Tonight while I am giving my one-year-old her bath she flails so violently when I rinse the shampoo from her hair that she falls forward in the tub. She catches herself with both hands, but not before her face dips into the water. My heart engorges with fear. I plunge my hands into the water and grasp her slippery little body under the armpits and pull her upright again. She stares at me wide-eyed and coughs. The skin around her eyes is splotchy pink. Her nose runs. I pat her back. "Are you okay, Baby Girl?" I murmur. "Yes. You're okay. You're all right." Without letting go of her, I quickly soap her up and rinse her off, then lift her from the tub. I wrap a yellow hooded towel around her and hold her against my chest. "You're safe, Baby Girl. You're safe."
***
I am five years old. It is a warm summer day, the kind of day that a Michigander dreams of all winter long. The sun shines, but clouds scud by to offer occasional shade and cool. For once the humidity does not squeeze all the oxygen out of the air. Best of all, I am with my family at my Aunt Jan's house on Little Silver Lake for a potluck. All of my Smith aunts, uncles and cousins are there. There is a tablecloth-covered picnic table laden with cheesy potatoes, taco salad, meatballs, and various desserts, along with all the fixings for the hamburgers and hot dogs Uncle Dick is grilling. The air is fragrant with burning charcoal, and the drool-inducing tang of burgers and dogs cooking.
But it's not time to eat yet. It's time to swim. I change into my blue one-piece bathing suit inside Aunt Jan's bathroom. Then I meet my brother Eric outside and we race down the steps into the lake. We shriek at the cold water splashing our feet and legs. I plug my nose, take a deep breath and clamp my mouth shut tight. I bend my knees and drop my whole body beneath the water's surface. A thrilling chill squeezes my ribs. I pop back up above the water and gasp with joy.
My cousin Trisha plays Monkey in the Middle with Eric and me. Our favorite game. Trisha agrees to be monkey first. Eric and I toss a bright pink ball to each other over Trisha's head. Trisha is older and tall for her age, so we rarely succeed. When the ball flies astray, one of us swims after it. If it lands beyond the dock, where the water is several feet above our heads, Trisha fetches it. After a while, my brother and I find more entertainment in purposely knocking the ball into the deeper water so Trish has to swim for it. She knows what we're doing, but being the good sport she is, she says nothing and cheerfully retrieves the ball again and again.
One of us throws the ball and accidentally bounces it off the side of the dock. It flies past us, bounces off the neighbor's dock, and drops into the water. Trish takes off after it. But it isn't in water above my head. I'm just learning to swim and I want to get some practice. So I swim toward the ball, too. Trish is the faster, more experienced swimmer--she lives here, after all, and swims in this lake every summer day--so she reaches the ball long before I do. But I want to swim as far as the neighbor's dock, just for the practice. I cut through the water, paddling my feet, turning my head and slashing the water with my arms. I pass Trish on her way back to Eric. I keep swimming. I triumphantly reach the dock and slap one of the white wooden planks.
I stand to catch my breath and rest a moment. This is the farthest I've ever swum! But instead of touching white sand, my feet squish in black muck. It feels slimy and cold. I have just enough time to recoil from this icky feeling, and then the muck sucks me under. Slurp! I am drawn down, down, down to the squishy bottom of the lake. The water shoots me up above the surface again and I reach for the dock, but I'm sucked under again before I can grasp it. My feet sink into black sludge and far above my head the water's surface looks like a liquid ceiling. I shoot through the ceiling again and see the neighbor sitting on the opposite side of the dock from me. "Joe!" I shout. Water fills my mouth so all that comes out is a gurgle.
Every time I go under, the world goes eerily silent and dim. When I'm thrust above water again, sound and light explode around me. I try to breathe when I break the surface, but I'm sucked under so quickly I swallow more water than air. My chest is beginning to feel tight. My lungs are about to burst. The water feels like a lead vest.
I try calling to Joe a few more times, but only gurgles come out. He doesn't hear. He doesn't even turn around. I swivel my eyes straight ahead and see my dad in a lawn chair directly in front of me on shore. He appears to be looking right at me. Why doesn't he come save me? "Dad!" I call. "Daddy!" But again, I can't get the words out. My throat is too full of water.
Someone once told me that a person goes under three times before they drown. I know I've gone under more times than that. I start counting. I get to fifteen, then I wonder how long I've been in the water. How many more times can I go under? I begin to accept that I am going to die. God must want me in heaven for some reason. No one I know has died yet, so who will be in heaven to meet me? Besides God, of course. My great grandma died a few months before I was born. I imagine a vague, shadowy void and I see the wrinkled, white-haired old lady from pictures my mother has shown me. My mom always said Great Grandma would have loved me if she had met me. Peace overcomes me as I realize that Great Grandma will definitely be in heaven waiting for me. She will take good care of me. I see her smile at me.
Suddenly I hear violent splashing and a hand squeezes my arm and pulls my head and shoulders above water. It is my ten-year-old cousin Teresa. Her long black hair swings down toward me as she bends and hauls the rest of me up. She tugs me to shore where my mom and Aunt Jan stand waiting for me.
I fall to the sand and vomit black water and dirt at their feet. "Oh honey," Mom says. "We thought you were playing." She wraps her arms around me as I vomit again and again. It seems I am saturated with muck and water.
I tremble violently. Someone brings a towel and Mom wraps it around me. It cannot warm me. I feel cold from the inside out.
Mom and Aunt Jan pour buckets of water over my head. My hair is full of muck. I shiver more violently than before.
Finally, I am led up the stairs and into the house, where I change into my clothes. I spend the rest of the afternoon wrapped in a towel, unable to stop shaking under a sky that has clouded over.
When we get home, my mom runs a hot bath for me. She scrubs the mud from my hair. Her vigorous rubbing and the steaming bath finally begin to warm me.
That night I have nightmares about lying in a gleaming wooden coffin. About being buried alive. About Great Grandma turning her back on me when I get to heaven. I thump downstairs to where Mom and Dad are watching TV and lay my head in Mom's lap.
"I had no idea you were so upset by this," she says when I tell her my nightmares.
My near-drowning replays like an old movie in my mind night after night for weeks as I lie in bed trying unsuccessfully to sleep. I hear my thoughts like a voiceover: My entire family saw me drowning and never recognized I was in danger. They thought I was playing. And it wasn't my mom or dad or any of my aunts or uncles who saved me. It was my cousin.
