We
joined the groups of people hauling stuff along streets and across the
sand. Brigantine—a sea isle off Atlantic City—was, in the
nineteenth-century, a stretch of strand and dunes, bayberry flats and stands of red cedar, holly thickets and salt marsh.
I’ve been coming here in August since I was a baby as did my mother
before me—only she got to ride in the rumble seat of a seven passenger
Packard. In my memory, the hotel built
in the twenties dominated the shore as it does still, only the condos have
increased in number and ugliness. The
modernization of life only adds to the poignancy of people flocking to the
beach, looking like so many refugees, seeking a home. They come toting their belongings, hefting
chairs on their backs, hugging umbrellas under their arms, dragging wagons, pulling
coolers, and urging children to help. We
are the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free in the sea
air. Two days ago we heard that Emma
Lazarus’ poem on the Statue of Liberty really didn’t mean much—“it was added
later”—and that President Trump is proposing new requirements for immigrants
coming to America: a certain level of English proficiency,
employable skills, and entrepreneurial promise.
This is America
the great (if not “the beautiful”) with Trump in charge. His base voted in a businessman to do the job
of “draining the swamp,” yet, former Marine general, John A. Kelly, now chief
of staff, said the Trump White House is the most dysfunctional organization
he’s ever experienced. The beach,
thankfully, doesn’t discriminate: we
watch the family groups circle under the shade of umbrellas and tents, we
listen to the common talk, and I marvel at the unselfconsciousness of people in
bathing suits that do nothing for them.
“It’s not how you look here,” I remark to my daughter, “what’s important
is how you feel,” and even I let myself take pleasure in the warmth, the air, the
salt, and sound of the surf. The beach
takes us all in, and we return the favor.
Later
in the afternoon, we head to the boardwalk in Atlantic City to satisfy my daughter’s desire
for loud, bright, busy, shops, tattoo and piercing places, and elephant
ears. The decaying resort is a sea of
immigrants: Indians, Pakistanis,
Vietnamese, Africans—you name it. They
came with the casinos and the hotels, meeting the resort’s need for unskilled
labor; but they have stayed to open restaurants and other businesses and to
raise families. We drive past a
basketball court in the rose light of 5:00.
It is filled with all manner of movement—jumping, skating,
cartwheeling—excited and happy noise and not a white face in the bunch. Atlantic
City reminds me that we all came from somewhere
else. It doesn’t matter whether you
imagine that other place as Europe or Africa or the Far
East, the primal sea of the womb, or the ocean of blue-black space
between stars. We are here, we are here,
and even though “here” is overlaid with layers of tacky, tawdry carnival blare
and throwaway culture, the earth is especially beautiful on this marginal strip
of sand.
Katya
disappears into one more tee-shirt store while I watch an aquarium full of
hermit crabs in shells handpainted with familiar characters like Sponge Bob or
symbols like Batman. At first, all I see
are the brightly painted shells, but then out come the creaturely claws
grasping at things, and two hermits begin to climb the screen of their
cage. Pretty limber despite the
cumbersome shells they carry, up they go and—surprise—there are bunches more of
them at the top, clinging to the roof, desperate to get out and into real sand,
wet near the sea. “Would you like to buy
hermit crab,” says the lipstick pink mouth of a brightly painted Asian
woman. “No, I am just watching them” and
thinking that they express something about the consumerism of this seaside Mecca (est. 1853 … I learn
from a tee shirt).
In the day when this
place was so young, so gay, my great grandparents had a photo postcard snapped
on this beach, having come by boat down the Mullica River
to sell berries in the fruit market. He
wore a suit jacket and tie. She wore a
skirt and proper white blouse. With
their two young children, they kneel in the sand.
 |
| Great grandfather, Philip Wescoat, with his wife Katie and two children. |
My mother said that in her day a horse dove
off the end of the Steel Pier. Today the
entire pier is given over to amusements and tee shirt shops. “We have to find that Hot Topic we saw last
year—it’s ginormous,” she enthuses. The
last place I want to go is a store that we have at the mall at Flint.
But it is her “brand,” and after we walk for blocks in the heat past
Mary Star of the Sea Catholic Church and gardens surrounding Mary in upended
bathtubs, through the historic black neighborhood—the poorest purple properties
in Monopoly—with markers describing notable black lives like that of Sara Spencer
Washington, the first black woman millionaire, who patented some sort of curling
iron, we make it to Katya’s store.
Looking at the walls of band tee shirts—the colors, the labels, all I
can think of are the heavy shells that the crabs claim and carry, and I wish my
daughter would one day soon feel the urge to climb a little higher and get out.
I’d
been walking around wearing only a blouse over a damp bathing suit. I was hoping for one more dip but was vaguely
aware of looking like all the other dumpy middle-aged women with sun burns and
frizzled hair. After we’d
shopped to her satisfaction, it was my turn.
I dashed off the boardwalk across the dunes—balding with only a few
stray wisps of grass. “Rip Tides” warns
a sign, and the lateral pull of the water is strong, but I rush to meet the
incoming waves as they smack and roar.
The work of meeting, greeting, negotiating, being torn up by each one is
so all-consuming, I don’t have time to shiver.
“Up or under?” was the game I used to play while holding hands with a
much younger Katya. “Up!” she’d cry, and
we’d leap just enough to let the wave lift us.
Sometimes the top would curl and kiss our cheeks or slap us across our
faces. We never knew. Other times we’d duck or dive under. Occasionally the wave would play rough, and we’d roll over and over
in its white foamy way. The ocean is a
great teacher, preparing us to meet with glee
whatever comes. Even the
sticky feeling of skin after a dip and the impossibility of running a comb
through salty sandy snarled hair is an experience. I
lay atop the waves with my unbound hair drifting behind me. I see nearby bathers smiling—perhaps
because I look like a human jellyfish or a selkie (the mythical seal-woman who
eventually returns to the sea). But
maybe, like me, they are just happy to be experiencing the same delight with strangers side by side. This may be the closest America gets to being a true melting
pot.
Salt
scrubs away all images. And my mother
used to say that it would heal all of our childhood scrapes and cuts. These days, they sell bottled seawater in
piercing salons for after care. “Does it
work on emotions?,” my daughter asks.
“Absolutely,” I say, but you can’t worry about your dyed blue hair
turning green. You have to go with
it, take the plunge, “You’ll be the perfect mermaid
either way you look at it,” I suggest.
But instead, she stands in the shallows, watching
her mother play.
 |
| Steel Pier Diving Horse |
