Swimming (13 page)

I slip under water, sculling it slowly with my hands, and wait, watching pale faraway bodies pull themselves up and down the lanes. I close my eyes and Bron appears sitting on a coffin with wheels, a serious expression on her serious face. I feel a wildness surge, a deep pressing that opens my eyes. I wait, sculling the water with my palms, my body thumping violently until I can’t stand it anymore, break the surface of liquid to join that of air.

Naylor’s unimpressed, says:
Now do it again
.

Sometimes they have me observe. I watch world record breaststroker Babe Alberts glide for meters and beat everyone before breaking the surface, hands moving in some slow ballet, streamlined into a silver shadow, mysterious and shiny. I worry:
Where is she? She has to come up now; she’ll lose
. Next to her, other swimmers look like they are trying to do an anxious and impossible thing.

I study Peggy; she makes up for her lack of natural talent and her smallish feet with an admirable intensity and by swimming recklessly like a guy. She’s true to her word, does not acknowledge me. She turns out to be a verbally gifted individual known for her edgy humor, team spirit, leadership qualities, witty word associations, operatic voice.
Ernie Crampovitz. Sir Wormy Mankybliss. Lordy Mankovitz. Little Poopy Pantsovitz
. People like her; she’s popular.

She hits me on the head with a kickboard one morning during warm-up. Like that. The coaches are on deck in a huddle discussing drills. I see her coming at me with the board held high over her head and her teeth bared and am too dumbed by the sight to react. She hits me so hard my ears sing.

Consider yourself part of the team
, she says and laughs.

I use new motivational skills, say:
You are not going to let that monkey ruin your day, are you? Bluff her out. Stay cool as a CUCUMBER, do you hear me A CUCUMBER. She’s all wind
.

One of the rookies detaches itself from the exhausted group on the bench, the tall and starey-eyed Sunny Lewis, all-American backstroker, possessor of one large Armenian nose and not one but two sets of hammertoes that she tries to hide with a towel. Peggy gave her a nickname the first week:
Hammernose
. She comes up to me while I’m putting on my sweats, says:
She’s just fighting her own insecurity by being loud
and we become friends.

That night I knock on Peggy’s door as cool and as green as a cool green cucumber, my legendary non-confrontational palms rubbing their sweat on my jeans.

She’s painting her nails a weird shade of blue, doesn’t bother to look up.
What?

I’m going to beat you and I thought you should know. Look at me, Piggly … as soon as the breathing works out and I stop doing that … thing with my shoulder
, I will beat you. I’m almost as good as a good debater.

Ooooh, I’m scared
. Not.
We don’t even swim the same strokes
. But she licks her lips.

Not now, maybe, but Kyd’s been talking potential. She says I’m highly versatile. Don’t hit me ever again. I saw your face; you looked like some sort of … bug
. I feel my face turn colors.
Don’t do it again
.

She smiles at my flushed face. I’ve lost.
Bug? Now what? Hail Mary full of face, light a candle with some mace
. She’s blowing cool Peggy air onto ugly Peggy toes.

I’m mad.
I will beat you, Piglet. I saw you
. This toe-blowing thing is the last straw.

As if. Just try, Philippino ringlet rug spot rotgut. And call me Piglet again; you’ll regret it
. There is a touch of the monkey to her features, something about the nose to upper-lip ratio.

Most swimmers start to swim because they have some kind of a problem. At least half of them are serious asthmatics or suffering from dryland weakness with atrophied arms and deeply rooted genetic neediness. They suffer from attention deficit disorders, dyslexia, chronic dryland awkwardness, a minimum dishonorable number of friends. They suffer from bad divorces, monoparental abandonment issues, the sudden death of a gregarious twin. Piggly is an astigmatic, asthmatic only child. Something happened to her when she was born; something that required oxygen tents and special care; something that prevented the Peggys from making another one. There is a picture of her, seven, standing next to a diving board in a bright pink swimsuit with two white planky appendages holding up her flat torso like an easel. Her bedroom is covered with medals and pictures of her snowboarding, hiking, windsurfing with a sweat-free Dr. Peggy.

Dr. Peggy is as mild and as steady as a boat in a bath. He has a special hair spray for men he uses that has for men! written on it in masculine letters the color of blood. Hair spray is the first thing I smell in the morning. Hair spray is the last thing I smell at night. The Peggys do not like the scent of naked Colorado air; they like to enhance it. There’s cedar perfume emitted by the things someone plugged into the walls that I remove surreptitiously and bury deep under garbage in order to survive. I have slight burns on thumb and forefinger from snuffing scented candles out by hand, but I don’t miss home for one second. Colorado is good for me; its landscapes offer texture and relief and things my eyes can dig into. I feel safe surrounded by people in shorts holding stopwatches, blowing whistles, checking clipboards, wearing flip-flops with special poolside grip. I feel safe surrounded by densely packed wooded areas filled with trees with sweet-smelling needles, by large rock formations that cup the sky and hold cloud in. And no one knows anything about me; I walk around as plain and as blank as the faraway sun.

I’m not a weight-room person, dread my sessions with the dreaded Ken, who trains my muscles like monkeys and is content only when I’m a trembling, silent mess. I walk into the weight room the way I always walk into the weight room, as quiet and as invisible as a Shawnee. Peggy is finishing up, lying on a mat stretching with Babe. Her little eyes shift over to my direction, catch.

Jesus she’s huge—have you grown again, Phil?
she says.
Perhaps there wasn’t enough time to glue your dick on … You weren’t premature or anything, were you, Full—Oh—Men—Ya!
They laugh until Peggy says:
I’ve got it … let’s call her Pip!!!!!!!!!!!! Pip is perfect!!!!!

PIP!!!!!!
everyone screams.

It follows me like a vigilant nun. I watch in horror as its usage grows exponentially with each passing day. I accidentally look up when I hear it, find myself reacting when it’s called, but I whine:
Come on, you guys. That’s not my name
.

Peggy loves it.
Don’t get your PIP in a knot
.

I’m not a Pip
. I’m sulky.

Peggy loves it even more.
Look, everyone … PIP’s being a POOP
.

I’m the opposite of a Pip
. I’m sad.

When I’m not imagining the Olympics in a golden haze of red white and blue, I have serious daydreams where she swims so badly that people leave the stands. She’s taken away the only chance I ever had to name myself. I’m not going to get over it anytime soon. I hammer my pillow with my fists at night, call her Piglet in the company of everyone, but she makes sure it never catches on.

Change the H to a P and You Have Porny

Peggy’s stretching her Achilles by standing backward down a curb. She puts both arms over her head, sticks her chest out, sticks her butt out, and stretches, letting her hair flip with an invisible wind. When she can’t stand it anymore, she breaks her vow of silence.

Is he looking at me?
she whispers.

No
. I’m glad.

What’s he looking at?
She’s got her head between her knees.

I don’t know, something on the ground … I don’t know … maybe he’s just …
He’s a tall blond swimmer with solid gold possibilities who swims through girls like a speedboat with sharp propellers.

Shit
. She takes off her jacket, putting it around her shoulder like a cape, touching her toes with sexy-me fingers.
Is he looking now?

He’s drinking a Gatorade.
No. Wait! He just looked over
.

Don’t fucking wave
. She’s standing up, her hands on her hips.

He saw me looking
. I’m leaning on a stop sign.

Don’t fucking let him see you fucking looking at him, Kansas girl. My God. Is he looking now?
She flips her hair, smiling a big smile that isn’t meant for me.

How in the hell would I know, asthma face?
I’m sick of this.

Just look
. She’s playing nice.

Screw you, Piglet. You look. He’s your guy. I’m sick of this
. I put my Walkman on, tune her out.

We’re standing in the parking lot waiting for Mrs. Peggy because Peggy’s little red car is getting serviced. Delayed-reaction puberty is hitting me hard and I’m unusually mopey. I’ve grown two kiwis and a mini-shrub, and am secretly having hot, dramatic dreams, but I don’t trust anything my age with a sausage. I spend my time clamming up in front of the loud, hairy, obviously horny ones, a fact that Peggy finds infinitely amusing, not missing a chance to point out loudly when my face has changed color.
Look! Pip’s face has popped
. I’m still girl, and even though I’ve spent my entire life in a swimsuit, the thought of actually exposing my secrets to anyone fills me with a deep and terrible dread, one of the many symptoms of all those years spent in the company of nun.

Horny swimmers beget trouble. They leave pain in their wake, des troy careers, don’t care. There are stories. Legend has Chrissy Hughs, world butterfly record holder and Olympic champ, quitting when she falls in love with Leif Benson, world butterfly record holder and Olympic champ. Mutual passion gets her pregnant by accident and they have a baby boy they name Little Leif. Later, bored and chubby, her tired red eyes brimming with remorse, she tries to relaunch her swimming career, but never reaches the same level, no matter how hard she trains. Being pregnant changed her center of gravity, the baby sucked too much of the x-factor out of her, and her name had become too long to sound right on the podium:
Chrissy Hughs-Benson
. Legend has Arch Naylor taking one look at her and shaking his silver head.

She shouldn’t have taken on his name
, I say in the locker room after practice.

Babe’s drying her hair.
What in the world does that have to do with it?

I look at her and shout,
What doesn’t that have to do with it?

She shakes her head, turns off her dryer.
That’s the same question, only backwards
.

I know what I’m talking about.
Chrissy Hughs-Benson doesn’t work
.

Peggy chimes in.
If Babe would have been born a Rhoda …

It’s the first time we agree….
And Rhodas don’t swim
.

She finishes my sentence.
Chrissy Hughs-Bensons don’t win golds
.

I’m basking in harmony.
You got it
.

She goes in for the kill.
If you follow that kind of logic, then Philomena of course would be …

Harmony is fragile, but I know what I’m talking about.
A four-syllable anomaly. An exception to the rule
.

She’s putting lip gloss on with a wand.
Convenient
.

Peggy is attracted to the horny masculine swimmers, the ones who whip towels into weapons and leave welts for fun. She likes the ones who refer to their colleagues as rookie balls, prick, dickhead, and rover, the squinty handsome ones who drape an arm casually over her shoulders, looking up when someone interesting walks into the room. She brings them home when the Peggys are out; they make out in the living room as I hide out with Dave in my bedroom, Adam Ant blaring in my ears. My lonesomeness fights long, weighted battles with fatigue, but fatigue always wins and I eventually close my eyes to a dark velvet dreamworld inhabited by the soaring silence of a flock of nectar-eating mega bats until I open them up to a fresh new day.

Supercoach E. Mankovitz stays out of our private life, but it’s obvious by the way he tugs at his mustache, slowly shakes his head, clicks his tongue, and sighs that he does not encourage swimming love because everyone knows that in swimming love it’s always the girl who sacrifices her future for the sake of great passion and not the horny swimmer, who keeps on winning medals, eventually stepping down to get a great job in marketing, communications, finance, sports psychology, or pediatrics. I have due reason to avoid boys with balls, a real excuse for turning mute and red and clammy, for standing back, slightly bending my shoulders forward to hide puberty’s kiwis.

But I like the kind ones who hold the locker room door and don’t say anything gross when I walk through. The sweet ones who say
Good set
, who ask me what I’m listening to on my Walkman because they really want to know, who won’t make fun of Adam Ant even if they want to. When I spot a certain nice swimmer with a shy smile standing on the other side of the pool, I squirm, thinking
naked
as he looks back and waves, the muscles in his lean arms undulating like water. Yearnings wrestle inside of me like ferocious animals, sending feelings into parts of my body that up until now have been sleeping.

But avoiding horniness is like avoiding life. The continuous stream of hot thought mixes with keen curiosity, eventually wearing me down, girl or no, and I find myself on a couch at a Friday night swimming party, his tongue in my mouth, and my old world empties, the new one filling up with sexy stuff. He turns his head, breathing slowly into my ear, causing both my ear cords and my vagina to whir.

My vagina has done many things in her short life. She’s jumped down hard on new bike; ridden the occasional, misbehaving pony; sat quietly in class listening to nun. She’s plunged off a high dive the wrong way, vibrated along with a vibrating plane, idled sweetly with an idling bus, spent many summer hours soaking up heat from a faraway sun, but up until this moment, she’d never whirred.

He stops kissing me, whispering:
You okay?

I say
I think so
, and Holy Name shoots up toward the heavens, small and smaller the faster it goes, exploding in a shower of burning black stars that disappear as they fall.

We make out in the parking lot, at the Peggys’ behind their wall of trees. We make out in the shady parts of the street, we make out lying down on the floor in the empty weight room, we make out by the bluish light of an empty pool. He’s never pushy. I no longer worry about the breadth of my shoulders, the muscular boobs that flex when I move; I’m basking in the discovery that kindhearted, cute but not handsome swimmers love everything about me, not suspecting for one second that I’m still girl.

Peggy doesn’t understand.
Are you really going out with him? He’s so …
She looks for a word she doesn’t have the patience to find.
I can give you one of my old ones if you want
.

Keep the squints over on your court, Piglet
, I say, accidentally piquing her curiosity.

Mom calls every other day.

How is it?

Good
.

You always say that
.

Yeah, well … my times are down
.

So … you’re happy …

Yeah, Mom. I’m happy…. Roxanne okay?

The same
.

Hmmmm. Dot?

Top of the class
.

Mini-nun
.

What?

All that goodness and prayer. He’s going to call her
.

I doubt it … She’s got a boyfriend
.

What?

Paul Sloan
.

You’re kidding me
.

Why do you say that?

No reason. Just surprised. That’s all
.

Paul Sloan
. One hundred percent squint; one of those skinny guys who walks around with his shirt off anytime he can. He
says yo
and
does yo
things with his fingers. The nuns have him pegged as a future divorced person. He is the first of Dot’s sympathetic salvation loves that causes great grief in her life, thus ours.

My body starts doing things that incite reaction in the assistants: the milliseconds start coming off millisecond by millisecond. Kyd informs me that E. Mankovitz is pleased. She grabs my elbow, draws me in, whispers:
Ernie seems pleased
.

I meet some of the greatest people in my life in Colorado Springs, girls I’ll spend the next ten years swimming for or against depending on the meet. The entire silver medal squad from Seoul is there. One day we will be in our twenties, hopping mad, writhing in rage, making fists with our hands and punching the air. But Seoul is five years away. It’s 1983 and I’m seventeen. We’re tall kids who do kid things when we’re not swimming. We eat ice cream sitting on curbs, talk our way through movies, make tapes we put on our Walkmans to fire up, hitting each other’s shoulders and screaming
FIRE UP,
pretending not to think about the Olympic trials nine months away, but anytime we have a chance, we bring them up, imagining all sorts of crazy scenarios, letting our words trail off to the encouragement that follows. We sit in the dining hall plying our plates with thirty percent carbohydrate, fifty percent protein, and twenty percent fat, dreams tightening our minds, holding them in. I keep the embarrassing ones to myself, especially the one where I’m lifted up by an enormous hand that plunges to earth from the sky while Supercoach E. Mankovitz weeps like a baby.
I just knew it. I just knew it and knew it and knew it. The first time I saw her, I knew
.