Prologue to What You Can Live With
A Novel by Jessica Mehr
When I see her now, she is diving. Toes pointed, one foot in front of the other, she bends her knees and grips the edge of the starting block. They are cheap, yellow boxes made of splintering wood, and the water below them is public pool green, gridded into lanes by strings of floating beads. I’m five or six, sitting poolside on the hot cement, watching as the row of girls take their positions, identical except for Celia, who has painted her finger and toenails cherry red and refuses to pull the ugly rubber cap over her bright blonde hair. “She’s so fast,” the handsome coach says, “she’d win with lead weights tied to her feet.” I clutch my sister’s folded sweatshirt against my chest. Breathe in the warm cotton. The smell of strawberry perfume and suntan lotion, a hint of fresh lemons that she uses to lighten her hair.
Suddenly, a mumbled voice reads their names over the microphone. An old man raises a gun in the air. An explosion of smoke and water. I close my mouth tightly, convinced the thick New Jersey water is poisonous, the way it coats my teeth with the taste of metal and chlorine. Celia catapults forward and the starting block shakes as her body pikes above the others. Tan and shining. The face of a girl, the movements of a warrior. She pierces the water’s surface, slides in like it’s a secret, no splash, no yell, the water closing over her like she was never there. Soon the other girls float to the surface and begin dunking their heads up and down like ducks, but the middle lane is still just empty water rippling.
Only fish can breathe underwater. That’s one thing I know for sure. In ten or fifteen seconds, Celia will emerge lengths in front of the other girls, but in the mean time, I stand up and stare at the adults around me wondering why they don’t do something. My sister is running out of air and is going to drown drown drown in that water, and who’ll take care of me while my mom is at work or out with her boyfriends, who’ll pour my cereal each morning measuring out exactly a half cup of milk the way I like it?
I can’t even see the outline of her body anymore. She’s become just a shadow, like she was never really here to start with, and still I don’t make a sound. I stand paralyzed at the side of that pool, letting my sister’s sweatshirt dangle onto the wet ground as I wait for someone else to dive in and save her.
Because I know that I’m too small to ever save anyone. Because even after months of lessons, I still don’t know how to swim.