Young Writers Society

A/N: This story is based off the poem Swimming, One Day In August by Mary Oliver, and was written for a poetry-inspired contest. (Word count: 2,749)

As an infant, I was baptized in the Catholic Church. Momma held me under my arms and lowered me into the Holy water, and then lifted my small body back out, my legs curled at the knee as I choked and sputtered. She told me later that I hadn't enjoyed the practice. I had asked her what they put in the water to make it Holy, and she said "God's love", but refused an explanation.

When I was six, my daddy used to get down on one knee on the hardwood floor of my bedroom and knick my chin gently with his finger. It was a technique of retaining my attention. I was curious as to how he couldn't see that he was already the focus of my complete engrossment. I couldn't go two steps without looking after him and wondering where he'd gone. My eyes brimmed with admiration whenever he rushed in the door after a day of work. He was never drunk like other men his age; the ones I'd heard stumbling around in the late of night. He was completely sober and ready for me to jump into his arms, bending over and saying, "How's my boy?" though I just wrapped my arms around his neck and never answered.

His name was Michael James Storfield. He took trips after work to run steps at Safeco Field. Privately, he was a jazz musician, and played concerts for me in the living room.

"Because I like making things up as I go. It's like exercising the imagination," he would say, lips pulling back in a smile. He'd knick my chin. "What about you, sport? You wanna hear some imagination?"

Then he'd take his saxophone carefully out of its case, before he put his lips gingerly on the mouthpiece and ducked his head. He looked at me from the tops of his eyes as he played a long run of notes. I switched from foot to foot, watching him with a bashful smile, in a hopeless state of love for my father but not yet knowing the words to express it.

He left in late August of the next year, for Chicago. A White Sox game. Technically a business trip; he was traveling as assistant clubhouse manager for the Mariners. He kissed Momma and me goodbye and then walked to the door. With a burst of energy, I sprung forward from Momma's grip and grabbed his pant-leg. I nearly pantsed him, but he didn't scold me. He bent down and gave me a smile, dark-blue eyes capturing mine.

"I'll be back," he told me, and I believed him. "Take care of your mother." And then he ambled out the door, keeping a wary eye on my spontaneity, but I just let Momma wrap me up in her arms as my eyes tried desperately to capture his.

It was the last time I ever saw his face. He didn't come back. Momma told me he didn't want me anymore. I remember her hiccuping the words through a tissue in the middle of the night, with cold eyes that bid me to leave. And that made me the saddest little boy in the whole world. He broke my heart, and the damage was irreparable.

For three nights I went without dinner, and slept under my bed where Daddy told me I could 'camp out' sometimes--where he sometimes laid down by my side on his back on the hardwood. Something shifted inside of my chest that night. It couldn't be fixed.

When I was eight, I went through a year-long phase. Whenever Momma asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I told her I wanted to hear Daddy play his saxophone. She hated the phase, and would swear at me and tell me to cut it out. It was around the time where I'd peek out from the clothing rack in the women's section of JC Penney as Momma tried on dresses, watching as the kids stood in line for Santa Claus, whose breath supposedly smelled like candy canes. I didn't know. All I knew was that whatever I wanted, that man couldn't give it to me.

Every Christmas Eve, Momma and I would pick out a Christmas movie together from the bookshelf, and we'd cuddle up together on the couch in the living room. It was my first Christmas without Daddy, and we were watching Elf, my head in Momma's chest as she curled her arm around my shoulder. Our Corgi, Cheddar slept in my lap, his nose nuzzled into my side. The images on the television reflected on the dark walls and in my eyes. Fleeting swoops of color passed over our corpse-like forms; movement that ghosted over the mannequin boy and the mannequin woman, and the dog that nipped at his own tail whenever he got restless. It was the only sign that we were alive.

I asked Momma three times that night during the movie whether Walter Hobbes would ever accept Buddy as his son. I felt like Buddy represented me in many ways. He was a human among a world of elves, and abnormally elf-like among humans; the boy who didn't belong, and whose father didn't want him.

I couldn't help but continue to ask Momma if Daddy would ever waltz back through the door after work, because I was convinced that one day she'd answer. Those days, she took me by the arm, her acrylic nails digging into my baby fat.

"Shut up!" she would yell, by the third time I'd go asking. She'd cry like I'd never seen anybody cry before. There weren't any tears, but somehow I could see the pain behind her skin like it was a lightbulb under a translucent lampshade. "Shut your mouth, you little shit," she would shout, and then, sometimes, she'd open the front door in a way so that it swung on its hinges. She would toss me out into the snow and lock me outside. I cried until my tears froze in my eyes, clawing against the door like a dog. She left me out there until my bare skin was raw and I was so cold that I couldn't move. So cold that I thought I would die. All because she didn't want to be reminded of the one person who'd ripped her apart.

I wondered what it felt like to be dead.

I loved Momma as much as any other boy would. She was the woman who'd given birth to me; the one who'd nursed me to health when I was sick; the one who'd cradled me to her chest and whispered that she loved me when only I could hear.

When she spoke to or of me, I was called by my first-middle name, "Warren". Daddy named me Johnny after John Coltrane, but I supposed it hurt too much to pull threads of past memories and act like she could sew a new quilt. She missed him so much that it was like secondhand heartbreak. There were times when I walked into the living room with my rabbit blanket pulled over my head, my little elbows stretching within it like it was a trap, and through the fabric saw Momma there with her hands out from her sides, like there was a thread on her that she just couldn't catch.

After that, I'd slink back into my room and write down two different things I hated about my father. It became two per day; I was desperate for closure. I was desperate to find a way to settle my grief. I sought out everything Daddy had ever done to destroy Momma and me, tearing off corners of lined sheets and then letting them float to the floor with new ink. After awhile, the things I hated about him became the same things that I loved. The knick of my chin. His gentle strength as he lifted my sleeping body into his arms and carried me into my Batman-themed bedroom, my chin nestled on his shoulder. He'd given me everything, but then he'd taken it all away.

They were mere sentence fragments; nothing that Momma would be able to read and make sense of. I didn't have the stamina to hide them. I was ten years old and broken-hearted, and I couldn't deter Momma from coming upstairs to take my laundry every Saturday.

I took up the saxophone in eighth grade. I often sat in Mrs. Banks band session, imagining Daddy leaning on the other side of the window and peering in. The thought of him being disappointed in me was the worst feeling I could've imagined. It was too much to bear, and the sound of Banks's voice became background noise to the way my smile sank down inside me and couldn't be resurrected until I cried it out. But I couldn't do that in class.

I wished to God a hundred times for him back. But it seemed that God no longer loved me anymore.

That summer, I snuck out late one night, still convinced that there were ways I could slip out of my past skin. Pulling my ball cap down on my forehead, I jaywalked across Dave Niehaus Way Street. The cars rushed by in ones and twos, streetlights glowing across the street. A breeze blew across my face, and I rubbed my clammy fingers nervously over Daddy's stadium key. It took me twelve times to unlock the gate, because my heartbeat was pulsing in my ears. I couldn't shake the feeling that the police would pile out of a hidden cruiser and try to take me away.

But soon I was in, running past the shadows on the concrete walls and the closed shops. I climbed over the small barrier, metal clinking, and stumbled out onto the bleachers. My sneakers clapped down on the cement. I looked down the terrace, feeling alone and small at the top. Swallowing back my thoughts, I started down that row, and up the next, kicking my knees high and pumping my arms until sweat pooled at my temples. Until my breathing grew ragged, as any thirteen-year-old's breathing would after not running for over a year and then attempting to run all the steps in a stadium.

Four laps later, I tripped and my ankle rolled. I collapsed at the edge of the walkway. I'd ran myself so hard that I felt like I was about to pass out. My chest burned, and the mere act of breathing nauseated me. Bolts of pain stabbed through my foot. And then I sat, slumped in seat 106A for thirty minutes, whimpering in several degrees of pain. I watched the lights flicker and blink, wishing I had someone else to acknowledge my existence. I imagined Daddy propping up my swollen ankle and telling me that nobody ever ran the whole thing on the first try. And that it was okay.

Somehow I knew I would never hear those words. Not from the person I needed to hear them from.

Freshman year, I gave it up.

I tried to forget about the deep love that I'd felt for my father, which meant taking certain measures. In early July, I tiptoed outside at the first sign of dawn, the kitchen floor cool under my feet. I felt the leather on my palms as I towed the case across the grass, toes wet from the dew. I took the case to the neighbor's toolshed and then knelt on the floor. My fingers felt the indented keys on the saxophone as I removed it. The instrument fit so easily into my hands, like it was made to hold.

I smashed it on the concrete floor. Vibrations ran up through my hands like my forearms were tuning forks. A key spun off like a stray bullet, and when I turned it over in my hands, the neck was dented. Grunting in distress, I smashed it again, and again. It broke so easily. In moments, it was apart in my hands, twisted and destroyed, mechanically dysfunctional. Crippled like my heart was.

It wasn't my saxophone, it was Daddy's.

I hadn't realized my own strength. I hadn't realized that I was stronger than the one memorabilia that I thought was holding the pieces of me together. That realization broke my heart all over again. I was crying, tears rolling off my cheeks. The door opened, light peeking in and illuminating my face. It was Ralph Greer, our neighbor, only in his pajamas. His face was lined with sleep.

His guard was up, but he let it down when he saw me there on the floor. "What're you doing in my toolshed?" he asked groggily, rubbing a hand over his face. His expression may've been sympathetic. But I did what any kid would when he was afraid of being caught in the act; run past his outstretched arms and out the door like a chicken with its head cut off.

In late August of that year, I knelt beside the pool that had laid uncleaned since seven years before; filled with leaves and dirty water. I stared at the water, wondering how it had become so filthy in what seemed like such little time. "Warren!" Momma called from the door. Her voice was uncertain and soft, as it always was. The breeze rushed past my face. "I'm cleaning out the house, and if you don't get in here to clean up all that paper on your floor--" She paused to get my attention. "Warren? Okay?"

"Okay," I murmured, so she closed the door. I didn't know if she heard me.

She didn't see me as my shoulders shook with unmistakable terror. As my knees wobbled, threatening to bend and collapse from beneath my squatting body.

I waited, lips trembling, until she opened the door again, as I knew she would.

I closed my eyes. Inhaled deeply through my nose. As if the thread I'd pulled could be trimmed and tied; sewed and repaired, instead of unraveling my mother's entire quilt. My daddy always asked me whether I wanted to hear his imagination, and my imagination took me to places I knew I would see and wasn't sure if I wanted to. But I knew now that it couldn't be heard. As Momma slowly stepped through the threshold and towards me, yelling my name, I knew she couldn't possibly hear the pulse of my imagination. The way it coursed through my body and grabbed hold of my mind, burning like the haze of an afterimage in my periphery that I knew would soon return in full focus.

"Oh my God," she said, tears pouring over her cheeks. "You didn't, Warren, tell me you didn't!" she shrieked. Her dirty-blonde hair hung behind her ears, her whole body quivering.

"I had to," I told her, knees shaking.

She rushed at me then, sobbing uncontrollably, and put her hands on my cheeks. I began to cry then, a toppling relief rushing up through my chest, believing maybe that she'd comfort me. I felt such an overwhelming love for her in that moment, love that equalled that which I had for my father.

Then she slid her hands down to my neck and clenched so hard that I couldn't breathe, fingernails digging into my throat. Her eyes were blue like ice against her pink cheeks. "You destroyed it! You destroyed it! How could you?" she was screaming. "How could you do that to me?"

She'd looked in the case like I knew she would. She'd seen that what little she had left of my father was gone.

I still loved her, and I was desperate for her to remember that I was the only thing she had left of my father.

That was when I recognized--that was why she needed me to leave.

Split-pictures of the backyard flashed before my eyes, and the blood rushed from my face. I choked and sputtered, scratching at her arms. Filled with a certain and perpetual fear. Suddenly, she took my head, slamming it against the rungs of the rusted ladder, before letting me go to drown at the bottom of the pool. She would not lift my body back out from the water. I knew it was time for the deepening and quieting of the spirit.

I knew it was the only way we could make our peace.