Swimming at the Y

previously published in Junq Magazine

I wrote this story a year or two ago, and submitted it to a friend’s lit mag startup. That didn’t go how I wanted it to go, so here it is for free. I hope you like it.

Emma lingers in the changing room, looking around. Swimming appeals to her because it helps with her back fat, but the changing room before-and-after ritual is her favourite part. She likes that the walls are bruised ruddy and yellow. She likes the cool tile floor and its puddles, pool water drippings from now-dressed bodies gone about their days. When she enters the women’s changing room, she leaves her boots and socks at the entrance, walks the middle row of lockers, sets her gym bag down, and claims locker number 111. A bolt of pain flares in her left foot, and Emma sucks in a breath, flexes and points her toes in a familiar motion. On the ball of her foot, there is a crater with a ghostly band, two centimetres wide at least, a wart she has been trying to dig out for months with her miniature blue Swiss Army Knife. The rough crust of its dead edge lifts against the smooth, wet floor, but she resists the desire to slough it off just yet. She keeps the knife tucked in the nude, built-in shelf bra of her bathing suit, ready for her water-softened skin.

A mother with thick upper arms helps her daughter change where Emma now begins to undress. She hangs her down-filled brown coat, with its softly-scented plumage and fur trim, on the hook inside, then unzips her close-fitting heather gray hoodie and takes off the matching flared lounge pants. She pauses to pad over to the water fountain, where she fills her bottle, drinking while her eyes rove. Mothers come and go in sensible one-pieces, hauling children by their sticky hands. Emma observes their cellulite and moles, the hair at their ankles that they missed while shaving, their sagging posture. A little boy catches her eye and grins, his teeth mossy with plaque. Emma’s breasts hang forward under her tank top as she bends down to loop her underwear (black, 100% cotton) under one foot, and then the other. She steps into the lime green one-piece with black palm trees sprouting over her tits. She glances around; no one’s watching her.

Emma has smooth underarms but a visible bush, which she hides under the towel that wraps around her waist like a boy. After urinating and washing her hands, she turns to the sauna, where steam clogs the room like hair in a drain. Her scalp itches under her brushed dirty blonde hair. She walks to the benches, climbs to the second tier, and lays on her back with her knees up, feet on the bench. The wart itches, emits another shot of pain.

Emma is nearing 50 but still ties her long hair in a scrunchie. Discomforted by the tight, heavy ponytail, she pulls it out and fans her tresses behind her on the dirty bench. Two girls, maybe fourteen, enter the steam room and sit behind her, giggling. They complain about the no cell phones rule as one of them steps on Emma’s hair. Emma closes her eyes for some time, opening them occasionally to glimpse: a toe ring; the sweaty crown of a girl’s head; pink manicured fingernails, scratching mindlessly at a freckled arm. With each entrance and exit from the steam room, a gust of chill air reaches Emma on the bench. She drinks it gratefully but lies still in her coat of sweat, fungal, picturing moss overtaking her on a forest floor while she slumbers.

Emma opens the door to the pool as a whistle shrieks. Two boys slow their run to a speed-walk as they race to jump into the water first. The pool is in two sections: a shallow, family swim section to the far left, and the deep end before her on the right. On the wall opposite of the door, floor-to-ceiling windows wrap around the northeast corner of the pool, where only a thin wedge of floor separates the water from the glass. The pool is busy, too full of bodies for a Monday afternoon.

Emma takes the scrunchie from her wrist and re-ties her hair in a loose bun at the back of her head. She imagines herself as a ballerina-turned-choreographer who’s paid her dues and now pulls her hair back not for tradition, but convenience. She walks down the ramp with her feet turned out, even though it hurts her knees. When she gets waist-deep, she squats and pushes forward in an earnest breaststroke. Rudely, but without aggression, she squeezes between the bodies of strangers and implies apologies with her eyes. She lifts a rope over her head, pretends not to hear the whistle blown at her, and crosses two lanes of elders, who gasp for air with each stroke.

Emma reaches her favourite corner of the pool and ignores the glares of those trying to swim around her. She crosses her arms on the pool’s eggshell edge, her preferred place to rest her chin and watch the outside world. At this eye level she can see yellowed grass and trees on the long, barren lawn that runs downhill toward the main highway. Cars speed past and Emma can see the drivers in flashes, a pair of sunglasses here, one fat hand on the steering wheel there. It is uncommonly dark outside for an April afternoon, and she wonders if the drivers on the freeway can feel something she can’t, a pre-storm static in the air. She rests here for a few minutes, closing her eyes and listening to the sounds of mischief and pleasure around her.

When Emma opens her eyes again, the overhead lights have been turned on. She looks outside and sees a twilit world. The cars are fewer now and the streetlights glow. She checks the giant clock on the wall, but it has four hands, and only measures seconds for the competitive swimmers. It couldn’t be later than 1pm, she reasons. Emma had met her daughter for sandwiches and bitter espressos only two hours before at a cafe on Brunswick Street. Emma asked all the questions and Phoebe said work is good, Tom is fine, Dad and Monica are doing well, they send their best. But the room is darkening, darkening, despite the warm yellow lights that veil the children playing and the adults lost in their conversations.

From the comfort of the edge, Emma sees two lifeguards; teenage boys, gesturing to the dark sky. One holds his whistle but does not blow it, while the other walks towards the tiny corner office across the lane. The brush of a leg against her arm temporarily disrupts her thoughts, but just as quickly, she feels it retreat from her space. In the near dark of the pool, suddenly Emma realizes that she can feel the water: it is a part of her, even if it moves against her will, like a muscle spasming in her calf. She has the sense that she could flex it, manipulate the intruders in her black-navy body, push them together or pull them apart. And not just the bodies as wholes, but all their poorly parts. She could unsheathe a shoulder from the trapezius muscle and carry it away. She could lift a quadricep from the bone. A pair of breasts could melt away like butter against her hot inky knife. She could ghost against the strong back of a man until he bumped against a woman who was not his wife.

Emma can feel the children, thrilled by the anonymity of the dark, as a whistle blows again and again and parents call nervously for their spouses. The splashing, slapping waves flutter in Emma’s mind. Groups of girls with long chlorinated hair and glistening wet skins in patterned suits. White buttocks shine above the water as people begin to hoist themselves up over the edges. They shiver like dogs.

The full darkness blooms against her back, the cool glass a few inches from her soft skin. Her water-muscle feels ancient, and she sees stalactites forming on the high ceiling, reflecting orange chips of light. Figures dance on the glass like shadowy cave paintings, things from Before, gathering their towels and pool toys. The dark presses once more against her back, and she looks straight up.

A bright flash emitting from the skylight makes Emma close her eyes, but not before she sees the hole in the sky, encircled in pale fire. On the backs of her eyelids she sees its ghost: the terrible ring, the soft dark centre.

Violet crocus in yellow grass.

Oxblood iris set in goldfish scales.

The colours pulse, invert, revert, drumming on her mind’s eye. Emma squeezes her eyes shut, presses her palms against the tattoo, drags in a breath, and plunges under the water.

The undertow spins as prickly legs scratch Emma on her way down. She holds her breath, sinks, and curls into herself so her back fat doesn’t bounce her towards that hole. The pulse of the gold rings slows; red blood dries to brown and rots black. Her green suit meets the pool floor as she surrenders to the oscillation and waits in the deepest corner.

The ache in her head begins when she feels two soft arms sweep under her. Like a babe Emma rushes to the light. With every inch that she rises, the heat in her head rises, her brain sparking. The lifeguard has Emma in his puny arms, pulls her to the shallow end and up the wheelchair ramp, and turns her on her side.

“Ma’am, are you alright?”

Emma nods. The movement sends shrieks down the steel cables of her neck; her eyes bulge under their lids.

“Okay, that’s good news. Please don’t move while we get you some help, okay?”

Emma doesn’t answer.

The paramedics arrive minutes later. Emma shivers on the deck. Her hair has come out of its bun and her scrunchie is gone, probably floating on the waves toward a sucking pool vent. Gloved hands examine her tenderly.

“Did you look at it?”

Emma nods.

“Okay. Try to keep talking to me, ma’am, so I know how best to help you. We’re gonna bring you to the hospital, okay? We’ll have an optometrist there who can examine you.”

Emma nods once more. Her heart steadies as she flutters her eyes open.

A film over the edges. And at their centres, two holes so dark the space around them appears prismatic by comparison. She closes her lids again, and the two black eyes continue to bore into hers. Just closing her eyes, she used to see absence; now there is presence in those two spots, and it makes her smile.

“Ma’am?”

She opens her eyes once more. From beyond the hole, the paramedic speaks.

“Can you see?”

“Yes,” Emma replies. “It’s coming back to me now.”

“That’s good,” says the paramedic, his voice cracking with relief. Emma reaches into the bra of her clinging suit.

“This should help, I think,” she says.

Emma only manages to fix one eye before the paramedic can wrestle the little blue knife from her fist. But the floor is slick like the gloved hands that grab for her, and he falls before he can get far. Emma takes the knife back, feels for his other eye, and puts the dark in.