Non-Fiction

Eating Sand Dollars for Lunch
By Lea Hom

My oldest brother used to tell me that if I sucked on a sand dollar, every dream I wished for would come true. He would tell me time and time again, through the years, and always brought it up during my saddest times. Whenever he would see me in a corner, laying face first on my bed, or sitting out in the dark on our porch overlooking Casco Bay, he would come behind me and whisper in my ear.

"Suck on a sand dollar and you'll be ok."
"Suck on a sand dollar and fix it yourself."

When I was five, he told me that whenever the sun set, ten people died. On my eighth birthday, he said that going to church on Sundays actually would lead us all to hell. "Ironic, isn't it?" he'd always say with a straight face. At ten, he told me that when it rained, frogs made love. He would always tell me that I would be a fool not to believe the things he said.

We grew up along the harbor in Maine wanting to eat the fish out of the water that would pass our feet. My parents were Vegans before Vegans existed so I hated them as a child because of it. Soy to me was Devil's clay. His handmade batter for making my life miserable. Before there was tofurkey, there was my mother's grilled soy not quite a turkey-turkey splattered with pepper, dipped in soy sauce, and spiced with herbs.

"Toe-ferrrkey. Why didn't I think of that, Sylvee?"

When we first moved there from Vermont, we invited our neighbors who lived nearby for a meal and some neighborly conversation. After that night, they never took our offers again. At the dinner table, there would always be my brother, my sister, and myself in a line with my mother and father on the other side of us. During the week sometimes, I'd eat fish and burgers and chicken fried steaks at my friend Belinda's after school. When I would get home, my brother would always be nearby ready to speak to me the moment I'd walk into the door.

"Did you know caramel is made from the insides of giant trees?"
"Did you know that Lions have two hearts instead of one?"
"Did you know that when you die, your parents choose whether or not you'll get to keep your wings?"
"Did you know?"

The summer before my tenth birthday was the first time I began paying any attention to my mother's body. I would always call her slinky and shove my face into her hip. I'd put my head under her shirt and bite on her and she'd smile and push me away. My brother would always be nearby telling me not to do that. My sister was always hiding in her room avoiding everyone. On the weekend afternoons, we would be out in our backyard and dad would barbeque corn on the cob, eggplant, tofu, and peppers. He'd put three bowls of brown rice in a row and keep an eye on us. When I'd ask where mom was, he'd tell me she was inside resting. At dinner, I'd always ask why she wasn't outside that day and she'd look over at my father and he'd tell me to shut up. She would pick at her food as she always had in delicate stabs and careful movements. I had always been fascinated with her hands during meals. She'd take less and less through the days and months as if the things on her plate were too complicated to deal with in such big piles. You would never imagine anything would be wrong because of the way she used to take such pleasure in sorting her food out on her plate.

On one occasion, I asked my mother why she made eating so complicated. My brother, at that point, would start talking again about fairy tales, about magic, and about facts that surely couldn't be true. Couldn't be true. Couldn't be true. I'd squint at him and my sister would put her face into her food to avoid talking to anyone. Mom and dad would smile too and let him run off his mouth till the end of dinner. He hated talking deep down inside and resented my sister for her silence.

Throughout the summer, mother would spend more and more days indoors and my sister would slowly spend those very days outside with us. My sister would never talk to any one of us but would always be outside now eating, or swimming, or taking long walks to the harborside with the three of us. When we'd play in the pool or go out sailing in the bay, she'd come along and go through the motions.

The relationships your siblings have outside of the world you see them in is something I could never understand. The many conversations they would have in private were the very conversations that would give me a sense of the everything I couldn't understand. People are funny that way. We understand only small pieces of the family puzzle we are entrusted with. Each member of a family is privy only to links that are not whole unless connected with the very links they will never be privy to. I had always thought all of the answers could be solved if everyone of us in the family were together at all times. That way I'd see the links, hear them, be able to impose myself on them. But that's not how a family maintains its innocence. Or its perception of itself having innocence. Secrets of a family are meant to be burrowed deeply and hidden. I never took the time to beg my sister to tell me who she was or what she knew or what she believed. I never questioned my brother or questioned whether or not anything he said was important. I just believed they were in my best interest and in the end, it's the only belief that kept me able to look in their eyes through all the years I spent with them.

When school started that year, my sister stopped spending time with us. I asked her once why she never came outside on the weekends anymore and she said "I just ain't got time." Of all of us, I was the only one who dad would worry about or pay any attention to. He would send me up first to say goodnight to our mother and in the morning, he'd always have me wake her up and get her ready for work. In the van, on the way to school each day, mother would always tell my brother and sister to make sure I was safe and to spend more time trying talk to one another. They would both look at me at the same time, look at each other, and then turn away as if they had already had a hundred and one conversations about that very moment on another day when I wasn't looking. "We know."

I'm eleven years old. I'm on the back deck of our newly renovated backyard. It's around noon, December 4th, the day of my parent's anniversary. We're going to visit my mother's therapist before having lunch. She's got her weight back and some of her vitality as well. My sister is already in the car and seems to love my mother the most. I'm in the jacuzzi with everything underwater except for my head. My father is furious because he sees me with my mouth wide open. A cream coloured disc-like shell with short moveable spines peeking out of a young girl's mouth and a brother hiding in his room watching from a window. A brother making sure nothing bad ever happens to the little girl who holds all of her family's fragility under her breath.

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