Lauren Holmes: Barbara the Slut and Other People

When I got back to the apartment my mom said, “Ready to go to the beach?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Do you have the underwear?” she said.

“Yeah.” I opened my suitcase and took out the underwear and my bathing suit.

“Did you get the bags?” said my mom.

I was supposed to get fifty striped bags to go with the fifty pairs of underwear.

“They would only give me ten,” I said and gave them to her.

“Okay,” said my mom. “I can give them to the girls who buy a lot.”

I went into the bathroom and took off my shorts and T-shirt. My mom came in behind me and snapped my underwear band and said, “You should get yourself some new underwear.”

I imagined myself wearing the pair I had bought that said “Boys Boys Boys” a thousand times in black letters. My mom had said to get as many pairs with English words on them as possible. Another pair said “See you tonight,” and I thought those were really funny, because if someone else was seeing them, wasn’t it already tonight? Unless it was a reminder to yourself, like, see you tonight when I take my pants off again.

“I like my underwear,” I said.

“They’re kind of sturdy,” said my mom. They were gray and boy-style but for girls, and I wondered if she thought they were butch. I wanted her to think so, so that I wouldn’t have to tell her.

“I’m going to put my suit on, okay?” I said.

“Oh, okay,” she said and left the bathroom.

When I was done I went back out to the living room. My mom came out of the bedroom wearing a terry cloth dress. “Do you want to borrow a beach dress?” she said.

“No,” I said.

“We have to sell ourselves if we want to sell the underwear,” she said.

“I don’t want to sell myself,” I said.

“Okay, don’t sell yourself,” said my mom, “sell the American dream.”

“Really?” I said. “This underwear is going to fly people to the U.S. and get them green cards and jobs at hotels and then they’re going to win the lottery?”

“Ha,” said my mom. “Come on, let’s go. I have to be back for checkout at noon.”

“And then they’ll buy forty cars and go bankrupt and have to come back to Mexico?”

“Ha ha. Are you ready?” She had the underwear sorted by size in three of the bags.

“We’re selling the underwear now?” I said.

“Of course,” she said. “It’s Saturday, a lot of kids are going to be at the beach.”

It was starting to get really hot outside. We walked through the row of palm trees that separated the hotels from the beach. On the other side was sand and water, and some sets of tables and chairs under a thatched roof. The sky was almost clear except for thin stripes of clouds. As we made our way to the water I saw that there were already people weaving in and out of the sunbathers and selling things — women with buckets of something, a woman carrying a bottle and calling “Masajes, masajes,” and a man leading a pony and offering rides. I wondered what my mom’s plan was. She was ahead of me at the water.

“Put your feet in,” she said. “It’s nice.”

I went in up to my knees and it was nice. The rest of my body was getting hot and I wanted to go in all the way. There were kids swimming and I wondered if my dad was wrong.

“I can go swimming, right?” I said.

“I wouldn’t, baby, the current is so strong.”

“Those kids are swimming.”

“They’re pros.”

“I really want to go swimming,” I said.

“You can swim in the pool,” she said. “And I’ll take you to the lagoon on Monday, it’s gorgeous.”

We walked along the water toward where it looked more crowded.

“So, are there any boys I should know about?” said my mom. Always her first question.

“Nope,” I said. “Still no boys.” That was always my answer, and she never seemed to think it was weird or some kind of clue, which she shouldn’t have needed anyway. Shouldn’t she have noticed when I was born? Wasn’t there something about me that told her I was going to grow up to cut my hair and wear sturdy underwear and date a girl who brought her leather biker boots to textile recycling and then bought vegan ones? And if not when I was born, she should have noticed in elementary school when I was obsessed with amphibians and reptiles and with my friend Emily. And if still not then, she definitely would have noticed in middle school, when I hit puberty and was really confused and, according to my dad, really weird. But she was already gone.

I followed my mom out of the water and into the crowd of towels and people. She didn’t say anything or approach anyone.

“How do you say ‘underwear’ again?” I said.

“Pantis,” said my mom.

“¡Pantis! ¡Pantis!” I called.

“Lala!” said my mom.

“What?”

“I was going to go up to girls that looked like they would want them.”

“Okay,” I said, “good plan.”

We walked through the people until my mom spotted four girls and an older man together. She went up to them and said she was selling ropa interior from Victoria’s Secret, and would they like to buy any.

One girl sat straight up and said, “¡Papá, me encanta Victoria’s Secret!”

The dad looked at her and at my mom and frowned. “Huh,” he said.

The other girls sat up too, and soon my mom was spreading out the underwear on one of their towels. The daughter picked out like eight pairs. One of the other girls looked at “See you tonight” and said, “Hubba hubba.”

“Those are my favorite,” I said.

“Su favorito,” said my mom.

I wasn’t sure that they were impressed with me because I was starting to get really sweaty, but the daughter grabbed a pair of the same ones and looked at her dad.

“¿A cuanto?” he asked my mom.

“Ciento cincuenta.”

The dad raised his eyebrows but they bought three pairs. Then we sold some more pairs to another group of girls nearby, and when we were walking away my mom said, “See?”

• • •

Back at the motel my mom checked some Swiss people out and I went swimming in the pool. Later my mom came out and read, and I spent the afternoon sleeping until I was too hot, and then swimming until I was too tired.

At the end of the day we went back to the beach to watch the sunset. My mom said that when the sun set in Pie de la Cuesta, it lit up the backs of the waves, and you could see the silhouettes of kids swimming. Tonight the waves were too small, although they didn’t look small to me. If I were braver I would have gone in and felt the water rush over my body and my head, and I probably would have been fine. But I was scared. My mom wasn’t one to tell me something was dangerous if it wasn’t. And she was sometimes one to tell me something was safe when it wasn’t.

• • •

When the sun went down we went back to the apartment and got ready to go out to dinner. My mom came out of the bathroom with makeup on and said, “My friend is going to meet us at the restaurant. Is that okay?”

“A man?” I said.

“No, a woman. Of course, baby, a man. His name is Martin and he’s from Pah-ree . You’re going to love his accent.” I assumed Pah-ree meant Paris.

“Great,” I said.

The restaurant was ten motels down and when we got close we saw Martin waiting outside. He was tall and skinny and he waved at us.

“Oh shit, I forgot to tell you something,” said my mom. “I only speak Spanish, okay? I’ll explain later.”

“How am I supposed to talk to you?” I said.

“You speak Spanish.”

“I haven’t spoken Spanish since I was five,” I said.

Now Martin was twenty feet from us and he said, “¡Hola!”