from Grist, 2012
You are always swimming. Because when you were four years old your father tossed you in the waves, threw you up high and then you crashed down, your ears and mouth full of salt. You sank to the sandy bottom and he lifted you up again, and again, and you can’t stop laughing, even now you laugh with the memory of it bubbling up from your center.
You are always six months old sitting in the little tub on the back porch. Mama has just come outside with a pan of warm water to pour over your soapy head. Close your eyes and shudder, breathe, laugh. Feel your mother’s hands around you as you clutch the sides of the tub, holding yourself up. You splash and the sun beats down.
You will forever fall asleep to the sound of rain drumming on the old tin roof. The thunder rolls and thumps the flash of lightning in your eyes pressing on you in the dark you slide under. You swim until morning comes. You run through the pasture your feet splashing in and out of puddles.
Swim back through the watery lens to the old blue hole, the water is so cold, churning with the movement of your feet and your best friend Becky is there, walking up the creek with you, to the place where it gets warmer and muddier, the air is thick. Tiny leaches attach to your shins. You pull them off and there’s a little trickle of blood, a tiny oozing where the mouths have been. Wash the blood off in the creek. Put your shoes back on and walk home.
Swim back to the Fort Mountain lake. You are twisting and turning. Somersault forward, using your arms as propellers, blowing out through your nose. Over and over you turn until you’re dizzy with it, then you swim out toward the rope, long smooth strokes, pulling yourself deep and deeper. If they’d let you, you’d swim across the lake, slowly, a stroke at a time. You’d swim with your head above the water, all the way across, you’d gather all the water in the lake and take it home with you, store it in buckets and barrels so there’re always be water to swim in, water to wash your hair in, water to douse the campfires beside the rustling streams.
You are looking down through the glass-bottomed boat sailing across the Everglades. You are watching that bright green swamp grass waving underneath your feet. You are picking through all the shells you picked up and they are safe, nothing has snapped them into pieces. Here is a bowl of perfectly formed scallops and dried-up sand dollars. Everything lasts in this watery world. Anything is possible. You’re still crashing down the river without a raft. You’re still throwing yourself down the current. It pulls and pushes you into a large pool perfect for swimming and you will always crawl back up the slippery bank and do it again, and again, the water will always carry you back.
This is you. This is the cistern’s wavery mirror. You are waving and watching the tiny you waving back. This is you at summer camp, holding your nose before you jump in the pool, sinking down as far as you’ll go, blowing out your breath. You come up for air, the sun burning your cheeks bright pink, blistering over, making the freckles that will be there the rest of your life.
This is you safe inside your dreaming of water. All those long hot summers wanting nothing more than to be cool to be wet but on your farm there is no creek, no stream, only the old wash, the gulley cut deep with rainwater and when it flows you run beside it, wishing it was deep enough for swimming, wishing you could be naked, lying in the green pools like a fairy. You run the length of it, panting for breath and then your brother is there. He has an idea—Let’s dam up the wash. Let’s dam it up so we can swim and you help, the red-haired cousins help, and soon you have a pool where you splash and play until the mosquitoes are so thick and swarming that you all run to get away from them, back to the house and drink from the silver dipper, the dull tin taste of the water in your mouth like the taste of canteens like the taste of the Black Hills. Your mother is handing you a tin cup from the pantry. And you will always be that little girl drinking water from that little cup.
This. This is the water that runs through you. All through the west you travel with your family, stopping at campgrounds along the way. You brush your teeth in the brook, you wash your feet in the creek, you wade in, stepping carefully on the sharp stones. You cling to your father’s arms as you walk across the bridge over the bubbling hot springs in Wyoming. Beside the Roaring Fork river you make camp and your father and brother carve boats that you sail down the stream, your father sitting in a perfect throne made of three boulders and nothing has ever been as happy your father sitting there, the river roaring all around you.
This is the lake next to Cindy’s house and you have jumped from the pier and sunk to the mushy bottom. You didn’t chicken out. It will be worth it, the spanking, being sent home. That whole July is forever swirling inside you and you can go back, swim all the way across that lake. You can swim all the way back to the kitchen table where your father is crunching ice. You can take the cube from his mouth and slip it into you mouth and let it melt slowly, like the snowman in the yard. He can’t last in the forty degree weather. You watch while he melts, a little at a time until nothing is left but a snowball on the bare ground but you can go back and save it, all the snows that ever fell, the look of the light out the back door on the snow falling softly, the hush of it, the memory of the dream of your family in a sleigh snuggled into big fur blankets, gliding over the ice and snow, all the way up and down the ridge. Swim back to that winter and stand in the skinny bathroom. The water is ready now. You and the red-haired cousins fill Dixie Cups with the hot water, as hot as you can stand, to prove how valiant you are, to prove your worth.
It’s Saturday night and Mama has everyone lined up at the kitchen sink for a head scrubbing and one by one she washes all of you, your brother, the red-haired cousins, her fingers digging into your scalps, hard, scraping away the dirt and you watch while the suds and water swirl away down the drain, out to the soft spot in the yard, the evil smelling hole with its backwash and grime. Swim back to that house. You can keep every Saturday night. You can keep the Head and Shoulders, the scratchy towels.
You can keep all the waves, the dark water of Fall Creek Falls where your father swims across in long strokes, his strong arms pulling through the water because on this day the sun is still shining, there’s still a cascade of water flowing from the falls. On this day the lake is still full, the little stream beside it is still rushing forward. You can slip on your sandals and walk over to the water. Granny is there. She’s still waiting for you.
Close your eyes. You’re back in the car with the unbroken family, driving up into the Smoky Mountains. You stop for a picnic and it’s just like all the picnics you ever had together, beside the water, rolling up your pant legs, wading in, climbing over the slick stones. You are still clambering down the side of Cloudland Canyon to the falls, bursting from the air, water crashing, the spray the mist. You are still hiking up John’s Mountain, walking behind the falls watching the prism of light.
Take this water. Pour it into jars and pitchers. Pour it into the aluminum tumblers. Pack them away in a trunk, into your hope chest. Pour in the Pacific ocean, the women walking on the cold crashing beach in their fur coats. Pour in the ocean and bottle it up with the player piano that family in Oregon had, your feet barely reaching the pedals. Bottle up Disneyland, the people screaming as they move through the massive rock while you watch. And please pour in the long drive across the desert. Pour in every wave in the pool in Oklahoma because today your brother is safe. Everything is safe. With all this water nothing will be lost, you will be forever wet, forever moving through the waves. Tonight it won’t be that cold, it won’t freeze in the pipes. Tonight it will flow freely and your mother will throw bucketsful on the flames, over and over. She will douse the fire and there will only be a little smoke damage because you didn’t waste it you didn’t lose it you didn’t let it go.
This. This is what water can do. Turn your lips blue. Your daddy just lifted you from the old mill pond, your daddy’s arms are still around you. He’s tossing you into the deep cold water again, do it again, Daddy, do it again. You are forever lying on the December beach, drunk from Jägermeister, the waves moving up your thighs, up to your waist, soaking your sweater, as cold as winter snow. You are forever scraping out the conch shell until something hisses at you, and your skin crawls, and you leave him to die. You are forever leaping from the car ready to swim but it always begins to storm and all you can do is snatch up the huge white shells from the sand.
You will endlessly swim into the day when you and your family stop your bikes at a little stone house and a fairytale woman with a long skirt and kerchief on her head comes out and offers a drink from her well, the best drink you’ve ever had, the dipper cool against your mouth before you ride four more miles and then jump into the stream, the water freezing your ankles. Your brother splashes you and you run toward the bank, toward the campground where your mother is boiling evening coffee. You run through the woods, jumping over the little side streams, walking across moss-covered logs. You pick up polished stones and put them in your pocket. You’re just nine years old. You will always be nine years old.
Until you’re thirteen going on a creek hike at Camp Glisson, heading toward the falls roaring in the distance. Everyone stops on the way to add stones to the cross that other students have built in the middle of the creek and later that day your counselors wash your feet and you can’t stop crying, because Jesus did this, and water came from his side, and God separated the water from the land and your father dug a deep pond in the lower pasture and you lay atop the little bubbling spring that has all this very long time been filling you up.
