Shell

by Lisa Lerma Weber

I went for a walk on the beach, even though a storm was threatening and the sun had gone into hiding along with every living creature. Even the thieving seagulls my husband and I used to chase away from our picnics were nowhere in sight. Thick, grey ghosts floated in the indigo sky, waiting to release their shrieks on any fool who dared venture out. A fool such as myself. I should have been sitting in my husband’s favorite chair by the fireplace, wrapped in the blanket I knitted for my baby and sipping on a tumbler of good whiskey. But no matter how warm, the house felt like a crypt; too empty and too silent.

The wind howled at my defiance of the forecast, and I pulled my husband’s wool coat tighter over my hollow chest. For a moment, I considered returning to the house. But I didn’t want to go back if I couldn’t go back in time.

As I walked around a large rock, I saw a tiny head lying on the sand. Two blue eyes looked right at me and I froze. My heart dropped, my breathing quickened, and my body trembled uncontrollably. I placed my hand on the rock for support and screamed, the sound breaking something open inside me, and the memories came flooding back. I saw the truck speeding towards us, heard the sick crunching of metal and bone. I saw the shattered glass like a thousand crystalline bullets shot point blank at my face. I saw my husband’s contorted body covered in blood. I saw the look of pity on the nurses’ faces and the anguish on the faces of my parents and my husband’s parents. I saw my husband lying in a casket, our baby in his arms, their matching blue eyes forever closed.

I fell to my knees and clawed at the cold, wet sand, my body quaking with every sob. Suddenly the head moved, and I screamed again, watching in horror as it slowly slid away from me like some unrelenting snake head just separated from its body. After a few moments of questioning my already shaky sanity, I looked more closely at the little head with its ripe peach skin and rosebud cheeks. Then I laughed. I laughed and laughed, harder and harder until the sound became one with the wind’s howl. I stood up and walked towards those blue eyes and unmoving pink lips. I bent down and looked at the crab whose new shell was a doll’s head.

“Well,” I said. “You got me.” I wiped my face on a scratchy sleeve. “Ingenious, though. Wish I could do the same.” I touched the ragged scars on my cheek, my forehead, my skull. Thought about my scoured out insides.

The crab didn’t acknowledge me, just continued his trek towards the churning water. I looked up, watched the waves swallow the shore.

I thought of my husband and baby, of the months I tried to live without them. Of the nights spent crying and asking God why I had survived and they hadn’t. Why the guy in the truck ran from the police. Why I couldn’t have stayed in the hospital an extra day after giving birth. I thought of the months I tried to be patient with family members, with their sorrowful eyes and surprise visits. I tried to eat their casseroles and accept their too-tight embraces. But the food ended up in the trash and my arms forgot how to hold.

I removed my husband’s coat, inhaling his scent one last time. I folded it and placed it on the sand. The sun died and the sky split open. Shivering, I walked towards the water.