By ELIZA BECKER
Izza and Mila were the only two Jews staying at the Inn. All the other inn-goers were in neat groups of four, of mother, father, and two dear children, while Mila and Izza were just the pair. Every single room in the Inn had the same pale, jade-green, spotless, wall-to-wall carpeting. One side of the Inn held the bay, with its rocky sand empty of people, boats docked far in the distance resting on the salty still water. The sun ignited it all orange as it set.
On the other side of the inn was the beach.
It was the way beaches should look, Mila thought. People read their books, sitting in their chairs under the Inn’s umbrellas. A strip of rocks across the sand, only when the tide had gone down enough. There was no litter, no smoking teenagers. The sand was white.
Mila sat with her dark hair straightened in a low ponytail under her straw hat and read her book through her oval sunglasses under the sun. Beside her, Izza dug through sand.
“I’m going into the ocean,” Izza said to her mother, standing up. The ocean’s waves crested no higher than Izza’s hips. Very gently.
“Not yet. We’re eating lunch soon,” Mila said as she turned a page in her book. Everyone ate their salads and sandwiches on the deck above, sitting up straight in their chairs, in their pastel polos and blouses.
“I’ll just go in quick.”
“Your hair will get undone,” Mila closed her book on her finger. “You’ll be all wet on the deck.”
“No one’ll care,” Izza said. “I’ll dry off.” She turned to the ocean and broke into a run, feet-palms patting wet impenetrable sand, crashing through tide. She was fifteen and could go into the ocean whenever she pleased.
Izza ran with the fluency Mila had yearned for in her youth. It was the elegance boys wanted in their girls—the elegance Mila never had. Izza dove hands up, head first, flat, into the shallow sea. Mila looked down at her novel.
Ten minutes later, Izza returned to her mother, neck sunk into shoulders, teeth clattering. She picked up the towel from her own chair.
When Izza was a little girl, her mother would crouch down and spread the towel out wide, and Izza would run to her mother and Mila would wrap her up, warm, consuming her as hers.
“I found this shell,” Izza’s arm emerged from her own towel to hand her mother the shell.
Mila ran her thumb over the glossy inside. “It’s nice.” She handed the shell back to Izza and opened up her novel. “Will you put your hair up? It’s gonna dry frizzy.”
Izza sunk down into her chair, wet, and tugged her hair into a neat ponytail. “Do you not like the shell?” She asked.
“I like the shell,” her mother said, still reading.
Izza placed the shell on the wooden arm of her chair and stood up. “I’m hungry.”
Mila bookmarked her page, and the two walked up the old wooden stairs to the deck.
Mila returned to the table with two sandwiches. “I can’t believe you went in the water after all that time I spent straightening your hair last night.”
“Mom, we’re literally at the beach. I didn’t even want it straightened.”
Mila scoffed. “This is a nice place.”
“So you don’t think I naturally look nice enough?”
“You know what I mean,” Mila waved her hand around, gesturing at the other beach-goers on the deck. The women all had either straight or wavy hair, mostly blonde.
“I don’t care how nice these people look. Just because you keep your hair poker straight at all times, doesn’t mean I have to.”
Clouds had grown into the sky, deep. The mother and daughter turned paler without the wailing sun.
“Well it would make things easier,” Mila raised her eyebrows and wobbled her head.
Izza creased her eyebrows and forced air out of her nostrils. She plunked her half eaten sandwich onto her plate and stood up, forcing her chair back with the insides of her knees so that the metal scraped the wood and the entire chair toppled over onto the deck.
The blondes all turned their heads to look.
“Izza!” Mila’s throat rasped with a whisper. “What’s the matter with you?” Her daughter always had these sudden spurts of spite she wished she understood.
“You don’t think I look nice, you don’t like my shell, you don’t like my hair!”
“Izza, that’s not—”
“It’s getting cloudy out anyways, so I’m going back to the room.” Izza turned her back to her mother, and began marching away, from her, from the deck, from the blondes, and from the beach.
As Izza wove her legs through the thorny bushes that collapsed into the rocky pathway that led back to the Inn, it started to rain. She felt goosebumps prickle her skin; her ankles grew wet in her sandals. Her mother would stay warm and dry under the cover of her umbrella, which she brought with her always.
Once she returned to their jade-carpeted room and bay-view windows, she sat down in front of the mahogany vanity, stared into the mirror, into herself, and dragged the elastic from her hair. Her hair poofed out to the sides in lumps and made her look twice as big, twice as noticeable—which normally, she liked.
The rain began to batter against the windows, the sun was missing over the bay, the room grew dark. All she could do was stare and will herself not to cry, will her eyes to keep the liquid inside her. Her skin got too red when she cried.
There was a knock at the door.
“Who is it?” Her voice jittered.
The door swung open. A woman stood in the doorway, straw hat askew, hallway light shining against the wet frizz of her witch-like mane; her sandals squelched the carpet, and her two hands cupped a pink scalloped seashell.
Writer | Eliza Becker ’26 | ebecker26@amherst.edu
Editor | Annika Bajaj ’25 | abajaj25@amherst.edu