The Tribes of Palos Verdes (6 page)

“It's the land of ten thousand lakes,” she says dreamily.

“But you don't even like water,” I say.

*   *   *

Surfing is many things. Sometimes it's a religious experience, sometimes pure domination. I tame a patch of milky waves, ride on them as if they were beautiful horses. The girls taunt me at school, chanting,
“Fatty Mom. Elephant Mom. Big as a whale. Gross as a snail.”
But in the water, they can't reach me.

I love stepping into my wetsuit, tightening the zipper slowly up my back, feeling my naked skin against rubber. As I begin to paddle, long strands of wet hair tickle my neck, cashmere soft in the salty water, making me shiver and giggle out loud. Sometimes I lie in the sun for a few moments, hair fanning out, face to the sky, feeling exotic and beautiful.

It's a frank sexual pleasure to be wet and warm, lying alone on my stomach near the mouth of the sea, relaxing completely, then pushing my body upward while taming the liquid motion.

After school, I love to be in the safe, warm curl of a tube.

*   *   *

The winter surf is kicking up. Mountains of water are moving toward our house, carrying more and more abalone shells to the beach. There is a storm off Mexico, Hurricane Alex; the waves are five feet high.

Jim and I have been surfing for nearly seven months, but we've never tried waves bigger than three and a half feet. We huddle together in the yard, deliberating. Jim says we should tell Skeezer we're sick.

“Both of us?” I ask. “They'll never believe it. They'll say we're scared.”

“We'll say you gave me the flu. I feel sick, I swear.”

We take our boards to the pool and lay them belly down in the blue, calm water. For a while, we paddle from end to end, discussing different kinds of flu and their symptoms. There's the Chinese kind that makes you barf for seven days and the Taiwanese kind that gives you the runs. Jim says we can pull off the Taiwanese kind if we take six Ex-Lax pills each.

“Ex-Lax is disgusting,” I say. “Besides, we're good enough to go out now.”

I remind him that he never falls off. “You're just afraid the older guys will laugh and call you a grommet-fag.”

“Maybe,” Jim admits, picking at his fingers. “So what?”

Then I thrash around in the water, making the biggest waves I can, and tell Jim to stand up. He stands up, and laughs.

“See, you're not gonna die,” I say, and I slap him a high five.

We suit up on top of the cliff stairs. I rub Jim's back before I pull up the big zipper in the back of his wetsuit. By mistake I catch a piece of his skin in the fold. I put my hand over my mouth, sucking in my breath.

“Oh my God,” I say, “I'm sorry.”

“What?” he says absently, leaning out to look at the waves. Then, “Damn, I don't think I can do it.”

I tell him my secret strategy. “Pretend you're a barnacle on the back of a whale—stuck on forever. Pretend there's no way the water can throw you.”

He shrugs, telling me to forget it. “You always imagine crazy stuff. When I get scared, my mind goes blank and I don't even know what I'm doing.”

We smoke an entire joint on the way down. But Jim lights another one at the bottom.

“Forget it,” he says when we get to the rocks. Looking at the towers of water, he stands still and white, holding his board stiff, like a wax statue.

I push him toward the water.

“You're gonna rule the waves,” I say.

A few of the guys are watching us. Jim gives them the thumbs-up. When he turns, his eyes are raging.

“Stop poking at me!” he says. “Don't treat me like a baby in front of everyone.”

The waves are a translucent emerald green, highlighted by sparks of light thrown by the setting sun. I've been paddling for fifteen minutes, but I haven't reached the wave-break yet.

The waves are far more powerful than I thought. I can hear stones and heavy shells rumbling against the bottom.

First I try to go around the break, through to the left, but the current is too forceful, so I throw my board down and fight the whitewash in front of me. My arms are heavy with fatigue, and I'm swallowing mouthful after mouthful of spray. I can't see the sets that are coming because my eyes are slitted against the sting of salt. Finally there's a small lull, and I paddle.

Jim is nearly out. He jumped in at the jetty and started stroking, smooth and fast, riding up and over the wave faces, his powerful shoulders pushing him much quicker than I could follow. At first he tries to wait for me, but I motion him to go ahead. Now I see him with the guys, lined up, ready to go for a turn, astride his board with his legs deep in the water.

I see Skeezer being spit forward. He dances from right to left, swaying before gaining balance, leaning forward then lurching to the left, perfect. Another set comes. Another lull.

I paddle ferociously and make a lot of ground. I'm almost there, ten feet away, when the next set comes. Aaron lines up, ready to go, but I see my chance. I scream “Mine! Mine!” and turn around to catch the swell. It's late, already breaking when I catch it. The wave throws me sideways, but I hang on, stand up, and whip around in the force. Hair slaps over my eyes so I'm blinded. The roar of the water comes down as I slide over the wave, fishtailing back and forth like a sewing needle gone awry. Somehow I stay up, leaning forward, almost retching, ready to fall. But suddenly I'm riding instead, falling from the sky, watching the horizon surge upward. Then I'm kicking out just before the tube closes. I get slapped by the next wave, and the next. I'm holding on to my board with one hand, dog paddling with my other, turning my face away as the current pushes me back and forth.

“I got it.”
I yell to the guys.
“I got a wave.”
I paddle close to Jim in the next lull. Everyone is amped. Skeezer smiles at me. Tad gives me the thumbs-up.

“Hey, don't snake any more waves, Medina,” Aaron says. “There's a fucking lineup, you know.”

“Give spaghetti arms a break,” Skeezer calls out. “It took her long enough to find us out here.”

Jim joins in. “Yeah, mellow out.”

He smiles at me and takes off on the next wave. All I can see is his muscled back, almost black in the semi-darkness. He stands straight, tall, maneuvering back and forth, graceful and powerful. His hands are low at his side, his left foot barely raised.

When he kicks out, the board flows sweet and steady, spinning in the water overhead. Even when he goes under, he's smooth, controlled. He comes up laughing, holding his arm up in the air in triumph. He swims right up next to me, and winks, telling me how perfect I was.

Walking home later, Jim kicks the dead brush aside for me. He doesn't say much, but he comes to my room later to say goodnight.

“Goodnight yourself,” I say, grinning.

He hangs around for a while, picking through my records and magazines, then he sits down on the floor, putting his big, smelly feet up on the bed. He turns off the lamp. “That was fun today,” he says in the dark, “maybe one of the most fun days I've ever had.”

I nod, smiling, starting to fall asleep.

“Do you think the best times we'll ever have are happening now?” he asks softly.

“Don't think like that,” I say sleepily. “It's bad luck.”

*   *   *

At school they test my IQ, tell me to look at a bunch of swirls and tell them what I see. I tell them I see waves, and starfish, and whirlpools. They write words down on a pad of paper, and look at each other, nodding. They put me in with all the smart kids in a class track called Mentally Gifted Minors.

My father says I'm a lucky girl to get into this program.

“Nobody likes a brainbox,” I say.

But brainbox classes are okay. Cami Miller isn't in MGM, so she can't tease me, or hold me down and spit in my face, or tell me I'm ugly and a total freak. Plus, the brainboxes don't joke about my mother; they don't care about anything except fractions and trigonometry and Harvard and Yale.

Jim isn't in any of my classes. He gets stoned before the swirl test. He goes with a few of the other surfers, tells the tall lady he just sees a bunch of black shit on a page.

They put him with all the popular kids in remedial math, woodshop, metalshop. He smokes pot with them, makes jokes, laughs. He's the lucky one.

*   *   *

Some of the Bayboys tease me about my flat chest and skinny neck, but a few of them are pretty nice. Once when I step on a sea urchin, Charlie Becker, an eighteen-year-old, helps me pull the slender spines out of my feet. I pretend it doesn't hurt, even when he digs around with a needle to find the broken-off pieces of the quills. As he dips my foot in water to clean off the blood, he tells me to wear surf booties next time—watertight slippers made of thick rubber.

“You'll have better grip; they stick really good to surfwax. And the urchins won't get you as bad.”

Then he tells me to keep it up, to forget what the guys say.

“I've been watching you out there. I think you could get pretty good,
if
you get serious about it.”

Then he laughs and tells me I better practice a lot, because perfect balance takes years to attain.

The next day I go to Mrs. Ornage's house, the old French piano teacher, and tell her I've decided to surf more, so I won't be coming to any more lessons. She sits with her back very straight, playing a small song on the piano, smiling faintly.

“Yes,” she says, “maybe you will be better at this surfing than you are in piano. It is important to do something that you are good at.”

That week I also quit flute and tennis.

*   *   *

My father doesn't spend much time at the house anymore. Even on weekends he plays tennis, then goes to the hospital to catch up on paperwork. On weekdays he works later and later. One day my mother corners him as he leaves, smelling of cedar soap, carrying a tennis bag and a change of clothes. My mother turns to Jim, laughing and whispering, like one of the girls at school.

“Your father is playing a lot of tennis these days. They say he has a great
serve,
and a good
lob.
”

Jim stays quiet, not sure what she means. My father sighs.

“Sandy, we have a truce, remember?”

My mother pushes. “We're moving to Blaine, remember? That was my deal.”

My father stands his ground. He avoids looking at Jim; his answer is very slow and precise. “I can't move to rural Minnesota, I have a good job here.”

My mother's eyes are grim, but she smiles. “Well, Jim, it might be you and me then,” she tells my brother, looking at my father. “You'll come with me, won't you?”

Jim looks out the window, nods his head.

I stay up late, tossing and turning, unable to sleep. Then I go to Jim's room, wake him up. I ask him if he'd really go to Minnesota.

“We're not really moving,” he says, letting me climb in. “We just have to let Dad know I'm on her side.”

“How come you hate Dad so much?” I say. “He sure wishes you didn't.”

Jim says my father is really bad news, he's sneaky, and he hurts my mother's feelings for no reason. “Mom's told me a lot of things about him,” he says. “Really bad things.”

Then he whispers that my father has millions of girlfriends, my mother found evidence—the seats in his car smell like Chanel perfume and my father isn't at the hospital when she calls late at night. Plus he comes home smelling like wine and garlic.

I laugh. I tell Jim there's no way our father would have a girlfriend.

“Besides, Mom is bigger, she could hit him,” I say.

“Normal women don't hit people, Medina.” Then Jim looks at me. “Besides, Mom would never lie to me.”

*   *   *

Snooping around, I find a picture of my parents just before they married. They are running in the streets of downtown Chicago, a model and a young doctor. My mother smiles as she runs, dark glasses and a flash of enamel teeth. She looks stunning in a white sweater fitted close to her slim body, a set of pearls around her neck. My father wears a black cardigan along with a pair of terrible red golf pants. As they run, they touch shoulders, but their arms are free. They look contemptuously into the lens, but they are happy. They are two people entering the long run, with a wedding ring and a dream.

*   *   *

My dad comes down to the beach while Jim and I are out. He sits on the sand, wearing a visor and tennis shorts. I wave to him from across the water, but Jim ignores him.

I try to surf extra good, but my fins keep getting stuck in the kelp bed, so my board slides out from under me. Kelp can grow a foot a day, and it can be pretty creepy to paddle through it when it's high.

Jim wipes out twice. “Dad's bringing bad luck,” he says. Then he tells me he's leaving. But instead of riding straight in, he paddles all the way out and across, to the public cliff stairs, half a mile from our house.

My father watches him go, looking very small, scooping up handfuls of sand and letting them run through his fingers.

After a few more waves, I ride in and sit next to my father. I tell him I don't usually surf so badly; I explain about kelp, how hard it is to paddle through. My father nods, tracing a circle in the sand with his toe. He asks why Jim won't talk to him anymore. I fib a little, telling him Jim didn't want to come in through the kelp bed, so he paddled farther to avoid it.

In the orange smoggy air, I see flecks of sand stuck to the wet tracks on my father's face just under his sunglasses. I've never seen him cry before.

My father puts his arms around me. He tells me kelp is good because it makes most of the oxygen in the world. I nod, feeling very sad.

“See,” he says, his voice catching a little. “There're a few things I know.”

Then I ask him why he and my mother fight so much.