Night Swim

by Jessica Keener

  He passed the joint to Kenneth who sucked on the cigarette three times. Kenneth’s cheeks puffed out like a bad trumpet player. He bent over and hacked violently.

  “Good, good stuff,” he said. “You’re not going to tell, are you, beautiful?” he said, wiping a tear from his eyes.

  He knew I wouldn’t.

  Very soon after, fatigue pressed against my shoulders. I lay down on the bed and listened to Peter and Kenneth talk about the music scene in San Francisco. The vibration of their voices grew loud and soft or both, as if I were listening to an amplifier while someone invisible kept fiddling with the dials.

  I woke up in the middle of the night in my aunt’s attic bedroom. My room smelled of old wallpaper, a stale odor of paste, plasterboard and radiator steam. I was still in funeral clothes, a black skirt and sweater that I wore for choral performances.

  I didn’t know what would happen to us. Sobbing, I clutched the pillow and curled up into a cramp, trying hard to squeeze her vital presence into myself. I had lost her forever. She had driven into a deeper light without me.

  Chapter Twelve

  Escape Route

  I returned to school after a week, not knowing what to expect, nervous and scared in a different way, hugging my books to my chest to protect myself as I passed the town library, the Five & Dime. Everything was altered now.

  My heart jumped as I approached the schoolyard. I saw Anthony smoking with a group of boys near the fence.

  “Looking good, Sarah,” he said in a low voice, his hand curling protectively around a cigarette.

  I breathed his smoke and tried to smile as I passed him, some part of me wanting him to walk with me into the building but he didn’t. Inside the corridors, kids pushed. Shoes clattered. I moved through heavy double doors, following the building’s smell of warm paint and steam. The first bell rang. Its stark, impersonal sound took me right back to the old routine. In homeroom, I looked for Margaret but her seat was empty. Mr. Giles started the roll call. He called my name, his eyes settling on me for just long enough that I knew that he knew about Mother. I didn’t want it to be this way. I wanted to erase this terrible feeling. Return to normal, make it stop.

  Mr. Giles looked at Margaret’s empty seat. He called name after name on his list, his pencil flickering over the attendance book, his subtle shaking a constant companion. The bell rang again, shrill vibrations like a cold rain as I darted upstairs to biology, Sophie waving from her seat.

  Mr. Bingham told us to keep in mind what we learned about molecules and to turn to the section on ecosystems and the evolution of swamps. He looked at me, but then he talked in his usual stern way about beavers, and trees and water interacting as one system. “The deletion of one affects the processing of the others,” he said. “Mr. Beaver makes his dam, the water pools up, the tree roots begin to rot.” He lifted his bearded chin, perused the row of students then looked at me again and said: “all things connected,” in a surprisingly gentle voice. On the blackboard, he wrote “degeneration” and “regeneration” in blue chalk.

  I also wrote down these words in my notebook, neatly, in pen, but I couldn’t think about those things. Instead, I drew a beaver’s nest, leaves and sticks heaped round as an igloo. I felt my skin rippling as if it sensed stares I couldn’t see behind me. Mr. Bingham said that beavers had an exit and entryway and a special escape route leading underwater in worst-case scenarios. Where was my escape? Where could I disappear? The classroom darkened. Outside, rain clouds clotted up the sky.

  Mr. Bingham hunkered over his tiny desk, calling out our homework assignment and a short test for tomorrow as the bell rang. Sophie waited for me while I shuffled my papers together. I was stalling. What was she going to say?

  “This will be an easy test,” she said. “He likes to sound tough but he’s not.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said, relieved that she had said something typical as if nothing was wrong.

  The long hallway had a life of its own. Twelve minutes of chaos. I walked into Margaret standing outside the girls’ room.

  “You’re not sick,” I said. Sophie stood beside me.

  “Did Giles say anything?”

  “Nothing. He marked you absent.”

  A blond girl with dark roots swung open the bathroom door, releasing a cloud of smoke. She looked hard at me but said nothing when she saw Margaret.

  “I had to take my baby sister to school.” Margaret held open the bathroom door. “Come on. I need a smoke.”

  I followed her in. Sophie came with me. Toilets flushing in succession sounded violent, small humping explosions of water. Another dark-haired girl leaned over the sinks to blacken her eyelids. She smudged white lipstick on her mouth, powdery confectioner’s sugar.

  “I had to help my mother,” she said, her eyes shifting when she said, “mother.” The sound careened into my heart’s canyon, falling into darkness.

  “I’ll have a drag.” I held out two fingers and she passed me the cigarette. I puffed, blowing smoke in a stream as I had watched her do. I would pretend. It was the only way. I blew another stream at the grimy ceiling. I liked this place that never let in light. The green windows dimmed the room at all times of day. She watched then took back her cigarette.

  “You’ve been practicing. I don’t know if I should tell Giles,” Margaret said. “He won’t believe me anyway.” She took another drag.

  “Tell him. He’ll believe you.”

  Margaret blew smoke and offered her cigarette to Sophie who surprised me by taking a puff. She coughed. The girl at the sink looked over at her. Sophie passed the cigarette back to me. I put the filter to my mouth. It was hot and sweet as flavored lipstick. I tried inhaling this time and coughed too.

  “You both need a lesson,” Margaret said, smiling.

  She took the cigarette and lifted her face, sucking in a long length of the cigarette then hissing it out. She directed the stream up like a singer reaching for high notes. Then she went into the stall and threw the stub in the toilet. The thumping and crash of the flushing toilet resounded again.

  ~~~~~

  After lunch, Sophie and I went to gym and shimmied into hideous green uniforms, ironed and washed and starched to a harsh cardboard texture. In the dressing stall, I worked the pleated dress over my hips, snapped every button. I slid my nylons down and put on socks and sneakers. Water stains the size of squished cockroaches marked up the cement floor. The room smelled wet, the air interminably chilled.

  Miss Holloway paced the aisles yelling, “Get on it, girls! Hop to!” She cruised between the stalls and peeked over the tops of the curtains to hustle us out. Thick-thighed, her gym skirt pleats opened when she walked. She had an umpire’s chest. Her breasts joined together as one. Her calf muscles stretched the elastic limits of her kneesocks.

  Outside on the playground I stood near the splitting white lines of the basketball court where Anthony had played. We lined up for timed races. Miss Holloway sniffed and rolled her small eyes. She held up her stopwatch, the pride in her life.

  “On your mark, girls. Get set, wheeeoooo!” She blew her whistle. “Go, go, go, go!”

  I ran fast but Sophie with her longer legs beat me by two leaps.

  “Next group up. Hustle. Hustle. Move it!”

  The boys’ gym door opened and let out a small crowd of older boys in gray sweat pants and tops that looked soft and comfortable, so different from what we girls had to wear. Anthony ran in the middle of the pack. His blond hair fell across his forehead as he headed for the grassy field a quarter mile away, off school grounds. A few boys whistled at us as they ran by. Anthony saw me and nodded. I felt a thrill.

  “Girls! What are you looking at? Back in position, now!” Holloway clapped and blew her whistle. “We’re losing time here.”

  This went on for the rest of the period until it was time for showers, which we had to take. Back in my changing stall, I stripped to a pink towel from home. I wanted to bury my face in the terrycloth to escape and hide bu
t Holloway was pacing the aisles. I tiptoed down the short corridor to the shower room, a chamber of cement subdivided into stalls with plastic curtains hanging from metal rods. Above, green mottled windows covered in wire mesh allowed anemic sprays of light. My showerhead dribbled lukewarm water. The feeble nozzle connected to a maze of thin piping that zigzagged across the ceiling. All things connected, Mr. Bingham said.

  The floor was greasy cold. I pretended to wash with a scarred bar of soap as Holloway roved up and down, the Nazi Gestapo with her invisible dog and stick.

  “Under the water, all the way, Sarah,” she said, standing at my stall and staring in. I stepped back and covered my pubic hairs but she parted the curtain for a better view.

  “Get under. You can’t wash with air, can you?” I crossed one arm over my breasts. Cold air seared my stomach as she held the curtain open.

  “Turn and get your back wet.”

  She waited until I turned and dipped one shoulder under the dribble.

  “That’s right. No exceptions.”

  She released the grip on the curtain and moved on to her next victim. What did she mean by that, no exceptions? That she would not treat me kindly because my mother had died? How I despised her.

  By now the showers collectively let off a wheezy, thin layer of steam. One by one I heard curtains scraping across metal bars and Holloway barking her ignorant, prurient demands.

  “Soap and water, girls, please!”

  The deeper she walked into the steamy maze of naked girls, the happier she sounded. I reached for my towel and hurried back to dress.

  Sophie and I walked to our next class in stunned silence.

  Finally, I said, “I hate her.”

  “Me, too,” Sophie said.

  My art teacher, Mr. Wilkins — a tall, lanky man — skated between tables, gliding and pivoting when he emphasized a point. It was my last class of the day. I had almost made it through.

  “You’re here to break rules,” he announced. He took a sharp turn at the windows then stopped in front of them as if he expected to see something out there. “There’s no absolute right. Understand?”

  I nodded, breathing in his sanity compared to Holloway’s sick, strangulating antics.

  He loped toward the opposite wall and turned off the lights. “See if you can create something.” He slid back over to his desk and succumbed to his chair to see what we would do.

  The room quieted except for pencil scratching and the tapping of wooden rulers. I drew lines across a dinner table, crisscrossing them until the dining room looked imprisoned like one of Robert’s creepy, space-time alternative worlds. Wilkins got up again and moved through the room to glance at our drawings. He sat down again and began reading a novel.

  At the bell, he hiked a backpack over his shoulder, and called me over.

  “Tell me about your drawing.”

  I shrugged. “It’s a table.”

  “I got that. Tell me about those lines.”

  “Maybe they represent conversations.”

  He nodded. “Good start.”

  Sophie waited for me in the hall and we all walked out together to Mr. Wilkins’s car in the school parking lot. He was the owner of the dented red Saab.

  “Did you have an accident?” Sophie said, and I could tell she regretted it because she looked away from me.

  “Life’s an accident,” he said, opening the car door.

  I saw mother driving away in the snow and it made me understand that I had entered a blizzard of other people’s discomfort as well as my own. I had to figure a way through it. So, I forced myself to pretend that cars and accidents had nothing to do with me or Mother.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “It’s not important. Get in. I’ll give you two a ride home.” He tossed his backpack into the backseat, along with empty soda cans, old mail, a pair of sneakers and a stack of drawing paper.

  But Sophie and I had decided to go to a football game.

  “We’re going to the game,” I said.

  “Waste of time, ladies.”

  He folded himself into the front seat and rolled the window down. “Waste of time.” He smiled and drove out, honking once as he turned onto the main street.

  A few blocks away, I heard the syncopated clapping of the cheerleaders. The game had started. We hurried to the field and found a remaining spot on the bleachers. Rows below and behind us were full. Down in front, eight cheerleaders in pleated skirts and thick sweaters skipped on a running track, scattering black dust. Two girls wore ponytails with ribbons. They smiled as if their mouths had been ripped open. A group of boys in leather jackets and pants sat in the upper rows of the bleachers, hooting back. Directly behind us, a row of Italian girls were snapping chewing gum.

  “Kike,” one of them said to me.

  “Hey, kike. You deaf?”

  Someone tugged on my hair. I turned around.

  “Excuse me?”

  The girl behind me had bleached blond hair with obvious black roots. She looked vaguely familiar. She wore blue eye shadow and patches of rouge on her cheeks.

  “Excuse me?” she said, imitating my voice.

  I leaned forward and tried to focus on the game. I refused to be intimidated by this. Anthony shot out from the group and ran diagonally across the field to catch the football. The ball wobbled, broken-winged, and fell yards short from where he stood. He ran back to the huddle. Sophie nudged her knee against mine, signaling me that she wanted to move away but I didn’t. I didn’t want them to know that I was scared. The huddle broke up. Then the quarterback ran back and sent the ball into the air again. This time Anthony caught it. He ran out of bounds.

  “Dirty Jews.”

  “Do you have a problem?” I asked the blond. The other two cohorts looked stone-faced, their pale skin framed in straight, black hair.

  “Do you?” the blond asked.

  I turned away again. My shoulders braced, anticipating abuse.

  Someone nudged my arm. “We didn’t say you could sit here. You’re blocking our view.”

  I swiveled back around.

  “I don’t need your permission.”

  The blond smirked then broke into a smile. The cheerleaders started clapping to a specific, irritating beat. “One, two!” Clap! Clap! “Let’s go for more!” Clap! Clap! “Three, four!”

  Sophie nudged my elbow again. “Come on,” she whispered.

  “Five, six!” Clap. Clap.

  Still, I wouldn’t budge.

  “You should listen to your skinny friend. She’s smarter than you,” the blond said.

  I cupped my hand over Sophie’s ear. “Stay here.”

  The blond pulled my hair. I shrugged the hand away.

  “You better do what she says,” one of the cohorts said.

  I turned.

  “I’m not moving. Okay?”

  “Stupid-ass Jew. Don’t ever let me see you alone.”

  The blond rose from the bench and began heading down. The other two followed. “Kikes!” They hopped onto the grass and started across the field toward some pine trees.

  I gripped the edge of the aluminum bench. My knees locked. I couldn’t move.

  “Oh, my God,” Sophie said.

  We both looked behind us to see if anyone else had come to replace them. I felt suddenly exhausted. Home. I just wanted to go home. Even if home was empty. Where was my escape route? Anthony ran across the end zone. Everyone stood up and stamped on the bleachers. The metal vibrated under me.

  “Tone-knee. Tone-knee!” they shouted.

  The cheerleaders formed a T formation, throwing ribbon shakers over their heads, then catching them before they fell to the ground. In the midst of this jubilation, Sophie and I huddled in our tiny cave. The Italian girls disappeared into a grove of trees and when they were gone, I breathed. I wished Margaret were here. I wished Peter were here, but he hated these games and stayed far away. Sophie pulled up her kneesocks. “How are we going to walk home?”

  “We
walk out with everyone else and stay with the crowds.”

  “This is a disaster,” Sophie said. She looked down at her feet and shook her head.

  The game continued around us like a swirl of leaves while we hovered at the core, trying to pretend that we belonged. The cheerleaders screeched and worked themselves into near hysteria. Anthony crossed the end zone, securing the win for the school. Then it was over. The crowd began to disperse.

  I looked toward the woods. I couldn’t see past the first line of trees.

  “What if they’re waiting for us?” she said.

  “We’ll stay with the crowds.”

  The players gathered at the benches, slapping each other’s backs, sucking on water bottles. Anthony stood in the middle of a group talking, one eye toward the bleachers looking for someone.

  I waved my arms. “Anthony,” I shouted. “Anthony.”

  He said something to the boy next to him and hiked up the bleachers to my seat. The cheerleaders headed back to school, punching the air in syncopated rhythms. “Two, four, six, eight, who do we app-reeshey-ate? The Chargers!”

  He stood in front of me, one hand on his hip. His wet jersey pressed against his chest, his shoulder pads bulging. He looked wonderful.

  “These girls were trying to pick a fight,” I said.

  “They called us kikes.”

  “Who?” He searched the field, which had emptied except for the team.

  “I don’t know them.”

  “They pulled Sarah’s hair.”

  I touched my hair, the memory.

  “They went into the woods.” Sophie pointed to the faraway trees.

  “Girls, follow me.” Anthony took both of our hands, as if he knew I might balk but I didn’t because he was protecting Sophie, too.

  “Hey, Tony,” one teammate shouted. “Going for two? Nice going!”

  “Get lost!” he said, then smiled at us. “See. You girls are already getting me in trouble.”

  “Tony, my man!” another uniformed kid called.

  He waved dismissively and slowed down until the rest of the teammates had gone ahead of us.