by Unknown
Aunt Zo saw it happen and jumped onto the beach. She waded in right past the kids and their watermelons, and pulled me out. I hadn’t been in long enough to start drowning, so she just had to deal with a screaming hysterical kid, and then deal with my mom when she found out she’d missed the whole thing and I could have drowned. It was another of those it-takes-a-village moments my childhood was filled with.
Still, after that you couldn’t get me near the water unless we had to take a boat ride somewhere, and then I sat in the middle of the boat with my arms wrapped up around my life-jacket. I wouldn’t play in the water at all anymore, wouldn’t even go near the beach. The year I was five, everyone just laughed it off, said I’d get over it. When I was six, mom started trying to do things to entice me into the water. She let me pick out a bathing suit, which I ended up wearing while running around on the boardwalk. She bought every kind of inflatable toy and water-wing type thing, but that didn’t work either.
The following winter, she enrolled me in swim classes at the local YMCA. Evidently, I pitched a fit every time they tried to get me in the water with the other kids. Just screamed and cried and wouldn’t budge. The teacher gave up, told my mother to wait another year, that I “wasn’t developmentally ready”. That really got my mother going.
“That idiot doesn’t know what she’s talking about, ‘developmentally ready’. Of course Hannah’s scared. Someone takes a header at four, she’s gonna be. But you get over it. I swear, the teachers today are incompetent boobs. Can’t even get a little kid to learn how to swim. Fine, I’ll do it myself,” she’d said, nodding, to anyone who stopped by the first few days we got to the island the following summer. I remember hearing that and a wall going up. I was not going to swim!
My birthday was in early May and we had already celebrated at home with a small party in our back yard, but suddenly, my mother kept talking about having a birthday party for me on the island.
“So, birthday-girl, what do you think about a party in your honor? Cake, ice cream? We could get you a Carvel cake with those crunchies you like. I know, let’s make it a mermaid party! Wouldn’t that be fun? You and your friends can all pretend to be mermaids, and we’ll get shell and pearl necklaces for you all to wear. Ooh, this will be great!”
I didn’t respond, didn’t know what to say. The other kids on the island were nice, but we weren’t friends. I didn’t really fit the Captain’s mold. The other kids were all way ahead of me, diving and sailing already. It was hard to imagine them wanting to play mermaids with me, even more impossible as I wouldn’t go near the water.
The day of the party, my mother gave me a huge beautifully wrapped present with a filmy blue bow, the box decorated all over with glued-on shells. I was excited, hoping it was a new Barbie or a Barbie outfit. Instead, it was a shiny turquoise one-piece bathing suit.
“Don’t you love it? It looks just like a mermaid, so pretty. Perfect for today.”
“I’m not swimming, Mommy. I thought we were just going to have a regular party. Why do we need to go in the water?”
“Oh, come on, sweetheart. Everyone can swim. So can you. It’s not bad, it’s fun!”
It got worse when everyone showed up in their bathing suits. Evidently, this was definitely a swimming party, only I hadn’t been told. Other than the cake, which was cut and served inside before it melted, the Barefooter house lacking a gas refrigerator and freezer, all the games my mom had organized were water games. I refused to go in, wouldn’t even put the bathing suit on, and my mom and I got in a huge fight. The kids played and had fun anyway. I ended up watching my own party from a window, safe inside the house.
I thought that was the end of it, but first thing the next morning, my mother was waiting for me outside on the front steps. Those were the days before we had our own house, when we stayed in the Barefooter house every summer, which was like living in Grand Central Station with everyone coming and going and impromptu parties firing off all the time. But in the mornings, it was quiet, just the two of us and those were the nicest times with my mother, when we’d tell each other about our dreams and try to figure out what they meant. Mom would make our breakfast, usually muffins and fruit and canned pineapple juice, and if it was a nice day we’d sit on the steps and bird watch. Mom knew all the types of birds that lived on Captain’s, what kind they were and what they ate and where they lived, and would point them out.
That morning, though, she didn’t have breakfast for me. She was just sitting there wearing her red bikini with the turquoise bathing suit she’d given me for my birthday on her lap, waiting. When I stepped out onto the stairs above her, she looked up at me and said. “Good morning. Okay, today you’re going to learn how to swim.” She wasn’t smiling or trying to make it sound fun, she just said it like it was a done deal. It scared me to death.
She stood up and said, “Come on, now, before breakfast. Then we’ll eat.” She handed me the bathing suit and I looked at her and she looked back without comment. I felt trapped. I went inside and put it on, and I started shaking all over. When I back outside, I was still shaking, but she didn’t seem to notice. She just marched down to the water with me following, going as slowly as I could. I didn’t even want to put one toe in that water.
“Mommy?”
“Yes, Hannah.”
“There are witches in the water.”
“No, there are not. I swim in the water every day and there are no witches,” she said, wading out ahead of me.
I stepped gingerly down onto the beach from the boardwalk. “They only come after little kids. They don’t like grown-ups.”
“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not a little kid. You’re a big girl now.”
“No, I’m still little.”
“Not according to anyone but you. Come on, I’m right here. I’ll stay right by your side the whole time. You’re going to be a champion swimmer in no time,” she said, turning around when she was hip-deep in the water and motioning to me to come in.
I stood at the edge of the water and shook my head. I wasn’t budging.
That was when things went bad. She walked over to me and started pulling me in the water. Before, she’d tried to entice me, tried to make it all appealing, but she’d never used physical force. Now, she was literally dragging me in the water, saying “Come on, it’s not scary.”
But it was scary. My heart started pounding really hard and I couldn’t breathe all of the sudden. I started making this squeaking noise, bugging my eyes out at her to let her know how scared I was because I couldn’t get the breath to tell her, but she just kept pulling me into the water saying over and over again that there was nothing to be afraid of. I was getting in deeper than I had ever went, already up past my hips, and the deeper I went in, the more I panicked.
That was when something clawed at my ankle. If I thought I was scared before, nothing could prepare me for this lightning bolt shooting through me. It was probably a crab or something, but at the time it was the clawing hand of a witch, grabbing at me from the depths, about to pull me down to my death. I screamed bloody murder and my mom started screaming back. She thought I was just being difficult.
She yelled, “Stop it now, young lady! You’re making a big deal out of nothing!”
Then she really looked at me, saw my face, my eyes rolling around, and realized. “Oh, my sweetie! You’re really really afraid, aren’t you?”
She held me and helped me back out of the water, with me still shrieking and crying, nameless things brushing by my legs, long cold bony fingers reaching for me. It took me an hour just to breath properly after that. She didn’t apologize, she never apologized, but she did everything else she could to make it up to me, giving in to every whim I had, coddling me like no tomorrow.
For a week or two after that, I thought she’d given up, and I was relieved. That was that, or so I thought. I did overhear her talking quietly with the Barefooters about it, but they’d shush each other if I walked in the room.
Then, one
morning while we were sitting out on the steps having breakfast, she turned to me and said, “You know, Hannah, some day you’re going to want to learn how to swim. Really. And whenever you do, I’ll be here to teach you. And we’ll do it slowly this time. I promise. Because I didn’t know it, but your fear is real. It’s as real as this cup of coffee. I didn’t know that before because I was never afraid of the water. I didn’t understand. But I do now.”
That was the closest she had ever come to apologizing to me. Although I thought she was crazy if she thought I’d want to learn how to swim, it was nice. It made me feel safe.
It’s funny how life sets things up, because it was only a few days later when I went to a clambake on the island with my mom and all the Barefooters. That year, I had them all to myself. My mom wasn’t dating anyone, Aunt Zo was between husbands, and Aunt Pam and Aunt Amy were still single. They paid a lot of attention to me, even when we were out at parties and events on the island. I was like a pet and I followed them everywhere.
The truth was that, though I had some friends from school at home, I never really fit in on Captain’s. If there are words I could use for most down-islanders – because we really didn’t know any up-islanders except for Aunt Zo – it would be “tough” and “athletic”. I was neither tough nor athletic. I was basically a geek who loved to pretend and to read, and both preferences were always lauded by the Barefooters. I was the creative genius who would make them a million dollars someday with my brilliant play or something.
But at this party, for the first time, they shooed me away. “Go play, honey,” they kept saying, nodding at the crowd of kids running around in the yard and the others splashing in the water around the dock and diving from it. I looked at the kids and then back at my mom and aunts as if to say, “Are you crazy?” Finally, they started walling me off, putting their backs to me. I was in shock.
Feeling rejected and not having anything else to do, I wandered over to where the kids were playing and watched them for a while. They were playing a game they called “Punchball” or just “Punch”. In this game whoever was “it” would have to carry the ball – a volleyball - and try to smack it against another kid’s head. Meanwhile, other kids could do anything to “it” including throwing sand at the kid’s eyes, tripping him, and kicking him in the butt, but you couldn’t touch the kid who was “it” with your hands or you became “it”. As with most games, the object of the game was to avoid being “it”. If the kid with the ball succeeded in hitting you in the head with the ball, then you were now “it” and subject to all the implicit torture. The game was like a living hell as far as I was concerned, and, standing there, I started to worry that I would be required to play. I wasn’t wearing a bathing suit, so I thought it would be safer to go out on the dock and watch the kids swimming.
The water games were more innocent and non-violent, mostly just swimming and bobbing around clinging to a neon-green inflatable raft the kids were playing with. It actually looked pretty fun, but, of course, I sat far away from the edge of the dock, and just watched. Some of the kids invited me to swim, but I said I had forgotten to wear my swimsuit. Then they suggested I go get one, so I said that I might, but I just kept sitting there. This was when John Nugent, the most popular kid among all the kids in my age group, sat down next to me. He was muscular for a seven year old and tanned a deep brown, his dark hair gilded with gold where it had been bleached by the sun. He was still dripping from swimming.
“Good idea,” he said, nodding and leaning back on his elbows. “I’m tired, too. I’m done in, I tell you.” He said this last with the weary voice of an old man. I guessed his father probably said that a lot.
I nodded, hoping he would think that was the reason why I was sitting there, watching instead of playing. But, no.
“Wait. How could you be tired? You haven’t been swimming. Were you playing Punch?” He squinted at me, and then beyond at the yard where the kids were still running around attacking each other.
“Uh, no. I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“But how?”
I looked at him and was trying to formulate an excuse when he said, “You don’t come down and play with us, usually. Why not?”
That was when his girlfriend, Shelly, climbed up the ladder to the dock, squeezed the water out of her hair, and came over to sit down next to him. They weren’t really dating, of course. Shelly just called herself his girlfriend and followed him around a lot. She must have overheard his question because she went ahead and answered for me.
“Oh, she doesn’t play with us. She’s afraid of everything. She’s even afraid of the water. Wouldn’t swim at her own birthday party; I was there.”
John bugged his eyes out at her and then at me, “The water? How can you be afraid of the water?”
I shrugged and tried to look casual, but I felt my face getting hot. “I don’t know.” I wasn’t about to tell them about the witches, about the other dark things that moved under there. For some reason, these kids had been immune to those horrors.
“That’s weird. So, you’ll never ever go swimming?” He was looking at me carefully.
That was when I realized he was undecided about me. Shelly had written me off, but not John. Not yet. This was my chance to fit it, be more like the other kids.
“No, I’m going to swim, I’m learning this summer.” I nodded, like I was sure, but a fluttering started in my chest and throat. I looked away from him, at the other kids wriggling on the raft and kicking boisterously, plumes of water splashing up and catching the sunlight. I could do that: kick. Couldn’t I?
Shelly spoke up. “I’d like to see that. You were so afraid, you hid in the house. At your own party! Missed everything!”
I wouldn’t look at her, just felt the shame I’d felt at my party hitting me again, sinking down and soaking me through. That was the final thing, the thing that pushed me to decide. I nodded again. “Well, I’m gonna learn. Just wait and see.”
Mom, of course, was thrilled. And she was true to her word: we went slowly. Aunt Amy came over just before lunch every day and the two of them taught me.
“Backup,” Aunt Amy said, “Between the two of us, we can protect you. Not from witches. There are no witches, Hannah. But, there are things in the water: crabs and fish and other little creatures. They all live down there, partying it up, just like in The Little Mermaid. They’re so busy playing their shell horns and dancing around, they’re not even interested in you. Unless you step on them, of course. But, then, they’re just trying to get away before you step on them again.”
Aunt Zo came, too, the first few times. She was pacing and shouting out assurances to me while they were teaching me to float on my back, holding me up in the water. She kept saying, “You can do it, sweetie!” The thing was that her shouting was interrupting their lesson, and they had to repeat themselves.
Finally, Aunt Amy swore a little and told us to take a break. We all came out of the water and then Aunt Amy took Aunt Zo aside. I don’t know what she said, but Aunt Zo took off, didn’t even say goodbye, and didn’t come back until the next day. Missed a whole party at the Barefooter House that afternoon and evening. When she saw me again the next afternoon, she got teary-eyed and hugged me and said she was proud of me.
It was still scary when I went in the water. I tightened up and couldn’t breathe all over again, but my Mom and Aunt Amy would back off on whatever it was we were trying. They were both really great about it, even when I refused to do something they told me to, they just said, “Okay, when you’re ready, we’ll do that.”
We started with my floating on my back with them holding me. Then I practiced just putting my face underwater while standing in waist-high water. Then I floated face down in the water with them on either side, which was scary but exciting too, because it was more like real swimming. Then I started doing little bursts of swimming followed by longer ones, just doggy paddling at first, and before I knew it, my mom said, “You’re swimming! Look at you!”
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After that, it just got easy. The panic left for real. I could breathe and relax, even when I was in deep water. I learned all the strokes and started practicing diving with my mom, who was the champion diver of the group, the one with the trophies in her study at home. I remembered the photos of her diving and those trophies and wanted to be a champion, too.
One morning, when it was just me and my mom, I got ambitious. I told her I wanted to swim across the channel to the causeway and back, just like she always used to when she was little. Mom had been cutting up some strawberries for our breakfast in our tiny kitchen. She put down the knife on the cutting board and turned to look at me. “Are you sure? I’ll swim with you.”
“No, I can do it by myself.”
“Okay, I’ll come out to the dock to watch.”
And I was fine for the first half. Got over to the other side no problem. It was when I turned and looked back. My legs and arms had grown too heavy. I was still panting and I had a stitch in my side that hurt. The island looked very far away; our house was miniature in the distance. I could see my mom’s tiny figure standing and watching me from our dock. How was I going to get back there?
I started swimming back slowly, trying to remember to roll with each stroke the way Aunt Pam had demonstrated a few days before. I felt like I was sinking in the water instead of floating. I slowed to a doggy paddle and then treaded water and looked back to see how far I’d come. I hadn’t made much progress. I could see my mother doing something on the dock. She was getting in our boat. She was coming for me.