Somebody thought it was a good idea to take a family vacation after Mama tried to kill herself: San Diego. By some miracle of incompetence no one came for me and T right away, to take two nearly grown teenage girls from the jaws of maternal dysfunction. T said that level of extra was for white kids. So instead we ended up on a two-hour road trip south. San Diego, the yellowest city I’d ever seen, totally sun-bleached, all the buildings, old and new, dipped in Mission-style architecture like an ice cream in adobe sprinkles. It was ridiculous.
T had been acting like a snatch-face c-word from the start. I’d never seen her so eager to go anywhere since before Daddy died. This was going to be our first vacation with just Mama, and knowing that woman I did not expect great things. But T, my goodness, the rushing and the shouting—get in the shower, put on your clothes, don’t leave your hair like that, brush your goddamn teeth, help carry the cooler! Mama never touched me unless it was to tug and twist on my hair until it looked somewhat satisfying to us both. When she heard T yell at me she came over with a jar of product and a comb. It hurt the usual way and then it didn’t. I wanted to cut it all off the way women do when they get divorced. I wanted to divorce my mother and her genetic code and her self-hate and her addictions and her disregard for her own beauty, her own body. I was done before we got in the car.
Things were going well for me, I had a wrestling match coming up, friends, more than friends even, and the two of them just plucked me out of it, root and all. Eventually we stopped talking, turned the radio off in the car, and just rode into the resort driveway in complete silence. I got out first for some fresh air. It smelled beachy and tropical, the artificial tropical that comes in tubes of sunblock or a tray of mai tais. All-inclusive, the receptionist repeated, whatever that meant. Mama had a lot of insurance money to spend and no idea what she was buying, apparently. There were other families checking in, men in khaki shorts and women in sunglasses so large they looked like giant flies wearing sundresses. Short brown and pink people struggling with luggage and no sense of direction, and that one Viking-looking couple that walked out of the elevator and out of the sliding glass doors to some other destiny. Then there was us: cranky, saggy eyed, hungry, grieving, and alone. With all T’s shouting we still looked terribly unprepared for family fun by the beach. I had on a sweat suit with socks and flip-flops, T had on enough jewelry to use as armor in a war, and Mama had on a faux-leather jacket. Everything about us said we did not know what the hell we were doing. The receptionist said all-inclusive for the twelfth time to clarify a point Mama refused to embrace, then recited a list of amenities, including six restaurants, a spa, an indoor space simulator, and an aquarium.
T packed all those sodas and water like we were going hiking at a park with Daddy. We didn’t need any of it here. We ate horrible burgers that came with an unrequested pineapple on the meat for no goddamn reason, then went to the aquarium. A guided tour was in progress that we joined just in time to reach the manta ray exhibit. Six or seven little stingrays wide and flat as dinner plates scuttled along the sand. Guests were allowed to touch the little guys, which I thought a bad idea. A little blond boy insisted on trying to poke them in the exact manner the guide told him not to and had to be forcibly removed by a similar-looking man, a pattern he’d walk his whole life. Me and Mama looked at each other and rolled up our sleeves, then reached in hands flat like we were supposed to. The creatures came to us and slid like beaded glass under our fingers. She almost smiled then, eager to touch this strange little thing in this faraway place, and I realized I didn’t know her at all. T didn’t touch the stingrays and was glad to move on to the shark tank, which I will never forget.
Apparently there is a thing that can happen to some animals, spontaneous births, parthenogenesis, right out of ancient mythology, Zeus and Athena, the guide said. Their tank held only female sharks, but one Sunday evening a shark gave birth to eleven babies all on her own. The guide spoke as if it were science, nature, the divine, and a curse. For a second lots of the women chuckled and nudged their men and felt a kind of pride where I felt immense terror. The thin guide in her bright-orange lipstick continued, parthenogenesis is a kind of self-cloning, the babies are identical to the mother genetically with minor differences here and there. Unfortunately, the babies are usually not well. I felt it coming, the grand joke this kind of singular motherhood represented. The babies are usually deformed, the guide said significantly, or stillborn altogether. Call it a panic attack, call it the heebie-jeebies, whatever it was I couldn’t breathe well, even the feel of fabric on my abdomen made me shudder, and I had to leave before hearing anything else.
The hall between the shark tank and the hands-on exhibit was peaceful, dark, and empty. Someone spun me around so fast I almost put them in a choke hold, but it was just T. She held me by the collar and was at the point of crying. I got scared, figured Mama did something crazy again. In an instant I imagined her keeled over at the bar or half-submerged in the shore like a seashell, mouth and nose filled with sand, or in the shark tank, naked and drowned, wide-eyed with head and limbs tucked close to her like a fetus. But it was none of those things. Mama was just beyond T, gazing like she always did, quiet, locked in whatever past drove her to this moment that she couldn’t go beyond. And there was T, looking at me like I might not be there. The shark talk messed you up too, I said. She laughed a little and let me go.
San Di-fucking-ego, a whole-ass mess. I’d come to find out that all-inclusive meant you got to eat and drink anything all day—crab legs, shrimp, steak skewers, chicken tacos, ribs, lasagna, and if you flirt with the young attendants they’ll bring you endless piña coladas on the artificial dock at sunset while your drunk mother and sister cry on your shoulder, everyone not knowing which of us came first or if anyone would live through the night.