When we got to the pool, a man with a whistle and white shorts and a red T-shirt told the girls to go change in one room and the boys in the other. I looked at the picture and dreamed about winning Olympic races with a striped racing suit and blue goggles just like hers. On the side, it had a picture of a woman doing the crawl. Mom bought me a special new bag to carry my new bathing suit and towel. Until the first Wednesday afternoon of seventh grade. But there isn’t enough room for a bathtub on the boat, so never in my life had I been totally immersed in water. Hey, I’m not dirty or anything - I do take a shower every night. Just don’t start trying to get me in there with you.” But the summer before I started middle school, I finally wore her down. “That’s not for us, thank you very much.”Īnd each time I asked her, that would be that: End of Discussion. “All those bodies mixing in the same water.” She’d shudder.
She had kept me out of swimming lessons all the way through grade school, saying it was unhealthy. Now stop arguing, and come and help me with the vegetables.”
You know what it’s like when the day cruises have been through here. “You’re not getting me in that water,” she’d reply. “But we live on a boat!” I’d say (we actually do). Mom hates swimming, and she always used to change the subject when I asked her why I couldn’t learn. It all started in seventh-grade swim class, on the first Wednesday afternoon at my new school. Everybody has secrets, of course, but mine’s different, and it’s kind of weird. Sometimes I even have nightmares that people will find out about it and lock me up in a zoo or a scientist’s laboratory.
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