Crab Orchard Review Vol. 12, No. 2, our

Donna Hemans
As I left, she was taking out one of her tranquility candles, lavender
scent, I believed. Once the flame was lit, she shook the lit match, breathed
deeply, the outtake as heavy as a sigh.
Brad led us through a footpath bordered by grass and prickly
shrubs. The beach was a small cove with naked reefs jutting out into the
sea. The water was surprisingly warm but a little dark because the sun
was no longer directly overhead, and the sand carried a tinge of black.
It wasn’t until after I sat, my legs stretched out, the waves crashing over
my body, that I noticed the small crabs being carried as well by the
waves. Once the wave retreated, the crabs buried themselves quickly.
There were small, almost translucent fish darting around, inspecting
my dark brown legs and unable to resist the pull of the waves.
“This is awesome,” Brad said and whooped, plunging into the water.
I imagined him as someone else, a television character who says
words like cool and dude and awesome, the type of American son my
mother didn’t want to raise. In that moment he was not the brother I
had known, not the brother who always stood back from baseball or
softball games and who would dribble a basketball if there was only one
other person on court, never with a full team. Independent thinker, my
father said because he hadn’t yet learned Brad’s thinking. Brad wants no
broken bones; he wants to remain as complete as the day he was born.
Brad swam a bit, coming up for air and yelling back, “Aren’t you
coming in?”
I didn’t swim at all but sat at the water’s edge rubbing sand onto
my skin. A free body scrub.
Two boys came loping down. They were accustomed to the cove.
They waved hello, dropped their towels on the rocks and waded out
towards Brad. Brad settled for a bit to shake hands. Later, I learned
one was seventeen, one twenty. The seventeen-year-old, Shane, spoke
softly as if all conversations were private or it pained him to talk. The
other, who called himself Red, spoke with a different accent. He told
us his mother was from Germantown, a descendant of a group of
Germans who came to the island years and years earlier and never
resettled back home. He pointed west as if we should know where.
Germantown, another name I love. Simple. Straightforward.
Once we headed back to the cabins, the boys pointed out their
respective homes on the compound. All the houses were occupied by
siblings, uncles and aunts of the two boys. I couldn’t help but think
of my parents who could barely live together, but here was one tribe
on the same compound. I couldn’t imagine an entire family of adult
Crab Orchard Review ◆ 85