Kiss the Undertow by Marie-Hélène Larochelle

Author:Marie-Hélène Larochelle [Larochelle, Marie-Hélène]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: House of Anansi Press Inc
Published: 2024-05-02T19:23:57+00:00

Part Three

1

A breeze sends sand into my ears. It’s already caked on the back of my head, in my eyelashes, my nose. I didn’t bother with a towel, just laid right out on the ground. I stay on the surface and burn while the others swim a little way down the beach. I can hear them goofing off, boisterously free. I’ll join them in a bit. I turn onto my stomach, lay my cheek down, and squeeze my eyes shut. I release handfuls of sand, kicking my feet as it rains down, tingling against my back and sunburnt thighs.

By the time I stop, I’ve burrowed a hole where I curl up, my eyes crusted with sand. The trench is shallower than I’d thought—just a few centimetres deep. The beach smells like warmth and iodine, blending with sunbeams. The fusing of opposites. I peer through the octagonal in my sand-caked eyelids, my tears sending brown streaks down my face, but there’s nothing sad. It’s my first time in France and if I could, I’d swallow the whole shore. Take it home with me. I roll in my burrow until it gets too scratchy, then, caked in sand and dust, I hurl myself in the ocean.

My thighs don’t seize when they hit the cold. Submerged in the thick, salty sea, I thrash myself clean and emerge like new. I’m too fast for this water, the power of my strokes mismatched with the extra flotation, but my swim is festive, jubilant. A carnival crawl. My head is empty, my hair loose, my body bikinied. I’m normally strung up like a sausage. In the ocean, I can expand. The water is blinding, the natural rays bouncing off as it rebuffs them.

I swim my hardest, my longest, then, winded, I float. My body undulates with the curve of the waves. The sea is mine. I bob joyfully, eyes stinging with sand and salt. I shiver, but I stay. My flesh has no memory. Before, I was burning. Now, my teeth chatter.

I catch up with the rest of the team, who grab me because it’s time to go.

I take a last look at the ocean and promise I’ll come back tomorrow. I’ve taken some of the beach between my toes, but it dries too fast, and by the time I’m on the bus taking us back to the Pessac campus, it’s all gone. I sleep on the hot leather seat. The rest of them smell like seaweed, sun, and sweat. We’ve travelled back to our organic state.

When we stop at the campus, they have to yell to wake us. We’ve fused to the seats, melted into the window frames, coughing up salt. The bags at our feet have tumbled and their contents have scattered. We grab our own things and others’, and climb down, hanging on to each other. We grudgingly split off to go to our dorms, using our free night to sleep. Enough freedom for one day.

•

The Girondins pool is outdoors. The surface, glazed like frosting, flows to the drain in three shades of blue.

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