The Seaside Mausoleum
Braden built his sand castle with a set of matching blue and green buckets his mother bought from L.L. Bean. He had filled one bucket to the brim, the other only three-fourths of the way, leaving the towers asymmetrical. Waves battered the castle walls, their sharp edges quickly eroding to curves. Braden didn’t care. Kneeling behind his creation he announced that he was the Wizard King.
The summer before, Lily and I had been dragons, throwing fistfuls of wet sand down upon Braden’s castle like ash settling after an eruption. Summers, I had always thought, were for shedding. No more polite Paige sitting quiet at her desk. I wanted to sluff off my skin and find scales underneath. I wanted to breathe fire. But Lily scoffed and informed Braden that we had outgrown playing pretend. It was two weeks after the Adams elementary school graduation, at which we had been awkwardly paraded across a stage as our parents cried. In Junior High, Lily’s older sister explained, there was no recess and nobody talked about magic. Make-believe was for babies. Determined to distinguish us from the now teary Braden, Lily grabbed my wrist and led me further down the beach.
“Come on Paige,” she said, “let’s build a real castle.”
…
The problem with castles, we decided, was that they ought to contain princesses. And princesses, although real, did not reside on the Oregon coast.
“How about a fortress?” Lily asked.
“No. Nothing here needs protection. We have to build something useful.” Lily nodded. “I need time to think, k?”
It was mid June. Small window of time after the spring rains’ departure, but before the swelter of late summer made its descent. By afternoon the sun retired, hiding behind a pack of thick clouds. Our parents brought out the sunscreen anyway and lathered globs of the stuff onto our backs. Braden squirmed out from under his mother’s grasp before she could rub it in and Lily and I giggled at the white marks streaking across his skin.
Lily wanted to swim. “What’s the point of a beach if you don’t get in the ocean?” she asked. “Relaxation,” my mother called out as I followed Lily to the water.
The ocean was frigid. Pain shot up my legs as soon as my feet touched the water. I wanted to turn back, dig my toes in the sand, still warm from the morning’s sun, but Lily was already waist deep. I grit my teeth and followed. Lily dove and the waves rolled on, erasing ripples so it was as if she had never been there at all. I urged my body to submerge, counting down from three in my head. By one I had not moved a muscle. Lily came up for air long seconds later and pulled me in.
We emerged from the water shivering, arms hugged tight around our chests. Lily grabbed my towel, left hers folded on the sand, and wrapped us up. We huddled together, teeth chattering and bones shaking.
“Fuck I’m cold,” she said. I had never heard Lily curse. I wanted to join. My mouth formed the f, teeth digging into my lower lip, but my voice did not come.
We were standing there, my beech towel wrapped tight around us when Braden found the fish. He let out a shrill scream. We dropped the towel, forgetting our cold, and ran over. Braden had given up his castle building and was exploring the edge of the beach. Three fish lay on the sand. I examined them. About five inches long. Wide, glassy eyes. Bloated stomachs. The fishwere ugly in death, the silver of their scales now dull and gray. Lily grabbed a stick and poked at one. Braden’s eyes were wide. Glassy, too from tears. Very much like the fish.
“I know what we’ll do,” I whispered to Lily.
“Oh?”
“I know what we’ll build. A mausoleum.”
Lily had not heard of mausoleums. For once I knew more than her. Or, at least, I had a vague idea. “It’s like a grave,” I explained, “but it's a whole building and not underground. Something like that. We can build one and put the fish inside. They should be remembered, don’t you think?”
I was rambling, nervous that she would not like my idea. But Lily’s eyes lit up in a manner very unlike a dead fish.
“Let’s do it.”
…
Lily called her father and asked him if there were any shovels at the vacation rental. He arrived fifteen minutes later with two small garden spades.
“Dad, those are barely shovels. We want real ones. Please. Buckets too.”
While we waited for the real shovels to arrive we began to sketch out plans. We picked a spot high up on the beach where the sand was firmer and the tides wouldn’t wash our mausoleum away. I used a stick that was half rotted from sea water. Lily grabbed an oyster shell. It shone purple and pink in the sun.
Lily’s Dad laughed when we told him our plan. “Good luck kids,” he said and walked off.We began by digging a base. The fish were not large but the mausoleum would be
because we were nearly grown ups now and could make it so. It was decided the mausoleum would be five by five feet long. Lily was exactly five feet tall, so we measured in body lengths, sand sticking to her loose wet hair.
I found two wooden planks by the bathrooms. Extras from the newly built docks. We used them as molds. Lily held the planks in place, roughly one foot apart, while I packed wet sand sturdy between them. The planks were then removed and repositioned for the next wall. We
built four walls that day. They were only six inches tall, but it was a start.
…
We met early the next morning. In two days we would be heading back home; there was not much time. The second layer of wall could not be built like the first. We attempted, but the planks couldn’t serve as steady molds without damaging the wall we had already created beneath. Instead we held them vertical, and filled in small sections of sand like bricks.
Lily was silent that morning. I worked my brain trying to come up with things to say like what classes are you taking next year? Or, are you excited for middle school? Or, what did you have for dinner last night? But these questions were inane. It seemed we already knew about each other anything that was worth knowing.
Sometimes I would breathe in as though to speak and Lily would glance up at me. I’d avert my gaze or mumble something about getting more sand.
We brought sand in buckets from closer to shore, so as not to disturb the surrounding soil. It was important, Lily declared, that the grounds of the mausoleum remain pristine. When the walls had grown up to our waists we took a break from stacking and began to decorate. Lily gave me her shell and I drew a winding path to the door. We gathered seaweed and leaves from nearby shrubs and arranged them in front of the mausoleum like a garden.
Braden arrived at noon and asked if he could join. “Sorry, we’re just about to eat lunch,” I told him.
“No,” Lily said.
We ate sandwiches. Mine was peanut butter and jelly. She had ham and cheese. Braden got a lunchable. Lunchables were cool in elementary school, but, Lily whispered, they were only for little kids.
Afternoon was dedicated to more wall building. This time Lily wanted to talk as we worked. She asked me about the upcoming election. Her parents listened to NPR. Mine did not, so she filled me in on all the worldly things a twelve year old deems important.
The wall grew to our shoulders, too tall for us to build any higher. We slipped through the door, careful to not displace any sand, and stood inside our creation. It needed a roof.
My mother came over, offering to help and taking hundreds of pictures. We declined her offer, though her height would have been useful. If we were to prove we were grown up enough for junior high, the mausoleum needed to be an independent creation.
We used a tattered towel as a ceiling. I stood on an upside down bucket and secured the corners with stones. The towel didn’t quite cover the entire surface, but Lily thought it was perfect because “The fish souls might want some light.” I didn’t believe in souls, but I said nothing.
The fish still lay on the beach where Braden had found them. We picked them up with sticks and placed them on one wooden plank which we then walked over to the mausoleum. Ifound the procession slightly absurd and a giggle worked its way to my lips. But Lily looked dead serious, so I stayed quiet. “This is your final resting place,” she told the fish before we slid them down the plank and into the dank sandy chamber.
We left the mausoleum without a door, “so anyone can visit,” I told Lily. She agreed. We were tired. We left later that day, waving goodbye to our deceased sea friends. While we were gone Lily’s sister had been camping with friends. When she saw us she gave Lily a hug. “Nice tan,” she said, “how was the beach?”
Written by Perry Huang Kemper
Perry Huang Kemper is a student at Wellesley College. She grew up in Boise, Idaho and
maintains that the mountains are better in the West.