Breathing Exercises

My mother had this idea in her head that, if she signed me up for activities like swim lessons, I might be baptized into another kind of life. But I was no longer allowed at the city pool. Trashy is what she called it. No one at the city pool knew how to swim, she said, and while I couldn’t fact-check this statement, I’d never seen a person use the lap lanes. Most people clung to pool noodles or lay on the deck, sprawled on bleached bathroom towels, while their children chased each other, stumbling over lounge chairs and skirting pool corners until a mother or tití yelled at them to ven acá before they slipped and broke their freaking necks.

My cousin, Katelynn, a record-setting freestyle relayer, offered to sacrifice her Saturday afternoons to teach me to swim at Sylvan Lake (her family’s ‘private community nestled on a natural waterfront vista’), no charge, because we were family, and that was the kind of girl she was. Athletic, generous, well-rounded. Aunt Mallory had suggested Sylvan Lake, which was her polite way of saying she didn’t feel comfortable bringing Katelynn to the city pool, which was her way of calling the city pool trashy.

Swim lessons began two weeks after my father left for a work trip and didn’t come back. It wasn’t unusual for him to sleep elsewhere for a night, but this time he’d taken the Roku but not the television, the record player but not the vinyl, my bike and our one car, leaving my mother and me marooned. The stolen car—“Borrowed,” I argued.—angered my mother more than my father’s abandonment. Since then, it seemed she could no longer tell the difference between the things that actually made her mad and the things she thought made her mad; or the things that actually made her happy and the things she thought would make her happy. She had begun to reject the things she loved, especially if they were puertoriqueño, as if empanadillas or dembow could somehow be responsible for our situation. When I’d eyed the supermarket quesitos, she shook her head and said, “Too much sugar.” She’d ripped all her nails off and said, “Tips are for people who don’t work.” And I guess, yeah, I was afraid she’d eventually reject me too, the mamí she’d had too young with the man who swore he’d stick around.

On the first Saturday swim lesson, I shimmied out of my denim cutoffs, and Katelynn slipped off her cotton dress, and we took each other in for the first time in our bathing suits. Me in a bikini and Katelynn in a navy blue one-piece. A swimmer’s suit. The summer Olympics kind, high-cut on her lithe hips, racerback. I expected Katelynn to sidle her forearm up to mine, the way she had when a circle of her fifth-grade friends determined that I, the only brown-skinned girl at the birthday party, was their suntan benchmark. Unimpressed, a girl with the shadow of a unibrow had said “I’m full Italian, so I turn practically Black in the summer,” and everyone nodded knowingly.

Today, Katelynn rubbed sunblock onto her chin and forehead in small, conscientious circles.

“Nice suit,” I said. She smiled and thanked me through her fingers. Her long toes, crooked from years of Irish step dancing, buried their heads in the sand.

“I can’t believe you never learned to swim,” she said. “It’s like not learning how to walk,” and then, as if she remembered she should be encouraging, she said, in her best Coach voice, “But don’t worry, swimming is basically instinctual.”

We passed a crooked lifeguard chair to the edge of the lake. Katelynn strode in and dunked herself, head and all. A dock floated in the deep part of the lake. Katelynn beckoned. I waved back. She’d likely get into college with an athletic scholarship, my mother had said. Not that she needed it. But I didn’t need to be a good swimmer, I replied. I just needed to stay afloat.

“This is gross,” I said. I pulled my foot up, unsticking it from the silt.

“You’re funny,” she said. Then she stretched her arms out as if she were on a feathertop mattress and said, “Want to know the best swimming advice I ever got?” She looked at me sideways. “You’re in control.”

But when she told me to kick, kick hard, my body refused to cooperate. Water leapt into my mouth and eyes, cramps seized my middle, and I panicked, splashing and sputtering. The lifeguard approached us as I clung to Katelynn’s shoulder. Reese, a senior, swam on the boys’ team at Katelynn’s high school and had cream-colored hair and freckles. I risked a free hand to adjust my bikini top.

“Where are you from? Your eyes are beautiful,” he said.

“Thanks, my mom is Puerto Rican.”

“That was my guess. Like Mexican or something.” He smiled. “This is fun. Usually, I’m stuck watching toddlers all summer.”

“We’ll be here every Saturday,” said Katelynn.

“Excellent.” He clamped his whistle in his lips and blew three short blasts at a group of children playing chicken. The kids scattered. When Reese climbed back into the lifeguard chair, giving a ‘no-worries’ wave to parents, Katelynn groaned and hid her face in her hands.

“It’s so racist to ask someone where they’re from.” She peeked through her fingers at me.

“It’s not a big deal,” I said, and I meant it. Reese wasn’t the first to ask, and he wouldn’t be the last. I didn’t see the point in being offended. Ask my mother, though, and you’d get a scathing response. “I’m an American,” she’d say, and I’d say, “You’re Puerto Rican,” and she’d say, “Which is American.”

After we showered in the bathhouse with little bars of perfumed soap, Katelynn towel-dried her hair, scrunching her monogrammed initials in her fist.

“My mom told me about Uncle Paul,” she said, bent over, her face hidden. “Your mom called to see if we’d heard from him.” This, I didn’t know—it spoke to my mother’s desperation and, feeling exposed, I wrapped my beach towel tighter around my body.

“He’ll be back,” I replied. Katelynn raised her eyebrows. I searched Facebook for Reese on her phone. He wore a button-down shirt and tie in his profile picture, an unexpected choice.

“You should message him,” I said.

“And say what?”

“You don’t have to say anything.” I twisted and tucked the corner of my beach towel so it gave my breasts a lift. Then I took a mirror selfie.

“You shouldn’t,” she said, but her eyes danced.

There were a lot of things I shouldn’t do and more that I should. I should turn my damn music down, my mother said, stop biting my nails, and watch my mouth. I should forget about my father, the come mierda. I should play a sport, join a club, read a book. I should want more.

I sent Reese the photo.

That evening, I stuck my head in our freezer and felt the sweat on my hairline crystallize. I wondered if my dad was somewhere colder, like Montana or Minnesota. When I was younger, we played the PC game Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego (Can you track her down to recover the stolen loot?) and followed her through London and Singapore, Buenos Aires, and Paris. I decided I’d visit him, wherever he was. I wouldn’t tell him he needed to come home.

My mother shut the freezer door on my neck. “Stop wasting electricity,” she said.

A slap of the screen door and Manny appeared in our doorway. We became best friends when his older brother nearly drowned me in the city pool last summer. He’d been teasing me all day, stealing my towel until, finally, he pushed me into the deep end, and I came up choking and crying. Manny had given me his towel and apologized. I couldn’t count all the ways he was different.

He came at me for a hug, and I dodged it.

“Don’t touch me,” I said, “it’s too hot.”

“There’s chuletas for dinner,” my mother yelled from the bathroom where she was getting ready for her first manager shift at The Ground Round, a weekend hustle she’d picked up. “Eat what I made you,” she said.

 

 

To read this story in its entirety, please purchase a copy of the print edition of Issue #23