Another Name for Fiddler Crab
- Jul 28, 2023
- 3 min read
by Tyler Anne Whichard
Momma, there’s grief like a beach breeze in October: a numbness that turns near-comfort because at least it’s relief from the cold. Your skin just — forgets that it used to be skin. I sit with a girl named Hazel in the hold of such an evening, swaying in time with the waves at our toes. The sun left us but we linger, losing feeling in our ears, our fingers, our mouths. I want to kiss her. I want to wash the sand from her skin and wrap her in sheets softer than my hands. I want her to know me without saying anything at all. But mostly, I want her to know you.
In the fifth grade, my class went on a field trip to the beach. Do you remember, Momma? You came as a chaperone and I sat next to you on the bus ride, resting my head on your shoulder until you bumped my forehead with your temple. Wake up, you chided, though you hovered a few seconds, your head atop mine. You must’ve been tired. Are you tired, still? Your fatigue’s the type to stick around and cling to the edges of everything you want to be. I didn’t know back then — I’m sorry. Even now, I haven’t called to ask. Are you tired, Momma? Is it bone deep like mine?
When the school bus slowed to a stop, we waddled into the heat on stiff legs. The collar of my Saint Peter’s uniform chafed, asked to be unbuttoned at the throat, but I kept everything closed. Austin Harold saw them first: casts of tiny crabs scuttling away as if part of the beach had grown legs and walked off. I asked you what kind of crabs they were, but you didn’t know the name. I think it takes a lot of courage to not know something. Even more to learn.
The crabs sensed our steps before we knew to make them but when we finally managed to catch a few, we shook and spun and tossed them about. Gone were our days of saving earthworms from sidewalks after rain, placing their bodies back in the dirt for them to burrow. Now, any sort of danger thrilled us. Holding the possibility of pain in our palms with no immediate consequence — no sharp flare of claw clamping the flesh of our fingers — made us brave. We dangled the crabs in the air, away from everything they knew to be true. And I didn’t tell you, Momma, because I knew I’d get whooped, but I felt a bit like God watching them struggle to get free. We could lower our arms, or we close our hands and squeeze. Sitting on this beach with Hazel, years away from fifth grade, I can’t remember which one I chose.
Tell me a story, she says, because she knows I’m the type to not say much, even with a pretty girl at my side and all the fucking time in the world. I think of the crabs but say nothing for a while. I wonder if it is the type of story to make someone fall in love with me. I want Hazel to hear me speak about crabs and exhaustion and mothers and decide she would like to stay. I want her to know I haven’t spoken to you in years. I want her to forgive me for it.
But the words crowd my tongue, Momma, and the silence here reminds me of you: of our quiet nights in the living room, hardly saying anything at all. I wonder if you’d sit quite so still if you could see the way my hand overlaps Hazel’s in the sand, trails nothing-patterns on skin so cold it’s forgotten it’s skin. How’d we live like that, Momma? Pretending to know each other under the weight of so much soundlessness? How’d you never have nothing to say?
Tell me a story, Hazel says to the dark.
Tyler Anne Whichard is a queer Southern writer from North Carolina. She received her MFA from UNCW where she interned for Lookout Books and read for Ecotone. Her writing appears in Brevity, The Rumpus, and Blue Earth Review, among others. You can find her on all social media @tylerawhichard where she is generally unimpressive. Fiddler crabs are also known as “calling crabs” for the way their large claws seem to “beckon” ceaselessly.
