The First Time Some Boy Groped My Girl

At three years old, Cheyenne loved McKlusky Beach Park, which was really just a place to park your car and walk down to the beach. Mornings, before we left for preschool, she'd beg to go there in the afternoon. More often than not I relented. On those days, before picking her up, I'd shove the swimsuits and folding chair and beach toys into the trunk. A purple plastic bucket and a matching plastic spade, but it never took long before she just rolled around in some sand, tossing clumps in the air or at birds. Those were the best days to be a mother, because the sun and salt air and breeze weren't just for her, as so many things a mother does are.

One day something unfortunate happened.

I sat where I always did, book in hand and leaned back in my beach chair—not far away, but not so close she constantly felt my eyes. Some collection by Welty, a story about a slow girl filling up her hope chest to marry a man she’d only met the night before. She asked a few old ladies to give her gifts for the chest, and one promised a new bible with a real gold monogram, and that's when I heard a faint "get off" in Chey's voice.

Next to the tide line, while forces of the universe pulled on waves, a bushy-haired boy of maybe five pulled down her bathing suit bottoms. Chey turned around, pushed him with both hands, and his body thumped onto the damp sand. She wriggled the bottoms up from her knees. I began to march over, thinking the worst had ended, but the boy got back up and lunged—arm outstretched—to yank on her suit again.

I was not happy. And neither was the boy's mother when I pried her son's hand off my daughter's butt.

"Why did you touch my son?" she said.

She looked older, probably six or seven years. Forties for sure. Wore this brown one-piece, not the best color for her complexion, with all those freckles. Her stumpy toes mushed into the sand, and on the bridge of her nose were two red ovals where sunglasses had been resting before her boy assaulted my daughter.

"Did you see what happened?" I said.

"Of course."

"Then you saw him grab my daughter?"

"No, I saw her pushing him."

"Pushing him off her."

"Pushing him down to the ground."

Her breath stank of cigarettes, the menthol kind I tried once in college. I looked at Chey, and she had no clue where my thoughts went. She just frowned.

"Your son needs to apologize," I said.

"She pushed him. She should apologize."

"He tried... to take off her swimsuit."

She put a hand on her son’s shoulder.

"I don't think so," she said.

"We both saw it."

"I did not. Did anyone besides you see it?"

She glanced around, only cracked seashells and cawing gulls for potential witnesses.

"Grady isn't that kind of boy," she said.

A wave broke, a large one that might've spanned half the coastline, and from the corner of my eye I saw its remains wash up the shore until bubbly water rushed over all our feet, sinking us deeper. It happened so fast.

"Your son groped my girl," I said. "Just make him say sorry."

"Grope. Her? But she's not even cute."

Her teeth snapped together on cute. Like a sea turtle. Or a bitch.

My hand darted toward her chest, twisted what I thought was a nipple. Then let go.

Before she could utter anything more than a gasp, I took Chey by the hand and trotted back up the beach.

After we toweled off, and I had jammed them into the beach bag, along with Welty, sunscreen, and a half-empty water bottle, Chey stabbed her plastic spade into the sand and asked, “Why did you touch that lady?”

I looked back toward the boy and his mom. By then ankle deep in the coming tide, she stared out into the blue, and wind tossed hair all over her face, but she didn’t wipe any of it away.

** This piece was originally published online at Perversion Magazine, and can be read here. Special thanks to Carl Rosen, Jacob Harn, Hurley Winkler, and any other groovy people who slave to make waves with the Perversion movement. Some of the most considerate editors I've worked with and coolest people I've met since moving to Jacksonville.