in Southwest Miami.  Southwest meaning that we were closer to the burning Everglades than to the white sand of Miami Beach.

It was a safe neighborhood and I have fond memories of that little house shaded by ficus trees and redolent with the smell of gardenia and hibiscus.  There were sidewalks where we could walk to school and a corner store to buy bubble gum cigars.  Conveniences I would miss, when we later made the great middle-class jump to suburbia.

On procrastinating afternoons, I have used Google earth and looked up our old house and I like to see that the neighborhood is still well tended.  Ornate iron grills cover the windows and doors but I believe that this ornamentation is not to deter criminals, but, rather, harkens back to the days of Conquistadors and Mediterranean plazas.

What gets me the most though is the miniscule circular driveway that is now in front of the house, which replaced a ficus tree I spent many, many hours climbing as a little girl.  I can never decide if I like the driveway or not.  On one hand it's rakish and Continental, on the other it's impractical and pretentious, considering it's a 900 square feet houses on  a 1,200 square foot lot.

Before the circular driveway and window ornaments, when I was growing up in the 1970s, we had a neighbor down the street who used to occasionally babysit my sister, brother, and me.  This family was, even at that time, a relic from a different generation of Floridians.  They weren’t transplants as my family and most of our neighbors were.  Whether from the cooler clime of  northern states or from a small island 90 miles from Key West, we were all exiles of a sort, leaving our own marks,

This neighbor’s house was what others called an eyesore or worse. 


Their driveway, which possibly could be described "early circular," defied neighborhood aesthetics and extended far back into the Florida Power and Light easement behind their house. They owned a fleet of rusted out trucks and cars and even had one of those distinct Florida oddities, an airboat. 

Anyway, the matriarch of this family was a tall, wide mouthed, tall, smiling woman named Wilma who had a passel of teenage children who came in and out of the house all day long.  Pleading for money, changing clothes, grabbing cases of albums, stashing who-knows-what  in the airboat.  It was the 70s- anything was possible. Or so we thought then.


The few times I was left in her custody I stayed clear of the confusion of the house, opting to sit in the black sandy front yard pocked by pools of old motor oil and stare longingly at my own well-tended house two doors down.

Wilma had a foster child named Amy, a two year old with curly blond hair and blue eyes, with crumbs of food always glued to the spittle in the corners of her mouth.  I never did learn the circumstances of her presence but I do know that the story ended well with Wilma and her husband formally adopting her.

Occasionally, while we were there, Wilma would have to run an errand and would cheerfully pile all of us into the back of her van.  Long before the invention of today’s comfy, safety oriented SUVs and luxurious min-vans, vans of the 70s, this one at least, sported two chairs in the front bolted to exposed metal and a cavernous back littered with gas cans, tires, and tools, with  scratched porthole windows on either side.

On one particular ride, actually the only one I remember, Wilma’s oldest daughter rode shotgun and the rest of us crawled in the back and held on for dear life as the van picked up speed. Loose wrenches and sockets bounced around and created a deafening noise. Amy had to sit on my lap, and I used my free hand to grasp the only immovable item in the van: a portable generator.   I kept careful mental inventory of all the dangers to report to my parents with the hope of convincing them that at eight years old I was old enough to keep their progeny safer in our own house far away from the supervision of Wilma.
 

Wilma and her daughter chain smoked and kept up a steady dialogue about someone’s boyfriend in the front seats but the details of their conversation were lost to my eavesdropping amidst the clanging of car batteries banging against the back door.
 

After what seemed to be a several hundred mile trip, our teeth still rattling, the van finally stopped at a local Army Navy surplus store.  Wilma, in a gush of cigarette smoke said they’d be back in a minute and promised us Slurpees on the way home.

What happened next I would like to blame on the heat of the van or the air compressor that had rolled over onto my flip flopped toe.  I’d like to blame it on any number of things because to this day what I did still causes a blush of guilt across my cheeks.
 

Out of boredom or out of simple childhood maliciousness I began to tease Amy.

Tease.  An innocent word encompassing a slew of hateful actions.  They say that Eskimos have something like 250,000 words for snow and yet we only have one for tease.  Actually, now we have two: tease and bully. 

“Your mom isn’t coming back Amy. We are going to have to live in this van forever.”

My brother, wrestling with a jackhammer and trying his best to power it up, chimed in, “Yeah, you’re stuck here with US.”

Unfortunately, my words only affected my five year old sister who started to cry.

I quickly took the story in a different direction and added, “Actually OUR mom and dad are coming to get us after work, only you will have to stay here forever.  With Wilma,” I said matter-of-factly in my best teacher voice to the unblinking Amy. 
 

Pieces of her lunch were glued to the corners of her mouth and Amy stared at me with the clear eyes unique to children while they began to fill with tears.


My still whimpering sister, bless her kind heart, offered Amy a screwdriver she had been playing with which broke Amy from her trance and the two of them consoled each other by taking turns trying to pry the hinges off the bag cargo doors.

On the way home I offered Amy some of my cherry Slurpee partly as a means of making up, but more as a bribe so she wouldn’t tell on me.
 
Guilt, that strange creature that plagues both young and old, gnawed at me the rest of that day. When I found its clenches in my throat, I did the same thing both young and old are known to do: I deflected it into anger. Anger at Wilma for leaving us in that hot, dangerous van. And anger with my parents for putting me in the situation to begin with.

I’m sure this isn’t true, but in my mind that was the last time I saw Amy or Wilma and her brood.  They moved shortly afterward, in the middle of the night, back to where they were originally from.  An island in the middle of Lake Okeechobee?  A cabin in the Everglades?  I never found out.

And so here I am, some 35 years later, slightly drunk, sitting on the deck of a cruise ship overlooking warm tropical waters on a moonlit night, tears welling in my eyes, awash in shame, and hoping with all my heart that Amy is happy, and loved, and  enjoying a beautiful life.

My niece, who is kind like her mother, notices my tears and asks me if I am okay. 


I put her on my lap and hug her tightly, and tell her what I would tell little two-year old Amy if I could go back in time: You are the cutest, most perfect, adorable little girl in the whole wide world.

She wiggles away from my grasp, giggling, “Stop Auntie Mare, you’re hurting me.”

With first grade coming in a matter of weeks and the great unknown to follow, I can only wish in vain that this will be the only hurt she ever knows.