You see two people kissing while you’re on holiday with your parents. For some reason, you have not wiped its image from your mind. They are pressed with their backs against a stone wall. Squarely above their heads is a graffito that reads in English: WATCH THEIR MOUTHS: IF YOUR CHILD IS LAUGHING THEN YOUR CHILD IS A FASCIST!!!
One of the women cradles her lover’s neck in one arm, while the other hangs loosely by her side, clutching a half-eaten peach. You remember a wrist, a knee, an outline of a neck. You will get your ears pierced the next day and scratch your face to produce a wound that will sting for the next three. All you wanted really wanted was to stand in a breeze and smell the sea. For some reason you can taste blood instead.
You spit in the street and earn a slap on the cheek that feels like thick salt in the wound of your cheek-scar. Baba tells you to stop staring at every punk with a piercing. One parent goes into a souvenir store and the other one turns to you and explains that she doesn’t love your father anymore.
You ask her why you are on vacation then.
This is a goodbye vacation.
A goodbye-vacation?
The conversation you are having is not in a language that you understand. The conversation you are having is persuading you that you are the last of your line. There will be no one after you. You will be no one’s ancestor. The blue balm of sea invites you to jump inside her, although you’re not convinced that she would let you back out if you did.
Later, you will thumb through your phrasebook, looking for a way to say goodbye-vacation in Italian. Even later, you will eat a peach in front of the bathroom mirror and prepare yourself for bed.
Dinner is at a place where people get up to dance between meals. Your parents have hushed conversations while you lose your appetite. You are vain enough to think that every glance they share is about you.
From across the table, your mother looks at you, and looks, and keeps looking. You can feel her trying to understand what type of person you are. You wonder why she doesn’t just ask.
A waiter walks towards your table with a large bowl of fruit. As he sets it down, the fruit-mountain trembles and pink and green slices bruise the floor and stain shirts. A whirr of voices speak overlapping sorrys. You didn’t know your parents could speak Italian so well. They must be practicing together while you sit in the hotel room and think about how you haven’t heard laughter in days.
Did they ruin your clothes?
Don’t worry about it.
I’ll take it off the bill, I promise.
Don’t be silly, it wasn’t your fault.
Don’t just sit there like a mute, help us clean up.
She bends across the table in your direction, and you realise that the waiter is a woman. She looks at you, and looks, and keeps looking – the gaze is not an accusation, but an opening of a door. You are looking at a phantom. You are looking at a memory. You are looking at someone you might know.
You’re bleeding, did you know? On your cheek.
She plucks a stray peach from the table. You smear your tears on the back of your neck and call it sweat.
Mama!
You are holding a photograph of your mother you’re not sure she knows about.
You are looking at it and searching for evidence of yourself.
You sleep with it under your pillow.
Baba?
You and your father share a nose you wish you could outgrow.
Evet, bebeğim?
The clock reads 02:09 am. He is finishing a tall glass of milk.
Can you cut my hair?
The story goes,
the next morning your father will be gone, leaving a note that defines his absence as a necessary exile. The words look good but taste sour. Will you remember them?
The note is written on the back of a folded newspaper. It is brief.
You turn it over and hope there is more. On the back are a smiling mother and daughter, their two hands holding a whisk, and a children’s recipe for peach brûlée.
Someone taps you on the shoulder. It is grief.
You swallow back the bile that rises in your throat.
Now for the summer that follows.
Your mother is convinced that you are faithless. You’re learning how to swim. You have something in your teeth.
Have you ever been in love?
She asked you in English. In your head it was one word: singular, proper noun: inlove.
Your cousin was perched on the courtyard wall, painting her toenails. She will not look at you because she thinks you like girls and you are the only person in the family that has dyed their hair.
In love, with a person?
She will not respond to your question, but rather offer you prophecy:
You will. By the end of the summer, you will.
Come, swim.
Your cousins swim and you watch them dive under the waves like birds. You have stood in the shallows so long that it seems you have grown roots.
A child swims up so close to you that you can smell the sunscreen on his back. You want to warn him: Stay here with me! Let’s play together in the shallows! The deep water is no place for children like us!
You will swim in it anyway, even though your fear is thick enough to taste. You are hoping to make your mother proud and find God here.
A solitary daughter floats on her back in the ocean. You open-mouth smile and remind yourself that it is okay to cry for something that can’t cry back.
A back of a head looks exactly like Baba.
Except for the nose.
The nose is not the same.
You have a Coke at the bar. Nobody asks you to dance.
In the opposite corner, someone raises their hand to toast. The hand is attached to a body that does not see you. The mouth addresses a small group in Turkish.
To the Gods we know, and I don’t mean the good ones.
This is where the night cracks open like a wound.
You watch as he pinches the gum from his mouth and slides the gum-hand hand under the table. You watch him laugh as he walks out the door.
It must be true that the body can feel when another’s eyes seek it out, because he will turn to look at you. He will look, and look, and keep looking.
You go and sit at their empty booth. Your fingers search the underside of the table. The gum is still warm and tacky. You end up chewing it for the rest of the night, long after it has lost its flavour.
Here are the things you know for sure:
Ten minutes later, he re-enters through the same door he exited. He will tell you later that he felt drawn to you. He will use the word magnetic.
That night you will whisper in the dark together.
He will steal peaches from his neighbour’s backyard.
He will hand them to you with a stretched grin and a sure hand.
You will swim for the second time in your life and the second time that week.
You will go back to the house tomorrow and tell your cousin, yes, yes, I have found love. Look at all the things I have done to prove it.
You and the person you love are talking about how the sea will outlive you all.
You sit between his legs like a dog and he unbraids your hair. The person you love tells you
that you look exactly like your mother from behind and that you should probably cut it.
You wish you couldn’t hear him.
Don’t want to be getting you two confused, he says.
Laugh and stay still.
Yes, yes, how dangerous it would be to look like my mother.
Your mother lurches forward and lets a stream of waxy bile onto the table. You almost put a hand on her back.
I shaved my head to match his.
You never know when you’ve had enough.
I did it because I love him.
Aptal çocuk.
I’m not foolish and I’m not a child.
Leave me be.
Why are you crying?
Okay,
okay,
okay,
Mama stop, please –
You used to be seventeen. Now you’re just a liar.
(It was the first true thing your mother had ever said to you.)
Your mother then places a necklace and a bowl of frozen grapes on the table. They are an unexpected inheritance. She insists you wear the first and eat the latter.
She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and plants a waxy kiss on your cheek.
That night, you wear her lipstick stain on your face like an accessory, and sleep with God around your neck like a noose.
When you hug him for the first time in three years, Baba will smell of salt and have a different surname. How is your Baba here? How is your Baba here on this second goodbye-vacation?
You: hug your father and are reminded of a certain metallic taste in your mouth.
You: feel possessive of your country even if you don’t belong to it anymore.
You: thought you were too young for all of this.
He: kisses your cheek.
There is a wound under there somewhere, buried over by years and skin, but when he kisses it, it feels just as tender, just as deep.
You’re telling the person you love a secret and he’s looking at your mouth.
You wonder if you can love somebody without using your hands.
You touch your lips to his shoulder and press.
Collecting bits of apple from his mouth when you kiss.
How many degrees of separation are there between a childhood and a love on the brink of extinction?
You are sitting in the sand the day after the person you love is gone and your Baba has returned and your Mama is somewhere in between. A stranger’s shirt reads: Things Will Get Better!
You peel an orange with your salty hands. It makes you feel like a child, so you smile.
You recite the only prayer you know:
Promise me that there will always be one more orange slice left for me.
Promise me that you will peel it yourself.
Promise, promise, promise.
