Transparency by Frances Hwang Page B

all — that her father and uncle and their entire side of the family
     just didn’t pay attention, slightly deaf to the world and to each other.
    Her uncle now revealed to them his plan for the day. He had to make his rounds and could drop them off where they liked and
     then pick them up in a few hours.
    “You have to work on Saturdays?” June asked.
    “How do you think I make any money?” her uncle said, rubbing his thumb and forefinger together. “Every day I have to try.”
    “What do you want to do?” Helen asked June.
    “Let’s go to the beach. It’s gorgeous outside.”
    Gerard let out a whining hum.
    “What’s wrong, Gerard?” June asked.
    “I don’t want to go.”
    “Why not? Don’t you ever go to the beach?”
    “No.”
    “Why not?”
    Gerard paused. “I have sensitive skin.”
    “He’s afraid of sunburn,”Helen said.
    “But I’m paler than you,”June said, putting her arm next to his. “We won’t go for too long. And you can put sunblock on.”
    Helen and Gerard went upstairs to get ready, and her uncle took June aside. “You talk to Helen, okay?” he said, and June nodded.
    It was low tide at the beach, and people were climbing over rocks to look at the shallow pools that had formed. June sat on
     the sand with her cousins and took the sunblock out of her bag, passing it over to Gerard, who did nothing but stare at it.
     “Don’t you want to put some on?” she asked. “I thought you were afraid of getting burnt.”
    “Here, Gerard,”Helen said, and she took the tube from him and squeezed a dollop onto each of his arms. Gerard began to spread
     it slowly in a straight line with one finger, and June felt exasperated just watching him. He was like a child and could do
     nothing for himself. “You have to rub it over your entire arm,”she told him. Helen helped Gerard spread the lotion across
     his arms and massage it into his skin, and when they were done, June asked Helen if she wanted to go look at the tide pools.
     They left Gerard behind, drawing patterns in the sand with a stick he had picked up.
    June wasn’t wearing sturdy shoes, and she tread carefully over the slippery rocks, listening to the crunch of barnacles beneath.
     Helen was a few feet ahead, bent over one of the small pools left from the receding tide. When June caught up with her, she
     saw Helen holding a purple starfish in her hand. One of its arms had broken off.
    “Is it alive?” Helen asked. “I won’t take it home if it’s alive.”
    The starfish didn’t move at all when June held it. There were traces of a jellylike substance along its arms where it had
     clung to a rock. June thought it should be less brittle if it werealive,that it should give way some, but she wasn’t sure.
     “Shouldn’t it be able to regenerate the missing arm?” she said.
    An older woman wearing a yellow T-shirt paused to look at the starfish they were holding. “Do you think it’s alive?” Helen
     asked her.
    “Alive or dead,”the woman said, “you don’t want to take that thing back with you. Starfish have a really bad smell out of
     the water.”
    Helen reluctantly put the starfish back into the tide pool. She looked chastened, though June knew she wanted to take the
     starfish home. They followed the woman over the rocks and located a cluster of starfish—whole starfish—brilliant and still,
     along the underside of a rock. One of them was bright orange, the color of a tiger lily.
    A seagull hopped and fluttered along the shore, dragging Helen’s starfish in its beak. It did a little dance in the air, as
     if it were trying to lift itself up, but the starfish slipped from its beak and fell into the water. The seagull flapped down
     to retrieve it.
    “Seagulls eat starfish?” Helen asked.
    They watched the seagull snap up the starfish, trying several times to get a proper hold. It eyed June and Helen for a moment
     before spreading its wings, flying only a short distance before it dropped the starfish