How to Breathe Underwater

by Julie Orringer

  That weekend something will happen that will seem like a miracle: Patricia will call you on the phone. She will tell you Cara’s sorry for tripping you in gym. Look down at your purple swollen wrist, touch the taped-together bridge of your glasses. Say it’s no big deal. Patricia will ask what you are doing that afternoon. You will whisper, “Nothing.” She will ask you to meet her and Cara at Uptown Square.

  —We’re going shopping for d-d-dresses for the Miggie’s B-ball, she’ll say. Wanna come?

  Now, think. Think. Do you really believe Cara could be sorry, that suddenly she and Patricia could crave your company? And even if they did, would you want these girls as friends? Try to remember who you’re dealing with here. Try to tell Patricia you will not go shopping.

  Of course, you will not refuse. You will arrange a time and place to meet. Then you will spend half an hour picking out an outfit, red Chinese-print pants and a black shirt, matching shoes and earrings. You will ask your mother to drive you to the mall, and she will consent, surprise and relief plain on her face. She will even give you her credit card.

  When you arrive at the entrance to Uptown Square, with its marble arches and potted palms, you will pretend to see Patricia and Cara inside. You will kiss your mother and watch her drive away. Then you will stand beside the potted palms and wait for Patricia and Cara. You will take off your broken glasses and put them in your pocket, and adjust the hem of your shirt. You will wait there for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. When you run inside to use the bathroom you will hurry your way through, afraid that you’re keeping them waiting, but when you go outside again they will still not be there.

  You will wonder whether Patricia meant next week. You will bite your nails down to the quick, then continue biting.

  Stop this. They are not coming.

  Go inside. Wander toward the fountain with the alabaster naked ladies. Sit down at the fountain’s edge and look at the wavering copper and silver circles beneath the water. Don’t waste time thinking about drowning yourself. Don’t bother imagining your funeral, with your classmates in black clothes on a treeless stretch of lawn. If you die you will not be there to see it, and your classmates probably won’t be either.

  Instead, take a nickel from your pocket and make your own wish: Patricia and Cara strung upside-down from the tree in the schoolyard, naked for all the world to see. Kiss your nickel and toss it in. Feel better. Dry your eyes. Here you are in Uptown Square with your mother’s credit card. Go to Maison Blanche, past the children’s department, straight to Preteens. Tell the glossy-haired woman what kind of dress you want: something short, with a swirly skirt. Look through all the dresses she brings you; reject the ones with lace and flounces. On your own, look through all the others on the rack. You will almost give up. Then, at the very back, you will find your dress. It is midnight-blue with a velvet spaghetti-strap bodice and a satin skirt. Tell yourself it is the color of Eric Cassio’s eyes. Try it on. Watch it fit. Imagine yourself, for a moment, as a teenager, an eleventh-grader, the girls you see in the upper school bathroom brushing their hair upside down and flipping it back. Flip your hair back. Twirl in front of the mirror. The dress costs fifty-eight dollars, with tax. Pay with your mother’s credit card. The woman will wrap it in white tissue and seal it with a gold sticker, then slide it into a white store bag. By the time your mother comes to pick you up, you’ll have almost forgotten about Patricia and Cara. When she asks you how your afternoon went, lie.

  School this next week will be hell. Everyone will know about Patricia and Cara’s trick on you, how you went to the mall and waited. Now you will have to pay a price. People will come up to you all day and ask you to their birthday parties and family picnics and country clubs. Do not dignify them with a response, particularly not crying. This will be extremely difficult, of course. Try to understand what’s going on: You got to dance with Eric Cassio, and he refused to act as if you made him sick. This is a threat to the social order.

  By Tuesday afternoon, things will become unbearable. It is a dull week—preparations for a spring pageant, the history of the Louisiana Purchase, sentence diagramming in Language Arts—and people have nothing better to talk about. After lunch, on the playground, they gather around you as you try to swing. They needle you with questions: How many hours did you wait? Did you cry? Did you make believe you had a pretend friend? Did you have to call your mommy?

  Get out of the swing. Be careful. You are angry. Words do not come easily around your classmates, particularly not at times like these. But you cannot let them continue to think that they have made you miserable. Tell them you went to Maison Blanche and bought a blue velvet dress.

  —Liar! You can’t afford a dress from Maison Blanche.

  —I did.

  —No, you d-didn’t. I think you bought a d-d-d—

  —A diaper, Cara finishes.

  —It’s a blue velvet dress. With spaghetti straps.

  —They don’t even h-h-h-have a dress like that there. You n-never went in there, you liar. You were too b-busy crying. Waah-aah! No one likes me! You bought a d-d-d-d-dirty baby diaper. You’re wearing it right now! Ew, ew.

  Ew, ew, ew. They run away from you, holding their noses, and tell their friends you had to wear a diaper because you kept stinking up your pants. Back in the classroom, before the teacher gets back, they push their desks into a tight little knot on the other side of the room. Finally you understand the vocabulary word ostracize. Look away from them. Stare at the blackboard. Swallow. Out of the corner of your eye, glance at Eric Cassio. He will be watching you, not laughing with the others. Patricia will lean over and whisper in his ear, and he will answer her. But he will not—not once—laugh at your expense.

  When the teacher comes in and asks what on earth is going on, everyone will start moving the desks back without a word. Soon you will all get lost in the angles and word shelves of a sentence diagram. After that, Math. Then the bus ride home. Now you can spend all evening sulking in the alcove of your bedroom. When your parents come to tell you it’s time for dinner, you will tell them you have a headache. You will cry and ask for orange children’s aspirin. Half an hour later your little brother will come to you with a plate of food, and he will sit there, serious-eyed, as you eat it.

  Later that night you will hear your parents in their bedroom, talking about sending you to a different school. Your father is the champion of this idea. When your mother argues that things might be getting better for you, you will secretly take her side. You tell yourself that leaving the school would mean giving up, letting the others win. You will not have that. You will not go to the schools your father suggests: Newman, your rival, or Lakeside, a religious day school. You will get angry at him for mentioning it. Doesn’t he believe you can prove yourself to them, get friends, even become popular?

  You blind, proud, stupid, poor dunce.

  Next day, you will take the dress to school. Why, for God’s sake? Why? Won’t they see it at the Miggie’s Ball anyway? But you insist on proving to them that it’s real, despite the obvious danger. You will carry it in the Maison Blanche bag to show you really bought it there. When it’s time for morning recess, you will casually take the bag out of your locker as if you have to move it to put some books away. Patricia and Cara will stop at your locker on their way out. You will pretend not to see them. Notice, however, that Eric Cassio is standing in the doorway waiting for them.

  —Look, she b-brought a bag of baby d-d-d-d—

  —You’re stinking up the whole place, Cara says.

  You pick up the bag so that the tissue inside crinkles, then steal a glance inside and smile to yourself.

  —Is that your K-mart dress for the Miggie’s Ball?

  —Can I b-borrow it? Patricia takes the bag from you and holds it open. You feel a flash of fear, seeing it in her hands. Look at Eric Cassio. He is staring at his shoes. Patricia takes out the tissue-wrapped dress and tears the gold sticker you have kept carefully intact. As she shakes it out and holds it against
herself, she and Cara laugh.

  —Look at me. I’m Cinderella. I’m Cher.

  Tell her to give it back.

  —Oh, sure. C-come and g-get it. Patricia lofts the dress over your head in a blur of blue; Cara catches it.

  —Don’t you want it, stinky baby? Cara shakes it in your face, then throws it over your head again to Patricia.

  Patricia holds the dress over your head. She is three inches taller than you. You jump and catch the hem in one hand and hold on tight. When Patricia pulls, you pull too. Finally she gives a sharp yank. There is a terrible sound, the sound of satin shearing, detaching itself from velvet. Patricia stumbles back with half your dress in her hands. Her mouth hangs open in a perfect O. Outside, kids shriek and laugh at recess. A kickball smacks against the classroom wall.

  Cara will be the first to recover. She will take the half-dress from Patricia and shrug. Oh, well, she says. It was just an ugly dress.

  —Yeah, Patricia says, her voice flat and dry. And a stupid b-brand.

  Cara will throw the piece of dress at you. Let it fall at your feet. Suppress the wail of rage inside your rib cage. Do not look at Eric Cassio. Do not move or speak. Wait for them to leave. When the classroom door closes behind them, sit on the floor and stuff the rags of your dress back into the paper bag. Stare at the floor tile, black grains swirling into white. See if you can make it through the next five minutes. The next ten. Eventually, you’ll hear the class coming back from recess. Get to your feet and dust off your legs. Sit down at your desk and hold the bag in your lap.

  You will remember a story you heard on the news, about a brother and sister in Burma who got caught in a flood. As they watched from a rooftop, the flood stripped their house of its walls, drowned their parents against a bamboo fence, and washed their goats and chickens down the road. Their house is gone. Their family is gone. But they hold on to a piece of wood and kick toward dry land. Think how they must have felt that night, kicking into the flood, the houses all around them in splinters, people and animals dead.

  On Saturday, wear something good: a pair of white shorts and a red halter and sandals. Put your hair in a barrette. Try not to think about the dress in its bag at the bottom of your closet. That does not concern you. Go downstairs and get something to eat. You will not erase yourself by forgoing meals. After breakfast, when your mother asks if you’d like to make cookies, say yes. Look how much this pleases her. You have not felt like doing anything in weeks. Take out the measuring cups and bowls and all the ingredients. Mix the dough. Allow your brother to add the chocolate chips.

  Put the cookies in the oven. Check them at three minutes, and at five. Your brother claps his hands and asks again and again if they are ready yet. When they are ready, open the oven door. A wash of sugary heat will hit your face. Pull on the mitts and take out the cookie sheet. Just then, the doorbell will ring.

  Listen as your mother gets the door. You will hear her talking to someone outside, low. Then she’ll come into the kitchen.

  —There’s a boy here for you, she says, twisting her hands in her apron. He wants to ride bikes.

  —Who?

  —I don’t know. He’s blond.

  Do not drop the tray of cookies on the kitchen tile. Do not allow your head to float away from your body. The familiar tightness will gather in your throat. At first you will think it is another joke, that when you go to the door he will not be there.

  But then there he is, in the doorway of the kitchen. It is the first time in years someone else your age has stood inside your house. And this is Eric Cassio, in his blue-striped oxford shirt and khaki shorts, his hair wild from the wind. Watch him stare at your brother, who’s gotten a handful of cookie dough. Try talking. Offer him some cookies and milk. Your mother will take your brother, silently, out into the yard, and in a few moments you will hear him shrieking as he leaps through the sprinkler.

  Now eat a cookie and drink milk with Eric Cassio. Do not let crumbs cling to your red halter. Wipe the line of milk from your upper lip. Watch Eric eat one cookie, then another. When he’s finished he will take a rumpled white package from his backpack and push it across the table. You will be extremely skeptical. You will look at the package as if it were a bomb.

  —I told my mom what happened at school, he says. She got you this.

  Turn the package over. It is a clothing bag. When you open it you will find a dress inside, a different one, dark red with a jewel neckline and two small rosettes at the hip.

  —I know it’s not the same as the other one, he says.

  Look at him, hard, to make sure this is not a joke. His eyes are steady and clear. Stand up and hold the dress up against you. You can see it is just the right size. Bite your lip. Look at Eric Cassio, speechless. Try to smile instead; he will understand.

  —Patricia won the Miggie’s thing, he says. She told me last night. For a moment, you will feel bludgeoned. You thought it would be you. You and Eric Cassio. It was supposed to make all the difference. Patricia couldn’t possibly have more stars than you. Then remember there’s another important thing to ask him.

  —Who’s the boy?

  He looks down into his lap, and you understand that the boy is him. When he raises his eyes, his expression tells you that despite the dress, despite the hybrid peas, things are not going to change at school or at Miss Miggie’s. He will not take walks with you at recess or sit next to you at McDonald’s. You can see he is apologizing for this, and you can choose to accept or not.

  Get to your feet and pull yourself up straight; raise your chin as your mother has shown you to do. Adjust the straps of your sandals, and make sure your halter is tied tight. Then ride bikes with Eric Cassio until dark.

  The Smoothest Way Is Full of Stones

  We aren’t supposed to be swimming at all. It is Friday afternoon, and we’re supposed to be bringing groceries home to Esty’s mother so she can prepare Shabbos dinner. But it’s the middle of July, and heat radiates from every leaf and blade of grass along the lake road, from the tar-papered sides of the lake cottages, from the dust that hangs in the air like sheer curtains. We throw our bikes into the shade behind the Perelmans’ shed, take off our socks and shoes, and run through warm grass down to their slip of private beach, trespassing, unafraid of getting caught, because old Mr. and Mrs. Perelman won’t arrive at their cottage until August, according to my cousin. Esty and I stand at the edge of the lake in our long skirts and long-sleeved shirts, and when the water surrounds our ankles it is sweetly cold.

  Esty turns to me, grinning, and hikes her skirt. We walk into the water until our knees are submerged. The bottom is silty beneath our toes, slippery like clay, and tiny fish flash around our legs like sparks. We are forbidden to swim because it is immodest to show our bodies, but as far as I know there’s no law against wading fully clothed. My cousin lets the hem of her skirt fall into the water and walks in all the way up to her waist, and I follow her, glad to feel water against my skin. This is the kind of thing we used to do when we were little— the secret sneaking-off into the woods, the accidental wrecking of our clothes, things we were punished for later. That was when Esty was still called Erica, before her parents got divorced, before she and her mother moved to Israel for a year and became Orthodox.

  Now there is a new uncle, Uncle Shimon, and five little step-cousins. My Aunt Marla became Aunt Malka, and Erica became Esther. Erica used to talk back to her mother and throw bits of paper at the backs of old ladies’ necks in synagogue, but in Israel she spent months repenting her old life and taking on a new one. This summer we’ve done nothing but pray, study Torah, cook, clean the lake cottage, and help Aunt Malka take care of the children. As we walk into the lake, I wonder if Erica still exists inside this new pious cousin.

  I follow her deeper into the water, and the bottom falls away beneath us. It’s hard to swim, heavy and slow, and at times it feels almost like drowning. Our denim skirts make it impossible to kick. Ahead is the Perelmans’ old lake float, a raft of splin
tering boards suspended on orange plastic drums, and we pull hard all the way to the raft and hold on to the ladder.

  “We’re going to be killed when your mom sees our clothes,” I say, out of breath.

  “No, we won’t,” Esty says, pushing wet hair out of her face. “We’ll make up an excuse. We’ll say we fell in.”

  “Yeah, right,” I say. “Accidentally.”

  Far down below, at the bottom of the lake, boulders waver in the blue light. It’s exciting to think we’ve come this far in skirts. The slow-moving shadows of fish pass beneath us, and the sun is hot and brilliant-white. We climb onto the raft and lie down on the splintering planks and let the sun dry our clothes. It is good just to lie there staring at the cottage with its sad vacant windows, no one inside to tell us what to do. In a few more weeks I will go home to Manhattan, back to a life in which my days are counted according to the American calendar and prayer is something we do once a year, on the High Holidays, when we visit my grandparents in Chicago.

  Back in that other world, three hundred miles from here, my mother lies in a hospital bed still recovering from the birth and death of my brother. His name was Devon Michael. His birth weight was one pound, ten ounces. My mother had a problem with high blood pressure, and they had to deliver him three months early, by C-section. It has been six weeks since Devon Michael lived and died, but my mother is still in the hospital, fighting infection and depression. With my father working full-time and me out of school, my parents decided it would be better for me to go to the Adelsteins’ until my mother was out of the hospital. I didn’t agree, but it seemed like a bad time to argue.

  My cousin says that when I go home I should encourage my parents to keep kosher, that we should always say b’rachot before and after eating, that my mother and I should wear long skirts and long-sleeved shirts every day. She says all this will help my mother recover, the way it helped her mother recover from the divorce. I try to tell her how long it’s been since we’ve even done the normal things, like go to the movies or make a big Chinese dinner in the wok. But Esty just watches me with a distant enlightened look in her eyes and says we have to try to do what God wants. I have been here a month, and still I haven’t told her any of the bad things I’ve done this year—sneaked cigarettes from my friends’ mothers’ packs, stole naked-lady playing cards from a street vendor near Port Authority, kissed a boy from swim team behind the bleachers after a meet. I had planned to tell her all these things, thinking she’d be impressed, but soon I understood that she wouldn’t.