Made for the Waves: A short story

You may get hit by sudden lightning or take severe beating from the cruel wind, but you will always get back up and stand strong on your feet - Suzzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun.I'm not quite sure if it was a Tuesday or a Thursday. I always forget which day it was. But it was noon and mother had not returned from sea. She would take baskets of fish from the fishermen and sell the fish at the market.Mother was never brave. I asked her often why she didn't join the men in their canoes on the sea to catch fish. "Women were not made for the waves, Mawuena. The gods made our spines so soft, the water will carry us away even if we fight." I think mother was afraid but I never told her so.I remember everything about father that day. Because I was with him. He was sitting in that same position- his back to the wall and his head tilted till it was almost touching his shoulder. House flies swarmed about him and I kept swapping them away with my hand. Get off my papa.Father was very sick. He had gotten so weak he couldn't go out to smoke or drink with the other townsmen. I asked mother if the cigarettes made father ill but she wouldn't talk to me about it.That day, I wiped father clean with a wet cloth and changed him into a faded polo shirt. He loved that shirt and wore it only during Christmas. When I pulled it out to put it on him, he made a sound as if to tell me to change it. I remember thinking why. For after his cure? I didn't know.When I finished with father, I begun to draw tennis balls on the wall with charcoal I had stolen from the kitchen. That wasn't the first time. Mother always joked about how I started drawing circles in her womb; turning round and round, creating tiny rings with my little body. I had turned our family room into a terrible art gallery with charcoal tennis balls taking dominant space amongst Junior's meaningless Math equations. He was trying to commit the formulas to memory.Junior is my brother. He is two years younger than me and is the only one who cares enough to call me "Se-reeeena". Because there was once I made an endless rant about having a change of name after watching Serena Williams play tennis for the first time on our neighbor's TV.Mother had said "Selena who?". Father barely blinked. Only Junior jumped in step with me screaming "Mawuena is Serena, Mawuena is Serena!", as though there was a gift for every time he said it.Only Junior saw me jump in the car that day. Only Junior said good bye.It was a little black Mercedes. I was sprawled in the dirt, outside our hut, spelling Serena , having only written the letter S in the sand when I raised my head to see what had interrupted me.It was a man. He wore an oversized Tshirt with a sagging collar and looked about father's age. I asked if he was here to see father but I knew father had no friends who owned a car. Only Baba Tunde owned a motorbike and he didn't ride it too often. I saw the man crane his neck to see my work in the sand. "S is for what?" I was wondering who he was, if he was going to get out of his little car.S is for Serena, I said proudly. He raised his eyebrows and leaned forward with interest as I went on about the best tennis player I've ever ever known and how she plays. "Like this", I said, swinging my arms with an imaginary racket and hitting a ball we both couldn't see.That was when he smiled and asked if I had a ball. I said yes. Junior and I crumble old newspapers into tiny balls and wrap them with father's tape. He smiled again, a little crooked this time. He must have lost some teeth in a fight when he was a child because I counted three gaps when he spoke. "What about a racket?" I pulled my lower lip out in a sad pout and said Not yet. I am saving up for one soon.When he said he had an old racket he wasn't using, I brimmed with enthusiasm , giving him my full moon-eyed attention. The racket was in his basement and we would be back before the wind would wash the S from the sand.Junior came running towards us just when I had jumped into the backseat of the Racket man's little Mercedes. My brother was panting for breath, asking where I was going. Who is that man? Can I join you too?No. Father is home. Stay with him until mama comes. I left an S in the sand, will he spell Serena out for me? He said no, then he said yes and threw a paper ball at me, shouting our favorite phrase as the engine revved to life "For when you're sad!". I caught the ball in mid-flight and stuck my tongue out at him.It's been too many afternoons and about twenty six rains and racket man never had a racket after all. I bet he doesn't even play tennis. He keeps me locked up in a windowless cubicle down a dark narrow hallway.My bone is sticking out of my neck because I do not eat the food he passes to me from under the wooden door. I want to see my family. I don't have charcoal to count the days or draw on the wall.He comes to me every day, the racket man. He steps into the room in his blue overalls and begins to touch me. He passes his rough hands over my chest, squeezing the little seeds in my breast. It hurts and I let out a cry. He slides his fingers down my skirt and sometimes he smells of father's breath after alcohol. He grabs my head, hard, and fills my mouth with his, biting my tongue, biting my lip, biting every part of me that used to be human.When he finally comes down on me, I am shuddering, withering in pain. He is huge and heavy, forcing his way into my softest parts.Every time he arches his back and thrusts deep into me, hard and strong, I think about Junior and wonder if he spelt Serena before the winds washed it off. I think about father and his favorite polo shirt and all the Christmases he was waiting for. And I think about mother. At the sea shore. Looking for me and crying herself to sleep at night.And I wonder if she knows that women were made for the waves too. The kind that sweeps us off our feet without caution, the kind that overshadows innocence with charm and life with death. The kind that peels away every form of worth and strikes an axe straight through the soul.And beneath the ugly weight of darkness, I whisper a prayer to her:But not all soft spines drown, mother.Sometimes we come out broken and wounded, tethered by strings of nightmares and unspeakable pain. But we come out all the same; limping on grief and torture, finding our way on thorns and bleeding foot, and walking into the sunset, with all the remaining parts of us that survived.