Beached by Rachel M. Hollis

“I’m a beached whale,” my mom says, tugging at her stomach in the mirror like she’s trying to peel it off.

At nine, I could count her ribs. Her collarbones hollowed out like spoons. I’d stare at the glow-in-the-dark stars on my ceiling and pretend we were floating.

When the ambulance comes for Mom, Grandma comes for me. Her home is thick with shrugs and glances away, heavy sighs and quiet phone calls. I still hear sirens after mom’s gone. I’ll hear them long after she’s back.

She comes home with a hidden roll of quarters for clinic weigh-ins, blush patched over grey cheeks like nothing happened. Then disappears again—into rehab, into herself.

Whales were familiar. We saw them on our last family trip, before everything got worse. Dad was fixed on the massive tail slipping under the surface.

“It’s like it was never there,” he said, to no one. We sat in silence. Lifejackets too tight at our necks. Waves lapping against the boat.

Beached means sick. Or hunted. Or lost. It means you drifted too far from home and couldn’t find the tide again.

A beached whale isn’t just stuck. It’s dying. Slowly. While everyone watches.

I watched too from the doorway. She lay on my bedroom floor, one arm over her eyes. Not wanting to see the stars. Jealous of their lightness.

Rachel M. Hollis lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, child, and a deeply unmotivated dog. Her work appears or is forthcoming in River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, Gone Lawn, Necessary Fiction, Lost Balloon, and elsewhere.