Swimming Lessons
My suit was blue, or maybe red with tiny pink polka dots and a string around my neck I couldn’t tie alone. Who can remember such things? I do remember clutching the orange Styrofoam kickboard for dear life, paddling my feet with twice the vigor necessary to move forward in water, nothing like the mermaid I wanted to be. Week four of swimming lessons at the YMCA, my classmates, evil, spoiled doctors’ kids, sat on the pool’s edge, laughing at whatever it is third-graders laugh at: rules, each other, poor girls exerting too much energy to move 12 feet, my failure to graduate from using a floatation device. Water beyond the bath was foreign to me. They all had in-ground pools and parents who could swim, fathers who held them horizontal while they went through the motions until they could survive alone. I could only concentrate all my attention on not going under. --April Salzano