Free Swim

We could do things in water we couldn’t on land. We flipped our bodies like Easter eggs in bowls of vinegar and food coloring. We conducted orchestras with our toes. We begged our moms to take us every day. There were five of us that summer—me and Heather, my little sister; our neighbors, Emily and June Lee; and a smushed-faced boy from across the street, Matt, who we hated because he talked all day about science.

“Oysters and worms have three hearts,” he told us. It was a Tuesday in July. Tuesdays were free swim at Swope Pool. Everywhere we went had to be free, even though it was only a dollar-fifty to get in on regular days. It added up, my mom said. We were economizing, she said. Our moms had a whole schedule of free swims laid out for the days left until Labor Day. School was far away—last year long gone, next year not even a tiny sadness yet. The cicadas weren’t in the trees, though they would be in a week or two. My sister used to think the trees were breathing when the cicadas came to sing. She was little then, so we told her yes. Mom and Dad and me. We told her the trees breathed heavy at the end of summer because they were hot, like Sammy, our old panting dog.

“You’ve never even seen an oyster,” said Emily Lee. We were in our station wagon, Matt and Heather and me in the way-back, where there were no seats. June Lee was in the backseat with her mom, Mrs. Lee, and Emily Lee all the way up front next to my mom, who was driving.

“Our dad eats tons of oysters,” said my sister. “When he goes on business trips, he always gets them.”

Our dad didn’t really take business trips. He and Mom were taking a break and he lived in a hotel downtown. Heather knew this, too. But when Dad came to take us to dinner on Saturday nights, we’d play this game where he’d pretend he just came back from Aruba. Do Arubians wear a lot of rubies? Heather would ask. Wear them? Dad would say, with a look like Heather was crazy. No, no, they catch fish with them! Would you wear a worm around your neck?

We liked this game a lot. Our mother did not. She was a modern woman who could face the truth, she said. She wanted us to be modern too, she said, and sipped white wine from a big pink tumbler.

“Gross! Your dad eats hearts?!” shrieked June Lee, as we drove through the park’s gates and wound through the roads toward the pool. The park was old, on land donated by a man, Colonel Swope, who wasn’t a real colonel, but people called him that because he was so rich. He died under mysterious circumstances when his doctor gave him poison. I knew all this because I asked my librarian, Margaret. Every day that wasn’t free swim was library. Margaret said I could call her at the library when I wanted to know anything. I liked how I knew all about Swope and nobody else did. You didn’t have to run around telling all your good stuff, like Matt.

Swope Pool was far into the park, under the trees. It had an old stone building with locker rooms that smelled like pee. When we got there, we usually ran through it fast to get to the pool. But our moms changed in there, getting bare naked before they put on their one-pieces with little skirts. That Tuesday, when they were changing, I went into a stall and sat with my feet up on the toilet so they couldn’t see me. I started snooping after my last birthday, when Dad didn’t show up in time for cake and ice cream. We had to eat the cake, even though we didn’t want it. Because you can’t let what he does dictate what you do, Mom said. I ate two big pieces, to show how un-dictated-to I was. But I still felt bad, like my insides were a balloon getting squeezed hard until all the air was in my head. Later, I stood outside their bedroom door and listened to the yelling. Mostly Mom yelling. Mostly not about my birthday.

“This is the problem. Right here,” Mom said, squeezing the skin of her stomach in both hands. “He told me the last time we did it to keep my clothes on. He said it all sexy, like it was some big turn-on. Should’ve known then, I guess.” I looked at my own stomach, which was bare in my two-piece. It wasn’t as big as Mom’s, but I could grab it in my hands and squish it together around my belly button, like she did.

“Well, if you’ve got one problem, I’ve got two,” Mrs. Lee said, and smacked her big butt with both hands so it jiggled. “Really, Jean, I don’t think that has anything to do with it.”

“Maybe not. But if Greg wasn’t into it anymore, wouldn’t you rather just know? At least have the chance to do something.” Greg was Dr. Lee, who was also our dentist. Mrs. Lee was naked, bent over now, rubbing sunscreen on her legs. I imagined Dr. Lee in his dentist outfit, kissing Mrs. Lee’s big naked butt through his mask.

“No. I wouldn’t.” Mrs. Lee said this soft, in a different voice than before. Mom stood up. She stepped into her bathing suit and wiggled from side to side as she pulled it over her hips.

“I saw Jim yesterday, driving,” Mom said. “He drove down our street, on purpose. With some business woman with short hair.” She ran her fingers through her own long hair. “She was talking on his car phone. He got a car phone. Didn’t think to give me the number though.”

Mrs. Lee got dressed fast, scooting into her suit and snapping the straps over her shoulders. Mom could get going, talking a lot. Talking so much she forgot who you were.

“Jess, though, when I see him, it’s like seeing a part of me. Like a physical part. Like he’s driving off with my arm or something. And he gets this whole new life and I get what?”

Mrs. Lee looked at Mom without saying anything. She had heard this before, you could tell. In the swimsuits, Mom and Mrs. Lee’s backs were big white Us. Their stomachs were lumpy, with faded tropical flowers on them. Mrs. Lee gave Mom a hug, rubbing their flowers together. Then she wrapped a towel around her waist and went out in the sun. Mom sat down on the bench, hunched over. The U went up and down—slow, then fast, then slow again.

My dad was wrong, I thought, looking through a crack in the door. She looked much better naked.

In the water, we played Under the Sea. Emily and June were sea horses, Heather and I were dolphins. Matt was a shark who tried to eat us all.

“I wanna be shark,” complained Emily, who had the teeth for it.

“You can’t be. You’re pregnant. In sea horses, the man gets pregnant. You’re the man and your sister just got you pregnant.” Matt grinned in triumph.

“Sick! I’m telling Mom!” yelled June Lee, who was always telling on people for things.

But Matt didn’t care if you told on him. What do you know about seahorses? Matt would say to Mrs. Lee, like he was an adult. Mrs. Lee was the kind of mom who wouldn’t say anything back. She’d just stand there with a mad look on her face and think about Matt’s mom, Shanna. Shanna was a hippie in the sixties, but now she had a job downtown. Which was why Matt had to come with us. Matt was allowed to call his mom Shanna too, because of equal rights. I heard our mom say Matt’s mom was a yuppie climber, but I didn’t have a chance yet to ask Margaret what it meant.

Emily lunged at Matt. Matt went under the water and came up hard under Emily’s legs. He lifted her in the air, then flipped her over his shoulder and dragged her head in the water. The lifeguard blew her whistle. Matt let go of Emily’s legs and dumped her on her head.

“I can do that because you’re a man, even though you’re pregnant,” said Matt, smirking. “It’s okay for me to hurt you because you’re a man.”

June and Heather and I watched, excited. Matt knew he shouldn’t mess with Emily. But some part of Matt had to keep messing with her. Like he didn’t have a choice. I felt sorry for him. Emily blew her nose in her hand to get the water out.

“Do you wanna die now or later?” Emily asked, not looking at Matt as she wrung water from her hair, which was still blonde but would turn green from chlorine by the end of the summer.

“Everyone dies eventually,” said Matt, shrinking down in the water a little.

“Okay,” said Emily, “You can die later, but I’m not going to tell you first.” She laid back and floated with her ears underwater so she couldn’t hear us anymore. I went over to Matt, who was thinking about jumping on Emily’s stomach. He didn’t know it, but now she would be ready all the time.

“You should’ve let her kill you now,” I told him. “Now you have to wait all day for it.”

“She can’t kill me,” he said, looking at her with his little grey eyes that needed glasses at home. “I’m still the shark.”

At the snack bar, during adult swim, we stood in line dripping water into pools around our feet. Water ran down our thighs and kept dripping from the crotches of our suits, where the material was thickest.

“Eww, you’re peeing, you’re peeing!” Matt yelled at us, as loud as he could. Other kids waiting turned around to see. June and Heather looked like they might cry and tried to step out of the puddles.

“You can tell when somebody’s peeing,” Emily said, “because it’s yellow. Does this look yellow to you?” She swished her foot around in the pool where she stood. Then Matt shut up because that was science. I smiled at the ground. All the time, I wished I was Emily. Someday she would have a car phone and cut her blond hair short.

In line, I was in charge of the money for my sister and me. “We have to economize,” I told Heather with my most serious face. “So just chips. No drink. Mom has water in the thermos.” Heather thought our mom told me to say this, so she didn’t fight me. I economized about every third day at the pool and any other time our mom put me in charge of the money. Sometimes I economized from a pile of fives and tens she kept in an ice bucket in the kitchen. She didn’t notice if I did it while she drank white wine on the porch.

Some nights, though, I liked to sit with Mom out there. We rocked back and forth in these metal chairs. One night, I asked her if the break with Dad was really a break, like summer break. Heather was already in bed. Lightning bugs made little dents in the dark.

I needed to prepare myself for the reality that the break was permanent, she said. Not a break, she said, swirling the tumbler in the air. The end of the marriage. She had a funny smile on her face when she said that. She had called it a break in a spirit of hope. You should always have a little hope, she said. Part of life is endings, she said, but endings are just beginnings in disguise. She said it all dreamy, with half her lip twitching, in a voice like she was reading from a book.

After that, I started economizing on my own. I didn’t know what I was saving for. But I knew I felt a little hope when I tucked another dollar inside my winter boots at the back of the closet.

When we got our food, we sat on the edge of the pool cross-legged, scraping our ankle bones on the cement. During adult swim, you couldn’t even have your feet in the water. Mom and Mrs. Lee stood in the pool together, chatting and doing deep squats. Most of the adults looked lonely. Some of them swam very fast and straight, across the pool and back again. Other ones floated on their backs with their eyes closed or stood just looking at the space all around them.

“Dad’s coming back on Friday,” Heather said suddenly, to everyone.

“Where’d he go?” asked June, picking at a soggy Frito.

“I don’t know. He doesn’t tell us till he gets home.” Heather closed her eyes, which I knew were getting blurry and sore from chlorine. “Probably Aruba though. He goes there a lot.”

I wanted Heather to shut up. I didn’t like her talking about Dad. I felt that squeezed-balloon feeling again. You don’t have to tell everyone your business, Mom said. Besides, Aruba was just a game that made us less sad before Dad went back to his hotel. When Heather talked about it like it was true, all of a sudden, I was mad it wasn’t.

I reached over and grabbed Heather’s chips and dumped them in the water. She screamed like somebody was murdering her. All the adults, even the fast-swimming ones, stopped to look at us.

“Hey! I saw you!” our mom yelled at me from across the pool. She didn’t care if everyone heard. Her whole face squinted up when she was mad, but I could only see half of it. The other half was underwater, swimming at me. Our mom was a champion swimmer in high school. She wore a Triple-A bra cup, which was terrible for life, she said, but perfect for swimming.

“What the poop, Erin? Seriously, what the poop?” Mom was yelling loud, hoisting herself out of the water next to me. She dripped everywhere, got all our chips wet. She started saying “poop” instead of “hell” or “fuck” when my dad moved out. Because those were was his words. When we told Dad about the “poop”-saying, he said he knew one bad word that definitely belonged to her.

“Why did you do that? Seriously?”

I knew why, but I couldn’t explain it. Mom was giant, standing over me. The flowers on her stomach bulged out when she breathed. I looked up at her face, but I could only see her eyes and forehead with her stomach in the way. Red eyes, wrinkled forehead.

June and Emily and Matt scooted back from us like crabs. The chips were floating away, greasy and gross, making me sorry I messed up the pool. Mrs. Lee was still out there, up to her neck, watching. I looked down at the cement. I decided never to move from that spot again. Even when the sun went down and the bats came out. I didn’t care what happened. Behind us, the trees were blowing in the wind, like crinkly paper. Like the only sound left in the world.

“I didn’t do AAN-NEE-THING!” screamed Heather, making everybody turn around and look again.

“You’re pushing it, kid. You’re really pushing me today,” growled Mom, in my ear. I didn’t look up again. All I saw was her pruned-out toes. Her feet had these blue veins and skinny bones, like you could see her foot skeleton. Dad said Heather and I were lucky not to get Mom’s feet. She yanked at my elbow, but I yanked it back down.

“Move or I’ll move you,” she said, still holding my arm. She grabbed my wrist and yanked again, hurting my shoulder. Somewhere behind me, the Lee sisters and Matt were watching—another thing I had to remember not to care about.

She should’ve given me a last chance. Usually, there was a last chance. Instead, Mom squatted down and put her champion-swimmer arms right under my armpits. She wrapped them around my chest then laced her fingers together like she was going to pray. She stood halfway up and grunted, pulled my butt off the ground. Her hands crushed the air out of me, palms against my chest. She pulled me an inch back, then two before I started to kick. But Mom was stronger. I tried to dig my heels in, but the concrete ripped at my skin. Her hands were near my mouth, almost close enough to bite, but not. She was dragging me, fast, the backs of my legs scraping the concrete. I could hear a heartbeat, mine or hers, I didn’t know. We went backward past Emily and June and Matt. Past a bunch of teenagers who turned around to watch. Past the lifeguard, who saw us, but didn’t say anything because we weren’t drowning. All the way to our towels spread out on the concrete, next to the fence.

“You’re out. Half an hour,” she said, dumping me in a pile. “Put a towel on or don’t complain if you’re burned later.” She walked fast back to Heather, who was still fake-crying.

I started breathing again. I wanted big gulps of air, but I could only get small ones. The breeze behind me was cool, the opposite of the hot feeling in my chest. Near the fence was always cool because it backed up to the park where the trees were breathing out oxygen. Matt explained that to me at the beginning of the summer. How what we breathe out, the trees breathe in and vice versa. I didn’t believe it was true. How could the world work so perfect like that? That was science, Matt said. The whole world was one big puzzle. When it was solved, everything would make perfect sense. Thousands of years still had to go into the perfect-sense-making, so we would be dead when perfection happened. But the important thing was our contribution. I liked him when he said that. I felt a little hope when he said that.

The backs of my heels looked like hamburger. I was hot in my chest, but cold and shaky in my arms and stomach. I pulled a towel around me. On the concrete, I could see little pieces of my skin. Mom would be sorry, I knew. She would put Bactine on the scrapes while I cried about the stinging, and maybe buy us McDonald’s for dinner. But I wouldn’t care. The not-caring was still inside me, only deeper, like she had forced it down with her hands.

“Hey, seriously, what the poop?” said a voice above me, not Mom’s.

Matt plunked down next to me. It was forbidden to talk to me while I was punished. But Matt had his own things he didn’t care about.

“Your face, that’s what,” I said, not looking at him.

He stuck his tongue out and crossed his eyes. His smushed-up face made him look like he was saying “so there” all the time.

“Are you out ‘cause Emily’s gonna kill you soon?” I asked him, wanting him to go away and not see my legs. It was getting toward the end of the day. I wanted to ball myself up in the towels and stick with my plan to never move again.

“No,” he said. “I was coming to talk to you.”

“You better get in there. Nothing worse than a chicken shark.” I tucked my knees together and pulled the towel so it covered all of me.

“Shanna says she feels bad for your mom. Like sitting on the porch like that.” He was trying to be nice, but Mom and Shanna could go die for all I cared.

“Shanna says maybe your mom should get a job,” he said, quiet now, different.

“Oh yeah?” I said. “Should she be a yuppie climber like your mom?” I hoped Matt knew what it meant and that he’d be mad.

“Shanna is an assistant. Like, to help people. Maybe your mom would like helping people.” He said it so gentle I almost hit him.

“At least I know where my dad is,” I said, turning to look at him, the hot feeling in my chest going into my head. Mom told me never to talk about Matt’s dad. He was a hippie, too, but stayed a hippie and did drugs all day in California.

“My dad is a musician! He sends us tapes all the time and they’re GREAT.” Matt looked at my ankles, which were soaking spots of blood into the towel wrapped around them. “At least my dad didn’t leave me with a mom like your mom.”

I wanted to kill him, but everything on me hurt. Even the parts where I didn’t care.

“Uh, hello? Your mom leaves you with my mom every day. And at least I have a real dad with a real job. Saturday, he’s taking us to Ocho Hombres for dinner.” I made a “so-there” face. Some of the hot went out of my chest.

But when I said that about Saturday, something happened to Matt. All his face-smush fell down a little. Around his eyes and his cheeks and his chin. Half his lip twitched, like Mom’s did when she talked about endings being beginnings. Matt’s dad would never drive up in his Cutlass Supreme and take Matt to Ocho Hombres for virgin daiquiris. Even though I wasn’t caring about anything, I wanted to fix Matt’s face. I pulled one of the towels over his shoulders so he wouldn’t get sunburned.

“Hey, you wanna know something cool?” I asked him. He shook his head no, but I kept on anyway.

“This whole park belonged to this guy, Colonel Swope, before it was a park. When he came out here from Yale, only Indians were here. He chased off most of them…but there’s still a secret tribe somewhere in the park.” I didn’t plan to say that, but it sounded more hopeful than the real story. I hoped Margaret wouldn’t be mad at me for changing it. Matt’s eyes smushed themselves up again.

“Do you think we could find them?” he asked.

I thought for a minute, looked down at my legs, then over at Mrs. Lee and Mom. They were sitting on the pool steps where you get in, water up to their waists. They were drinking out of a Thermos that was different than the Thermos Mom kept our water in.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe we could. That tribe is so deep in the forest, though, we might only ever find clues they exist.”

“Cool!” said Matt. “Let’s sneak out the front and go look.” I shook my head. My legs were hurting now like they didn’t before.

“Next Tuesday, okay?” I said. “Besides, you better go let Emily kill you now.” Matt looked sad again, but not like before. He had a right to. Emily’s killings were the worst—dunkers, pinches, Indian burns, stomach-fat twists.

“Or, you know, stay here. She can’t kill you on land,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Matt said. “She’ll just kill me tomorrow.” He lifted his head. We pulled our towels around us. The trees were making oxygen behind us, keeping us alive. In a week, the cicadas would come back and we would yell over their noise while we played kickball in our yards. Everything should have been good, but it wasn’t.

“Always get killed tomorrow,” I said and closed my eyes against the sun.

At home that night after the so-so-sorrys, the Bactine, the McDonald’s, I went up to my closet and got out my snow boots. I closed the door to my room and put a chair under the doorknob. When I turned the boots upside down and shook them over the bed, the money came out slow, all hot and stuck to the fabric insides. I counted a hundred and forty-five dollars. I took twenty-five out then rolled the rest up, tucked it back in the left toe—that was for librarian college, I decided. In one pile in front of me, I put five one-dollar bills. Flint arrowheads were a dollar at the Toy and Science store. I figured five scattered around in the park dirt would prove to Matt the secret tribe existed. In the second pile, I put a twenty-dollar bill, birthday money, not economized. I took a pen and wrote on it tiny letters: Use only in case of. Then I thought for a minute and drew a long line at the end of the sentence. When I needed it, I could fill in the blank. I folded the twenty and tucked it in a little pocket I carved in my shoe. Then I went downstairs and out to the porch, which was empty right then.

I sat down at the top of the concrete steps, the warmness of them burning my scrapes. When Heather was in bed, Mom came out with her wine. She sat behind me, in her metal chair. We watched the lights come on in our neighbors’ houses—at the Lees’ first, then Matt and Shanna’s. Tiny red mites climbed my arms and I squished them flat with my fingers so they looked like freckles. When the sun went down, we sat in the dark. In Matt’s house, the TV turned the living room walls blue and white. Two brown heads watched, shoved forks in their mouths. At the Lees’, the blinds were closed everywhere but the kitchen where the just-washed dishes dripped in the dish rack. From the backyard, Sammy barked at something he couldn’t catch. Ice popped and slid in Mom’s glass.

When we’d been sitting a long time, eyes adjusted to the dark, a Cutlass Supreme drove down the street, slow. I waved but it kept going, red tail lights down the hill. I reached down my calves, felt the scab lumps on my heels. Tomorrow was free swim at Overland Park. The chlorine would sting, but I would jump in, like always. Tomorrow, those scabs might change into anything. Jellyfish stings on a deep-sea explorer. Close encounter with a shark.