Sarah Manley
When I was a child I was not allowed to suntan. My grandmother told me it would make me throw up. It’s true I did throw up a lot. If I ate pork or went for a long car drive in the back seat of her 1974 Triumph with the sticky hot brown seats. The smell of liquid Gravol still makes me retch, I so closely associate it with waves of sick. The sun tanning thing though was a bone of contention. Before I went outside to the saltwater pool at our country house in Discovery Bay, she would lather me in Coppertone lotion from the green top bottle. It was my bottle. The lotion was thick and white. The other kids would already have chosen sides in Marco Polo by the time I got to the pool. They didn’t need lotion, weren’t forced to use it by their own mothers who were covered in the oily orange top Coppertone. Hell, they could use baby oil if they wanted, but not me. I stamped impatiently while the cream was rubbed into every exposed inch of flesh. At 11 am sharp I had to come out of the sun. The midday sun was the worst so between eleven and three I was not allowed in the pool or on the beach. I accepted this all as fact for a long time although I wondered why the other kids did not have such strict rules. It was the throwing up, apparently.
