Straight No Chaser

Grape

the boys have two playstations in their newly furnished living room, which makes them really happy. i'm indifferent; i haven't had much prowess with any console since super nintendo entertainment system, at which i was the shit.

and which, i'm realizing, left me with this weird "do-over" fixation. in a nintendo adventure game, nothing is ever explicitly the end. if you fuck up on a difficult level, like if due to a misstep mario falls off the edge of a bubble-shaped cliff and goes plummeting to his death below, you're not actually dead, in spite of the tragic music; you just start over from the last save point, the last place where you did something right. and if you fuck up enough times in a row, you just start again from even earlier. no action is irreversible and no consequence is permanent.

it seems impossible not to be able to do that in real life. in real life, every time i fuck up, my immediate thought is okay, do-over. for example, if i campaign really hard for a phone call and then i sleep through it, and wake up the next morning and see the accusation on my cell phone display, i cringe and think, okay, back to last night, let's try this again and i'll be careful this time. which would never occur to me if i hadn't spent countless hours in childhood helping mario rewrite his destiny, over and over.

last night was so bad, i'm not even going to write about it. except to say that if do-overs existed, i'd be calling one in right now.

i want a daughter too, but like i was telling aaron, i don't want her until we're done with this whole racism thing, until a time when she won't be expected to answer for her gender or her personality, until i can't think of any time or place i'd rather raise her in. which i know means never.

this is neither the start of something new nor the continuation of something old. i tried to work in a line about a grape, to tie it into the title, about how a baby can't eat a grape because of the size of her windpipe, but i forgot. an island would be a good place to raise a child, and if we'd never been rescued, then, well.

*****

At seven months old, she crawls like the wind. Crawls faster than either parent can chase after her, really. By now they've learned to maneuver the sand, so it doesn't shift so much beneath their feet and ankles, but she was born here; she's a natural, a precocious mover, surer on her hands and knees than either parent is upright.

One race to water's edge, thirteen frantic seconds of must get there before she does, and Aaron knows what he has to do; immediately starts crafting a playpen. He doesn't tell Shannon why, doesn't tell her about the one time the baby got away, but she wanders by and pales anyway, watching him wedge the poles into the sand.

Strapped to Aaron's back, Kailani giggles cluelessly and kicks her tiny feet.

*

He's thrilled when she starts walking, they all are, but it breaks his heart a bit, too. She's thirteen months old now, too inquisitive and too mobile to be happy for long within the confines of the playpen that sheltered her infancy.

"A toddler needs to toddle," is Aaron's rationalization.

Shannon is disgusted. "You want to put my baby on a leash?" she asks, scowling. Whatever he wants to call it--safety tether is the euphemism he's coined--a leash is what it is, a Kailani-sized harness at one end of a long strap of strong fabric.

He kneels before her and slides it gently around the baby's waist, demonstrating. "Only for when we absolutely can't keep our eyes on her all the time," he qualifies, ignoring how ridiculous it looks, even bulkier than her bulky cloth diaper. "And so she can just, she loves to go wherever we go anyway, most of the time she just follows whoever's watching her; this way you don't have to keep bending over, and I can just keep her nearby when I'm doing something dangerous--"

Shannon shakes her head, the universal sign for no, but Aaron recognizes it as unhappy assent. A single tear leaks from the corner of one eye, and she wipes it away. "Fucking island," she murmurs. Kailani reaches, up; Shannon gathers her up, safety tether and all, and walks away.

*

With a child in his care, Aaron perceives the danger everywhere: in the broken shell fragments lying exposed on the shore every morning; in the weird-looking, still-unidentified birds that roam the island, beaks sharp and ready to peck at a well-meaning and defenseless taunter; in the fallen berries that fit so neatly into Kai's chubby hands (she likes the brightest ones best, so they keep her away from the Vitamin C bush, though they themselves have taken to a one-a-day routine); in the fire.

It's sad, really. Fire thrills her, but they can't let her near it; they deny her its dependable warmth to keep her safe. Instead, they put her down in the shelter at night, cozy her between the two thickest of their selection of blankets, check on her often. Sex outside, while she sleeps. Shannon holds her tightly while Aaron builds fire after fire, and her eyes fill with joy every time, till she can barely contain herself, bouncing and clapping in Shannon's lap, ironically delighted.

Danger everywhere, but Aaron's perpetual anxiety stems from the vastest of them, the only one he truly can't control. She can wade and splash with supervision, but only that; every day till she's old enough to learn reliable swimming techniques, he will live in terror of finding her accidentally afloat, of turning his back just long enough for the malevolent ocean to swallow her up.

*

A geography lesson, a real one this time. "North America, South America, Africa-Europe-and-Asia," chants Aaron, pointing to each corresponding drawing in turn. It's an old song, one he probably learned in kindergarten, and since that's where Kai should be now, he's teaching it to her.

"Don't forget Australia, don't forget Antarctica..." she continues for him, clapping an impeccable rhythm, shaking her head in time to the same.

He smiles at her. Music is her favorite thing about life, hands-down, and hence the perfect vehicle for this lesson and others like it. They sing and she dances, and every time he imagines collecting tiny shells, tying one to the end of each of her long braids, giving her some built-in percussion. She'd probably love it, would probably shake her head incessantly to hear them clatter against one another. "You remember this song, huh? Good girl," he says, offering her his right palm for a high five.

"I remember, Daddy," she affirms proudly, executing a clumsy pirouette. She lands squarely on her rear end and they both laugh as she hops back to her feet.

"Next time maybe I'll let you do the pointing, instead," he adds, tugging at one of her braids. "You know, I showed you the continents before, this one time a really long time ago..."

She plops down on the sand, interested. "When, Daddy? When did you?"

"A loooong time ago," he answers, poking her gently in the stomach. "You remember I told you how you used to be in Mommy's belly? That's where you were, when I showed you."

"Did Mommy eat me on purpose?" Purpose sounds more like puhpose but that's okay, something to work on later. She's five, and on purpose is a big concept with her, these days. Yes, she pulled out the stakes holding up the shelter, but she didn't do it on purpose, she did it because she needed their pointy ends to practice her letters in the sand. No, she didn't unstitch the jumper Mommy was making, or if she did, it wasn't on purpose, though her memory is fuzzy; she doesn't quite remember.

He is shocked and impressed, every time she explains herself so articulately, but then again, why wouldn't she be well-spoken? She never hears kiddie words, there are no nuh-uhs on this island; her entire world orbits adult foci.

Which reminds him, there's something else he wants to cover today. "Mommy didn't eat you at all," he corrects quickly, "but look, Kai, look at Daddy's picture, I want to show you something else." She looks. He points first to Europe, reminds her of its name. "In Europe, most people look like Daddy. They have skin like this"--he touches his forearm--"and hair in different colors, sometimes strawberry blond like mine."

She stares at him, visibly reserving her judgments.

"Africa," he announces next, pointing. "Most people here look like--"

He stops himself. Most people in Africa do not look like Shannon, who stays inside on scorching hot days to keep her dusky caramel skin from burning.

He tries again. "Well, they are mostly the color of a coconut. Mostly with dark hair like Mommy's, but then sometimes they mix--"

Mix? Bad idea. He pauses again.

"A coconut?" repeats Kailani, incredulous, craning her neck to look up into the branches of their schoolroom.

He looks with her, sees the cluster of green orbs ripening above their heads, and gives up entirely. "Never mind," he says with false cheer, rubbing out their world map with his foot.

She doesn't need to know any of this, doesn't need to know that neither parent's homeland matches his or her place of ancestry, and that currently, she herself doesn't even have a homeland, because he refuses to invent something, refuses to lie to her. She doesn't need to hear about the peoples of the world, or about sex, or about how if she were ever to attend a real school, some narrow-minded classmates might have questions about her honey skin, hazel eyes and in-between hair, might wonder what kind of home she was from, might judge her without ever knowing how wonderful she was, and how musical.

Cutting the lecture short leaves them with time left for a more important lesson, anyway. He climbs to his feet. "Come on, baby," he says, scooping her up. "Let's go find Mommy and practice your doggy paddle."

*****

that was neither a beginning nor an end. just itself. it is about protection. a girl should always have someone to protect her.