The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Sixth Annual Collection

SWIMMING LESSON Charlotte Watson Sherman

I like to sit on this big old mossy pillow and lay my head back on one of them twisted red oak roots that look like arms comin up outta the ground, arms that feel like the satin of Aunt Leatha’s skin when she stoops down to gather me up and swing me round, and I lay in the roots like I’m layin in my mama’s lap, listenin to her hum them old old songs, sound like folks bottled up with sorrow so sweet it turn to sugar.

This tree’s right next to the old black pond where sometimes we get out in the water that covers our skinny arms with sparklin oil and we splash and kick and laugh.

I member the day somebody got the crazy idea to throw Neethie in the water and try to make her swim, and we all knew it was the wrong thing to do and didn’t think bout what grown folks always say bout if you know better do better. We didn’t think bout that when we was way out in all that green by the black water neath that big old red sun, but we shoulda, like I told everybody what would listen later. But nobody listened, not Egghead Sammy Ray Yarbrough, not even C.C. Beauregard whose daddy runs the funeral parlor and everybody is scairt of him cause he might get mad and get his daddy to come for ya in the middle of the night and put ya in that old hearse look like a big fat shiny beetle and take ya to the funeral parlor and put ya in a casket. So nobody, not me, not Elmo, not Ruby, not nobody said a word when Egghead Sammy Ray Yarbrough and C.C. Beauregard decided they was gonna make Neethie swim.

Now, anybody got half a piece of sense know Neethie can’t swim, don’t like the water, can’t even walk right on land on accounta one leg bein shorter than the other and don’t nobody usually say nothin bout it one way or nuther cause that just the way she come into the world, lookin kinda like a crookedy upsidedown wishbone. But some folks be laughin bout that big-sole shoe she gotta wear on her short leg so she don’t walk lopsided. But she still limp a little even with that big shoe on. I like Neethie even though she do live in the Bible most of the time.

Mama always say ain’t nothin wrong with Neethie livin in the Bible and wrinkle up her face and tell me I need to live in it too and ask me don’t I want to enter the Golden Gates of Righteousness? I say I only wanna enter the golden arches of that shiny new hamburger stand they got there in Jackson and she won’t even let me do that.

But we probably wouldn’ta thought to put Neethie in the water if Ruby hadn’ta been talkin bout how Jesus could walk on water. C.C. Beauregard said: No he can’t, can’t nobody walk on water. But I told em what my playuncle Eaton told me bout the slaves in the old days who left beatins and hoein and cotton and cleanin and set out cross the fields and headed north where they thought they could be free, and how some of em come to that yellow river that flow not too far from here and thought they had come to the end of they journey cause they couldn’t swim and didn’t know what all was in that water. Then they’d stoop at the edge and wet they faces and start moanin pieces of words they member from when we was all free, sound like: hmmhmm o-o-o-o-o-o mlongo. And the wind would start to blow and the trees on the edge of the riverbank would start to sway and the air would feel like how my mama say it feel sometime when Reverend Samuel hit a high note in the middle of his preachin, and the women start to tremble and the deacons start to shake and everybody’s eyes start to water with tears rollin down. That’s how my playuncle Eaton say it feel when the runaways bent down at the edge of the yellow river thinkin bout freedom and how they couldn’t swim and hummin: mlongo mlongo hmmhmmhmmhmm o-o. They knew they couldn’t turn back so they kept on hummin that song and then they feet sank in the red mud at the edge of the river and come up covered with green sprouts climbin on they ankles and circlin round and tiny wings grew from each ankle and started flappin back and forth and back and forth, gentle at first and then faster and faster. And they could feel the cold of them chains deep in the wet earth and the wings beatin harder and then they took a step into the yellow water but they first foot didn’t go down. It stayed right on top of the waves, and they put they other foot in the water and the same thing happened, it didn’t go down, and they look over they shoulder for they last look at the land that tried to turn em into mules. They know they wouldn’t never turn back, so they kept on walkin and the tiny wings kept beatin and they glided on cross the yellow river and only got the bottom of they pants and dresses wet.

But then Sammy Ray Yarbrough, whose head’s big as a jug of water, broke in with his silly self and said, “Can’t no slaves or nobody else walk cross no water, not even with wings on they back,” and he don’t believe Jesus did it neither. Ruby said she’s gone tell his mama he said that, so he said o.k., if Neethie can walk on water, then anybody can cause Neethie was the closest thing to Jesus any of us knew bout. C.C. Beauregard said he’d go and get Neethie and bring her to the pond.

Now me and Ruby and Elmo tried to shift round and act like we wasn’t scairt, but I knew we all musta been thinkin bout the whuppin we was gonna get when our mamas found out we’d pushed Neethie in tBe water, specially since she had a short leg and had to wear that big old shoe. I wasn’t sure but it sound to me like this was cruelty and mama always say cruelty’s one of the worst things in the world. Anyway, after a little while here come C.C. Beauregard holding Neethie by the hand and pullin her through bushes the color of bloodstone.

Soon as they got up to where we was standin near the edge of the pond Elmo started cryin, but didn’t nobody pay him no mind cause Elmo always start cryin whenever somethin’s bout to happen, good or bad. Mama say that boy just like to cry.

But when C.C. Beauregard brought Neethie to the edge of the pond I could feel tears wellin up in my own eyes, cause I knew it was gonna be one of them whuppins what hurts for a long, long time, probably one with a switch, cause Neethie was dressed up in a white ruffly dress that looked like it was for Sunday school, had her hair curled all over her head and had on some black patent leather buckle up shoes that was shinin like a mirror. I could see the trees and the sun when I looked down in them shoes.

Now Neethie’s eyes was full of all of that kindness from livin in the Bible. And folks never made much over her short leg in front of her. She looked like some kind of brown angel standin there by the pond holdin C.C. Beauregard’s hand.

“See, I told you I’d tell you what I brought you to the pond for, didn’t I?” C.C. Beauregard asked.

“Uh huh,” said Neethie.

Nobody else said a mumblin word. It was pretty quiet cept for the crickets whistlin and a few birds talkin in the trees and frogs croakin. We wasn’t gonna say nothin and I was hopin Neethie have sense enough to turn round and go on back home, but C.C. Beauregard told her he was gonna teach her how to swim so she could come out and play with us at the pond every day steada goin and sittin up with the Bible and all them old folks all the time. Then he asked her wouldn’t she like that?

“Uh huh,” Neethie said.

So then C.C. Beauregard told her the onliest way for him to teach her how to swim was for him to see if her body was heavy in the water and the only way he could tell that was if she stepped out on that log and walked clear back to us. Egghead Sammy Ray Yarbrough’d found a short log and pushed it up to the edge of the pond where it lay in the water lookin like a big fat link sausage.

Neethie said, “You want me to walk out on that log and walk back on the water like Jesus?”

And C.C. Beauregard said, “Yeah, I want you to walk back just like Jesus.”

Well, what he go and say that for? I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry so I just started hummin that sound my playuncle Eaton told me was magic: mlongo mlongo hmmhmmhmm o-o.

Neethie started to get out on the log and Elmo started to holler. Ruby started cryin real soft-like where you almost couldn’t hear her, what with Elmo’s screamin and the wind whistlin in the trees.

C. C. Beauregard said, “Neethie, you think you better take that big shoe off?”

Neethie didn’t say nothin, just looked kinda sweet and pitiful with her big black eyes lookin out on the water.

Now we all knew she couldn’t swim a lick so if she fell in, there was gonna be hell to pay as my daddy say when I’m in double trouble. My legs started to itch and I could already feel that switch, but I just kept on singin: hmmhmmhmm o-o mlongo. When Neethie was at the end of the log, she dropped her head back and looked up into the sky and said, “I believe.” That was it. Just “I believe,” and me and Ruby and Elmo with his cryin self all held hands and stood in a kinda circle at the end of the log, and C.C. Beauregard and Egghead Sammy Ray Yarbrough started movin back to the trees slow and easy. And then Neethie turned round and looked at C.C. Beauregard and asked, “You ready?” And that crazy boy just looked at Neethie with his eyes poppin out and didn’t say nothin. So me and Ruby started singin them old magic words and Elmo was so scairt he stopped cryin and started singin em too: mlongo mlongo hmmhmmhmm o-o. The words that was old magic went deep inside Neethie, deep inside, and Neethie stepped off the log into the air and put her foot down on that black water and she stayed up even with that big shoe on. Me and Ruby and Elmo squeezed our hands tighter and pressed our eyes shut, and sang the words louder and louder: mlongo mlongo hmmhmmhmm o-o. And the words pulled Neethie on cross the water and when we opened our eyes, Neethie was standin right there with us, her smile big as Egghead Sammy Ray Yarbrough’s head, cept he wasn’t there to see it.

Well, I thought that woulda fixed C.C. Beauregard and Egghead Sammy Ray Yarbrough good, but they didn’t even get to see Neethie walk on water cause they slipped through the trees and run off soon as she stepped off the log.

We told Neethie it was good they was gone, cause they probably wouldn’ta knowed what they was lookin at anyway.

Then Ruby said, “Let’s go over to the Sunflower Ice Cream Shop and get us some sodas to celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?” Neethie asked.

“Us all not gettin the whuppin of our lives,” I said, and naturally Elmo started cryin.