CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

I once saw a man hit by a car. A hefty Detroit monster, with rust holes where a strip of chrome had fallen away. The man was jogging in place in the middle of the street, the intersection of MacArthur and Fruitvale, and the vehicle brushed him lightly, a kiss. It was only when the man danced to one side and couldn’t bring his leg along that we all saw what was wrong.

Maybe in the following minutes I decided to be a doctor. My mother was riveted by the sight, and half-shielded me as the adult world gathered in to bunch its fists and look grimly around, waiting for the ambulance. But I had seen the empty cut of the man’s mouth, a gray-haired man dressed in the brightly colored, zip-fronted jogging wear that had been in style then. I heard his angry “Don’t touch me!” and I knew as though I had read a computer printout—it didn’t hurt yet. The pain would be later. We all knew that, that some miracle of the nervous system stunned him, kept him unmoving.

Or maybe it was during my first eye checkup, Dr. Wong holding a device like a flat spoon over my right eye and telling me to read the numerals in a spot of light that glowed, in a muted way, like a moon. When he peered into the caverns of my eyes with his pinpoint light, I saw the reflected blush of my veins, crooking like the roots of trees. When I gave a laugh of amazement, he said, in his exacting accent, “The smallest blood vessels in your body—some so small they let through only one blood cell at a time!”

I like emptiness, a theater before the crowd, the swimming arena before anyone in the world thought to arrive and slip into the water.

The lines on the pool bottom were exact, perfectly straight. I dipped my toe, slicing the surface of the water, and that entire plain, so calm, quaked outward from my touch. At once, water gurgled in and out of the filter valves, a sound like a dog lapping water very, very slowly. The metal and plastic disks in the poolside, the access vents to the inner plumbing of the pool filter and the pumps, gleamed in the light from the windows high above the bleachers. The Stars and Stripes hung motionless at one end of the arena, beside the water polo team’s home/visitor Scoreboard. My bare feet made echoing slap slap sounds on the concrete.

I walked briskly now, decisively, aware that I should use pumice on the calluses on my heels.

Habit marched me upward, three steps, four. Or perhaps it was a victory, my will asserting itself. Halfway up the tower my nerve failed. My knees locked and I had that bizarre sensation that my knee joints were going to bend backward and render me a sports-medicine freak. I stiff-legged my way higher, not letting myself count the remaining steps.

My pulse flickered in my vision, the retinal net of blood vessels hammering, hammering. Deep breath, I told myself. A long breath, all the way in, head to toe. Breathing belongs to us, Miss P said. Control respiration, you control your soul.

Like so much else wise people say, it is only a little bit true. I steadied myself on the steps, guessing I was more than two thirds of the way up. I looked down. I would have gasped, except that I did not let myself give in to such a sound.

I gripped the chrome rail, left hand, right hand. I wanted to laugh, but couldn’t. I had no memory of the tower being so high. A seam in the poolside ran from the edge of the pool and all the way to the bright blue wall, the sort of rubberized seam contractors build into structures in California to make them earthquake resistant. If I weakened and fell from here, I would plummet headfirst.

If I fainted.

The scar in my scalp burned. I ground my teeth and won another step, and another. I began making hectic deals with myself, shouted thoughts, mental bargains. This time I would climb to the top of the steps and then I would rubber-leg down. That was all. My breath shuddered in and out, and to my horror the rail was curving, rounding to its summit. I had reached the top.

I felt betrayed by the stair railing, abandoning me to a narrow, open flat. But a new railing took up where the ascent rails surrendered, and I clung to the side of the platform without rising to my feet. I stayed on my knees, hobbling forward, hand to hand.

They were like the protective barrier along the side of a ship, I told myself. Solid, firmly welded into place. I played a mental animation for myself, a welder at work, sparks flying. This is steel, I told myself. Anchored. Going nowhere.

A metal crash.

A loud, echoing sound. I would be all right if I didn’t move. If I stayed right there and never released my grip.

The sound faded, reverberating, and from far away I heard the tuneful whistle of the custodian. He had been performing some janitorial task, checking the door to make sure it was unlocked, or testing the door’s crossbar, going off to get some oil—the thing tended to stick. I let the sweetness of the song he whistled tease me into optimism for a moment. The world was lovely. I could be somewhere else.

I hung on so hard it hurt. But the realization of the exterior world awakened me to the potential that Denise would arrive for her workout, and Charlotte Witt for her sweet, ordinary dives, and all the rest of them, unthinkingly confident. They would see me and wonder, and then turn to each other with whispered understanding. Poor Bonnie, creeping along on the platform.

I crawled a little farther, and then I pulled myself to my feet and stretched first one leg, then the other. I sidled outward, halfway to the edge.

Divers have a favorite place on the platform, an imaginary equator. You know when you reach it, and I was there now. Three steps would bring me to some eighteen inches from the void, and then I would launch my hurdle, the last skipping step—and I couldn’t remember how I used to do it. I was like a little girl studying ballroom dancing from a library book, footsteps connected by sweeping dots, none of it making sense.

I had seen beginners like this, cocky seventh graders introduced to the tower for the first time, huffing all the way up, and then balking, avoiding setting foot on this mesa, this slab of emptiness that you could walk out on and disappear. I had glanced up at skinny kids, up there above the pool, and felt a quiet, interior laugh. I would have laughed at myself, at the sight of me like a scarecrow in the middle of the platform.

Miss P says that if you can’t dive well, dive badly. I gave the seat of my suit a tug.

What part of our minds makes the decision, on a cold morning: Get out of bed now? My arms and legs chose the time. It was a sloppy dive, a front dive from a layout position, my arms outstretched. The sort of dive you see caught in photos, the diver’s arms like wings. A classic dive, the athlete face first into the approaching wall, the water.

All the way down I felt my form crumble, my legs falling forward. I was starting to tumble. I rotated my arms to stop the roll, sure I would hit the pool before my form totally dissolved. I didn’t. There was plenty of time. I pancaked, back and rump slamming the water.

My body remembered this very well: the artificial aquamarine of the pool bottom, the steely grin of the drain, the wooden pressure in my ears. It hurts, hitting like that. I did a mental assessment, damage control, standing on tiptoe in an almost soundless environment, warped whale-song noises from the inner workings of the pool, and from my own body, holding its breath.