Another wave came, and another, but the rabbit was gone. Farther down along the beach a crumpled bit of brown washed up, but it was too far away for Magdalena to tell if it was the rabbit again or an old paper bag. The waves were higher now, water and foam and dark pebbles that rolled back into the sea, erasing her footprints and leaving the sand empty and smooth.
Every year on her birthday Magdalena’s mother told her the story of the night she was born, how her father had left the hospital and stumbled with a bottle of cognac and a box full of matches into the old church on Saint Mikalojaus Street, where he spent the long night lighting candles by the hundreds until someone called the fire department, seeing the church ablaze. In the morning he came back, looking, Magdalena’s mother said, like he’d had an even longer night than she’d had. The nurses put baby Magdalena in his arms, frowning at the smell of him and then trying to take the baby back as he started to unwrap her with clumsy hands, unwinding her blankets and pulling off her diaper, swatting at the nurses who tried to stop him, stinking of alcohol and incense. His hands shook, her mother said, his fingers were burned by hot wax, and by the time he’d gotten the newborn Magdalena entirely undressed and had examined every bit of her she was screaming and the one single doctor assigned for a floor full of mothers had come running. The nurses called her father a drunken pig and said he’d be sorry when his baby daughter caught her death of cold, but he’d held Magdalena to him, hours old, red and howling, and laughed and laughed—so happy, her mother had said, to see all her fingers and toes, her round belly and skinny legs and the wrinkles on her feet.
She thought of the man in Paris with her mother’s words on his skin. If the eyes don’t see, the heart doesn’t hurt. It was what her mother would say when Magdalena asked to look at the picture that had been taken of the three of them that day at the hospital, tiny Magdalena in her mother’s arms, her father flushed and smiling. “Akys nemato . . .” her mother would say then, because looking at the picture made her sad. But now Magdalena thought of that old phrase and her own unmarked skin and felt the beginnings of an understanding.
She thought of her father steeling himself to look at words written all across a tiny body—and then laughing with relief to see that actually his baby was covered with nothing at all, just a newborn rash and a faint down of hair. When he danced her around the nurses, singing a nonsense song so that even the oldest and maddest of them had to smile, it was out of joy at the blankness of his daughter’s skin. Because for her, at least, nothing was already planned.
Another wave came. Magdalena let the sand wash over her feet and bury them. She looked back toward the snack bar, squinting against the sun. The person on the beach was running now, calling to her and waving his arms. He was close enough for her to see that his hair was orange in the light and he was wearing a sweatshirt she recognized from the train station in Paris. Out of habit she started to take her glasses off. Then she changed her mind, and left them on.
A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR
Adelia Saunders has a master’s degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and a bachelor’s degree from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She grew up in Durango, Colorado, and currently lives with her family in New York City. This is her first novel.