The Salt God's Daughter Read Online Free PDF

easier to imagine that they, and not us, were the cause of the tiny bottles of whiskey in her purse, beneath the car seat, in the glove compartment. It was better just to love her. I wanted to protect my mother from the pain I was sure men had caused her, from the fact that her life as a single mother—caused by us—had not been easy on her. This made me hang on the rare sound of my mother’s laughter as though it were a life-rope, just as my mother hung on the stories she told us about the full moons, thinking that if she could make us believe, then perhaps they would come true.
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    WHEN THE POWER went out in the motel, I closed my eyes, wishing the storm would last forever. I had made peace with the ocean by this point, or had become infatuated with it, at least. Not it as much as the closeness it created, its suffocating presence that somehow forced my mother to see me. Who in their right mind would want to be holed up in a weather-beaten motel for this long? I did. I tried to absorb everything, pretending we were never leaving. There was no worrying about the future or the past in this place. No one would be left. Here she was, snuggled into bed, all ours. I could sense someone else near, even back then when I was just a child of six, keeping me company in my mother’s shadows.
    My mother said this could happen with familial empathy—that a very sensitive person could feel the enormity of emotions of those who had not yet been born into a family or those
who had already passed on. Perhaps that is why I had feared the ocean: because my ancestors had come by steamship to America, a difficult trip.
    And because I would have a daughter who would fall in love with the sea.
    By the time the lights went back on that evening, we had finished up the snacks, along with some oranges and apples, left outside our door by Dr. Brownstein.
    Dolly complained that she was hungry again, now that the storm had died down. When she opened the curtained windows, my mother tensed up.
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    I HADN’T SEEN much of Long Beach during our escape through the rain. I had hardly seen the parking lot. But when I heard the loud barking, I ran to the window. I speculated to Dolly that it might be a dog. My mother was sleeping off a hangover. A few hours later, the barking had stopped, but it was all I could think about. Perhaps an animal had been trapped, I told myself.
    â€œMy hair is on fire!” I yelled, but no one heard me. Dolly was in the bathtub. I snuck out of the room and sloshed through the parking lot in my bare feet.
    I adjusted my glasses. I could hear splashing. Beside the yellow Volvo, I saw a shiny wet boulder.
    It moved, its eyes focused on me. They were deep brown pools above a pointed doglike snout. Its ears perked up aside its crested head, and I could see the light catching on its whiskers. Its dark skin had begun to dry, despite the slick patches. It was vocalizing, barking. Was it grieving? Hurt? Somehow, I was not afraid, which worried me. I knew I should stay away, but something drew me nearer. I kept walking, my hands open, showing I was not a threat. I had seen this done on television. Whenever somebody approached a stray dog, they opened their hands.
    Suddenly, the barking turned into deep, loud utterances of dominance. He moved toward me, as big as a car.

    I didn’t mean to scream.
    Sea lions are similar to their seal cousins in many ways, but for the fact that they have protruding ears, and for the position of their hips. While both are pinnipeds, “fin-footed” mammals, sea lions’ hips are not fused, so they can rotate their hind flippers under their bodies, and shuffle or “walk.” California sea lions can move quite fast, rather than heave their bodies along, as seals do. Though fairly private, they could be fed. They liked the plethora of fish in Long Beach harbor. There were many reasons they might be territorial.
    I knew the word “help” but could not say