Salonee Verma
June arrives, as it always does nowadays, with the sea begging for its comeuppance. You’ve been spoiled, really, living inland all these years. This year, though, your roommate drags you out for a stroll along the beach.
***
You’d never been near the shore before moving in with Jasleen. Ammi had always kept you far away, swaddled in stories of the waves that had swallowed her wife & spat you out as a compensation present. She never says it the same way twice.
Other mothers tell their daughters bedtime stories about stealing mangoes from their neighbors as a child; however, yours begins each story the same way.
Once, there was a trade.
Once, there were the old girls, thrown into the sea by the angels, drowning to the tune of chemtrail sonatas because a half-fish wouldn’t give up her pride.
Once, the sea spluttered & provided its own old girls for the grieving to cherish.
***
The angels are out again, popping bubblegum & frothing at the mouth as they get shot down by the wind drafts. They skit across the ocean, ululating flaps on their throat like a cicada’s song. They want their birthright, a sacrifice of candyfloss girls thrown into the water, like your would-be mother.
“Do you ever just want it to stop?” Jasleen, the roommate, asks.
“There’s no way to make it stop,” you reply dryly. It’s a fact. The stars shine in the sky, the sun beats down on the desert, and the angels ache for someone to dig their claws into. There hasn’t been a sacrifice like the old girls in years.
***
Once, there was a beautiful woman who used to eat lychees with reckless abandon on the beach. She did not care where the juice dripped. That was the first mistake.
***
Let’s begin again.
Once, there was Suvannamaccha. Everything begins as it ends—with boredom. Even children of demons cannot spend their lives searching for stones to steal.
She falls in love. She has a son. She dies.
That is not the end, for who is she to escape the cycle? She returns, in the same form. Again & again & again, until she snakes onto the beach as a thief & returns as a thief smitten with lychee juice.
Once a thief, always a thief, except this time Suvannamaccha has set her sights on something bigger than stones or shells or even lychee pits. No, this time, Suvannamaccha is going to steal her life back.
***
The gods laugh at her ambition. They churn the ocean with their toes & remind the ocean that it is still theirs, even though it has been detached for so long.
“You belong to us,” the gods say.
“I belong to you,” the oceans reply.
“I belong to you,” the lychee lover replies.
“I belong to you,” Suvannamaccha does not reply.
***
The sea would not have one of its own sugared with promises of the sand. It spat Suvannamaccha out into the shore with a promise that she would receive seven years before the waves made the world right again.
Once, there was a vengeful sea.
Once, there was an aching half-fish who would vow anything to taste the lychee at her woman’s hand again.
Once, there was the beginning.
***
There is a sunburnt half-fish on the shore, looking like a beached marlin for all intents & purposes. You wonder if she has one of those tails that changes colors out of the water, scales shimmering crimson instead of the blue you see now.
You & your roommate exchange glances & haul her up the shore, depositing her in the filmy sand near the boardwalk. “You think she’s one of the old girls?” Jasleen asks, kicking at the mermaid’s tail.
“Nah. She looks too young,” you reply. “No claw marks either.”
The half-fish isn’t breathing. Her hair hangs limp like a halo. You can see, now, how the sea changes its sacrifices into acolytes. You don’t necessarily mind it either.
Is she a relative of your mother’s? It’s possible. You certainly hope not. Bad things happen when half-fishes come on shore. You do not want to be an unwilling old girl.
Although, there is something tantalizing about it all. Perhaps you could be a willing old girl.
Jasleen stretches, yawning & pulling her neck to the side. “Wanna grab a cotton candy? We can share it.”
“In a minute,” you say. “You go ahead. I’ll catch up.”
“Sure,” replies Jasleen. Then, she leaves, cleats leaving marks on the sand behind her.
The mermaid opens her eyes, baring her sharp rows of teeth like a corsage. “You know what you have to do,” she says in a raspy voice, clutching at your arm with nails that draw blood.
And you do.
***
Suvannamaccha spent seven years out of the water before the shouting began.
Before, humans had forgotten the shrieks of the waves, how the noises tasted like salt & phlegm & something in between. They remembered, then, how it felt to feel small. How it felt to feel dry.
“This is because of me,” Suvannamaccha confessed to her lychee lover, kneeling as the woman oils her hair.
“Perhaps,” replied her wife, winding her fingers in between the strands of hair, still smelling like seaweed after several years. “Or perhaps it’s because of me.”
“How could it be?”
“Don’t you remember? You only wanted to steal the pits. How careless of me to leave the juice still on them.” The wife of Suvannamaccha sighed, leaning back & back until the bones of her back cracked like a yawn.
***
Once, there was a girl borne of the waves to remind Suvannamaccha of her vow to the sea. She was you. You were her. There is a reason Suvannamaccha has never let her daughter return to the shore until now, three groups of seven years later.
Once, there was a woman who loved lychees who drowned. Perhaps the greatest tragedy is that the ocean salted the juice right out of her. The angels arrived like a hearse after her last cries, murmuring for more girls to throw into their mother’s water.
Once, there was the sea. Still, there is the sea.
***
The sea welcomes you when you drown, lychee lover corpse-hands stroking your back.
Suvannamaccha shrieks.
The gods laugh.
& at long last, you are home.
