Beach Reads: Salacia

By KyKye Kostroun  |  Illustrations by Darcy Kelly-Laviolette

I.

Mom names me Salacia, after the Roman Goddess of the Sea.

Unlike the other kids in our village, I’m not afraid of the water, but mesmerized by it. One day, when I am three, she walks me down by the waterfall. I learn to swim that same day, in the deep end of the sparkling pool. It doesn’t require much thought. I just hold my breath and flap my arms, my legs kicking in slow motion against the thick world below. Mom laughs, then lays me on my back. The water tickles my earlobes and the tippy top of my forehead. She tells me to shut my eyes, so I do.

“Salacia, you are my world,” she whispers, pulling me close to her chest. I play with the wooden dolphin pendant that dangles from her neck.

One morning, when I am twelve years old, I wake before Mom does for the first time in all my life. It’s unlike her to sleep in late. I climb into her bed, shocked to see her still snoozing, and sweep her hair away from her face.

“Mom, wake up,” I say. “It’s morning.”

I rip the covers off and shake her gently. “Time to get up!”

She doesn’t budge.

A sudden wave of nausea attacks the pit of my stomach. Something isn’t right. I hold one finger under her nose. No air. I fling my arms around her.

She’s gone.

When no one in the village can afford to take me in, I cry an ocean and am shipped halfway across the world to live with the man who is supposed to be my dad.

New York City’s phony waterfalls are cold and black. Not a single one is safe for swimming. Dad’s apartment is located on the second story of a grimy building that looks nearly identical to the ones surrounding it.

I’m afraid of the staircase. It terrifies me but I follow him up, clutching the railing with all my might. I don’t dare look behind me. It’s steep. The metal pangs each time my flip flop hits a new step. When we finally reach the top, he unlocks the door. Inside, the bare walls are peeling. I can’t tell what color they are because it’s so dark. I can’t tell what time of day it is.

I step into my new room. No dolls, no plants, no knitted blankets or hand-sewn pillows. Only a single window in the center of one of the walls, but it’s too high for me to see out of it.

“Home sweet home,” he says.

“This isn’t my home,” I tell him.

“It is now.”

For dinner, we have corn flakes in almond milk. I spit it out.

“I can’t eat this,” I say. “May I have some fruit instead?”

“Check the fridge,” he replies.

I do. No fruit. Just more almond milk, a six-pack of Bud Light, and a box of Chinese leftovers.

“On second thought, I’m not very hungry.”

“Suit yourself,” he says.

For my thirteenth birthday, Dad makes breakfast. He goes to the grocery market and picks up a pound of green bananas. He slices them up and puts them on top of my corn flakes in almond milk.

For my fourteenth birthday, he does the same.

For my fifteenth birthday, again, the same.

On my sixteenth birthday, he tries to kill me.

What had I done?

The pile of clothes topples over my head. He picks it up again only to throw it back down. Again. And again.

“Do it! Do it now, Salacia!” he barks.

I cover my ears.

He looks up at the ceiling. “I swear to God I’m gonna kill her.”

“Kill me?” I cry. “Go ahead! I’m already dead.”

“Do you think I’m playing games? I told you to do something. Now do it.”

“No.”

He grabs my arms and yanks me to my feet. “Now!”

I shake my head.

“Take the goddamn clothes to the laundromat!”

I say nothing.

“That’s it!”

He shoves me out the door. Everything moves in slow motion. My eyes watch me fall down the stairs before my body hits them. I fumble, reach for the railing, the doorknob, a hand, something, anything. I miss.

When I open my eyes, I feel warm. There is no New York breeze. I am home. Mom is outside in the yard dancing in the sunlight. She looks like an angel.

“Mom?”

“Salacia.” Her lips move, but I can’t hear her voice.   

I step closer and can see my reflection in her eyes. She reaches out her hand. I go to touch it.

As my skin meets hers, the moon replaces the sun in the sky. I can hear the familiar sound of water rushing in the distance. Bewildered, I glance down at my hand resting on the face of a tree, where Mom’s hand should be.

“Where are you? Where did you go?” I call out.

The sound of the water crescendos. I follow it through the trees until I approach the waterfall. My face is moist from the mist of white. The normally teal water looks gray in the darkness, still lighter than the color of the New York falls. The full moon reflects on the surface of the water. In that reflection, I see myself as her.

“Wow,” I whisper. I raise my arms. Hers do too. I begin to dance. With every turn, I lock my eyes onto the water. I watch her dance. Our long, dark hair flows all around us. We smile and we leap and we cry. I stare into our eyes before I let myself into the water.

II.

I regain consciousness and hear the static of the living room television. I open my eyes, for real this time, and find myself in bed. I am sore but nothing is broken. I throw the covers off me. Stumbling with one hand on the wall for support, I make my way over to the living room. I flinch when I hear my dad burst into laughter. I pause, watching him watching the television. He places an arm around my shoulders as I sit down beside him on the sofa. Then we are watching the static together.

“Look, kid. I got a little out of hand earlier. Forgive me,” he says.

“I want to go home, Dad. I just want to go home.”

“Someone’s tired, I see. How about you get a good night’s sleep? But first, why don’t you grab your old man a beer from the fridge?”

“Okay,” I say. “But just know I won’t be here when you wake up tomorrow morning.” I hand him his beer.

“Thanks, kid. Get some rest.”

I turn to leave. I pack my bags and am off once again. Only this time, I won’t stop until I’m home.

I use forty of the hundred dollars I steal from my dad’s wallet to get a cab to JFK. I don’t have enough money to buy a plane ticket, so I’m wandering aimlessly around the airport when I hear a woman’s voice.

“These plants have less germs than that dog’s ass.”

“Ma’am, all plants have to go through inspection,” says the security officer.

When I turn around, our eyes meet. I feel obligated to walk over.

“Um, hello,” I say. “Auntie, I’ve been waiting for you…”

A puzzled look crosses her face, but it melts into a smile. She plays along. “Ah, yes. See, sir. My niece has been ever so patiently waiting for her Auntie Martisha.”

“That’s right. Ever so patiently.”

“You’re not going to let this pretty little girl wait any longer now, are you?” She holds my face in her hand, which smells of nail polish remover masked by cherry blossom scented lotion.

The officer squints at me.

“This girl here is my niece. My brother married an Asian woman. Get over yourself already! This is a disgrace. Come on, niece. We are out of this place!”

The officer lets us go and when we get outside, she thanks me.

“What’s your name?” she asks, her faded ginger flyaways whipping my face.

“Salacia.”

“Cynthia, you really saved my life in there. Now, what can I do for you?”

I consider her request.

“Well,” I say. “I could use a ride.”

As we approach her car, I see a wood-carved dolphin charm hanging from her rearview mirror on a long silk string.

“See something you like?” she asks.

“My mom loved dolphins.”

“Yeah, I got this little guy when I was traveling in the Philippines last summer. Supposed to bring me protection. Must be working good. I haven’t crashed this baby yet!”

We are racing down the street when we come to a sudden halt. Martisha backs up. I thank God no one is behind her. She rolls down the passenger seat window and yells at a couple of hitchhikers.

“Hey, Marge! Pablo! Tinka! I didn’t even see you guys. Hop in!”

We spend the night driving around the city until sunrise. Tinka points out her favorite places in the city to photograph and offers me a job at her studio, if I want it. Pablo sleeps with the uninspected plants cradled between his legs. Marge and Martisha cackle like an old pair of good friends always do. And I watch the street, tracing the raindrops as they race down my window.

Timed to her first yawn, we arrive at Martisha’s apartment. It’s not much bigger than Dad’s, but I feel soft inside as I walk up to it. I’m not afraid. She lives on the first story of the building. As the five of us enter, we take off our shoes by the door, just as I used to back home. The window sills are lined with happy plants and short trees, green, pink and purple. Pablo and Tinka crash on the floor. Marge and Martisha share her bed. I take the guest room, upon their request.

The early morning light bleeds into the room through the windows. I feel myself drifting in and out of consciousness.

III.

When I wake up, the three hitchhikers are gone. Martisha and I spend our Sunday afternoon at Central Park. She purchases two fruit bowls from a vendor down the street and we eat while we walk.

“Alright, Cynthia, this is it. This is my favorite place in the city: The Conservatory Garden. Here, I can actually hear myself think. And look, this one is my favorite. It’s called the Three Dancing Maidens.”

“It’s so peaceful.”

As we approach the fountain, my eye is drawn to the stream jetting from the center of the sculpture. I see the joy in each of the maiden’s faces. Then I find myself staring into the outer pool of water that surrounds them on all sides. 

“I travel a lot. I’ve been a lot of places, Cynthia. I love them. I love this whole wide world. But I’m always happy to come home. I always want to come back.”

“Have you always lived here?”

“No, I grew up in Connecticut in some wacky town with some wacky people. Let me tell you, I don’t make a lot of money. I inherited most of it from my parents when they went to hell. I spend it good though. Better than they could have.” She picks a blackberry seed from between her teeth and flicks it onto the concrete. “Am I really supposed to stuff it away forever in a drawer for my rotting corpse? Better to put it out there and let it circulate, you know? Spending is spreading and spreading is sharing. That’s my motto.”

“I like it,” I say.

Just then, I see Mom’s reflection in the water. She laughs when Martisha does. She claps her hands together when Martisha does. She hugs me when Martisha does.

I spend the next two months living with her and officially drop out of school so I can begin working full-time at Tinka’s photography studio, where I hold my first camera and fall in love. There is something comforting in knowing that a single event captured at just the right moment has the potential to live on forever. Life always goes on, and what remains at the end of it all, is not the people, the places, or even the memories; it’s the photographs. And there are some things in this life I just don’t want to ever forget.

Martisha and I cook dinner together on Thursday nights. As soon as I get back from the studio, she blasts Def Leppard and hands me the apron she bought for me, identical to her own. She never asks me to leave or questions how long I’ll stay. She likes my company, or so it seems.

Until one day.

Martisha comes home from the grocery market with a flyer in her hand that has my face on it.

“Salad! Is that your name? All this time I’ve been calling you Cynthia,” she says.

“It’s Salacia, but I don’t mind.”

“Oh, shit. You’re right. That’s what it says here. Well, you should care! A name is highly important information. So is the fact that your daddy is out there looking for you.”

My knees buckle. “I won’t go back there. I just have to save up enough money and I promise I’ll leave. But I won’t go back. Please, don’t take me back.” I beg her.

Martisha rips up the flyer and tosses the pieces of paper into the recycling bin. She places her hand on my back and guides me to sit down at the kitchen table.

“Talk to me,” she says.

I tell her everything.

For my seventeenth birthday, Martisha and I travel to the Philippines.

But nothing in this world, not even water remains the same. On All Souls Day, we visit Mom’s grave.

For my eighteenth birthday, we return to New York.

IV.

I’m walking through Central Park on a Sunday afternoon. I see a mother and a father, each one holding the hand of a little girl walking between them. She hears my camera click. Then she turns around and looks at me, wide-eyed and curious. She isn’t afraid. I smile at her.

As I turn around to head back to my studio, where Martisha will meet me before we grab dinner, I spot a familiar face sitting on top of an unfamiliar body. He’s on the wooden bench across from the Three Dancing Maidens.

“Salacia?”

“Hi, Dad.”

He scans me from head to toe.

“You look different,” he says.

“So do you.”

He opens his arms to hug me and to my surprise, I don’t resist. He is an old man now, I tell myself as my arms make their way around his skeleton. He’s fragile, almost childlike, but still just as stubborn and stiff as I remember him.

“Need some cash or something?” he asks.

“I have everything I need.”

I can see why Mom loved him once. The deep sadness that rests behind his hardened stare taunts me, trying to break me and make me beg for his forgiveness.

“Well it’s good to see you again. I’ve missed you,” he says.

“Yeah.”

“Well, I won’t hold you up now.”

“You’re fine.”

I imagine his eyes are glimmering with tears and realize that even if they were, it wouldn’t make a difference to me after all these years.

“Salacia, did you find home?”

I look at him one last time. His eyes are still dry. Still empty.

Click.

About the Author

KyKye is a writer, currently pursuing her BFA in Creative Writing from Ringling College of Art and Design. She is also an actress, Thespian alumni, and graduated Theatre major from the Academy for Performing Arts in Scotch Plains, New Jersey. Connect with her on Instagram @_eclectickye.