Fishing

Fishing

My skin is taut. Every time I wrinkle my nose when I giggle, I can feel the crispy, sunburnt skin moving up and down. The squinting of my eyes feels like it leaves concaved crevices imprinted upon what will one day be crow's feet many years from now. My hot pink Minnie Mouse sunglasses are shielding my eyes from the sunlight reflecting off the ocean. The breeze is blowing my pigtails around, causing them to whip me in the face as they stream by. Everything around me smells like salty ocean water, worms, and dead fish; the sweet smells of summertime on Long Island. Seagulls are laughing overhead and lunge towards the seaweed scurrying around the parking lot.

"Can we go home yet?" I beg.
"No. We just got here," you reply dryly. I can hear the irritation in your voice and your are secretly mocking me inside your head because my maturity level has not yet surpassed the ability to remain still for more than thirty consecutive minutes.

I am growing antsy and want to do something else, but there's nothing else to do. There's nowhere to go swimming, no other kids around me to play with, and You are certainly not going to entertain me. This is Your time to relax and meditate, to be one with the earth. I am actually an interruption just by existing, for which I apologize. I remain silent and people watch as the line of my fishing pole, thirty yards out into the ocean, remains unwatched. A whale could bite down on my bait, but I would never notice until being pulled up from my fold-out chair and dragged into the depths of the ocean, never to be seen again except by flounder and other bottom-of-the-sea creatures whose names I do not know.

I am secretly praying for a tidal wave, a tsunami, a huge gust of wind to pick up my small frame and plunk me into the water without a sound, leaving everyone to wonder where I've gone and why. "Will she ever come back?" they would all wonder. And there I would be, trapped under the water, smiling at all the lobsters, crabs, bluefish, blowfish, and snapper waving at me, welcoming me to their secret world. They would play with me for all hours of the day and race me in the water and would always let me win. They would never forget to read me a bedtime story. They would always leave the nightlight on. They would check the closet for monsters before shutting the door for the night and they would most certainly not forget to crack the door open in case I needed to make an emergency escape.

"You should reel your line in," You tell me. And I do. I reel it in slowly with labored intentions and I allow my irritation to show through. You put another piece of bait on the end of my hook.

"You keep getting nibbled on. You should pay more attention."

I should pay more attention because You pay attention. You know I couldn't care less. You know that I could be at home splashing around in the pool, play ing with barbies, or putting on elaborate, ornate costume jewlery and pretending to be a princess in the comforts of the air conditioned living room.

But I am here. With you. And I'm bored out of my skull, but I'm doing it because I want you to love me so badly. You and I both know you wanted a son. You and I both know that I am the greatest disappointment you'll never escape. But here I am.

My hook has a fresh piece of freezer-burnt bait on it. The glassy eyes of the crusty fish 2 inches long is staring at me and I will have nightmares about this vision for years to come. I will close my eyes at night and see the petrified look in your eyes begging me for help, frozen over and the dialated pupils in your yellow eyes will haunt me because I couldn't be there to save you before your death.

I look behind me to make sure no one will be caught in the wrath of my casting off. Clearance for takeoff has been decided. I fling my arm forward and lose my grip for a moment. My hands are hot and sweaty from the sunblock. In slow motion, we watch it. Inch by inch, it leaves my grip and heads towards the water. There is goes. It's gone.

My fishing pole is in the water, bobbing up and down with the ocean. You can still see the symbol for Fischer Price on the right side of the pole. I begin to cry.

"I'M SORRY, DADDY."
I do not know it now, but this will be one of thousands of times I will cry out to you, exclaiming the same thing.Truth be told, I am sorry. I'm sorry for everything and nothing all at once. I'm so sorry I'm me. And I'm so sorry for you. And I'm sorry for me, for being sorry for being me. But you're not sorry. You're angry. And you will yell.

"Goddamn shit motherfucker. What the hell is WRONG WITH YOU?"
I'm sobbing. Snot is dripping down my face, my chest is heaving up and down and I'm half hyperventilating. The tears flowing down my cheeks cools the heat of my sunburn, but this is not relief; This is the ultimate punishment-humiliation and disappointment. The most horrible thing in life is the innocence of a child. We are sponges and we absorb everything you put into us; all the sadnesses we feel as an adult are planted in our pores during every crucial minute of every waking day.

You grab your pole.You fling your line out without checking behind you to see if anyone is there to get hooked on. You reel in your line furiously. I can smell the burning of the fiberglass as your fishing line heats up....you are so heated. You miss. You fling it out again. And miss again. Third time is a charm. You hit the tide just right and your line drifts towards mine. You reel in my pole and catch it with a crab net.

I still cannot stop crying. I am gagging on my tears at this point, unable to catch my breath, praying that you will not stop loving me for my mistakes, because I am imperfect. Because I love you and I cannot live if you do not love me: I am only a child. I am four years old and I need you. And I need you unconditionally. I need you even when you get mad and slam the door. I need you even when you've just gotten home from work and you're tired. I need you when you're fighting with Mommy and you both forget about me in the nurses's office of my school with a 103.2 degree fever because you were busy fighting. And I need you to teach me how to act on a date, and how to sit up like a lady at the dinner table, and how to feel beautiful with no makeup on because you assured me I am, and how to change the oil in my car so I am not always dependent on a man.

But that's not who you wanted to be.

As I stand there crying, you fling the pole on the ground. "Are you happy now?" you bark. I'm not and I never will be. I will always be sorry.

I have never forgotten that day. And though I am older and no longer go fishing with You, I feel like I am that pole. But on that day I fell into the ocean, the tide was not just right. And as I float in the water, I am watchin you out of the eye of my Fischer Price logo as I get further and further away from everything I can grasp. And all I can do is drift far, far away.