Albatross

We are freer in this moment than in any other time I could recall. Here we stand, facing the severity that is the ocean, churning to its own accord as we both watch it from the distance. Jacqueline falls into the wet sand, crumbling to her knees as her back creates impact with the sand.

"You alright?" I call out, immediately stopping my half of our impromptu dance.

Jacqueline giggles, the salt water comes up over her face as she shuts her eyes. The mother in me has a neurotic breakdown, wondering if the girl has finally lost her marbles. As the water recedes, the white tank top she wears tucked into her red skirt is transparent. The nude lace of her bra is visible. "I feel alive," she heaves, breathing unstable though she'd only been without oxygen for mere seconds.

"As opposed to any other time?" I raise an eyebrow, pacing over to stand in the soothing mud. Jacqueline shook her head from side to side, constantly blinking at a rapid speed due to what I contributed to the salinity. Maybe she was crying, trying to express the strain of the struggles she faces without disrupting me. It isn't an easy life for us, but these moments where we both get the time to catch our breath are the things that keep me going.
"Well, do you feel alive, Vivian?"

"I am alive," I responded, rolling my eyes at the girl attempting to be prophetic. Nonetheless, it was her personality, but the way she talked beyond her years was amusing to me. I had that phase too, seeing the world with utter clarity and poeticism, the cynical aspects of life snatched it from my grasps. That is one of the many ways I live through Jacqueline. When people see her, I hope they see some fragments of me I tried to instill in her--like a mother.
"I said feel. Viv, do you feel alive?" She asked once more the wave now covering her face in a thick veil of silt.

As the tide receded once more she sat up, dress soaked and caked along the backside with mud. She shivers in the nightly September breeze as her darkened honey blonde streaks break apart and direct themselves in the movements of the gusts. I sit there and watch, knowing my answer to the question, and the answer I'll keep to myself and ponder until the rising of the next forgiving dawn. "Yes, Jacqueline," I reply, crossing my arms across my chest, yearning to return to the car to fetch a sweater.

"What are we going to do about tomorrow?" Jacqueline casually inquired, not trying to add anymore stress to my towering abundance of the emotion. I had ceased to feel strain a while ago; it was now a natural mindset.

I shrugged my shoulders, staring out into the deadening paleness of the sky where it meets striking azure of the water, simultaneously sunless and moonless. "You'll wake to a homemade breakfast and then you'll get dressed-- we have to leave by eight," I reminded her.

"What about..."

"Not tonight," I reassured her. The words, 'Never again' danced around my tongue, but that would be a lie. No matter how much I wanted to shelter Jacqueline, I knew that it was not fair and that she could handle the truth. She's the only person I trust with the truth.

Jacqueline sighed in relief, picking herself up before the next wave rolled into the shore. Seashells stuffed the pockets of her skirt. Innocent, that's the only word that came to mind, even if it looked like she had taken part in a wet t-shirt contest. "I don't want to imagine a day you don't come home," she confided, steely blue eyes piercing through my thick shell.

"I won't let it get that far," I genuinely vowed to her, like I had many times before.

"I want to see you make it to college," Jacqueline's eyes twinkled as I rolled my eyes in disbelief. My incompetent mother had made that aspiration simply impossible. "Viv, a year can change things," the positivity was nearly repulsively rampant through her words.

I could only cross my fingers and hope that a measly year had to power to change my predicament. Just like the year before last and the year before that.