Flowers

We were looking for flowers. Sunday morning in Mexico, walking up and down streets looking for a flower shop. There were no flower shops. We tried to ask people where a flower shop was, but they just looked at us like they couldn't understand. Maybe our Spanish was so bad. Maybe they just thought we were foolish to think a flower shop would be open on Sunday. Maybe there just weren't any flower shops.

There were flowers along the roads. Flowers along the streets. We picked flowers. while we walked toward the beach. A few here from this yard, a couple from in front of that restaurant. By the time we got down to the beach, I had a good handful of flowers. It was getting close to 11:00. We walked across the beach, the sand pulling at our shoes and making our legs work hard. My right arm across Dar's shoulder. Her left arm around my waist. My left hand holding this bunch of flowers we'd picked from the side of the road and from a restaurant's flower bed. Holding this bunch of flowers out in front of me, my arm all stiff, like it was the first flowers I ever got for a girl.

The sun was shining and the sky was clear and the ocean made that roaring sound oceans make on the sand. I knew where I wanted to go.

Cabo San Lucas is the tip of Baja peninsula. The peninsula gets thinner as it goes south and there's a point, an actual point that sticks out. A point that sticks out like a wedge in the water. Like a mountain into the sky., Like the space between your legs when your feet are a couple of feet apart. On the Pacific ocean side, the rocks have all been worn into smooth tan shapes. All the rocks on the Pacific side look like sand that's been molded into rounded shapes. Cylinders. Columns. Minarets. Frozen molded sand cliffs that looked like the curtains at a theater. Like someone made them as a project for sand castle day.

The molded sand cliffs and the ocean waves get closer and closer together, the further south you go. and you can't really get out to the exact tip, not unless you're a mountain climber or something and have special gear. But there's a place there, just as the molded sand cliffs cut off the beach sand and start hanging out in the waves. There's a place there where you can walk up on some of the smaller molded sand boulders, there's a little pile of them between the cliffs and the beach and the ocean where the ocean waves come in and splash over the molded sand boulders. A narrow inlet that comes and goes with the tide and the tide was going so the boulders were coming and that's where I was going.

Somewhere between where we started walking on the beach and those boulders I started thinking about what I was doing. Why I was there, and my mouth started feeling all twisted up again and I coughed, only it wasn't a real cough. It was that cough that sometimes happens when you cry. Somewhere between where we started walking and those boulders I went through the whole mess again. Why was I here and not there? Why did this have to happen? Why couldn't I just be normal and have a normal life? Somewhere between where I started cough/crying and those boulders Darlene stopped and let me go on by myself. I went on by myself walking through the sand like quicksand and I wanted it to suck me in and I wanted to kick free from the sand and fly away and I wanted to just tune it all out and I wanted to kill whoever killed my sister.

The sand dragging at my feet at my shoes and then the molded sand boulders up onto them and the waves were smashing in there between the boulders and the cliff and the sound was so loud. So loud I couldn't hear myself crying, so I cried louder. Sat down on a molded sand boulder and the ocean loud gray wet came over my shoes. My arm tossed in some of the flowers. For you, Betty Jeanne, I said. The next wave came in, my arm tossed in some more flowers. I'm sorry I can't be there, I said. The flowers weren't really going out with the waves, but they moved a little bit away and when the next wave came I tossed in the last of the flowers. Please forgive me, I said. Wanted to sit there and watch the waves take the flowers away. Wanted to pretend the waves were taking that hurt away with the flowers. Wanted to wait for a sign from heaven that I wasn't going straight to hell. A sign from Betty Jeanne that she understood.
But there was a voice and it wasn't Betty Jeanne's voice and it wasn't God's voice and it wasn't even Darlene's voice, but just some guy's nerdy voice and the sound of his rubber sandals on the molded sand boulders and this touristy guy in khaki shorts and a Gortex jacket and a beard was climbing on my rocks. Climbing up on my boulders where I'd come to say good-bye to my sister. Yelling for his friend to come take a look. Couldn't he see? Couldn't he tell this was my private ceremony?

The flowers were mostly out in the ocean, spread out over a few dozen yards of bouncy water, going up and down in sheets. Darlene was sitting up the beach aways, arms crossed over her knees, straw hat on her head, big sunglasses and hat shadow hiding most of her face. I walked back over to her, beach sand sucking on my legs and shoes, but not like before. Not as bad as before.