Sea Spray

Another inkblot dark night hung from the palm trees above my head on a meandering Caribbean coast. As I sat there in somber silence, I heard distant ocean waves striking against the jagged edges of rock and coral of the Tobago reef. Sea spray freckles on my face hid tears that pooled around my bare feet that cowered into the balmy beach sand. The tide crawled in to tugboat my tears and guide them into the outstretched arms of the opaque ocean.

“Alain? Where are you? Alain?” The family search party was on its way again. “Alain? Where is he? Alain? There you are!” Against an outcry of frustration and bewilderment, I would sheepishly acknowledge that I had snuck away from them again. Prolonged looks and prodding left me unshaken from my reserved reasoning. “I just like to escape sometimes” I suggested, as I surrendered to the shackles of what felt like another life sentence of falling into a world that was so alien to me.

My parents and siblings fashioned each other with self-affirming stories of their grand lives. My brother was the champion of another school exam, albeit thoroughly disgusted by the malice of his teacher who denied him his rightful 100%, due to the frailty of missing one accent on the most impressive French word in his essay. “He is such a faggot!”, my brother remarked about his teacher to raucous laughter from my frothing family.

My eldest sister superbly stretched the truth about how high her athletic limbs drove her above the floor and across the stage in another modern dance number she performed at a dance studio. We were certain that she would ascend to the world stage and even that may be too small of a canvas for the masterpiece she would conceive next.

My second sister posed in the corner twirling her wind-blown golden-brown locks, her light cinnamon skin shimmering from the sun that seemed to shine on her every step. She basked in a downpour of compliments about her breathtaking beauty. “What would she become?” A great model! A pop star! A movie star!”

I couldn’t believe she was my sister. How was it possible that I could be related to this jewel, to any of these ornate people? They seemed so foreign to me. I could feel myself drift above the room and move further and further away from them until I was just a spec in the distance. “Alain?”, “Alain?” would belly drop me back to reality. “What’s going on with you?” I was too winded to speak. How could I even make eye contact with their unrelenting spotlight of expectation that I knew I could never achieve? What could I possibly say?

“Alain? Come on spit it out. What’s going on with you?” I held my head down and said nothing. The temperature of the sand seemed to rise with each second of silence that defied their inquiry. “What is the point of this?” I wondered, the perspiration dripping from my brow.

Didn’t they remember that my aunt had visited just a few hours ago demanding to see our school report cards. All I remembered from that ordeal was her cackling about my teacher’s comments on my failing grades and lack of focus and attention in the classroom. My sports teacher noted that I refused to change into my shorts to play soccer and ran home after he asked. They did not know I cried the whole way home. I would not dare add that further insult to what already felt like a terminal injury.

Yet they inquired “Alain, tell us, what’s going on with you?”. I would look into their eager eyes unable and unwilling to weave a worthwhile narrative. I could not burden them with the truth, for the truth itself was still so unknown to me, like another family to which I could not belong.

The silence would become too deafening to bare. Time would stand still until the valiant voice of one of my siblings would ease the discomfort and redeem the situation. The attention returned to where it belonged, away from me and with adoring gasps, infectious inquiry and loving laughter piercing the stillness. I was there but their voices would fade and I would once again feel parts of myself rise from the beach like grains of sand blowing in the wind, until my feet would steal me away to squat by the shore, my back to their world, my face to the waves, sea spray tearing from my eyes and my heart shipwrecked in the tide.