Vacation by Deb Olin Unferth

Author:Deb Olin Unferth [Unferth, Deb Olin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2010-03-03T05:00:00+00:00

THE UNTRAINER

I was born underwater. My mother wove seaweed baskets for the Mexican ships in the Gulf. Say what you want, a job’s a job. She worked in water, the long hours of the poor, so all I heard was sea sounds for nine months. She did not get Labor Day off—there’s a shameless asshole overman for you. I washed out of her womb and the foreman had me fetching starfish by the time I was five. I never knew my father. My mother told me nothing and I wasn’t going to ask. Some water-dog prick, no doubt. Nothing manly in leaving your egged-up woman behind. As soon as I was old enough, I went to Cancún, where I grew up against a skyline of sails. I dove with the dolphins for tourists who threw coins that I caught in my fist.

One day I came out of the water and onto the hard earth of Mexico. I took buses clean across the country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, through the cities and towns, the ruins, the rivers. When I got to Mazatlán, I took a boat through international waters around Baja and over the border. I walked up onshore and into California. Hollywood felt brittle under my feet and the smog kept the air cool.

No, I wasn’t after some minor-league American dream—TV, savings, packaged applesauce, frequent-mile flying. You think there’s something special about that? Let me be the one to tell you: You’ve got nothing special going on in the States.

No, I went to find someone. Place was bigger than I thought.

I got a job training dolphins for the movies, the movies where the dolphin saves the kid but almost doesn’t. The movies where the dolphin almost dies but doesn’t. Where the mother smiles like the one you have at home, the one who almost never smiles but when she does she almost looks like that. Where the father pals around like no father ever does anywhere. That sort of thing, that’s what I threw in with.

Sure, I pulled a little stunt on the side. I was the guy with the underwater gun, the guy swallowed by the whale, the one who fell to the deep tangled in a net so the stars could sit around and eat carrot cake up top. I blew off the tip of my thumb. I shattered my cap. That stunt shit is for cowards. But many lives are carried out that way. I wasn’t going to be the first to complain. That’s a rule you can live by.

I preferred to work with the fish.

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