Issue #20 (2011) PDF - myweb - Long Island University

―Angelo,‖ I called out. ―I‘m stuck; I can‘t move the water is pulling me in.‖
He carefully waded in the water and very easily grabbed both my hands and pulled me out.
When I reached the dry sand, I cried. I don‘t think I was strong enough to get out of the water by
myself. To this day, I am convinced that I would have drowned if he hadn‘t come to the beach when
he did.
During the remaining days of our trip to the beach, Rosa and I survived the sun, the insect
bites and the other children putting three-inch dead beetles under our pillows.
Once back in Cali our aunts saw us, they were horrified to see our burnt and peeling skin
and all the weight I had lost. We had been out in the sun for fourteen days without any sunscreen at
all. That night when I showered for the first time in fourteen days and put on a proper nightgown
on to sleep my aunt saw my legs, which were covered in bug bites, some old and scabbed over and
some fresh still bleeding from where I had scratched. The bite marks were of different sizes and
colors, red to purplish black. I remember that on my right leg I counted twenty-seven in a line as if
the mosquitoes had a dinner party in which I was the main course. She hurriedly called my other
aunt. I doubted that they called my father in New York, because in 1975 my family only made an
international phone call if someone had died. My other aunt came over and they cleaned them and
covered the worst ones with band aides. My sister hadn‘t been bitten as much as I had been, but
they checked
Later that fall my uncle and his wife sent my father a nasty letter telling them how lazy and
sloppy we were. I guess they were talking about the fact that we didn‘t wash dishes and then refused
to take a rainwater shower on the back porch the day we were leaving to return to the city. What
was the point We weren‘t allowed to shower for fourteen days. What was one more day and we
weren‘t about to go naked in the back of the house. The other children had played enough pranks
on us we weren‘t going to take any chances. On the other hand, maybe they were talking about all
the blood spots my mosquito bites left on their sheets. My mother cursed them out and my father
too for leaving us with him.
I was angry, hurt and embarrassed, so started to write a letter to my uncle to tell him what a
bad uncle he was and maybe use some of my mother‘s curses, as well. I was going to ask, why did
he take two city kids out to the jungle, not watch us, tell us about riptides or make sure we ate and
had protection from the bugs and the sun. My hand was shaking as I wrote the first few angry words
on the page.
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