“That’s Less’s ship.”
We were off by Morehead, a museum that stood a handful of miles away from my grandmother’s row house in Beaufort. My brother and I stood lazily in a room by the front, the coast ahead of us present through thick glass windows. We were inspecting small placards and exhibits as we waited for her to reappear from the restroom. This was what we did when we saw her every summer: Lunch, surface level conversation, museum, repeat next year.
When she emerged, her face seemed to change. Frown set deeper in scrutinization. I looked behind me, vaguely confused.
Encased in glass was one of the many sailboats my grandfather had designed during his time volunteering at the Harvey W. Smith Watercraft center on Front Street. Mint condition, finely detailed, and fragile to the touch. I didn’t dare get too close.
She was gone in an instant, striding towards the front desk. For a moment I couldn’t tell if she intended to hit the woman, tell her off, or negotiate. All I knew was she spoke in a tone reminiscent of a perfect sweet-as-a-peach-southern-belle, and by the end of it was left with a promise that someone higher up would give her a call.
The ship was back in the upstairs hallway the following year, alongside all the others. We didn’t talk about it much—that wasn’t really how the maternal side of my family operated—but I knew it mattered to her. In a soft, unspoken way that most trivial things often did. She protected those memories of him as best she could, but that fondness often came at odds with something most families in the south—stuck in the background sort of places we lived in—still held dear.
Reputation.
Thus came a seventeen-year battle between who my brother and I were and where we came from.
The first time I became acutely aware that my mother had not accumulated the same wealth as her parents manifested at the age of seven, when my grandmother instructed me to not tell my friend my clothing was second hand. Out on the dock by Shackelford, when that same friend asked, I told her anyway. It was a thing of spite, I’m sure. At that age there’s always an urge to do the exact opposite of what a person’s meant to. But while I was learning to lie with my fingers crossed behind my back, standing up a bit straighter, making myself scarce when the verbal punches were thrown—being who I needed to be for three weeks out of the year and a haphazard mess the other forty-nine—my mother was starting to come into herself.
Visits started to grow further in between. We went to rockier beaches where the water was colder and the sand less fine. The rosehips shone out from the bushes like small morsels of forbidden fruit. It wasn’t a horrible thing, to be less attached at the hip of a life I hardly knew. But it didn’t feel the contrary either.
I craved the sensation of being at the boathouse, held up in cedar trees I was allergic to, passing by graveyards and the old house of Blackbeard. Just to get a taste of freedom in a town that fit in the palm of a tourist’s hand.
My own progression was more subtle. Formed by boxed hair dye, more jeans and fewer sundresses. A phase of tomboyish energy that would only last a few years before I found that I truly liked heels that made me look half a foot taller than my brother and my mother’s bright pink lipstick. But I eventually caught up to my mother in that respect. Found a balance between pleasing them and being honest with who I really was. My grandmother wishes I was straight as a lace. She wishes I was still that seven year old in the clothing I wasn’t allowed to talk about, refusing to talk back the way girls my age (or any age) shouldn’t. And I know what I look like. I also know that in some deep down part of myself, she loves me and I still love her. But places tend to be much more forgiving than people. And I forgave Beaufort first.
My stories are shaped by the pain I feel, cut up by the sharpest edges of cockle shells and mollusks that bury themselves in the sand. I only feel the burns and scrapes when they’ve made contact with skin. I hear my mother’s voice in my head, her mother’s before it, that of my grandfather, my aunts, my uncles. I have a theory for that string that periodically pulls me back to the banks. And to be quite frank, I don’t believe it has much to do with them at all. I have the distance and yet the ability to close the gap. To dip my toes into a world my mother tried to allow me to know while she worked so hard to forget.
So when people question my desire to one day return, my response is simple. It’s where I need to be. To be defiant in my presence. And make marks even the tide can’t wash away.
To love and be loved.
That’s all any of us really wanted anyway.
Georgia Hope writes queer fantasy with a southern gothic twist and essays that break down the turbulent relationship between adolescence and academia. Currently a high school senior in the state of Texas, her idea of a good time is exploring haunted small towns with a notebook, camera, and a large cup of iced coffee. When she’s not making her readers cry you can find her gathering more bizarre lore for her next story or having an existential crisis on her instagram page @georgiainabook.
Featured image by John Scafide on Unsplash.
