I was seven the first time I almost drowned.
We were at my aunt Sylvia’s house. Her large white colonial sat back in the woods and was not far from the Rebecca Nurse home; a fact my father was always quick to point out. “These woods are haunted with witches who were wrongly executed,” he’d explain.
Sylvia’s house was one of the first to be built in Danvers, long ago when it was still known as Salem Village. It was three stories of large rooms that echoed under the racing feet of my sister and I, with ceilings so high that there was enough room for elaborate chandeliers, the type you’d usually only expect in a movie about Marie Antoinette or John Jacob Astor. Each floor was connected to the other by formal staircases with dark pine steps and thick white handrails that were always a bit darker at the end of the summer from our grubby paws. But the best part, the part we loved most, were the hidden staircases that intertwined through the walls and deposited you into musty closets or onto the dirt floor of the basement. The narrow corridors of these staircases were steep, lacked windows, and creaked with each step. The yellow and ivory wallpaper, having not been replaced in the last century, was not only pealing but missing strip after strip, or they dangled waiting to be pulled off and taken away; I could never resist – I always pulled. The center edge of each step was concave with time and wear of people who had made a difference in their day, but in mine, were lost ghosts that I’d never even covered in a history book; history is not all-inclusive. So many times my bare or socked feet would glide too easily over the dulled wood, and down I’d go, sliding the whole way to the bottom. It was only under the muted lighting of the old wiring of the lamp overhead that my impending bruises looked non-existent; sunlight had another interpretation.
We had been racing around the yard, climbing over the rock walls that had managed to withstand industry and development, and the new neighborhood that you could see over the tree line from the widow’s walk of the house. And when we stopped, covered in scratches from briars and simple childhood clumsiness, we decided it was time for a swim.
My father climbed the ladder of the slide with my sister in front of him. Her blonde hair was in a low messy braid at the nape of her neck, and her blue bathing suit, that matched mine, was missing a decorative pink button that had been lost somewhere in the yard…
And then I was under the water.
I don’t remember if I had slipped, or if I had the urge to jump and just did assuming my dad would catch me. But before I knew it, sound was muffled and everything in front of me wavered with bubbles and blurred splotches of color. I was not scared. I just watched the turquoise color of the cement tangle with the water that surrounded me as I floated fearlessly. I had never been so fearless. Then I breathed in deeply and choked.
It was my cousin Raymond who plunged into the water that day. I remember my head hit the side of the pool with a thud that made me cough water up all over my face. Someone’s lips were pressed to mine and I coughed again. There was no sound attached to the commotion of faces that dotted my view like a ViewMaster on high speed. I turned my head toward the water and noticed all the leaves that had landed since we had first arrived; then my memory stops.
I was twenty-one the first time I wanted to drown.
We had been drinking beer on the banks of Oyster River, tucked away from view of our fellow students, just off the path, just on the other side of Lee. There was a group of us, a group that dispersed quickly after college when we realized the only thing we ever had in common was the present, and the past was still something that’s a foreign concept. It was Tom who suggested we go skinny-dipping; it was James who agreed this was a great idea.
The fire we had built just as the sun started to set flickered weakly, and our shadows that extended across the width of the river made us look like a family of giants, giants with long limbs that were careless with each step. As everyone around me slowly removed their clothes, I pulled my summer dress over my head and stood, slightly embarrassed, with my back to the others. I would not be the first to take off my underwear. We all looked at each other as if we had never seen another naked person, with our arms awkwardly draped over our lower stomachs although everyone’s underwear was still in tact. Tom dropped his boxers first and ran for the overpass; we all followed.
We lined ourselves up on the side of the bridge that faced upriver. It was so dark you couldn’t even see where space stopped and water began. No one wanted to be the first, so I took a step forward…
I love the feeling of falling. There are no words for the sensation that comes with taking a step, and there not being something to catch you. I had half expected the ground to meet my foot, that the space was just a mirage, but it wasn’t; there was nothing. I heard my name and the “whooping” sound that comes with your friends egging you on to do something that part of you knows is dangerous, and another part of you is betting on a dramatic result. The drop seemed to take forever, as if I had enough time to read a chapter in a book, or make a long distance call to a friend… then I hit the water.
It was far colder than expected. I plummeted into the darkness, into waters that had it not been for the night, I would have avoided. I kept expecting to reach the bottom with every second that passed, so I could push myself back up, but the bottom never came. I imagined myself a broken buoy that had sunk through no fault of its own, but simply because it couldn’t escape the water. I didn’t want to escape the water.
Around me, bodies dropped, falling full speed into the river… and before I knew it, I was on my way back up, and my head was above the water. I looked around and everyone else was still underneath; there was nothing but the sound of my own breath gasping for air against the warm sky and cold waters. I remember thinking I could stay there forever if the sun promised to never appear again; I could stay there forever in that moment if it meant never having to touch the ground again.
Tom was the first one back up and he looked at me.
“I thought you were dead… didn’t think it was possible for anyone to hold their breath that long,” he said.
“Practice,” I answered.
“Ah yes… the girl who wants to be the ocean diver.”
I don’t know what it is about the water that sucks me and enraptures me. Nor do I know the reason behind my urge to jump every time I’m near it, or the hope that a wave, when it knocks me to the sand, will pick me up and carry me off to sea. I just know that the rain will never be enough, and my favorite ground is one that does not exist.
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