Barbara Benjamin
Comic fiction based on a true event
1840 words
THE POOL
Dear Pen Pal, My head hurts kind of bad tonight, but
everybody keeps telling me that I should feel lucky. And, I suppose that's true ‘cause I could be
dead. Dead is one of those things you get
when you're not careful. That's what my
mom's always saying, "Now watch out or you're going to kill yourself!"
Getting dead must be about one of the easiest things a person can do, or
moms wouldn't be wasting so much breath saying those kinds of things.
She's even saying it to my dad all the time.
The doctor said I should just lay real still for today
and I'd be OK. So, I'm laying around here in my room now, but I'm not getting too
much rest on account my head is hurting so much. See, this morning my older sister, she's thirteen
and her name's Birdie---that's short for Bertha, but everyone calls her Birdie---anyhow,
my sister and her friend, Butch---his real name's Sherwood, but he doesn't want
too many people to know that---they asked my mom to take us to the swimming pool.
Already this morning it was good and hot, like it always is in summer here
in
And so there we all were at the pool having a real good
time. There was my friend, Janis, her little
brother who's only five and he's a real pest and his name's Jimmy, and my little
brothers, David and Robert, and they're both brats, and my sister Lynne, and I
already told you about my other sister Birdie, and they're OK, and then me, too.
Oh, yeah, and Butchie came too. My
Aunt Peggy, she came by just as we were leaving so she said she didn't have much
to do, so she came too, but she didn't have a swim suit, so my mom said she could
wear her old pink one with the butterflies on it. That's a yuckie one,
but Aunt Peggy said it was OK. So then
we all left in our car. It's a station
wagon.
Mostly we all swim around and stuff in the part of the
swimming pool that's for kids, on account of it's not
very deep, cause none of us can swim, really.
But we're always practicing at home. We
lay on our stomachs on the old hassock and move our arms
and legs pretending like we're in the water, and turning our heads to the side
and down and to the side, you know, so we can breathe right in the water.
We can get going pretty good at home, but in the water, it's kind of different and
my mom's always fussing so about us drowning or getting dead there. So, we just splash around a
lot in the shallow part. My mom
won't let us go in the deep part anyways.
Now, Butchie---that's what
we call him sometimes cause mostly he doesn't like it and we laugh when he gets
all red and mad---well, he likes teasing me and my sisters. See, he's older than me---I'm eleven---and he's
thirteen like my sister, Birdie. But he's
always acting like he's so big. But mostly,
he acts stupid, I think. He says girls
are weird and so he's always doing dumb stuff to me and Birdie.
Mostly, I like it at the pool. I like the smell of clorox
in the water. It kind of makes everything
smell funny, but the smell makes me think of summer. But mostly, I like the way the swimming pool
water turns Birdie's hair green. She says
it's on account of she's special cause she's got blond
hair. Not like mine---I have brown hair
that kind of looks like mouse fur. Well,
that's what Birdie says. But brown hair
won't turn green in swimming pool water. But part of the pool I don't like so much.
That's on account it's inside a big building.
Sometimes on real hot days it gets to smelling like Butchie's
socks cause he doesn't like putting clean socks on everyday. He says clean socks are scratchy. Well, I think he's nutty. And we don't let him take his shoes off in our
house. My mom makes us put on clean socks
everyday, even if they got holes in them. And
I hate the way it feels when my toe goes poking out a hole.
Anyway, we're at the pool and splashing around in the
baby pool---that's what Butchie calls it. He's always hitting or spitting, or something
dumb like what boys are always doing. He
gets to splashing and teasing my sister Birdie pretty good, and she's at first
pretending she's not liking it so much, and she gets
kind of giggly. And she's pretending like
she's trying real hard to splash him back, but I know she's scared to really do
it. Then he starts splashing tons of water
on her and she's starting to not be so giggly, and I can tell she's getting mad
at him cause she's having some hard time breathing with all that water splashing
all over her. She snorted up some water
in her nose and started coughing and yelling at Butchie to cut it out. And,
besides, sometimes she's real fussy about getting her hair wet, course Butchie
when he finds that out, he wants to be sure her head looks like it comes straight
out of the shower. So, he's beating the water really hard and it's
spraying just about anybody in his way. The
moms with their little babies in the baby pool are getting kind of mad at him
and they're telling him to cut it out. And
I know pretty soon my mom will be yelling at us to "Pipe down."
Now, I'm trying to help out my sister and I'm splashing
water behind Butchie while he's busy splashing water
all over Birdie. But before I know it,
he's turning around and he's splashing water on me, so I quick jump out of the
pool and start running around on the wet cement to get away from him, but he's
right behind me yelling real loud that he's going to get me good.
But there's rules at the swimming pool and no one is supposed to run around
on the wet cement cause they might fall down and get hurt. The lifeguard is always blowing his whistle
at kids who forget the rules. And I'm forgetting
all about the rules cause all I want to do is get away from Butchie cause I'm only a girl and
I know he can pinch real hard if he catches me.
Then I hear the lifeguard blowing real loud on his whistle and yelling
at me and Butchie to cut it out. And my mom and Aunt Peggy are piping out real
loud, too, so I jump right into the pool, not paying attention to how deep it
is, and it's right in the deep part. And Butchie jumps
in right behind me but his foot kicks me real hard in the head. He didn't mean to do that, it was just an accident.
But, the funniest thing happened right after his foot kicked me.
I felt like I sunk straight down to the very bottom of that pool and I
could touch the bottom of it. I remember
I was trying and trying to get myself back up to the top cause I didn't take any
breath before I jumped in, I was in such a hurry. And I was splashing my arms hard as I could
and kicking my feet to get me to the top as fast as I could, but it seemed like
I was in an ocean and the top of the water was clear up to the sky. And so I just kept telling myself to keep splashing
my arms and feet real hard.
Then, I felt someone laying me on the wet cement flat
on my back. Now this was a funny thing
cause I don't remember getting out of that pool water. I felt real kind of whoosy
and funny. Things were fuzzy, but I could
see the lifeguard and Aunt Peggy was standing there looking down at me, and lots
of other people too but I couldn't tell who they were cause my eyes were kind
of fuzzy. And they were all asking me if
I was all right, but I wasn't sure where I was or what was going on. All I remembered was my lungs felling about
to bust open when I was trying to get to the top of the water, and then all of
a sudden there I was laying there, but I couldn't remember how I got there.
After a while, I sat up and was coughing raspy and my nose feeling like
it sucked up the whole swimming pool inside of it and boy was my head ever hurting.
Now I couldn't even remember why I couldn't get to the top of the water
and that Butchie's foot kicked me in the head. I couldn't remember that for a long time after
I was sitting there on the wet cement trying to figure it all out. But everyone was telling me all about how I
was just laying there in the water not moving a muscle. Birdie was real proud and said it was her who
first saw me there acting kind of funny and she started yelling for my mom and
Aunt Peggy. Birdie said Aunt Peggy, she jumped right up and jumped into the pool. And Aunt Peggy she pulled me out of the water.
Then I started remembering about Butchie chasing me and jumping in and all that stuff.
Now, how come all of them were saying that I was just
laying in that water like a rag doll with lead in her pockets, sinking to the
bottom. Maybe I couldn't remember much
about why I was out of there and all that stuff, but one thing I can't forget
is how I was so scared and splashing my arms and legs so hard to get to the top
of that water. I couldn't hear my mom yelling
those things about "You're going to kill yourself!" but I knew this
time she was right and I'd better get out of that water or maybe she couldn't
ever say that to me anymore. So, how come
I can remember all that, but none of them saw me splashing my arms and legs so
hard? Now, that's what I want to know.