by Paula Ortega
On the nights she couldn’t sleep, she would think of those people who had given her advice – read the Bible, count backwards, draw cats, think of a man you’d like to marry, or simply try harder – It was astonishing to her that even though she knew exactly what nights she wouldn’t be able to rest (one in two), she still hadn’t figured out what to do about it. If she was lucky and the wind decided not to be loud, she would sometimes open the window and hear the waves crash on the shore. She then felt part of something bigger and better, something that shattered any condescending words.
A knot was starting to build up in the small space between her stomach and her heart, like a little pocket where her not so little hopes were carried. It was a sense of longing, of nostalgia for something that had not happened yet but she knew would be missed after even the briefest of appearances. It wasn’t helping her sleep, it never did; but it gave her something to do for the next day for she would wake up at dawn, collect some things to write on and read and leave for the beach. Oh, she could have offered some life-time to be swimming right now.
Her mother used to say they could have been rich if she had sold her ideas; melodies were colours, smells were places, words were tastes… Everything around everyone had something to do with her, a special connection, a kind of intimacy only she could have a taste of.
She had read somewhere that great writers, the ones she admired, had their best ideas when they went for walks. That lived her with a sense of contentment, of being on the road for a highly productive experience; something that would elevate her to the same rank as her idols (which really was what she desired most).
The sand under her feet was the temperature of feverish skin but it was still too early for anybody to be enjoying the water. She adored this time of the day, when the island is still unconscious and civilization seems to be a thought not yet fully formed. — who decided the ocean was blue?, she thought. She had been living in the same town for fifteen years and never had she seen the water blue. It could be green, it could even be silver on some days like this one; but never blue. Her sense of reality was altered when she started imagining that she was standing where Venus was born. A feeling of confirmation was arising for it was all so picturesque (she was mentally adding Zephyr, the flower nymph and the Hora of Spring) when a sudden stumble on a tiny piece of rock made her come back to her body; she needed to rest. A minute later of walking twenty additional steps, she had found a place to lay on a tangerine shawl she had taken with her, closed her eyes with the conviction that she would not sleep, and slept.
If nobody had woken her up, she would have been resting somewhere on the sand for the entire day; but somebody – a girl -, in an abrupt manner, had sat down next to her. This event alone could not have made her waken (for she had even started to dream), but the girl was talking to herself, loudly. She was about to spit out a question that was burning her tongue –namely why the latter had come so close when she had multiple hectares to land in- when she realized the blonde-haired girl had a scar going from the right side of her forehead to the middle of her right cheek. She wasn’t skilled in anything related to anatomy but guessed a dog could have caused the mark – her uncle had been bitten by one, leaving his face scarred in a similar way –
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
But really, the scar was too definite, too perfect to have been caused by a clumsy animal.
“Do you?”
She realized the girl had been asking a question.
“Do I believe in ghosts?”
“Uh-huh – but not the scary ones, the desperate ones. The ones you imagine having died in a small peaceful cottage (with the front door threatening to fall down on the muddy ground every passing minute), so peaceful that only a hunter who got lost noticed the smell two months after the old man passed away, sat on the couch with the TV still on. (Some kind of vintage cartoon was playing when the police arrived). The ones who thought they would be seeing their mother or even the cats they had when they were little, but actually stay in the same place they took their shower every morning, got drunk and cried when looking at family pictures… generation after generation.”