Katy and I felt like nomads. She brought incense and soon the tent felt like an extension of one of our rooms. Katy is very close to me in age, so we fell in the same peer group. My sister Scarlette at the time was clearly in the older adult group, which also explains the tent assignment. Ethan tended to pee the bed, so I was glad to be in the little stinky tent with Katy.
Later that night, after everyone had gone to sleep, I awoke to a loud rustling. I looked down by my feet to see my mother fidgeting with the zipper.
"We got washed out over there," she says, exasperated. "Help me get this damn zipper."
I play like I am sleeping, but she grabs my foot through the tent and pulls on it to wake me. I resign, sit up, and open the zipper, and my Mom settles in the middle of the tent, pushing me into the tent wall.
"Goodnight," she says.
The next morning I wake up to the sound of Scarlette's battery-operated coffee grinder. She insists on drinking only fresh coffee regardless of her location. This seems ridiculous: me with my bright, yellow plastic record player and my sister with her black Krupp's battery-operated bean grinder. I sit at the picnic table, drinking my coffee and listening to the constant ocean sounds.
Scarlette looks exhausted.
"I slept next to the fire in the lawn chair," her smoker's voice grates.
She is wearing her usual all black-and-white attire, her platinum bleached hair sticking out of the back of her black ballcap. The big and fancy "pee" tent is airing dry on a tree limb. After coffee we gather our things and drag them all to the beach nearby. Ethan looks well rested and saunters in front of us, enthusiastic and barefoot.
His feet are fat and round. Scarlette calls them "filet mignon feet." Scarlette pays attention to feet. The R&B group En Vogue, popular in the 90s, had "Daisy Duck feet." My mother has "engine feet" because they are so calloused.
Scarlette yells at Ethan to slow down.
Katy and I are the pack mules of the group, obliged to haul all the chairs, baskets, and coolers. Once settled, I drag a reluctant Katy to the water. We get about ankle-deep and Katy says, "It's too damn cold."
"We'll get used to it: come on!"
I am super enthusiastic about swimming so she sees no point in putting up a fight. After walking out a bit the current pulls at us.
"There's a good undertow today," Katy remarks worriedly, like a seasoned Islander though she lives inland.
"Yeah. I better go get the buoys."
We swim/run back to our pile of junk where my mother is sitting under an umbrella reading a Dr. Seuss book with Ethan. Scarlette is on a lounge chair and I wave as I walk past.
GRANNY YODELING
© 2013 Works & Days Quarterly and Jodi Page Corley