Mama started to cough. Tata turned to her as if hearing it for the first time, tried to hold her hand. She kept fixing our sun hats as her face reddened with spasms. A few steps in front of us, my little brothers kicked at the dirt road, lifting clouds of red dust around them and twirling in it.
“Stop that,” Tata said, sharper than I knew he could. “You’re making Mama cough. Fucking powder.” He hugged Mama, trying to shield her from the dust, but she tapped on his shoulder to signal she would be fine. He turned his attention to the man with the groceries.
“Where did you get the bread?”
The man pointed to a kiosk. As we approached, we could smell the yeasty warmth. Tata cleared one whole shelf and handed us each a loaf.
“Bread is the only food that should be made out of powder. Water gives it life, yeast makes it grow.”
“Water gives life to the instant mashed potato,” I countered.
“A potato is already flowing with juices. Who in their right mind would want to dehydrate it, only to add water later? Ridiculous!”
“Because it tastes good?”
“Is that so.” He stopped and grabbed me by the shoulders in a let-me-make-myself-clear manner. “It’s unnatural. Powders, dust, debris make people ill. Look at your mother.” At this his chin trembled and he turned to the side. “Coughing like a miner after a lifetime of inhaling rock particles. And before you say, ‘but we eat powdered food and we’re not coughing—’” he mocked me in a smart-alecky voice—“Mama’s head is always in that pantry, stuck inside like in a sooty cave, rummaging through powders to cook us dinner. Enough is enough.”
His eyes were fierce. Mama’s cough restarted. The same cough as always now sounded like an emergency.
*
We sat our things on the pebbles, spread out the towels. In the distance we could see Zadar, the fortress and the port, the tall cathedral tower and bells. Aside from a small cluster of kelp floating to the side, the sea was clear and docile. Behind the pebbly strip was a pine grove, the needles and sap covering the red dirt like a throw. Further back stood densely spaced houses, almost all of them overgrown with oleander bushes. I laid down the blanket in the shade so we could read, play cards, have our picnic between swims. The boys were already in the water. Tata picked them up one by one so they could perch on his shoulders before belly flopping into the waves, climbing back up his torso to do it again and again. Even though there were no other people on the beach, save the pasty old couple picking peaches by one of the houses behind us, I felt uncomfortable taking my clothes off. I was convinced that there were others lurking behind the windows of the houses, waiting until I was defenseless in a bikini to laugh at my gangly legs and ping-pong-ball breasts. Once I had undressed, I sat next to Mama and curled into a ball, my fretful breath smothered by the relentless cicadas and Mama’s tight hug. The pasty old-timers came over and offered us a couple of peaches. They smiled at us like long-lost friends and said things in German, to which Mama said Danke schön, nodding profusely. The peaches were so juicy that eating them felt like biting into a water balloon. Mama and I laughed as the juice overran us, setting on our skin in gluey patches of sugar.
She held my hand as we got in the water. The sea was a private pool, vast and deep, there just for us. When the old Germans got in, Mama pulled me away, even though they were pretty far from us.
“They pee,” she said, making a disgusted face. I didn’t want to tell her that I’d peed as soon as the water tickled my bikini bottom. But then she let go of my arm and looked at me with a smirk. “Let’s do it,” she said. “Nothing like the splash of a warm current in the cool sea.” She burst out laughing. I laughed too and squeezed out the little I had left in my bladder.
We swam away from my splashing brothers. Mama didn’t say it, but I could tell she was happy Tata brought us here. And that was okay; we were all happy we had Tata to snap us out of reality—even when his own made little sense, bordered on crazy. Mama floated on the water’s surface, the sea drying on her face in salty blotches. I dove down. The water moved about my body, set the seaweeds dancing. There were so many urchins on the seafloor, sharp in black attire, like they were at a party.