My Way Home by Mary Bonina (Fiction ’85)

From My Way Home

I started college in Maine that year, and not wanting to go home for summer break, wanting to see my father as little as possible after the decision he’d made for me, I took a job as a cook at one of the hotels on the southern coast, one right on the beachfront. I lived there, too, since “the working girls,” as we were called, were allowed to rent rooms at a reduced rate.

At night in my room, I’d leave the window open. It didn’t face the ocean, but I could still hear the waves breaking and get the scent of the salty air coming in with the breeze. The working girls had rooms in the back of the house. Premium rooms were for tourists who stayed at the hotel for the ocean view, and paid a pretty penny for the privilege of waking up to it.

At the restaurant I hadn’t been prepared for how busy the kitchen would be, serving the dining room, and the beachgoers as well. At night I was as tired as I had been after working at the Home with the other girls. The sleeping quarters were also reminiscent of that other place. At the hotel, besides being relegated to the back of the house, we were also settled in attic rooms. Mine was to the right of the narrow stairway, a large, but not exactly spacious room, since it had four double beds set up infirmary style, as the rooms were at St. Ann’s Home. Three other girls—two sisters and their cousin— occupied the other beds, arriving a week or so after I moved in. Most nights I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. The ocean, combined with hard work, did that for me.

Being at the ocean the summer after I gave up my child, had brought me the comfort I desperately needed. I love the salty air, the sound, and I don’t know what pleased me more then: the reliability of the waves breaking, or the fact that the sea is always changing. On nights when the sea was calm, and stayed that way, I fell asleep and never woke until morning. Other nights I was awakened by a wild roaring, because there was a storm at sea, a high wind whipping up the waves.

The storms inspired me to get out of bed and dress, quietly leaving the hotel to walk down to the beach, my bare feet squeaking as I scuffed the smooth sand to reach the water’s edge, to watch the show. I climbed the ladder to the lifeguard’s stand and sat there, my curly hair frizzing from the moisture in the air, and I thought deeply about how I might get on with my life. I stared past the breaking waves to the horizon, trying to count lights burning in towns all up and down the coast, sparkling like jewels studding the black sky.

After going out in the middle of the night, I dreamt of living at the ocean under better circumstances. Living on an island would be nice, I thought. What would it be like, I wondered, for a child to take a water taxi instead of a bus to school? Or, to live on a larger island, one with its own school, or enough children to warrant a real ferry to bring my child to the mainland?