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Feb. 1st, 2010 10:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
searingedrockMaracas Beach stretched out like it does, powdered white sand, green waves, midnight blue in the distance. In the summer of that year I went with Keith to the annual swim meet across the bay. He wore his bright green Speedos and I went over to the shark-and-bake huts quickly to escape him. The event was one the upper echelons attended and in which their children competed. In this you saw how separate we were from the rest of the island. I came with my friends; we didn’t come with parents. Instead Laura made her boyfriend drive us and we watched the swimmers come ashore dripping in the sun, embarrassed, tired. Parents threw towels on them and they stood around with fellow swimmers, touching the numbers on their chests, looking at the water with respect. The winners would be the ones chosen for the national teams. They all went hand in hand here; the school, the scholarships, the national teams, the prominence, the networking. Most times they just left for other places and never returned. I stood there with Laura and Shara, feeling the sun on my bony 15-year-old back, staring at the water. It looked cold but I waded slowly in, allowing bits to acclimatise, gasping as it touched between thighs, continuing until I was drifting, fighting currents and diving under curling green monster waves. Swimming out further beyond the breakers we rose on bright green swells, young legs suspended, looking down on the stretch of beach in the sunlight as we laughed and laughed.
Under a wave there is silence and noise all at once, tossed in swirling sand and pushing you down. Once I was pummeled by a wave and dashed chin first onto the sea floor, grazing chin and tumbling into a foaming churning mass, not knowing which way was up and running out of air as my body was curled and shoved. You rise, gasping, to see another merciless wave crashing over you and sometimes there is real fear that there in the ocean, standing next to friends in the sun, you could drown, it could happen. From where you are the shore looks so far away and danger so close to you. Sometimes you can’t think about retreat, surrounded by currents you daren’t turn your back on them; all you can do is face wave after wave, diving deep under the trouble, below where all is dark and quiet, cloudy, holding breaths until there is a lull and you retreat, quickly in jumps, and safe on the sand you forget how bad it was, how scared you were, and you laugh. Maracas is known as the most popular beach in Trinidad. It is the Sunday hangout for Trinidad’s suburbia, along with the other north coast beaches. As a child when returning from a day at the beach I would lie motionless on my bed and still feel the swell of the ocean, still surging with some imaginary tide. I would empty the sand from my swimsuit, powdery white, and wriggle toes into them gleefully as evidence I hadn’t imagined it.
Under a wave there is silence and noise all at once, tossed in swirling sand and pushing you down. Once I was pummeled by a wave and dashed chin first onto the sea floor, grazing chin and tumbling into a foaming churning mass, not knowing which way was up and running out of air as my body was curled and shoved. You rise, gasping, to see another merciless wave crashing over you and sometimes there is real fear that there in the ocean, standing next to friends in the sun, you could drown, it could happen. From where you are the shore looks so far away and danger so close to you. Sometimes you can’t think about retreat, surrounded by currents you daren’t turn your back on them; all you can do is face wave after wave, diving deep under the trouble, below where all is dark and quiet, cloudy, holding breaths until there is a lull and you retreat, quickly in jumps, and safe on the sand you forget how bad it was, how scared you were, and you laugh. Maracas is known as the most popular beach in Trinidad. It is the Sunday hangout for Trinidad’s suburbia, along with the other north coast beaches. As a child when returning from a day at the beach I would lie motionless on my bed and still feel the swell of the ocean, still surging with some imaginary tide. I would empty the sand from my swimsuit, powdery white, and wriggle toes into them gleefully as evidence I hadn’t imagined it.
