Swimming (14 page)

“O Lo and Behold” Sang the Angels
,
Rising from Their Mucky Torpor with
Clay-Covered Wings

I’m not feeling well and hiding it. When we walk out on deck and Kyd calls to me with weights in her hands, I want to slap her, have to hold one hand down with the other so I don’t. I flip Peggy the bird behind her back, not noticing Babe sitting quietly on the bench in front of her locker, rubbing a smelly oil onto her feet. She says:
What’d you do that for?
I don’t know, shrug, fighting the desire to hit her shiny blond head with one of my shoes. Ken yells at me about maintaining technique for over five minutes and my chin starts to tremble like a washing machine before I can stop it. My head hurts, my eyebrows hurt, my teeth hurt, my gums hurt, my shoulders hurt, my pelvic cavity hurts, my ass hurts, my thighs hurt, my ankles hurt, breathing hurts, chewing hurts, sleeping hurts, sitting still hurts, and it’s starting to get on my nerves. Last night, when I watched the white buds spiral their way down into my pasta, I rebelled, picking them out one by one, sighing loudly as the three Peggys stopped chewing and watched.

And Leonard keeps showing up. Today he’s on the bottom of the pool, sitting in a stupid three-legged chair staring into space with dirty brown caveman hair that reaches down to his feet and eyebrows as dense and as flowing as a windy field of dry bamboo. When I see him, I get irritated, clamping my teeth down so hard my jaw hurts. Arch Naylor materializes from his dark den in a flash of silver, says:
Just who were you trying to thrash out there?
as I stand heaving, begging my fingers not to flip him the bird. I’ve discovered the joy of being mean to my nice boyfriend; I can’t help it. He grabs my gym bag before I can, opens doors like a gentleman, massaging the small of my back with his warm hands, and I think
Slow, slow, now retarded
. My eyeballs laser right through him and I don’t say a word, but when he tries to kiss me with soft minty lips, I push him away.

After dinner, Mrs. Peggy knocks on my door, waits a respectful four seconds, comes in, and sits on the edge of my bed.

Are we a bit homesick, honey?
she asks, about one hundred thousand freckles I’ve never noticed before scattered randomly throughout her face.

I laugh a mean
no
.

Is Peggy being … she’s got quite a character; don’t think I don’t know. I know my daughter
. She’s shaking her head, twisting a perfect diamond on a thin brown finger.

I stop laughing the mean
no
, say:
It’s not her. But she’s no piece of cake
.

What, then? Are you not feeling well?
She touches me on the forehead with a freezing-cold hand.
We’re all just two or three degrees away from a fever
.

Sometimes when I get back from the pool early, she’s singing in the living room with a yoga woman whose voice vibrates up the staircase like a sad cello. One sings, then the other sings, then they sing together as the windows quiver and poor Dave the poodle gets so upset he shakes.

I’m in a bad mood
, I say.
I’m … I don’t know why
.

She studies me for a second, says hopefully:
Is it your time of the month …

I look at her and my gut wrenches out of solidarity with my past. I cover it up by laughing a mean
no
.

Are you sure? Sometimes the stress of training throws your body out of whack. You’re probably just getting your period, early … or late as the case may be
. Then she looks at me, waiting for an answer.

I don’t know
, I say, braiding the fringe of my blanket.
I don’t know why
.

The next morning I meet dawn with a pounding head, a pounding gut, pounding eyeballs. I sit at the breakfast table stirring my oatmeal until it turns to crumbled brick. I sit in Peggy’s car watching pine trees with snow in their needles greet the vast day with an ache inside an ache inside an ache like an evil Russian doll. When I open the door, the locker room blasts me with humid, chattering life. I say nothing, sitting on the edge of a bench, the gray lockers clanking, vapors from the pool attacking my dry, stingy eyes. I slide my white hundred percent cotton underwear down to my ankles and discover I’m bleeding like a pig.

I’m so surprised, I say it out loud.
I’m bleeding
.

Peggy turns.
What?

I recover, lock my knees together, hanging on tight to my underwear.
I’m bleeding; there’s blood. I have my period
.

She forages in her locker.
Do you want a Tampax?

A Tampax?
My heart twitters its way down a lifeline of lie.

She laughs.
Well, you’re not going to swim in a maxi pad, are you, Kansas girl? Or is that what the nuns taught you?

Everyone finds this immensely funny as I sit on the bench folded over myself as mute and immobile as a statue until the room clears out. I open my palm and study it, a miniature toilet paper roll with a fine cotton tail. I creep into the bathroom bent in two like a woman selling matchsticks, sit on the toilet, pray.
Please God our Holy Father make this work
. It’s so simple, it’s complicated. I close my eyes, sliding it up down there until it seems okay, but when I stand, it falls to the floor, and I freeze.
What do I do now?
People are looking for me. I can hear rumblings, an occasional yell. I put my feet up on the door and stop breathing, my body aching in hell.

I’m stuffing a wad of toilet paper down my pants, planning a quick escape when Kyd walks in and says:
What are you doing?

I can’t take it anymore, explode into nervous breakdown, throwing both hands up in the air, toilet paper flowing behind me like tattered wings.
The blood. There’s a lot. More than I expected. I feel sick. I’m bleeding. A lot. And lately I’ve been so … so … so … mad all the time, like worse than normal
.

She looks at me.
What?

I have a bigger nervous breakdown, with flapping feet and trembling teeth and whapping arm movements she has to deflect.
I’m bleeding. I’ve got the, the, periods. I’m menstruating, Kyd, and it’s awful, worse than I ever expected … Lilly was right, but I lied to her … I lied and Dot, that bitch, she could have told … but Bron said … she said … she told me I was relatively … normal
.

She looks at me, whispers:
What?

I have an enormous nervous breakdown, with rivers of snot and red splotches, bleeding into a foot of toilet paper, a makeshift towel diaper wrapped around my thighs, my pants falling at my great feet, an ache pounding in my groin.
The blood
, I say,
the blood is so awful. What’s the … how … do people do this, do you know, Kyd? Do you? So this makes me normal? The fuckers
.

She studies me without speaking, apparently confused, then her face lightens, she takes her voice down a notch, practically whispering:
Were you afraid you were pregnant, honey?

My nervous breakdown is so surprised, it eats itself up like a monster, stops dead in its tracks.
What?

She breathes a sweet sigh of relief.
Would you like a Tylenol?

And I say:
What?

And she says:
For the pain
.

Yes please
, I say in an electronic voice.
Pain is no good, and I’d like a box of Tampax or a Tampax, but with the box please
.

She looks concerned, but says:
Okay
.

Life is all about gliding straight things into angles, being human, but not so much that people can tell. Life is all about curving around corners without falling and removing any bodily leaks as fast as you can. I sit on the toilet and read the instructions; simple words flow into simple words like enigmatic poem. I stand up, try to figure out the angle, my mind filled with grim urgency. It takes seven to get it right. When I finally crawl out of the bathroom stall, bent in half like a dying opera woman, Kyd’s standing at the sink with a bottle of Tylenol in her hand.
All better now?

I reach for the Tylenol, avoid any contact with her curiosity, sitting down and staring at the floor until she gets the hint, and I’m finally alone to study my new face. My face is a sheer pale green, my hair wild as though I’ve been wrestling with the devil, my eyes morphed into two hollow plums. I grab my cap, stuff hair up underneath it, look myself in the hollows, say:
Me as woman
in my new robot voice, then go out and get into the pool.

O Misery O Philosophy O Jargon

When I get back to Glenwood, summer’s over, and I’m a highly charged, brand-new, international senior woman. Dot, Roxanne, and Father Tim are standing in the exact same spot I last left them like a painting in a museum, except they’ve changed clothes. Father Tim is a vision of tennis-playing health in beige slacks and a light blue polo, his transparent skin bronzed the color of oatmeal. Dot’s now taller than Roxanne, whose eyes are ringed raccoon to match her black tights, black dress, black bangles, natty piece of lace holding up her hair. Roxanne is wearing funny makeup. Dot is wearing funny makeup. They’re makeup-wearing miserable people. I look over at Roxanne, who looks back at me and says:
What? I
say:
What, what? and
she looks at Dot and says:
She’s back
.

Priests often say the wrong thing. Father Tim looks up, says:
What did they feed you in Colorado? You’ve grown!

When I get home, Mom is fully dressed in bed, propped up on an arsenal of pillows, waiting for me. Her bedside table is packed with life’s necessities: a telephone, a smorgasbord of pills in clear brown plastic with the child-protection tops screwed on sideways, a thermos of something, a half-eaten family-size pack of M&M’s, three detective novels, a jar of cream, a toothbrush with dried-on paste, an empty plate void of crumb, a roll of toilet paper, a blunt knife, some speckled bananas. She hugs me and says:
You’ve grown even bigger than I ever, more than I ever, you’re just like …
then has a tired nervous breakdown with gentle seismic trembles and a couple of clear blue tears that light up her eyes but do not fall. I watch her carefully: she’s lost all muscular tonicity and her skin has turned the color of paste.

Have you been feeding her the grimlock?
I accuse Dot in the kitchen later.

She takes offense.
No! Not for months. She’s eating food again
.

What’s she been eating?
I open the fridge and look in. Raw potatoes, cooked potatoes, milk, butter, cheese, new potatoes, a frothy pitcher of grimlock with an oily green sheen on the top, mashed potatoes.

She likes potatoes
, says Dot, getting nervous.

Potatoes! There’s like hundreds
, I say, throwing my hands up in the air
… I can’t believe this
.

June puts things in them—broccoli and cheddar
. She’s speaking fast
. Bacon and cauliflower. I chopped up some chicken and mixed it with butter, then I baked it again with mozzarella … She liked that one
.

I shut the door.
So what’s the deal with the M&M’s?

She shifts her eyes in the international dance of all bad liars.
They’re for visitors
.

I speak slowly, reeling her in.
Are you sure?

She shifts her eyes to the ceiling, her face an unholy hue.
Yes, I’m sure
.

I go in for the kill.
She has two chins. When I left, she only had one … She was better off on the grimlock
.

She looks at me, her sad eyes ringed in blue:
She’s turned … that color … because she doesn’t go outside and you can’t
live
on grimlock
.

I sigh.
Better grimlock than potatoes and M&M’s
.

She gets both defensive and shifty.
I told you: those are for the visitors. And it’s not just potato. We add healthy ingredients
.

I look at the shifting landscape of her face.
You can lie to yourself, but don’t lie to me
.

I go through an unfortunate big-shot phase, pretending that Colorado obliterated all that I’ve been, thus changing me forever. I make it known to one and all that I’ve won a full scholarship to
Stanford University
in
California
, where I will swim under the guidance of the immensely amazing
Supercoach E. Mankovitz
, the most successful coach since the beginning of time. I subliminally advertise the fact that Kansas has finally been revealed to me for what it really is: a river of flatness and snot, a sad mixture of tornadoes, crushed mobile homes, pizza parlors, stores that sell items no one really wants, people whose small stories no one wants to hear. Most junior Catholics spent the summer lazily floating around Lake Shawnee on tires, experimenting with pot, getting their cherries popped. They have brownish arms and noses that fade faster than you can say
snap
. The real me is a serious person with serious desires, way too serious to be contained by Kansas. I am already half out and want fellow Glenwoodians to know it so that I can know it even more.

At first, the sisters deal with me and my slouchy classroom ways the way they always have:
Straighten up, missy, or the only pool you’ll be swimming in today is one of your own sorrow
. But I’m zooming up into the stratosphere, breathing ozone, dreaming of the world championships in Moscow, where I will most excellently skim water and beat the rest of the world. I fling myself down on one of the Cocoplat’s twin beds and think about winning as she calmly explains her deep endless pure heart-wrenching gut-disturbing love with this idiot guy who used to be so skinny we put glue on his chair in sixth grade to see if he’d stick. I have perfected the art of half listening from Dr. Leonard Ash, am swimming so fast in my head, no one in the world comes close, as Lilly Cocoplat speaks of the joys of disguising hickeys with a cream made with zinc.

But I feel sorry for everyone stuck forever in their small local lives. In gym class, I stare at poor old Augusta standing at the top of Mount Mercy in her red parka miming and pointing at her sad nun knees. I run, her speck becoming larger and larger until I see the poor broken veins in the corner of her poor Polish nose. There’s Ugly Helena, the history nun, reading sad passages from history books she’ll never grace. All Sister Belly has to look forward to is tossing up a disk of pizza dough and catching it behind her back. Poor Sister Fergus whooshes by on her way to deal with human disaster, emitting a perfume of ham and clover, her cross glowing in the sun like the light saber of a Jedi before a good smite. I give her a sad little wave and she gives me a normal wave back.

But after a while, things switch. Kansas becomes real again and Colorado fades away; mountains turn to clay, Kyd’s hair becomes haystack and her teeth turn to marble, Arch Naylor’s mustache turns into parts of that old red broom the nuns use for the sidewalk. The nurses who drew the blood out of my arms turn into bored dental hygienists. Mrs. Peggy has a plate face with spaghetti hair and two halves of a tomato for lips. She’s got olive earrings and ham skirts and cheese sticks for feet. Dr.

Peggy has one of those cork heads that grow wheat out the top. Peggy jumps up and down gnashing sharp gorilla teeth. Only the superior E. Mankovitz remains steady in his flesh and blood. He takes off his cap, scratches the dent in his hair, says:
That’ll do
.

Coach Stan is overexcited with thrill, a deep, borderline hyper. I sit in his office as he describes everything he thinks it will take to cover me one day in the near future in six grams of pure Olympic gold. He says
Okay
at the beginning of every sentence, opening both his palms.
Okay, by the end of this year, this is what you’ll be swimming the 200 m free
, he says, sliding a piece of paper across his desk and clasping his hands as I unfold it:
1:58
, faster than the fastest time yet recorded by a human woman. I look at him and he looks at me, his face twitching with edgy athletic energy, his hands tapping the table, his feet tapping the floor and we sit, all serious until it starts to get embarrassing and he says:
You could be faster than the fastest swimmer in the world
. Then he says:
Okay, this is what you’ll be swimming in the 200 IM
and he slides another piece of paper across his desk:
2:12
. His face is twitching again, his hands and feet still at it, until he can’t contain himself anymore and says:
This is what you’ll be swimming in the 100 butterfly
. I unfold the square:
1:00
. I look out over the empty pool. Even those crazy East German Berliners don’t have these times. I tape the pieces of paper above my bed. They are the last thing I see at night, the first thing I see in the morning. When I’m in the mood, I kneel down and say crazy stuff, nothing prayer-like but crazy still. When I’m in another mood, I dance around in my underwear and swear.
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. You’re going down
. Sometimes Dot and Roxy join me and we dance, and when we dance, we flip off the East German Berliners, our walls, the window, the world.

I say things like:
I’m going to beat those East German Berliners
because the words
East German
and
Berliner
make me feel bigger and darker and more mysteriously heroic. Someone writes
EAST GERMAN BUTT LINERS
on my locker and Lysol and bleach won’t remove it.

Lilly Cocoplat takes me aside and tells me to knock it off. She’s wearing barely detectable brown eyeliner and clear Vaseline on her lips.
Knock it off with the East German Colorado thing
.

What?
I’m sitting on the curb waiting for June.

You know what
. She’s added a heart charm to her cross.

It’s exciting! I mean, can you believe it? It’s me
. I wish she were swimming; we could be champions together.

Yeah, but like quit talking about it all the time
. She is over the swimming, has been hanging out with people who are not me, thus fun.
Every second you’re like Ohhhhh the East German Berliners and Olympic Super-coach Ernest Manvinch is so super …

Man-ko-vitz. And I don’t talk about it like every second
. Now I’m surly. I put my
I feel sorry for you, Lilly
, face on and she sucks in a breath, pivots, and walks away.

I swim with Coach Stan five days a week before school and all afternoons except Sunday. Mother makes the commitment to drive in the morning and Coach Stan takes me home at night. I have specific rules I have to follow: No attempting to roller-skate backward, the wearing of seat belt at all times, even in the backseat, fifty grams of protein at each meal including breakfast, whole grains, whole pastas, whole meals, whole pajamas, whole muffins, whole doughnut holes, whole hats, whole scarves covering whole head. No skating, no sledding, no biking, no running, no sliding, no tripping, no hammering, no dancing, no falling, no hurting, no breaking. I take mixtures of vitamins and minerals and essential acids at different times of the day, drink a gallon of water, sleep the sleep of the genuinely tired for ten hours straight, rolling out of bed and into my sweats, making it to the pool in twenty minutes flat. I have a weight trainer from the U, the cute Chip, all to myself. I eat a stack of pancakes that comes up to my chin, four scrambled eggs, two English muffins, a banana, and am still hungry.

Fredrinka Kurds is getting faster.
She’s superhuman
, I say to Stan the day we learn she broke a minute in the 100 fly.

Stan’s sitting at his desk, tapping the floor with his sneakers.
Well … it almost seems impossible
.

You said anything was possible
, I say, biting into a disgusting sandwich June made, but hunger keeps me chewing.

Yes, yes, I know I did
.

Fredrinka Kurds swirls around in my head, then swirls around in the pool moving so fast the water remains still. She’s practicing as hard as I am, or—and here my heart sinks, revolves a little bit, twitters, sinks again—
harder
. People I don’t know want to talk to me about it. There’s a write-up in the Sunday supplement of the
Kansas City Star
with a photo spread. I wear ugly shoes and striped pants that don’t fit right. The Dark Catholic with the putty face volunteers to do my hair and I accept, only to discover she thinks ugly hair looks good. As an extra bonus, she paints my face orange and uses a brown pencil to accentuate what she calls my
strong brows
. In one photo my orange face is looking at my white hands as if it’s thinking about what color to paint them. The caption next to it says:
I’m really concentrating on beating the East German Berliners. I think it’s time they know what a real American from Kansas can accomplish
. In the pool shots, I look as anonymous as any other swimmer from any other place on the planet: big-shouldered, cruel, determined. Roxanne points out that with the eyebrows and the orange face, I look like that guy who lives fearlessly with bears.

I don’t care. I’m going to wear dress sweats, meet Team USA in the terminal of Chicago International Airport, where we shall fly to the backward part of the world like tall venting angels, and when we get there we’re going to show them a thing or two. I hop around to the beat of a different drummer in my bedroom, put violet glitter on my eyelids, am never tired but often possessed by a wave of scary Peggy-like horniness. Puberty has decided to hit me hard; my small breasts throb when I lie flat on my stomach, and my genital shrub is thickening into category three: woolly and wild. I examine it and consider taking measures. I learned in Colorado that a real swimmer’s hairy bits are rarely wider than a stick of gum.

Faced with the perplexity and internationalness of the situation, the nuns steer clear. I wonder out loud if I am going to stay in a type of
Moscow Marriott
not so far from
Siberia
. I wonder out loud what would happen if the
KGB
steals us and sends us to a
gulag in Siberia
with other dissidents. Jealous locals don’t want to have lunch with me anymore so I have lunch with kids who pretend to like me more than I pretend to like them. Coach Stan concentrates on my taper, worries to excess, calls the superior E. Mankovitz on the phone, says:
I’d like to speak with Mr. Mankovitz, please
until it’s time for me to depart.