In the Lap of Our Mother
By Benjamin Hernandez Soriano

Look at her, she wants to go, too. Take the baby to see, I say. Sea or see, you say, pointing to the beach then to your eyes. And we both laugh because you say it like my Tito Toots would. I think she's hungry, you say. Here's the bottle, I say, here, take it with you, and you shut the car door and I open it and say, Make sure the boys don't get wet above the knees! And though I am ashamed that I let my selfishness rise over my baby's small cry, my nipples are so sore and it feels now that I am finally rid of a tumor that has grown and been with me for a year now. I watch you out there through the window, all of you curious about the sea as it slips back and recedes farther still, as if a drain plug had been accidentally pulled by the big toe of some hapless diver far out in the deep blue, exposing sunken boats and old debris cast for maybe years now. Rich treasures in my children's imagination lie partially exposed in the wet packed sand; a starfish, an old pot, a wooden post painted red. And the tourist and locals scramble about where the sea once was, like seabirds pecking for a meal of hermit crabs, and I lose all of you for a moment among the dark and light skinned children mingling and spying old rods and dead fish, and the adults who walk behind them, but with the subtle hesitation that registers primitively, far back far back in the mind. And it comes to me in the ankle of a woman who trails her small child around as he explores. It is in the ankle that I see her reticence. And it is slight. But her ankle sends a signal to my soul like the tail of the deer I have seen on TV when the scent of a low-crouching lion is caught, disclosing that it is already too late and now it is only a matter of determining which will die that day, and whether death will come slow or fast. The lion, I realize, is out there. It is drawing in its paws, i say to myself, searching for the window button, it is out there and preparing to spring, and i push the window button, but it does not roll down, and the key is not in the ignition to function the window, so i open the door and as I do, i see what you see, husband. i see what the woman sensed in her bones. i see what her heart saw and what her eyes are now registering to confirm, as the wave, enormous, murky and brown as the children before it, swift like a predator, sweeps up her child in its yawning mouth, and there is a moment of deep envy that I have for her, and it is because of what she does next, husband. Her next step is hardly even half of one, but it is forward, forward to her child just as she is swallowed up, too. And I can only shut my door and watch as the sea gathers up our children and brings them to you, and now all of you to me, and I push at the window to grab our baby because I want the soreness to last forever, but all of you gush by in a swirl of silence and hopeless struggle. But you never let go of her, love, bless you, I see that you never let go.

© Benjamin Hernandez Soriano

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