The cold brushstrokes of April’s currents wait to tug me back into a past that I no longer know. Previous April’s rest on top of my tongue like a thin sheen of saltwater, but it’s an aftertaste that’s been fading with each passing day — and in its place is the hint of something new, light, joyous, delicately and complexly sweet.
I am peeling back all my layers to reveal the thumping sanguine nature of mine that’s always been at the heart of who I am. I am rambunctious! I am deeply excitable! I am a child! I am, I am, I am!
But the goodness, it’s taking its time settling into my bones, and I worry that this may all be too good to be true. I worry that one day I’m going to wake up and find out that this was all a dream, that I entered a new reality I was only ever allowed to get a taste of and not stay a lifetime in.
I wiggle my right ankle out of a potential grasp looking to pull me under the waves again. A part of me wants to be pulled under, with air bubbles floating out of my nose and mouth, eyes fluttering shut, body going limp. I want to be carried into the deep, dark cold ocean and come alive in my previous form.
I used to be a mermaid. My grandma said so herself every time my head popped above the surface: rusalka. You couldn’t get me out of the water, maybe because I felt so free in it. Even when I was nothing but pruned fingers, chattering teeth, and indigo lips, I still wanted to stay. I was constantly diving under, water rushing past my face, thin light lines crackling through the surface, trying to reach me, trying to pull me back up and out, but I didn’t want to go with them. I liked living below the surface where everything was so still, so straightforward. I liked the way the cold water wrapped itself around my body and then plunged into my skin, creating a new layer around me at the edges of my body. It was a shock to my system every time it happened.
But I can’t go back to who I used to be; she no longer exists. So I rise and the ocean sinks below me; its teardrops slink down my skin, along the curves of my body, and pool in the dips and hollows of my scars. Honeyed hair — straw-like strands salted by the sea — flattens against my neck.
I leave footprints in the cushiony, beige sand that fade as the waves slink over them — memories of me disappearing as I go. It’s much like my pasts that I keep revisiting and erasing. I am no longer bound to what used to be. It no longer exists.
I’ve always been a wobbly question mark for people when I wish I had been a definitive period. But now, I imagine, I’m becoming something more perceptible, more indomitably integrated, to those around me — because inside of me I am becoming more me than I have ever been and I think that others can feel that, too. But at the same time, I like being unknowable. I like floating in no man’s land like a shapeless shapeshifter, giving away pieces of me that evaporate before those pieces can even have a chance to dissolve into people’s bodies. The more people think they know me, the more I don’t want them to. Because just when I think I know me, I don’t — and I don’t want anyone else to have the upper hand on me.
I shake my body like a wet dog, sending all my water onto the sand, staining it. I turn to look at the shore. The waves are so small, so modest in the way they kiss the sand before retreating as if they don’t want to disturb the sand, or let on how much they love her. But they love her, so much so, really. A tiny peck and another tiny peck and another tiny peck and nothing more. You’re telling me that’s not love? (I cannot show all of my love because what if it scares him away?) (What if it doesn’t?)
There’s a hunger stored in my shoulders for the fifteen-foot-tall waves of the past. When I was a little girl, I used to come to the beach with my family, and on particularly stormy days, Brighton Beach would see some massive waves, the likes of which I have never seen since those summers in the mid-to-late 2000s. I would forget about everything, leave my family behind on the sand, and run into the water, timing it so that as the wave peaked at the top, like a monstrous beast looking to make its descent and capture its pray in its foamy hands, I would jump into its body and come out on the other side with a big smile on my face, feeling vindicated. Victorious.
I laugh at these thoughts because old parts of me really do die hard. Or, maybe these aren’t even parts of me but actually me: someone always looking for a brief thrill, a chance to feel even more alive.
I put on my t-shirt, my skort, and my black cap. I push my head through the racquet case strap and hang my racquet against my back, the bag’s strap crisscrossing my chest. I walk towards the boardwalk where I sit down on a bird poop-covered bench (the mostly clean part of it) and put on my socks and my pink-and-blue tennis sneakers. My clothes cling to my bare body like a second skin, a uniform. I have been given a formidable armor. (I am four years old again and I am going to tennis lessons for the first time.)
Spring with her airy touch is filtering out broken promises, revealing the veracity beneath them. I see everything so much more clearly now, including myself. The memories that used to take up multiple floors in my body have been cleaned out. And while a trace of them still burdens me, I know that in a few months I’ll barely remember them.
With all this fresh space, I’ve started cultivating a big garden in my body, and within it, a massive flower has started blooming up and out of my mouth (a hot pink pistil with white petals). Its stems have snaked up my face and wrapped themselves around my head several times over. They tighten themselves, tighter and tighter and tighter until my brain starts leaking all my memories down my nostrils. The liquid memories dribble across my lips, down my chin, into my palms, and I can taste the sweetest ones on my tongue, saving those for keeps.
I walk across the boardwalk to the handball courts near Luna Park. I skip down the ramp and loop around the walkway until I get to the lone wall that lives several feet in front of the men’s bathroom (I’ll end up, accidentally, sending two tennis balls in that direction). There’s a single tennis ball sleeping on the forest-green bench, a nice gesture left behind by a stranger.
It’s an unusually warm morning. I throw up the ball softly in front of me and hit it against the wall. Smooth. It comes flying back at me and I hit it again.
I whisper when I play. I look like I’m mumbling incantations, bewitching the ball to go where I need it to go. There’s still so much weight I carry. I’m not as light on my feet as I’d like to be. I can’t chase down balls as well as I used to. But that’s alright. It just means that I have room to grow, to come back into myself better and stronger.
The ball crashes into my strings and rebounds, flying towards the wall again. I need this to go faster, I need this to go faster. Several feet above on the boardwalk, people are watching me, the girl crushing the ball against a wall, faster and faster, at breakneck speed, the loud thud of the ball against the wall, the ___ of the ball against my strings. I am the center of their galaxy for a moment, and I must impress. I must show them I am capable of talent.
There’s not a lot of aggression in me anymore, but I still have that itch to crush something, to fight something, to crash my fist against the wall (but only in my head). I’m precariously inching back towards my boyish frame, but until I get there, I’m holding all my remaining weight in my fists and in my chest as if I still carry an unfulfilled desire to crush men beneath my body (I know I do). When I was a little girl, I was unbeatable, shattering boy’s hands, arms, and legs without ever touching them. It was one of the few sources of power I had. No surprise then that I don’t want to let it go.
But, I think I’m ready to give up these hypothetical fights. They, too, fade away with each passing day, as does my desire for them. If I’m always looking for a fight then that’s all I’ll get. And I no longer have any interest in revenge, in settling the score. I want to move on. I am moving on. I’ve transformed my rage into laughter. I’ve transformed into something more nimble, sprite-like. I’ve transformed. I am transforming.