BY JJ GRAHAM
Copyright is held by the author.
STICKERS LOSE stickiness. Bathwater cools.
At Family Swim, I am Superman. I can touch bottom.
Marla stands on one foot, then the other, holding my hand while she waits. The floor tiles are beaded with water. Since Christmas, she’s been saying, When the clock moves. As in, When the clock moves, we’ll go to the pool. As in, Let’s get going already. Her grandparents have a big analogue clock on the wall next to the door in their kitchen. That’s where it comes from.
But still, we got here late. Shit happens. We’re waiting at the end of the line, way back by the locker rooms. Ahead of us, two teenage lifeguards in red shorts watch the last holdouts from Adult Swim pull themselves out of the water. Towels are found among the bleachers, goggles carefully returned to goggle cases. A retiree doing laps doesn’t hear or pretends not to hear the whistle and one of the lifeguards splashes the water in front of him with a kickboard.
Finally, dripping resentment, the adult swimmers start to pass by. They give us mean looks, or don’t look at all. One of them, a woman about my age, breaks off and tucks into line behind us. She’s wearing a black one-piece with a towel around her waist. Dry hair. She focuses on the middle distance, hoping no one will make eye contact. Family Swim is for families, after all.
On the far wall, the word Respect is spelled out backwards against the steamed windows. Snow covers the playing fields outside. Chicago is stumbling under the weight of all the snow. Driving here, wearing our swimsuits under our pants and coats and snow boots, we passed the 49 bus going the other way, its windows iced white. A moment later, Marla, facing backwards in her car seat, said, “Bus.” No further comment, just noting it was there. The world runs in reverse for Marla, when we’re driving.
The retiree is taking his sweet-ass time shaking out his ears.
“Tell them you’re my aunt,” I hear behind me.
It’s a pudgy kid in enormous fluorescent swim trunks, looking up at the woman in black. The line now stretches back to the wall and is turning in on itself.
“They’re not gonna let you in,” says the kid. “Trust me.”
She sees me looking and smiles as if to say, Kids, right?
“Cousins,” she says.
“You’re too old to be my cousin.”
I look down at Marla. I could offer to cover for them both. A nice little blended family. But what kind of example would that be?
The line starts to move, and we make our way towards the lifeguards. As we pass, I hear one of the lifeguards say, “This is Family Swim?”
Marla and I put our things on the bleachers and go into the water, which is so warm it feels like nothing more than a denser part of the air. Marla follows tentatively down the ladder. She does everything one toe at a time. A line forms behind her and I reach out and take her to my chest and slowly bend my legs, submerging both of us up to our necks.
In my arms, Marla holds on tight like you’d think it was a game to keep any water from coming in between us. It reminds me of when she was a baby and she would grab onto any part of me within her reach: fingers, hair, nostrils.
The woman and the kid, I see, have passed the test. She lays out her towel on a plastic deck chair under one of the windows and reads a book as if a wall of snow weren’t piled up on the other side of the glass. She’s the only person not in the pool. At some point, a lifeguard goes over to speak to her and she points towards where the pudgy kid is swimming laps. I can’t hear what’s been said, but eventually, when my back is turned, she leaves.
Which feels right, I decide.
They leave the kid alone, which also feels right. He’s just a kid, after all, still doing laps on the other side of the rope float. He moves with a surprising grace, reaching out one hand, then the other, pulling himself through the water as naturally as if through time. When our hour is over, I see him run around to the back of the line for Adult Swim, unimpeachable, ready to go again.
Sitting on the bleachers, I deflate Marla’s swimmies. She screams while I hold her in the shower. We towel off and head to a bagel shop across the street to wait for her mom.
Cream cheese melts on our bagels. Our bag of wet swimsuits is the only proof of what we’ve done.
The steam from a coffee maker dances across the window.
***
JJ Graham lives in Rhode Island. Recent work has appeared in A-Minor Magazine, Oblong Magazine, Smokelong Quarterly, and The Antigonish Review.
