What We Hold In Our Hands Read Online Free PDF Page A

legs planted in the sand, wearing the crossed-in-front overalls with the legs rolled up past my pointy knees. My father has persuaded my mother into celebrating his birthday with a picnic on the beach, even though the radio weatherman has called for afternoon storms associated with Hurricane Arlene. The weatherman does not expect Arlene herself to visit the island, only her entourage of winds and rains. No need to put up the hurricane shutters or fill the tub with water. The mere twenty square miles of rock, sand, and soil that make up our hook-shaped island will be safe from Arlene’s bright, quietly cunning eye.
    Were my parents downright negligent or merely foolish? I can see my father lounging on the woollen blanket they bought in Canada on their honeymoon, my mother posing between him and me on the beach, the palms fanning and the bay grapes bursting behind her. Her blonde hair is brushed up into a beehive, and she wears a sundress, sewn from the same pink gingham as my overalls, with a little white cardigan shrugged over it. I don’t know if these are memories or imaginings. As I’ve spent most of my life watching my parents carry on, it seems not unlikely that even before I reached the defiant age of two, I was already taking notes on their expressions and apparel. How they dressed like actors playing parts in a television family. He in his tipped fedora and pale grey flannels, the waistband snug around his belly, the striped suspenders a mere accessory. She in her bright, starched frocks, a fresh hibiscus pinned to her hair. How they paraded their love with handholding and lustful glances, how he stared into her eyes before anointing her hand with a kiss.
    My parents lie together on their big blanket, lips locked. My mother sends me guilty sideways looks before standing to brush the sand from her skirt. The sun sneaks through the clouds, blessing my hair with a splash of light. She rummages in her straw bag for the camera. My mouth gapes wide in a jack-o-lantern grin. You can see the thick black wave rolled tight behind me like an enormous Persian rug.
    After that day on the beach, I started to bulk up. My skimpy toddler body, now alert to the dangers of smallness and lightness, incorporated this new knowledge into all of its smart little cells, which set to work building fat. I’d only to watch my father to learn how it was done. Every day he padded himself against life, seeking comfort for his failures in French toast and syrup, bacon and tomato sandwiches, the yellow cookies he bought by the boxful from the Bermuda Bakery, strands of black and red licorice his sales girls fetched him from the candy store. By the time I was ten, I knew all his secrets, could smell sweets on his breath, identify the crumbs on his necktie and in the creases of his shirts, could recognize in his brown eyes fear disguised as revulsion whenever he was unable to avoid looking at me, his young and female mirror image.
    Spray from the surf tickles the nape of my neck. Sand dissolves under my feet as the surf pulls me back, and a dark wall of water rises. Salt burns nose, throat, and eyes. I am swallowed whole and alive, reclaimed by the sea.
    In Junior Four science class, Miss Reese told us that all life on earth evolved from the sea. Jane Pemberly raised her hand, sticky from the jujubes hidden in her desk.
    â€œGod created Adam and Eve,” she said, a piece of jujube stuck to her tooth making her lisp. “They didn’t come from fith. It thays tho in the bible.”
    â€œThe bible says the waters were here first,” countered smart and tactful Miss Reese. “Fish came before birds and animals. Everything originated in the water. Susan, please stop kicking Jane’s chair.” But Jane deserved it, spouting Sunday school propaganda. I hadn’t believed a thing they’d taught us there, the teachers passing out pictures of bible stories for us to colour, while they nodded over morning coffees and