Wall of Water

When she thought of water, she thought of how she wanted to be: bare and untouched—like a painting of a former self, a memory. She thought of Lake Michigan, which may as well have been an ocean, sand dunes rolling on the shore, the space of its water bigger than everything she had ever known, everything she would come to know. She thought of her mother, calling out from the dunes, but the girl never wanted to leave, digging her toes into the wet sand, stubborn in her contentment. She thought of what it felt like to count underwater, count to three, slowly and patiently. Her mother would laugh at this thought—the girl was never slow and patient with a single thing. 

For three suspended seconds, though, the girl would be a wall of water, suspended in time. The girl would be a dispelled world, a held breath.

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One second: The water is tall, everywhere. No one can talk to her, about her, towards her. She listens to the hum—the blue earth stilled, like giving birth in a white-walled room, if she allows herself the memory: seventeen years old, legs straddled, scared. She thought there’s no turning back now. Her feet trapped in cold metal, her mother hovering over. Faces indifferent underneath clinical masks. A nurse told her, “No, honey. Don’t push that hard,” when the girl grew red in the face, forgetting to breathe after 1,2,3 push. The nurse laughs, still floating overhead. The girl’s face reddens from lack of oxygen and embarrassment. She wonders if grown women with husbands have made this mistake, if they’ve forgotten to breathe despite attending the necessary classes. Did the coach speak towards them carefully, as if they were stupid, a bit slow?

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Two seconds: The water is a mosaic of greens and blues, and she imagines herself blending into the abyss, camouflaged. Underwater, the girl forgets how her mother used to recount the story of the girl pushing too hard. After the birth, the girl’s mother will tell the story to entertain, but not to be harsh, not to condescend. “In the delivery room,” the mother would say, grinning, “the nurse told her not to push too hard.” She snorts. “I said, ‘She’ll push as hard as she wants. She wanted that baby out of there.’” The girl will blush, reliving her embarrassment every time her mother recounts the image. And every time the story repeats, the girl will stretch her fingers wide, pretend there’s water filling the room, blue-green hues drowning out the noise, drowning out her anticipated response when all eyes turn to her, until it floods all the holes and becomes a quiet space. 

Glances like this reminded her of Lamaze, where she always felt out of place. She was the youngest person in the class and it showed despite trying to conceal her age with subtle makeup and a modest ponytail. She corrected her posture and didn’t ask questions. A pro, except when the instructor discussed the importance of your pelvic floor, and the girl blushed. “Practice your Kegel exercises daily,” the instructor said. “It’s an exercise you could do in a grocery store checkout line, and no one would ever know.” The girl remembered hearing how Kegels were supposed to make sex feel better, and she found herself blushing harder. 

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Three Seconds: Light, just out of reach. In the water, you almost always go back up; you have to go back up. But there is always some beauty in your body rising to that first peel of water, a space where the sun reaches, its rays dancing with the tide. A decade after the birth, the girl’s mother still tells the story, but instead of holding her breath, the girl looks over at her son, smiles. “That sounds like her,” her son will say, laughing. He has root beer eyes—the corners curl up, mirroring a grin. His eyes remind her of damp sand, a comfortable place. Everyone chuckles, the laughter feeling like the warmth of rays just before going up for another gulp of breath. You always have to go back up, and this time, she remembers to breathe after counting to three.

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When he smiles at her, the girl remembers how, at four, he was scared of Lake Michigan. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “There’s a sand bar just out there, just beyond the deep parts.” She pointed at the light strip lined across the lake, a refuge, a safe place for the two of them. When the water became too deep for him to walk, she told him to grab her waist, to hold onto her as she waded to the other side. And when it became too deep for her, she told him, “Grab my feet when I go underwater, and we’ll dive together,” just like her mother did for her as a girl, and for three seconds, they’d live in a stilled world together, the blues and greens mixing around them for a moment, bare and untouched.

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