Hate Fractals

It’s your first July fourth in Santa Barbara. You arrive early to relax on well-tended lawns bordered by ocean. Sails unfurl in the distance. Bicycles wobble on nearby paths, bells singing. Your children play with friends whose dad has arranged to meet you at the park. The friends: a dark-haired girl the same age as your darker-haired daughter, a dark-haired boy the same age as your darker-haired son. They’re like siblings: same hairstyles, matching T-shirts.

Boom boxes pulse with patriotic music. Ice cream drips down arms. Candy stains tongues purple, and nachos crumble and litter the grass. Your son flings Frisbees with boys who are strangers. Your daughter’s conjoined with a circle of girls, heads touching. You and the dad unfold blankets, smooth away wrinkles, overlap edges. The children come when you call. They roll and sprawl, pick blades of grass from their hair, toss jokes back and forth as though water balloons. They stretch limbs and tilt faces upwards, opening themselves to the sky. The evening gently darkens. The show signals its start.

You hear a high pitched whistling, then cracks and sizzles and pops. The sound hurts your ears, sets dogs on edge, into whimpers. You suppress the thought of gun shots. Pyrotechnics reflect in the bay; light explodes into fractals of color. The children suck in their breaths, quiver, grow rigid. They clamor for bigger, louder. The city doesn’t disappoint. Shapes form, dissolve, form again in the lavender air—spiraling pinwheels, expanding stars, contracting circles. It goes on; no one wants it to stop. The tension builds for the finale, the celebration burst-of-all-bursts. You feel inside you, a bud of belonging blossoming into flower. Applause ripples through the crowd, deepens, becomes thunder. Sparks of red, white, and blue fill the horizon. Your children shriek and jump their excitement. You decide you should come back next year.

Smoke lingers; the music goes silent. You pack your blankets, stack empty snack baskets. You hold your children’s hands, your children hold the hands of their friends, who are hand-linked with their father. Entwined, you surge along with the crowd. Everyone is smiling. You stroll down streets lined with eucalyptus, date palm, jacaranda. Petals carpet the asphalt, stick to your children’s shoes, are crushed beneath tires. You navigate past cars clogging the roadways, radios crooning.

You wait at an intersection for the walk sign. Across the street, a woman staggers toward the crosswalk, drunk. She lurches into traffic. Her eyes meet yours. She stops in the middle of the road. Cars honk. You know, before she starts, something is coming.

She opens her mouth and lets loose: Go back to your country! You brown, nasty fucks. Get out of here! Fucking terrorists. Get the fuck out! Go back to your own fucking country and fuck yourselves.

You once saw a grizzly in a national park, years before. It materializes now before you. The woman is a bear who has gorged on hallucinatory berries. She rears on hind legs, claws bared, roaring at foes she has conjured: you and your children, enemies deserving the threats she hurtles.

The light-skinned friends drop your children’s hands. Your children yank your dress. What’s wrong with her, Mommy? Why is she mad at us? What you find odd at this moment: you care most about the swear words. Your children have been insulated, never insulted—these words aren’t familiar yet.

The dad steps in front of you and your children, trying to block the woman. It doesn’t matter—she can spot you, single you out, amidst thousands. She waves her arms; her body screams its agitation, bellows menace. The signal comes on for you to walk. No one moves. The father, clutching his children, furrows his brow; lines elongate along his mouth. I’m sorry, he says. Is there anything I can do? You know he wants to drag his children to safety.

No, you say. There is nothing.

. . .

Next summer. Laguna Beach is crowded with tank tops, bikinis, board shorts. The sun reflects off the leaves of palms. You drive by the ocean; the water is three shades of blue. Your daughter loves turquoise the best. The world coalesces into her favorite color. You park along the waterfront, pleased you’ve found a meter. Your children burst from the car, bounce on toes. You pack swimsuits and towels, plastic buckets and shovels. You meander down streets narrowed by pedestrians, your children’s fingers entangled with yours. You visit crystal shops and browse through the angles of color. You admire a window that features fractal art: cauliflower close-ups, swirls of aloe, snowflakes. Photos of fireworks. A jewelry shop entices your daughter; she desires dolphin-shaped earrings stained aquamarine. Your son begs for the rubber Great White in a toyshop. The shark grins at you, teeth protruding from doubled rows, tapering into spikes.

You spot a gallery displaying an enormous painting: a woman with blue-black skin wearing swaths of sunset cloth. You can see, inside the exhibition, many paintings of blue-black women in elegant poses. You bribe your children with the promise of treats if they stay quiet, and you admire the brushstrokes, the lithe lines of the women’s figures, the rich night of their skin. You wish you could afford to buy one; you’d hang it behind your dining room table as your home’s focal point.

You finish with the streets and stores. To pacify your children, you head for shore. Your children frolic amidst rocks, splash through shallows. They join rows of children who squat by the tide pools as though sea potatoes, backs rounded. Your son hunts for buckshot barnacles, limpets, periwinkle snails. Your daughter sights an octopus, arms curled in apprehension, body blazing red: its fear pigment. Later, you towel sand off your children’s skin. You ascend ocean-view bluffs where hummingbirds dart amidst roses, hibiscus, zinnia, aloe. Flowers bloom. The whole city blooms.

The children want ice cream. You wander towards a corner shop. From afar, you see the posters: three feet tall triple-scooped sugar cones. You picture your children crawling into cones three-foot high, eating their way out, happily lapping, ice-cream coating their bodies. You share your vision, laugh at their gleeful trilling. They decide they want to live inside a sugar cone, surrounded by cream and sweetness.

An old lady bundled beneath too many clothes sits on a bench outside the shop. You stand across the street, still laughing, at the crosswalk. She catches your eye. Your joy dissipates, fizzles. She sways; her mouth moves. She isn’t talking to anyone because no one is near her, but she keeps looking at you.

You hear gibberish as you get closer; she is speaking in tongues. Chatting with your children, you don’t pay her attention. She’s only an old lady; what can she do?

She points at your son when you pass her; he squeezes your hand tighter and stares back. You pull him and your daughter into the ice cream shop, shutting the door behind you. The door seals you off from the world.

The woman rises, presses her face to the window glass. Your children are sampling flavors, running back and forth along the display case. A young man awaits their order.

The woman opens the door, breaking the seal you’ve created. She steps into the shop’s doorway, pauses.

The young man ignores her, gazes straight ahead. She stalks inside, positions herself behind you and your children, readjusts her many clothes. She clears her throat. You are braced, ready.

No Indians! The woman shouts near your ear. No Indians served here. We don’t want Indians, never had them. Filthy Indians. Get them out.

As if an afterthought, she adds—and no Jews. Not those Blacks either.

Your children are watching her and ducking as if she is throwing something. They use your torso as a tree trunk. The woman: a crazed vulture flapping her wings, spitting and hissing, displacing the air around you.

You make to leave. The young man at the register speaks with his throat vibrating, almost matching the woman’s volume. He asks your children what they want.

The children call out: mint chocolate! Rainbow sherbet! Waffle cone!

Everyone is yelling. Yours, the loudest.