Tanned, toned Madison snaps photos of beach flotsam, a dead bird, a stray dog, a lavatory, sunbathers, beach umbrellas: random minutiae that catch her eye. Having exhausted her photographic curiosity, she sits in a shaded corner of the beach in the breeze-scattered scent of roasted coconut and sunscreen mingling with the waft of garbage.
Nostalgia has brought her here—a fond memory of a solitary day spent with her parents decades ago. She’d worn her first bikini. Her hair was bleached blond from the sun. Now, wearing a white cherry-imprinted flared sundress, greying hair with blonde and rust highlights skewing from under her straw sunhat, Madison longs for her imagined past.
A boy, loud and boisterous leaps into the air to catch a beachball someone has thrown, spraying sand into Madison’s face. She sputters and rubs grit from the corners of her eyes.
‘Disculpame. I’m sorry Miss,’ the boy stammers. She gets up, suppressing tears of self-pity that sting behind her eyes; ignores him, and moves down the beach. Is it too much to ask for silence and reflection in nature? The beach is alive with the chatter and shrieks of exuberant Mexican families, a pandemonium of parrots.
She remembers another beach, Paradise Bach, nearby, but further from the road where fewer people are likely to venture. She’ll find respite from this crowd there. Madison sets out, stopping at a popular kiosk selling coconut water, joining the dozen or so people waiting in line under the shade of palm trees. They shout to one another, joking, raucous.
Madison barges through the line-up ignoring the grumbles from others. ‘Perdon señor.’ She assumes her most commanding voice. ‘Cuanto tiempo necisito para llegar a la playa Paraiso? Pero sigiendo la costa, no a la calle.’
The vendor, a grey-haired Mexican man, looks at her bemused, answers in English. ‘You can’t go to Paradise Beach by the coast, señora. You must take the steps over there, then follow the sidewalk to the beach.’ He points to a wooden staircase along the cliff edge. Madison resents the merry parade of Mexican beachgoers climbing it, no doubt crowding onto Paradise Beach.
‘I don’t want to go up there and walk on the pavement with everyone else. I want to follow the coastline.’ She has perfected her Latina whine.
‘It’s not so far, señora. Not even ten minutes. This is how all the people go. It is the only way to Paradise Beach. You can’t get there along the coast.’
Madison hears her father’s voice. ‘This guy sells coconuts. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Of course she can get to Paradise Beach following the coastline. It’s a beach—ten minutes away from this beach—on the same coastline!’ She is an egalitarian but confesses to inheriting her father’s disdain for the meek and mediocre mainstream, to which most Mexicans belong, like people everywhere. No prejudice there. She is from a Germanic tradition of adventurers. Not inclined to follow the beaten path.
‘Gracias, señor. I’m going to go along the coast. If it doesn’t work out, I can always turn around. Maybe I’ll buy a coconut from you. Hasta la vista.’ Madison dismisses the vendor and brushes past the others waiting in line. The vendor shrugs his shoulders and points to his head. He and his customers watch the gringa as she is swallowed by shadow. They continue their banter.
Madison walks through the shade and into a shock of bright. She pulls her wide brim lower over her eyes and observes the landscape spread in front of her. The scene exhilarates her: a tumble of strewn boulders piled one on top of the other, bordered on one side by the cliff rising from it and on the other by the ocean cracking against it. Even if Paradise Beach is crowded, at least she’ll have an adventure getting there.
After living under the constraints of her chastising father, enduring a domineering husband till she couldn’t anymore, then shouldering the yoke of frugal single parenthood, she relishes this feeling of freedom. She needs a physical challenge to clear her mind, take power and move forward with her life, which lately has taken a dark turn: estrangement from her daughter, getting fired from her job, losing her best friend to cancer.
She hops over one pile of boulders, then another and another. She loves her agility. All those years of yoga have paid off. She feels like a kid playing hopscotch, breathes in the salty air, marvels at the ruggedness of the moment.
Her father would be pleased to see Madison stoically alone on the rocks. She remembers a woman he’d disparaged, a solo traveller, who’d briefly joined some people for companionship. ‘How can she say she’s independent when she’s hitching her horse to their cart? Anyone can do that.’ His contempt has reverberated through her life. Madison purposefully lives alone and travels alone, proving her courage and independence on jaunts such as this coastal hike, even though loneliness is her constant companion and her father long dead.
She carries on, rounding one bend then another. She believes the beach must be around the next one. Which is a relief. Her able legs are tiring under the rigour of boulder hopping.
A blast of heat billows as she rounds the corner: more boulders piled on more boulders, a ribbon of toppled towers as far as she can see. Which comfortingly, isn’t that far. Madison’s gaze follows a lone crab skittering around the rocks scrabbling for existence, a kindred spirit. Aren’t we all a bit like that crab? Alone and scrabbling? Ah, this landscape is so profound. Madison tingles with nature’s inspiration.
‘Ouch!’ She slips on the treacherous slime that carpets the boulders and tweaks her knee, sucks air between her teeth, wincing with pain.
‘Damn it.’ How inconvenient.
Thankfully, Paradise Beach is only ten minutes away. But it’s been much longer than that. She’s sure of it. Madison doesn’t wear a watch: as a savvy traveller she knows it would invite pickpockets. Nor does she carry a cell phone, which is for the fearful tourists who abound these days, like amoebas, always needing to merge with friends, family, just a text away. Not her. She snubs her compatriots, influenced by her father’s judgement: ‘They travel to Mexico to be with each other. They need each other. We need no one. We’re real travellers.’ Her father didn’t like humanity in general, whether they were tourists or Mexicans or Germans. He didn’t much like Canadians, either, or his kids. Madison was one of a large brood, now scattered around the globe, letting their shared history disperse into the years lapsed since their collective childhood.
How much time has passed since she’s been on the rocks? The sun burns a perfect round hole into the atmosphere, radiates heat that makes her scalp prickle. Paradise Beach has got to be around the next bend. She stops to lean against a boulder, takes off her hat and wipes the sweat from her forehead with her forearm. No wonder Mexicans follow the well-worn route. This is not for the faint of heart. Ah, the trials of an independent spirit! Madison chuckles thinking of tricky situations she’s been in and escaped from.
Her mouth feels like it’s stuffed with cotton balls. As she’s twisting the lid off her water bottle she fumbles and loses her grip. The metal container slips from her hand, ricocheting down an abyss between boulders, its banging echoing and fizzling into a slender tang, then a sliver-thin ting followed by a chasm of silence. Except for the ringing in her ears.
Madison peers down the crevasse into a deep darkness drenched in pungent sea odours. She broods, elbow on thigh, chin in hand, lifts her gaze to the horizon and wishes herself to be drinking cerveca on Paradise Beach. Stubbornness clings to her like a sea urchin to these rocks. She wont’t admit she might have been foolish. She continues through the boulders along the coastal route to Paradise Beach.
She rounds the next corner. Nothing but endless rocks, sky and sea, a vista she would normally breathe in, exaltated. Now, the intensity of the sun pummels her, an overload of sensation depletes her. ‘Where the hell is it?’ Doubt ripples into Madison’s thoughts. Why had the man at the kiosk said you couldn’t get to Paradise Beach following the coast? In retrospect, she had been foolish, perhaps, not to heed the advice of a local.
A maverick gust of wind swirls around her, lifts her skirt Marilyn Munroe-style and grabs her sunhat, lofting it into the air. She watches it shimmy in the air, all whimsy and lightness, and sail toward the ocean. The gust ends as abruptly as it began, mocking her as if it arose just to steal her hat.
Her gaze follows the brief and rapid descent of the hat plunging to earth, tumbling among the boulders, disappearing. She releases a wail, raw, like a wounded animal. Gasping at this new indignity, she limps a detour to fetch the hat, spies it tucked in a gash between two rocks. She lies on her stomach, attempts to reach it, sliding her torso into the crevasse. The hat is so close, but her grasping fingers flail futile mere inches above it. A failure, she heaves herself from the dank cleft, slumps onto a boulder, lowers her head onto her knees and clasps her shins with her arms. She imagines the effervescence of a Corona slaking her thirst, the luxurious repose of swinging in the hammock under the shade of a palm-thatched roof, the savoury drift of fish frying—on Paradise Beach. She squints to survey what lies ahead. A sea of boulders as far as her eye can see. A limited horizon, yes, but she’s become wary of what lies concealed beyond the next bend.
It can’t be far now. Ten minutes? Why did he lie to her? She deflects blame for her circumstance at the vendor, her father, the elements, even though she knows she herself orchestrated this. Madison’s folly heckles through the string of tiny coastal undulations she is consigned to follow. Each has gulls flying overhead, crabs, snails and the occasional colony of sea urchins. All of them creatures of this environment. Unlike her. The prideful certainty of her infallibility crashes down, crushing her belief in herself.
She inhales through a parched throat. Her tongue is thick. Her legs tremble. The bells in her ears clamour. She needs to get off these rocks. Should she turn around? That would be admitting defeat. She’s already come too far. She couldn’t bear the vendor’s knowing look.
She hears her heart’s throb as it pounds her every cell with dread, flushing blood into her fingers, swelling them sausage-like—and into her face, which pulsates like a broiling tomato.
Another corner rounded. More rocks. More sky. A large bird circles above her. Is that a vulture? How long has it been up there, witnessing her struggle, anticipating her demise?
For the first time her death on these rocks seems possible. Wouldn’t that be ironic? Imagine what the vulture will do. Imagine what the vendor will say. What if her father were still alive? He himself made many mistakes. He was a prideful, hurtful man, strident and clumsy. At least she doesn’t have to face his judgement. She pushes away thoughts of him, hauls herself onward to the elusive Paradise Beach. She dreads endless boulders ahead. Fears the vulture’s purpose. She promises never to be prideful again. To be better. Humble. If only she can extract herself from this situation.
Her last angry conversation with her daughter pounds in her memory. Why did it bother her that the girl loved other girls when Madison had a series of unsatisfying relationships with men. It didn’t make sense. She promises to reconcile with her daughter.
Madison rounds another corner, running her dry tongue over the tiny blisters forming on her cracked lips, limping through the stabbing pain in her knee. She peers into the distance. The landscape has opened! Cupping her hands over her eyes she spies three distant figures undulating through the heat waves.
She dares to hope. No matter how reckless she’s been in the past and what life-threatening situations she’s entangled herself in, she has always managed to survive. Today, the pattern would repeat. Hope’s adrenaline sends her sliding and stumbling over humping rock. She’d almost given up. She’s giddy with her luck.
She stops. She’s reached a gaping inlet. The humidity and heat have distorted space. The figures are across the inlet, farther away than they looked. ‘Señores, I’m here! Help!’ She flails her arms above her head. The breeze snatches her pleas like feathers, scatters them syllable by syllable, weightless, feeble. The bodies move away without having seen or heard her. Her road ends here. No water, no hat, a sore knee. How will she get back?
She sits on a rock. Shudders at the vulture still circling, cringes at the crabs carrying tiny mollusc corpses, recoils at the pungent stink of decay, despairs at the punishing waves pounding the boulders, ponders her plight. If only she could press the rewind button, taking her back to the kiosk where she would follow the vendor’s wise advice. If only she could hear her daughter’s laughter again.
She’s read the stories about hapless adventurers who ‘died doing what they love’ and has cast derision on them. At least she’ll be dead and will not feel the judgement of the living. She hopes she is dead by the time the vultures land on her body and crabs scrabble over her to feast on her eyeballs.
She lifts her head, casts her eyes across the landscape and searches for escape. Over and over and over she examines the cliff. She used to be good at scrambling. Maybe she could scale this formidable wall, even though a fall onto the rocks would probably kill her. That or retreat. Which comes with its own set of dangers.
She stands, limps toward the cliff and searches for a route to her salvation. Nothing but a sheer wall of rock probably thirty metres high. Desperate now, her eyes jerk from shadow to shadow. There must be a way.
On the periphery of her eyesight is a cement runoff channel extending from the tip of the inlet to the top of the cliff. ‘Oh my God!’ She’s going to get out of here! Madison scrambles over the boulders, slipping on rock slime, splashing though the shallow water, arrives at the mouth of the culvert.
It’s practically vertical, too steep to walk up. ‘I’ll crawl if I have to.’ She has to. Madison crawls on all fours, using her arms to haul herself up the narrow, scum-sour trough, smearing fetid muck on her pretty dress. The cement scrapes her knees, pebbles and debris embed into her chafed palms. From beyond the grave, her father’s laughter goads her onward, the way he used to mock her physical awkwardness. ‘Fuck you, dead man!’ His laughter fizzles and dissipates. That was easy. Why hadn’t she done that years ago? She is making progress.
Quivering with fatigue, she drags herself to the top of the cliff and hauls her bruised body over a low stone wall. Her knee aches and her ankle pulsates with an injury she didn’t even know she’d acquired.
Madison leans against the wall, scans the scene. She has arrived on a cobblestone walkway shaded by an elegant arc of large trees dripping voluptuous trains of spicy-scented yellow flowers. Jolly vendors sell refreshments from brightly coloured carts to Mexicans who meander in couples and family groups, breezily chatting and laughing, eating ice cream, and drinking Coca Cola in their crispy clean beachwear.
She wants to weep with joy at seeing them. Instead, a demented cackle escapes her lips.
Her presence has cast an unease on this oasis of good humour and cool. Frightened children point, gasp and move toward their parents, grasping their hands. Adults eye her suspicious, alarmed. Who is this bedraggled gringa? She looks like she’s just crawled out of a swamp. She acts deranged, eyes darting about, squawking and panting like a captured animal; stinks of the sweat of desperation brewed with seaweed and rock slime. Her thin hair is plastered to her head, her face sunburnt and streaked with dirt; hands, forearms, shins scraped, muddy and bleeding; sundress filthy and torn, the imprint of cherries unappetizingly mushed. Parents, shield their children’s eyes with their hands as they manoeuvre around her, trying not to stare at her themselves.
Diminished and battered, repentant and relieved, Madison peers back along the walkway. About one hundred metres behind her is the exit from the beach where she declined the vendor’s advice. Ahead of her a wooden arrow reads ‘Stairway to Paradise Beach 100 metres’.
Madison limps towards it, humbled and grateful to join the flow of fellow human beings heading to Paradise Beach.
About the author
Anne Georg lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She has published journalism, travel writing, a graphic non-fiction (with illustrator Jaye Hilchey) four flash fiction stories and a novelette. Anne is a volunteer judge for the Alberta Magazine Awards and a member of the Alexandra Writers Centre Society.
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