Free The Salt God's Daughter by Ilie Ruby Page A

the same way. Hamburger joints. Fancy cars. Men, you know? Anyhow, I’ve got to get back to my girls. He owes you that vacation. Don’t forget it.”
    My mother brushed the hair from my eyes. “What am I going to do with those bangs?” she said, as we walked back to the car.
    My mother smiled at the woman’s husband.
    â€œGorgeous,” she said. “A 1970 Chevy. I’ve never seen one with a convertible top like this,” she said. Her pink muumuu was now drenched under her arms. I could see her bra was wet, too, and the outline of her nipples showed through the thin cloth. She looked vulnerable and weak.
    He nodded. “That’s because they don’t make them like this anymore.”
    â€œOh, the convertible roof, I mean. It’s really something. Must have cost you a fortune, I imagine, for a custom job like that?”
    He glanced at his wife, rifling through her purse for another cigarette.
    â€œConvertibles are standard for Camaros. Not so special,” he said.
    â€œFunny, they stopped making Camaro convertibles a few years back; 1969 was the last. Yours is second-generation. Round taillights, right? Which means this convertible roof was made special for this car. That, my friend, must have cost you a pretty penny. By the way, your wife needs a vacation.”
    â€œYou wouldn’t tell her about this.”
    â€œNo, of course not. But I would love your number. Work phone is fine. I like to have friends around town.”
    He glanced at his wife as he pulled a business card out of his wallet. “Sure, lady. You just call me if you need a favor.”
    My mother shooed us away and we sat on the curb, eating a bag of Fritos and drinking Coke as we stared at the oily pools
in the dusty ground. I never knew what they talked about after, or how my mother got people to do what she wanted. But within half an hour, we were riding in a red Camaro with Sam and Sasha, back down the highway to our station wagon. He filled the gas tank and told us to take care. “You keep this nice lady happy. I’ll call you for lunch, Sasha,” my mother said. My mother gathered her hair into a bun on top of her head. She grabbed her almanac from the dashboard and paged through the charts in the calendar section. She scribbled something across the side of the right-hand page. When she was satisfied, she kissed the cover. Then she propped it back up, and we were off.
    â€œWhere are we going now, Mom?” I asked.
    â€œOh, Ruthie. We’re going home, sweetie. We’re finally going home.”
    We were headed back to the only place my mother was sure would have us.
    It ended up being the perfect place for us.

Chapter Six
    M Y MOTHER SAYS that when she was pregnant with me, she used to swim every day. There was a colony of sea lions at the tip of the peninsula in those days. One morning, while she was swimming alone, a sea lion swam right up beside her, so close that she could see its shiny black eyes and its flared nostrils. “It was huge,” she said. “Like a large bear under the sea. I looked right into its eyes. It was a rogue male, I was certain. It just raised its head and then dove back underwater, disappearing. I swam like crazy back to shore. The ocean is their terrain. Best to keep a safe distance,” she said. Though sea lions are massive, they can slip in and out of view as if they were simply apparitions, diving silently into the deep without so much as a splash, making you wonder if you had seen anything at all, she explained.
    Some folks will tell you that although Long Beach has had its share of illusory changes, certain things will always rise to the surface. Before the digging of oil even began here, before one of the largest pools of oil in the country was discovered here and systematically siphoned from the earth, marine life and birds would show up, dying, on the shores, covered in the
dark liquid. Children who grew up in the area used