Rockaway by Tara Ison Page B

hears the thick clink of broken glass in her backpack. A garnet trickle slowly pools beneath her. She cries in pain and humiliation and hatred. No one comes rushing from the house with the black knit cap hanging on the line. She stills her crying, swallows it down. She slowly gets up on her feet, righting the bicycle. Her sunglasses are tangled in the rear tire’s spokes and she has to free them before she limps away, pushing the warped bike before her with raw-scraped hands.

    AVERY HAS VISED to the kitchen counter an odd propeller-type device and is gripping a coconut in one hand as Sarah enters the kitchen. At the stove, Bernadette is cooking what looks like pita bread on a spatula-style pan. They look at her, puzzled.
    â€œYou are all right? What has happened?”
    â€œI wiped out a little on the bike. It’s fine, I’m okay.”
    â€œYou are bleeding that much?” He raises his eyebrows at the ruby splotches on her T-shirt, her pants.
    â€œNo, I’m fine. I just spilled something. A juice bottle broke. Really, don’t worry, I’m fine.”
    He seems satisfied, unconcerned. Bernadette looks at Sarah’s knee and shakes her head, smiling, then returns toher cooking. Sarah opens her backpack and carefully places the broken wine bottle, piece by piece, into the recycling bin for glass. She hopes they don’t smell the alcohol. But they’re busy cooking, Bernadette cupping white flour from a canister into a mound of shredded coconut, stirring.
    â€œWhat are you making?” Sarah asks.
    â€œBread,” Bernadette says happily. She flips a flat disc of it in the pan to its other side. Avery squats on the floor, taps at the equator of his coconut with a hammer and screw-driver-as-chisel, then gives it one hard thwack ; the coconut cracks perfectly in half, split to symmetrical and concave whiteness. He presses a coconut cup against the propeller blades and cranks a handle; shreds of coconut drift down to the counter like snow, like a pile of pure, dry sand.
    â€œI love coconut,” Sarah says.
    â€œYou would like to taste?” Bernadette offers her a piece fresh from the stove; it is warm, it smells toasted and rich.
    â€œSure. Thank you.” Sarah chews on the bread; it is delicious. She rinses her torn palms at the sink and pours herself a glass of milky tap water, while Avery shreds out the second coconut shell and Bernadette pats flat another disc of bread. She drinks her water, waiting and hoping for Bernadette to offer her another piece of the bread, but she does not.
    Halfway up the stairs to her room Sarah stops and returns to the kitchen. Avery and Bernadette glance silentlyat her like all the other family eyes in the house, as she digs through the trash bag of recyclable paper and fishes out her little sketch of an insignificant inky shell on the crumbed and coffee-ringed newspaper. She takes the drawing up to her room with her and sits, tracing it with a finger, studying the blank canvas on her easel, while her knee dulls to healing and outside the picture window the glassy acid-green waves break with their rushing, hushing sound and stretch to foam on the sand.

PLAYLAND
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    â€œI TALKED TO Julius this morning,” says Marty.
    â€œOh? Is he coming today?”
    â€œNo, he had to work.”
    â€œOn Saturday?” Sarah asks.
    â€œYeah, I know. It’s terrible. You shouldn’t work on Saturday.” He puts on a pair of dark glasses and glances at himself in the car’s rearview mirror. He settles his fedora to a tilt. It is lintless, and spanking black, a new variation on the black knit caps, the baseball caps, the embroidered, Rasta-looking yarmulkes she has seen him wear.
    They are driving to Brooklyn, to pick up his musician buddies, then heading to some family park upstate, in Rye, a few hours’ drive from Rockaway. Come, he’d said to her on the phone. He and the guys had a gig. An