Sara Jaffe - Dryland

I ran up the basement stairs and up the house stairs and at the top of the stairs I wanted another set of stairs to run up. I went into my room and hung the red bag on the knob of my closet door. I put on my sneakers. I went downstairs and got my jacket and told my parents I was going for a walk. I said I wouldn’t be long. I said I wanted a little fresh air. The air outside was cold and wet and I turned left and headed uphill. Once I’d passed the houses of the neighbors I knew I started running. My shoes slapped the wet street. I wanted another, louder sound to swarm and match the itch I felt, a sound that was a feeling combing through me. I didn’t want to be quiet. If I ran all the way to Alexis’s house I could pretend it was just something I did, in the night, for training, whatever, this is your house? I wanted to sit next to her. On the phone her voice had had a sandpaper scrape to it and at the same time something warm and pooling.

At the top of the hill at the end of our block I stopped running. In my memories of swim lessons, one person at a time jumped in for a test. The crowd watched from the deck as each person foundered or glided. I put my hands on my knees like a runner at the end of a race. I heaved in breath after breath of cold, clammy air, but not because I was tired from running.

THERE HAD BEENa time when my dad and I would go pick up my brother at practice. We’d wait in the car and my brother would always be the last one out. He would swing his red bag like his arm was a windmill and he was about to let the bag go and send it sailing. While we waited in the station wagon, my dad and I would play There He Is. A short boy with glasses would come out of the building. A girl with curly blonde hair. My dad would say, There he is! My dad would say, Well, hello son, you’re looking a little different today, and I would go pink with laughter. When my brother finally came out of the building, always last, he would lope toward us, unhurried, windmilling his red swim bag, readying it for the launch, and my dad would say, Where? Where? I don’t see him. There! I’d say. I’d go pink with frustration.

There! There! There!

MY NEW BATHINGsuit was bulletproof. I’d known already, from the dressing room, that it felt good for it to feel so tight, but I hadn’t known that when I put on the suit and pulled my other clothes over it and looked in the mirror that what I would see would match how I felt. It wasn’t about how the tight suit banded my chest flat beneath my shirt — it was about that — but not about the fact of my boobs disappearing. It was how the flattening made me feel: set and armored. Clearly it would be stupid to keep my suit on under my clothes all day, hot and itchy and a pain to pee, but I didn’t want to take it off. I looked at my info sheet as if it would tell me something. The sheet gave information like what time the bus came and when it came back, and to bring a lock and, it suggested, flip-flops. It said foot fungus without saying foot fungus. It mentioned hours for the weight room. I could have crumpled that sheet. I knew everything about it. I remembered, no thanks to the sheet, to throw some clean underwear in my bag for after.

My mom was at the kitchen table doing the crossword with her coat on, and my dad was at the counter pouring coffee. I got my mug and my tea bag and water and pressed the numbers on the microwave. The bathing suit was making me stand up straighter than usual. I leaned against the counter and let the microwave paint me with radiation. I pulled my flannel away from my body.

My mom said, Is that one of the new shirts you bought?

I’d had that shirt for months. I said, I got one just like it. I said, I forgot to give you your change. I put my hand in my pocket as if I were looking for change, even though I had had to borrow another ten dollars from Erika to pay for the bathing suit.

My mom said not to worry about it. She stood up to go catch the bus and I had a sudden fear that she would hug me goodbye and feel the flatness of my chest or the outline of my bathing suit through my clothes. I tried to stand the way I normally stood. My left rib cage started to itch like crazy. I worked my hand over to the itchy spot and pressed. My mom never hugged me goodbye in the morning.

I sat at the table with my tea. My dad drank his coffee and read the front page. He had the paper tilted up so I could see the text on the back, the continuation of an article about the guy who was being charged with murder for giving AIDS to a girl he’d had sex with. Obviously if he knew he had AIDS he shouldn’t have had sex with her without a condom, or, I couldn’t remember exactly how it worked, he shouldn’t have had sex with her at all, but something felt off to me about convicting him of murder when AIDS was going to kill him anyway. I dipped my tea bag up and down and the brown water whorled. My dad folded the paper to the next page. I scratched my rib cage. I said, I might be home late a few days this week. I said, Maybe most days. Yearbook’s getting really busy and they want me to stay after school.

My dad said, Taking photos?

I said, Yeah. And other things. I sipped my tea down to the bitter bottom of the cup. I wasn’t sure about what to do with my wet hair. Maybe there was a blow-dryer at the Y. If my hair was still damp I could wear a hat and get into the shower as soon as I got home. It wasn’t unheard of to shower at night. Pledge ran up and stood shivering on the patio. I got up to let her in and stood for a minute looking out through the glass. Beyond the patio, the grass on the lawn shone with crystalline tips. Somewhere else those tips might bode snow but here they just meant cold rain, colder air.

I said, Do you want to know something funny? It just got cold out, and today the swim team starts practicing. I said, Erika told me. She’s swimming this year.

My dad said, Oh yeah? I didn’t know Erika was a swimmer.

I said, She’s not. She’s just trying it to see if she likes it. I said, If you see her don’t make a big deal about it, okay?

The sky was thick and chalky white, so dense with fog I couldn’t see the mountain.

IN MATH CLASSI felt the sac of my bladder push taut. I should have skipped my morning tea. I’d had to pee since midmorning but I didn’t want to deal with the mechanics of getting my suit down. I could leave it up and pull the crotch aside, but I didn’t want to stretch out the suit before I’d used it. I paused between classes at the girls’ room door. I looked down at myself, pretending I was looking at the floor. My chest really was completely flat. I had to pee so badly but I didn’t want to take the chance. I’d seen it happen, freshman year — a girl was at the mirror putting on lipstick and this scrawny, boyish rat-girl came in and the girl with the lipstick, said Oh my god, this is the girls’ room, and the rat-girl squeaked out, ridiculous, I’m a girl! I’d been washing my hands. I hadn’t said anything. It was embarrassing for everybody.

In Yearbook Erika told me that she’d gone down to Coach’s office to make sure it was okay if she came to practice. She said she’d mentioned my name and Coach had said, Any friend of Julie’s.

Erika said, He’s so nice. She sliced out a caption and said, I didn’t know you knew him so well.

I said, I don’t. I wondered if Coach had said Erika’s name twice, bounced it like a ball. Her name would be awkward to say twice like that. I said, What stroke did you tell him you wanted to swim?

Erika said, He didn’t ask.

I said, He was probably busy. He’ll probably just see what you’re good at today.

It was hard to talk and cut captions neatly, to keep the corners crisp and a uniform border of white around the words. It was harder when I was also keeping an eye on the front of the room. Alexis should know that Erika had decided to join on her own, that she hadn’t been asked by me, or anyone, that I hadn’t dragged her along because I needed a buddy.