Photo by Lavi Perchik on Unsplash
One time when I was 5 years old and Momma left me alone, I nearly drowned.
I was too young to know she was suffering from postpartum depression. She spent hours in bed, sleeping well beyond the light of morning. I remember the oriental blankets she draped over the windows, their ornate patterns casting light and dark shadows in the room where my parents slept.
Daddy didn’t know about any of this because he left early in the morning and came back late at night. He worked long hours, and we couldn’t afford much on his salary.
We lived in a rundown apartment community. I didn’t know at the time this was one of the poorest areas of town. But we had large windows that brought light into the kitchen and bedrooms, and that was the best. I would wake up early in the morning, urged by the morning sun to get up. I’d stumble into Momma’s room, see that she was still asleep, then go into the kitchen and hope that there was some food for me. Sometimes if I was lucky, Momma would leave some rice cakes soaking in water on the first shelf of the fridge and I would eat those. Sometimes I would drink that water, too.
On this particular morning, I had decided that I wanted to go swimming. Since Momma wasn’t going to take me and I nearly got into trouble the last time I went by myself, I cooked up a scheme. I would wait until the pool was busy. No one ever paid attention when it was crowded. Kids could belong to anyone, so as long as anyone wasn’t getting into trouble no one cared.
I waited until the sun was at the highest point in the sky and I got on my bathing suit and blew up my arm floaties. It was really hard to put them on with so much air, so I had to deflate them. After wrestling with them for some time, I managed to pull them up my arms. Then I went outside and walked all the way down the street to the pool. No one even batted an eye. I did forget my towel, though, and this gave me away later.
When I got to the pool, sure enough, it was crowded. Families with kids and even lone kids who lived in the apartments were present. My mouth tilted up when I heard the laughter coming from the deep end of the pool, which is where most people swam. I had scant memories of being at pools, but they were always happy.
I always took the stairs into the pool. They emptied into the shallow end. There was a small kiddie pool, too, but I was too big for that now. The deepest part of the big pool was 10 feet deep and dangerous for a kid my size, but I didn’t know that because I couldn’t read yet. The shallowest part of the pool was over my head and I remembered not to go into it all the way. My parents always put floaties on me since I hadn’t learned how to swim.
As I rounded the bend to the pool steps, I could feel myself getting excited. I had to slow myself from running. It often got slippery and I fell once, and I remembered being laughed at.
I noticed that a kid I didn’t like was near the stairs. She was an older kid and often mean to me. Sometimes I played with her when there was no one else. But she was much older — I think she could have been 12 years old. She always looked annoyed when I was around.
Her face contorted into a sneer as I started to descend the stairs. She asked me where my parents were but I ignored her. I didn’t want to deal with her today.
The first step was easy. The water was nice and lukewarm and it went nearly to my knees. I could have stopped there and enjoyed myself but I was determined.
I got to the second step and it kissed my thighs. A voice in the back of my mind was warning me. I started to feel a bit scared. So instead of going further, I sat on the second step and the water nearly covered my entire body. I leaned my head back against the pool lip, floating my arms on top of the water.
The girl I didn’t like appeared near me, dangling her bare feet in the water. I noticed that she didn’t have a bathing suit on. She was wearing a low-cut shirt and she kept jutting out her chest. She seemed very interested in what I was doing, but I didn’t know why.
“I bet you can’t stand on the next step,” she said, nonchalantly looking at her nails. When I didn’t immediately respond, she pointed to the third step for emphasis.
I sat up. “Oh yes, I can!” I was little, but I wasn’t a baby. She was always making fun of me.
She put one hand on her hip and looked at me directly. “Oh yeah? Prove it.”
I huffed and stood up. For a split second, that warning bell rang again in my mind. But I ignored it. I gingerly stepped on the third step. I had done this before, but it was as far as I usually went. The water on the third step was quite deep and it hit me high on the chest.
I looked at her smugly. “See?”
She put her arms behind her on the concrete and leaned back on them. She looked up at the sky for a moment. “I bet you can’t make it to the next step. It looks too deep for you.”
She looked across the pool at the families frolicking in the water. Most people didn’t swim in the shallow end so we were by ourselves. No one was paying attention to anything we were doing.
I looked at the next step. It did look very deep. It was the final step before the bottom. But I had my floaties on. I gave her one last look and took the step.
When you begin to drown, your body instinctively panics. At first, I thought everything was fine. My floaties seemed to be holding me above water. But the air I had taken out earlier to get them on started working against me quickly.
My head went under first which triggered my body to go into fight mode. I kicked my feet to push me above water, but this motion ended up taking me further out into the pool. For the few seconds I had before going under again, I yelled “help!”.
I could see that the girl was standing near me at the pool’s edge, peering at me curiously. She didn’t say anything, just watched me quietly. Everything felt like it was happening in slow motion.
There was no lifeguard at the pool. I’m not even sure if they were required in those days. No one was designated to save me.
I resurfaced several times and I screamed as loudly as I could each time. Eventually, my cries caught the attention of others. I remember a boy jumped in and tried to help me. But I did the quintessential act that all drowning victims do — I latched onto him like a vice, which then put us both in danger. He fought me underwater. He managed to kick me off of him and save himself.
A couple of other young people appeared at the pool’s edge, staring at me with concern. I was now having trouble breathing. Every time I yelled for help water would make its way into my mouth, and soon I was coughing instead of screaming.
At some point, my erratic actions drifted me closer to one edge of the pool. And then that frustrating girl who taunted me into this situation reached in with her long arms and grabbed me. She pulled me straight out and laid me on the concrete. Then she yelled something angrily at me. I remember coughing out what seemed like a good lot of water. She glared at me and walked away.
When people realized no one knew me and I didn’t have a towel, they quickly understood that I was there by myself. I don’t remember a whole lot after that, but I remember being taken home. When the events were relayed to Momma, I was spanked soundly by both her and Daddy. I don’t remember going to the pool by myself ever again.
That was not the only time I nearly drowned in my life. But the second time is a story for another day.
Ever since that incident, I’ve tried to learn how to swim multiple times. Good money was paid for private lessons. But no matter how many instructors I’ve had, there is just something about swimming that I can’t work out. I lose the knowledge quickly. At my best, I can doggie paddle or bob on top of the water with snorkel fins. Everyone who knows me understands that beaches, pools, and large bodies of water are a weak point for me.
Some folks say that people who have been through this type of trauma early in life are forever limited by these memories. We can never really focus on the act of swimming because we panic as soon as the memory of deepwater engages our brain. There is a lot of logic to this, and I’m quite certain this is the reason for my blockage.
But sometimes when I’m in the water and that old familiar alarm bell goes off, I think back to that girl. And the way her eyes looked as she quietly watched me drown.
* This is a true story from my childhood. It is intended to be written from the perspective of my childhood self.