Girl Bait
Kayla Jessop
My father called me his favorite wing woman.
We were both barefoot, digging our toes in the wet sand as the water recoiled back to the ocean, slow and deliberate. We’d been at the beach since early this morning, securing a spot before the June tourists encroached on the dunes with their “I love Myrtle Beach ” towels and oversized umbrellas. My father hadn’t told me what time it was, since I last asked hours ago. The sun was high in the sky and my stomach was rumbling, so it must have been close to lunchtime.
He snaked his arm around my shoulders, pulling me closer to him. He laughed as he said wing woman, but I didn’t laugh in return. Instead, I watched my feet as they dug into the sand, afraid of stepping on shells. We hadn’t said more than a few words to each other since we started our walk, so I was surprised at his words and sudden movement. I always got weary when he became affectionate suddenly because he rarely showed it without wanting something in return. He had a way of using his charm for when it was convenient for him, for when he would benefit from the appearance of being a loving dad. As he turned his head to look at strangers sunbathing on the beach as we walked by, I knew he wanted them to perceive him as the doting father, only to fuel his ego. It wasn’t that my father didn’t love me, but rather, he wasn’t a father.
We had been walking like that for a while, though I wasn’t sure how far we were from the space between the two piers—more than a mile between them—that we always parked our belongings on, afraid of being too close to each, knowing sharks and fishing hooks came by the numbers. It had been a longer walk than I intended it to be when I could no longer see our towels and beach chairs, but I could see the pier becoming more clear in the distance. Instead of removing his arm, he tightened it around me and squeezed me. He used his free arm to tickle my side until I was laughing, begging him to stop. He didn’t, though. He used both hands to tickle each side, adding more volume to my laugh and drawing the attention of those around us.
Though we’d been at the beach together all morning, we hardly talked or interacted much. The day before, he had to beg me to come with him to the beach so Mommom, my grandmother—his mother—would drive him to the beach. I knew she wouldn’t take him before she left for work unless she thought I wanted to go, I agreed reluctantly. Before we left that morning, she asked me multiple times if I was sure I wanted to go, if I was positive I wanted to spend my last day in Myrtle Beach for the summer with him at the beach before going to Maryland for the rest of the summer, only coming back right before the new school year started, to spend some time with my mom. I had always been closer to my grandmother than anyone. From my birth, she raised me as if I was her own, never letting me feel the weight of having young, irresponsible parents on my own.
And so, because of our mother-daughter-like bond, she could read me like her own favorite book. I didn’t lie to her and immediately say ‘yes, I want to go’ because I wasn’t a good liar. Instead, I reassured her it would be fine, because after all, I wouldn’t see him for the rest of the summer. We packed the beach bag together in silence. Sunscreen for my fair skin, water bottles, towels, cash for lunch, and secret hopes that the day would go smoothly. My father didn’t help; instead, he waited impatiently outside, smoking cigarettes, as we took our time preparing for his day. Reluctantly, she dropped us off that morning with a promise to pick me up if I wanted to leave and a long list of instructions and reminders to my father like, “Remember to watch her closely in the water” and “Make sure you eat by noon,” and “Don’t forget you have to sunscreen her fair skin once every two hours.” It wasn’t that she didn’t trust him completely, but rather, my father couldn’t be trusted to put anyone but himself first.
Earlier this morning, he spent most of the time out in the water, too far out for me to join him. Part of me knew it was purposeful, even he didn’t mean it to be hurtful: if he was out in the water, we didn’t have to talk, and I didn’t have to remind him of my basic needs: water, sunscreen, food, and a father. The other part of me didn’t mind so much, as I rarely liked to go out beyond where I could see my feet, afraid of sharks and other sea creatures. The only time he came back to shore was when he needed a cigarette. He would sit in his chair opposite of mine, letting his Newport bounce between his teeth as he talked about how cool the water temperature was.
In the four years I had lived in Myrtle Beach since my grandmother and I moved here from Maryland, and the two since he had joined us, we only went to the beach together a handful of times. Most of the time, my grandmother joined us in any adventures we went on together. Being a young mother to my father and again a young grandmother to me due to my father’s early entrance to parenthood, she parented us both. Part of that meant that she always kept the peace between us— not that we argued much, because I was 12 and he was 27, but because we didn’t have anything in common. In his 12 years of parenting when it was convenient for him, we spent more days apart than together, which didn’t leave us much of a relationship. And so, all morning, I watched him swim around while I sat in my beach chair, reading a book off my school’s summer reading list. My father never liked that about me, how I would rather have my nose in a book than be adventurous like he was.
By the time I could catch my breath from my laughter and looked up, I understood the sudden change in appearances between us. There was a group of women a few yards ahead of us, four or five of them. They were sunbathing in bikinis, laying on oversized beach towels that only minimized their already small frames. My heart immediately sank, knowing what was about to happen next. It was my father’s favorite parenting hack. My father, who hadn’t yet removed his off-brand aviator sunglasses all morning, put them up on his head to get a better look at them. He grabbed my hand and pulled me back to movement, so we could walk even further in their direction.
“Can we go back now?” I asked quietly but loud enough where he could hear me over the crashing waves.
“No, we’re walking,” he said, not even looking in my direction.
“Please? I can’t see our stuff, and I am hungry,” I countered. I did the thing he hated the most: added a whine to my voice, like the impatient child he always said I was.
He gave me a look, squinting his blue eyes into my matching ones in a warning. I pursed my lips, swallowed the words I wanted to say but knew his warning heeded not to.
As we approached the water that faced the women directly, my father switched to the left side of me, so that he could be closer to the water. He then splashed water on me, causing me to shriek. We were close enough now that I could hear the women laugh. There were four of them, a blonde, a redhead, and two brunettes. They were lying down on their towels but now sat up to get a better view. He did exactly what he wanted to do: get their attention. To them, I know what it looks like: a young man, either a brother with a big age gap or a young father—they never know right away—and a young girl. Each time, no matter the woman, it made her heart melt. They can’t resist a man and a child. If it were a group of them, they always giggled to each other, giving each other knowing looks. No matter where we were, a mall, a restaurant, a park, the routine worked the same way: they stared long enough for my father to know he’d gotten them hooked, but he wouldn’t make the first move. He acted like he didn’t notice them and put the majority of his attention on me other than a few glances their way, making soft eye contact for a mere second until the woman walked over. I know this routine like the back of the hand, forever being his wing woman.
“Are they looking?” My father asked once he stopped tickling me.
He stands in front of me, my 5-foot-2-inch frame making it hard to see beyond his 5-foot-8-inch frame. I looked over his shoulder, and like sandpipers to the tide, they watched my father intensely.
“Yes,” I said.
“What about the blonde? Is she looking?”
Of course, he was curious about the blonde. She fit his type perfectly: slender frame, long, loose blonde waves hung around her shoulders, and she was eyeing him. Even without her glances, he would be hers for the taking.
“Yes. I want to go back,” I reminded him.
“Not yet. Let’s get in the water for a few minutes,” he left me standing there and waded into the water without looking back. He swam out further than I would join him, ending the charade of diligent father. He left me to be the bait, the shiver of sharks circling me as he finally looked back at me before diving deeper into the water, hiding under the surface.
I went far enough into the water where my feet were submerged. I looked back to the women who are now making their way down the beach. I understood their appeal to him. My father was attractive, at least from what friends and family said: he had a toned stomach, and not because he worked out but because he was naturally lean, he kept his brown hair short, close to the scalp, and carried himself with confidence that only a man who knew he was attractive could carry. Not only was he conventionally attractive, but he had charisma when he wanted to: he was good at deepening his voice, smiling wide to show off his perfect, white teeth, and he was funny. He had a way of making someone laugh when they didn’t want to. They would soon find that out.
They stopped to talk to me first. The redhead was the first to introduce herself with the others following. I didn’t bother to remember their names, not to intentionally be rude, but because I knew after the day that always leads to a night with him, my father won’t see them again. I rarely met the women in his life more than once but then again, neither did he. On rare occasions I did, I never had a real connection with them. Either my father would grow tired of them quickly, or if they had stayed longer, they grew tired of him being self-involved, a child stuck in a man’s body. And so, they weren’t around for long, much like my father.
My father swam back to shore after a few moments to check on the progress I had made.
“Making friends, Kayla?” he asked with a smirk.
The blonde answered for me by saying that she hoped she and her friends weren’t bothering us. They were bothering me, but I would never say that. The soft-spoken, people pleaser in me would be mortified. I also know that my father, with his lack of patience, would scold me now and later. Even so, it wasn’t them that was the bother: it was the position of being the wing woman left for bait. I knew how my day would play out before they introduced themselves: my father would forget about me, leaving me to my own devices while he flirts the rest of the day away.
Their conversation excluded me from there: introductions and names, clarification of being father and daughter, the women said they just graduated from the local university; my father admitted he never went to college—but tastefully left out that he never attended high school either—and at my father’s suggestion, they all made the decision to hang out together for the rest of our day.
The women walked a few steps ahead of us while we stayed behind to talk to each other, no doubt excited to spend time with my father.
“We’re going to hangout here for a while,” he told me, focusing on pulling a cigarette out of the pack he had in his swim trunks.
After he lit the cigarette, he still wasn’t looking at me, but instead, he watched the blonde as she walked to her towel and sat down. Her small bikini covered close to nothing. My father, too focused on the task at hand, ignored my pleas to not do this. To not spend our day with a woman he’ll spend more attention on than me. To not eventually leave me here, on this beach, so he could be alone with her. Even if he would stay right next to me during our time with them, he wouldn’t be here with me. He never was when there was more appealing entertainment.
“Mommom said you can’t leave me alone,” I repeated. He hated when I threw my grandmother’s words at him.
He appreciated her for parenting me, so he didn’t have to take on the responsibility, but he never liked the way she and I took each other’s sides over his. To my father, he always felt like it was a betrayal, the fact his mother got along better with his daughter than with him. She had tried to a parent to him that he respected: she coddled him more, spent more time with him, reverted to yelling less, but my father wasn’t an easy man to respect, trust, and love most days. My soft temper was mild to his loud one; I helped with chores while he made messes in her life, both physically and mentally. I went to school, completed homework on time, kept up with my chores such as dishes and sweeping, all while my father rarely kept a job for long. He didn’t help my grandmother around the house, not with bills or parenting, and often, he’d make more messes than he’d clean. He spent more days out of the house than in. More so, he’d stay sober for even less time.
“I’m right here,” he said.
“I thought it would just be us,” I dragged my toes deeper into the sand. You promised was on the tip of my tongue, but I knew better than to believe he could keep any promises he made.
“It’s fine. Stop complaining, princess,” he said. A nickname he reserved for only when his charm was out.
I was close to telling him he could go back to how we were before, if we could just go back to just us. He could go back into the water, leave me near the dune with my book, and only talk to me when he needed to ask for a drink out of our cooler, but I had never been good at confrontation. I wouldn’t grow better at it as an adult, but at 12, I couldn’t be stern without crying. As the tears started to pool in my eyes, my mouth opened to ask one more time if we could go back to our spot on the beach, but the blonde interrupted us, putting her hands on her hips, and asked if we were coming.
My father left me there in the sand without another word, his signature move when he was tired of talking. I watched him walk up to her, place his hand around her waist, and lead her to sit down on his lap on her own towel. I wiped the tears pooling at my eyes and followed only seconds later, after one of the brunettes invited me to sit with her. I sat next to her, hugging my knees close to my chest as I always did when I felt anxiety settle in my stomach. The redhead offered us drinks from their large cooler, a water bottle for me and a beer can for my father. Thinking he wouldn’t take it, remembering how many times my grandmother reminded him how important his sobriety was as she counted off her list of parenting requirements for the day— two things he struggled with immensely—I watched as my father took the can from the redhead’s hand. As I sat on the towel across from him, close enough to the brunette to touch her shoulders next to me, I watched as he and the two women poked holes in the can with his pocketknife, turned it to the side, and chugged it.
With each passing beer, my father grew louder in his antics. His arms moved more as he talked, his voice grew louder. I barely tuned into what they were all saying, ignoring their laughter as my stomach tightened in knots. If I was sitting closer to him, I would have whispered to him, in a small, gentle voice, afraid of making him angry: “Mommom said you aren’t supposed to be drinking.” I would have told him I overheard him and Mommom arguing last weekend, when he came back from his week stay at the doctor’s about how this time needs to be different, how my grandmother was tired of supporting her adult son who wouldn’t support himself. I wondered if he knew how every night, she checked the trash cans in the house for bottles or cans, never trusting that he hadn’t lied to her about staying sober that day. Most nights, when they thought I was asleep, I could hear them arguing about his reluctance to stay sober, how each time she paid for a rehab, in the matter of days of being out, he’d go back to the cycle of going out with friends, missing the curfew she set, stumbling home and vomiting on the carpet she only recently got the last stain out from. Had I been sitting closer to him, not afraid of confrontation, and worried about embarrassing him, I would have told him these things.
Instead, I sipped my water and listened as his voice grew louder, the deep bass booming as he laughed with the blonde.
When they ran out of beer, my father offered to go to the store up the road to buy more, with the cash we had been given for lunch. The blonde didn’t hesitate to offer to go with him, putting her hand in his. I watched as he squeezed it, let it go, and then placed his arm around her shoulder as he did to me earlier. The other women gave their drink orders, even adding in snacks. I knew my father didn’t have enough cash on him for them and me, too. Before he started to walk away, I got up and asked to talk to him. Closer to the shore, he asked me what I wanted to talk about. Ignoring the slight slur in his voice and the way his balance is off, making him rock back and forth in the sand, I said: “We have to go get our stuff. It’s been a couple of hours. What if it’s missing?”
“It’s not,” he assured me. “Stop always stressing.”
He punched my arm in a playful way, but my father never knew how to play, so it was hard enough for me to put pressure on the growing mark with my opposing hand.
“I haven’t had sunscreen. My skin is burning. I’m hungry, too,” I added.
“We’ll do it when we get back.”
I knew we wouldn’t. He would have an excuse then, too. My stomach growled, reminding me of the cash in his pocket.
“Can you get me food when you go to the store?”
“I’ll see what’s left of the money,” he shrugged his shoulders.
“Mommom gave that for us. She’s going to be upset if you’re drinking,” I reminded him.
Again, he left without another word, grabbing onto the blonde’s hand, and began walking.
As my father and the blonde walked down to the beach, the other women circled me as bait once I sat back down on the towel. I became meat thrown to the frenzy. Watching my father become more and more distant, the women moved so that I sat facing one brunette while the other sat behind me, the redhead next to me. One brunette and the redhead talked as fast as waves crashing on the shore, hardly taking a breath as they interviewed me. The brunette that sat behind me, loosely braided my long, blonde hair. It was soothing; the only comfort I had all day.
I already anticipated their questions as they threw them at me. Women always asked the same questions about him: Where is your mom? Do she and your dad talk? Does he have a girlfriend? They always finished by asking me to tell them more about him.
But women didn’t know my father had coached me in this fishing game. For the last two years, each time we went out, each woman’s attention he grabbed, he gave me a simple task: Answer the questions, but don’t be too honest. I had always been a bad liar, so I only answered what I wanted to. I told them that my mother lived in Maryland, and that they weren’t in contact, but I tastefully left out that each time she calls to talk to me, he paces the floor and tries to take the phone, wanting to beg her to get back together. I told them that he didn’t have a girlfriend, but again, left out that he never did. And the ones who did become his girlfriend, never stayed around long enough to become serious, growing tired of his drinking and lack of job security. I tell them that my father is a painter, working with a family friend on houses as they need redecorating. They asked follow up questions, more so to each other, and if they were to me, I tuned them out, focusing on watching the beach for my father’s return.
By the time he came back, my father had an opened beer can in his hand and a huge grin on his face. I recognized he was properly drunk, more so than when he left earlier. The blonde was still hanging onto his arm, this time seeming for support rather than desire. They each carried a case of beer in one hand while my father also carried a full grocery bag. When he was close enough, I got off the towel and walked towards him. Instead of stopping like a good father would, and acknowledge the state of me: hungry, sunburnt, alone amongst strangers, he walked right past me and put the contents on the sand near the cluster of towels. I stood there, slightly in shock but more so disappointed, as he pulled snacks out for each of the women until the bag was empty. He fell back down on the towel, the blonde sitting back on his lap as they sipped their beers and ate their bags of chips. He didn’t do so much as spare me look, focusing on the blonde licking her fingers from her food.
We sat there for more hours, the women and my father taking breaks from drinking to swim out in the water and they repeated this cycle over and over. I stayed on the towel, knowing the water would only fry my red, painful skin even more. I stressed about our belongings, maybe still on the beach, maybe in someone else’s car now. I thought a lot about Mommom, who would be upset when she saw the both of us: my father drunk and me with a sunburn. I imagined the argument they would have when we got home, if she could hold in her disappointment long enough to make it the twenty-minute drive back to our house. I knew that by now, she had tried to text my father multiple times to check in with us. I also knew he hadn’t responded because his phone was with our stuff further on the beach. Maybe. Hopefully. I felt a pang of guilt that she was more than likely stressed.
When the adults were back on the beach from the water, I still hadn’t said a word to my father since he came back, and in return, he didn’t try to talk to me. The brunette that braided my hair kept offering me water bottles, giving me soft frowns and furrowed eyebrows, each time she looked between me and my father. She was the only one who seemed to recognize my situation in this ordeal. Still, it didn’t stop her from continuing to drink with him or offering to find me sunscreen, my pasty skin boiling at the seams, close to lobster in color. I sat on the towel in silence, now not looking in my father’s direction at all.
Drunk and angry with my sulking, my father decided it was time to leave.
“Stop acting like that,” he said suddenly, the cigarette tucked into the corner of his mouth.
I started to cry.
“You’re ruining the day and embarrassing yourself,” he slurred his words.
When I didn’t say anything to him, he firmly grasped the blonde’s waist and pushed her, knocking her from his lap and got up, stumbling at his own sudden movement. I wasn’t surprised at my father’s outburst; he had always been an angry drunk. I was, however, surprised he let the facade of a good father slip in such a way. He stood in front of me, staring down as if I was a dead jelly fish on the sand, a nuisance in his path. Because I was too focused on swallowing my sobs to prevent more anger on his behalf, I couldn’t respond to him. Each time I tried to open my mouth, my lips trembled, my words—unsure of what they would be— catching in my throat. After becoming more impatient with my lack of response, he declared right there that the beach day was over for me.
“We’re going to get our stuff and you’re going home.”
He said this as a promise, and despite the tears streaming down my face, I was happy with his decision. I wanted to go home, shower and eat, and spend time with my grandmother, try to forget this day and relieve some of the weight on my shoulders of having him as my father. Lost in the thoughts of finally going home, I missed most of the plans my father made with the women. Overhearing small bits and pieces, I gathered enough to assume he was going to get his stuff and go back to their hotel with them. I didn’t bother to ask questions, so when he told me it was time to go, I got up and walked with him. My father filled the walk back to our belongings with gushing over the blonde, forgetting that he yelled at me only moments ago.
Our stuff was luckily still there.
While I cleaned the towels of their sand, put the beach chairs in their bags, and packed our things without his help, I listened as he called my grandmother, never once apologizing for ignoring the many texts and missed calls he had from her. He tried to hide the slur in his voice, the years of practice made it barely noticeable. If Mommom had noticed, I couldn’t tell based on his responses. I could tell by his constant eye rolling and heavy sighs that she was angry with him, though. Instead of owning up and apologizing for the lack of communication, something he never did, he lied and said he had been in the water and the phone was on silent. He asked if she could pick the both of us up soon outside of a hotel, noting that I was tired and cranky. Only a half true statement.
“Is everything packed?” he asked when he was off the phone.
“Yes,” I said.
“Let’s go back to the girls. I’m going to stay at the hotel,” he said.
“You’re not coming back to the house?”
“No. I want to have fun. They packed while we were here, so everything is good to go.”
Thankfully, he helped me carry our things as we trekked back down to the beach and in front of the hotel. He didn’t bother to answer any of my questions about what would happen when we got to the hotel.
I sat on the bench outside of the hotel, waiting for my grandmother to pick me up. My father left me there long enough for two strangers on separate occasions to stop and ask if I was okay. I couldn’t tell them what really happened— that my father sat me on this bench a while ago, told me to not talk to strangers while I waited to be picked up, and walked into the lobby of the hotel, not once looking back as he met the blonde at the main entrance. I couldn’t tell them that he coerced me into lying to my grandmother, that I was supposed to tell her he ran into the hotel to use the bathroom if she got here before he returned to make it look like he had been sitting with me the whole time. I couldn’t tell them that the tears on my cheeks weren’t just from my deeply reddened skin or the hunger growing in my stomach or even that I was afraid of what could happen to me out here, so instead, I told them that my father went into the hotel to use the bathroom and would return immediately. Thankfully, they believed it. One offered to sit with me and wait. I told them that it wasn’t necessary, and as they walked away, I almost wish they hadn’t. I played the part of a daughter who had a loving dad, one who was coming back as soon as he possibly could, not once forgetting the danger that his young daughter could face if left alone in our busy tourist season. And they left me there, much like he did.
My grandmother’s car approached shortly after the last stranger offered to sit with me. As her white Kia pulled up directly in front of me, I could already see the frown forming on her face at my situation. My father, who must have been able to see where I was sitting from inside the hotel, staggered, slow and wobbly, out of the automatic doors and appeared at my side. As she got out of the car, circled it to open the trunk and help me put our belongings in the trunk, my father rambled on and on about how he was in the bathroom, that he hadn’t left me, and he would be right back. This time, he was unable to hide each syllable that bounced off his swollen tongue, slick with alcohol. My grandmother didn’t say a word to him. Instead, she continued to look at me, tears heavy in my eyes, and asked me to get in the car. Outside, she and my father exchanged words, too muffled for me to hear through the windows and the radio playing. He walked back into the hotel as she sat in the driver’s seat. Our ride home was silent except for the few questions my grandmother asked about our day, never pushing me too much for answers. When we got home, she helped me into a cool bath, rubbed aloe on my blistered skin, and made me dinner.
When we were done eating, my grandmother sobbed alone in the kitchen, standing at our breakfast bar. Her tears rushed out like waves. I knew she was crying from the day, but I also understood, from her slumped shoulders and increased breaths, that it was more than that. For the first time since my father has lived with us here and to my knowledge, she left him without giving him the chance to recover from his actions. Instead of letting him spew of an apology she wouldn’t forgive right away, she drove off, leaving him to his own devices. She hadn’t talked about him since we got home, a sign she wasn’t ready to, unlike the other times where she would apologize for his behavior and note that he wasn’t aware of the outcomes of his actions. I realized then, watching my grandmother struggle with the reality of having my father as her son, that I could no longer be his bait. Being his wing woman required more sacrifices than I could give or want to give. I deserved a father who protected me, not one who roped me into a tangled fishing net. As my grandmother eyed me looking at her, she swiped her eyes with the back of her hand, inhaled a shallow breath, and joined me for dinner. She too deserved a son more deserving.
Kayla Jessop’s nonfiction has been published in Tempo, Harpur Palate, Broad River Review, You Might Need To Hear This, Lindenwood Review, Variant Literature, Welter, Press Pause Press, Chapter House Journal, and Newfound. She does her best writing while sitting in coffee shops and daydreaming about possibilities. In her free time, when she’s not teaching, she enjoys cross-stitching and watching New Girl.