Written on 16 April 2019
There was the sandy haired boy, no older than her, flat on his back, unmoving, the retracting surf still sliding in underneath him, his parka jacket bulging with sea water.
Unmoving.
Mhukti wasn't moving either. She dared not approach the boy. She didn't want to touch if he was dead. If he was alive, though, and she stood there doing nothing, then it would be her fault. Impossible choices.
She thought back to the life saving demonstration she had seen that past summer. The blonde nurse had brought that weird dummy to Brownies. Mostly she just laughed with the other girls when the nurse put her mouth round the dummy. “How was brownies?” Her mum had asked her. “Some blonde lady kissed a doll.”
Her mum had been cross with her, and Mhukti now knew why as she stood frozen in the sand. It was time to act. She remembered something about the recovery position. She ran towards the body. Not wanting to touch the boy, she pulled her sleeves over her hands and heaved him on to his side. He was so heavy. The boy didn't stir. Mhukti took off down the beach towards her mother. She considered herself pretty smart, and right now she was smart enough to know when she was out of her depth.
She took her Mum to the boy. She'd never seen her mum run so fast as she did towards the Sandy haired boy. She knelt down beside him and felt his neck. She then put her head to his chest and finally her hand to his brow. She turned around to look at Mhukti, tears in her eyes, and told her to run and get the lifeguard.
The boy had died a long time before when in the sea, after he was thrown overboard sailing with his father, who was also missing. But it was many years before Mhukti stopped blaming herself for the boy's death.