Elly watched the kids building sand castles on the beach they were visiting and smiled painfully.
"One day when I was young, I went off to play with the neighbors. I can’t recall exactly how young I actually was, but you can take a guess if you know what our game was: making dirt pies." She paused, then smiled faintly as she thought of something. "Actually, it was more like sand pies. We lived close to the beach so dirt in most of the yards wasn’t rich soil, it was sandy."
"Ah." Hizashi could see exactly why she had been reminded of this incident. He was the rubbing suntan lotion they had brought on her shoulders, sitting behind her on a large, fluffy towel.
"Well, we went to their backyard and turned on the hose and played. Their mother could see out out their kitchen window, and she was keeping an eye on us and smiling. Their father walked around the side at one point to leave for something work related, and he also smiled and waved cheerfully at us four kids playing happily."
He nodded. "Normal enough, kids playing happily and safely in their yard." He stole a smooch and ran his tongue out, making a face at the taste. "Bleargh."
Elly giggled. "It smells like coconut but I guess doesn't taste as good, huh sweetie?"
"Augh," he agreed, wiping his tongue on a paper towel from their cooler. "Ew. Oh. So, you were bein' a kid, having fun and lemme guess. Your mom saw you."
"Yep." She smiled sadly up at him. "Then my mother saw me."
Hizashi cringed, scrunching his feet in the sand and wondering what horror was sure to come to this younger version of the woman he loved.
"Screaming like a horror queen she ordered me to come home <i>right now</i>. I knew that tone - I was doing something bad. I would be in far, far worse trouble if I didn’t do what she said, so I immediately ran to her side. She took hold of my ear in a firm grip and pulled me in, speaking loudly in a shaming voice. I don’t remember all of what she said but I do remember she insisted on saying I was playing '<i>mud babies</i>' over and over again. It hurt."
"I bet. Name calling is straight up bullying, babe. That's wrong."
"And it's worse since I was at the age where I didn’t want to be a 'baby'. She knew this, saw that I was embarrassed, so grinding on about how childish I was being and using her demeaning term over and over again she yanked me inside. The neighbor kids just stared with wide eyes.
"I do recall trying to reason with her. As young as I was I was far more mature in my mind than I should have been, and I reasoned that both the other adults had seen us playing and <i>smiled</i>. Why was I in trouble? I didn’t know I had done anything wrong!"
"She thought you should somehow read her mind? That's freaking crazy."
"When I got older, I read up on abusive parents. That's a typical tactic, the thought that the child should know what the adult wants ahead of time. It's insane. Anyway, long story short, the neighbors were 'wild Indians' and 'filthy' and here it is, of course: '<i>I should have known better</i>'."
"Ugh." He made a face at the racist terminology and she nodded, knowing and agreeing.
"I heard 'mud babies' the rest of the night as she humiliated me with it as my grandfather and stepfather came home, each time being subjected to the torture although I had already promised never to do it again. She knew the term was as childish and degrading as she could make it, she <i>knew</i> it hurt. Once would've been enough but she said it what felt like hundreds of times."
He blew air out his nose and mouth gustily. "Man, babe, I'm sorry. All I can say is that you should've been allowed to play like a regular kid." He paused. "Hey hey, now... how about we make a sandcastle?"
Her ears pricked up. "Really?"
"Yeah. We don't have like, buckets or anything fancy but we've got plastic cups and stuff. We could do it."
She stared at the patch of sand at her feet for a long while before answering. "You know what? I never did make one, even living at the beach like we did."
"I'll bet," he grunted as he rummaged through the cooler and brought out two extra cups. "We got extras! Let's go!"
Elly smiled shyly and took a cup from him. "Okay - but I have no idea what I'm doing!"
"Just have fun." He grinned at her.
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