When I Look Back, I See Anna Underwater

 Adam Graham

I harbored a secret in the softball we tossed to each other. You were 12 and I 10, and in your eyes, that was too wide a gap for us to ever hold hands. You stuck your tongue out anytime you needed to focus. When we played catch that day, it was like a little wad of gum attached to your lip. You said your parents did it too. You couldn’t help it.

“What’s that on your lip?” your brother would say, and you’d pull it back like a turtlehead. I always searched for you in the bleachers – when you cupped your hands to yell, when you said my name. It was nothing. You were a girl and I, a boy. We were kids, that’s all. But those moments, those memories. They sat and stuck like morning dew. The first time: summer practice in those desert hot fields my hand touched yours as you passed me a drink. The second time: your brother's birthday when he blew out his candles and I found myself looking for you. The third time: you, proffering that softball. And the last? And then? At night I would whisper your name like a prayer. Looking up, listening to sirens sound in the distance, my ceiling fan tossing shadows across my eyes. 

Anna. 

I knew what I was to you. Like a heavy coat around my heart, I knew. Your father, always putting you in swim classes, ballet, piano lessons, anything to raise you up. Exposing you to heights I couldn’t reach, people I couldn’t see. I was an alright baseball player but what else? You were from the highbrow curve of East Charleston, and I was born in Darlington; the double-wide capital of the south. Two hours and two worlds apart. We played catch in the end-zone of a hybrid baseball/football stadium while a few baseball games took place around us. Those summertime days, humidity here then gone, where sea breezes drifted inland like a salty exhalation. Palmetto trees abutted the ballpark and I swore they leaned with every move you made. Behind us, my teammates lounged like on-call workers, awaiting our next game, and out of everyone to toss with you picked me. Why did you pick me? I feigned apprehension when you tapped my shoulder though deep down, I was cutting backflips.

“I’m pitching next game,” I said. “I can’t throw too much.” 

“My first practice is Monday,” you said, rifling through a floral red tote bag. “My dad said to toss with some of you guys and ya’know, since you pitch and all.”

I nodded, the pride forming dimples on the face of my heart. You held a softball in front of you like an offering, the whole melon of it eclipsing your face. I grabbed my floppy first base mitt while you, with snapping flip flops and bouncing blonde hair, skipped ten yards out on the turf. 

“Ready?” you called, standing at the forefront of a cotton-streaked sky. I put my thumb up. Your first throw was a gangly flail of limbs like a giraffe finding its legs. It hit a few feet in front of me before rolling to my cleats.

“Are you serious?” your brother said from the fence, laughing. 

“Shut up,” you yelled back. 

“Don’t push the ball,” I said. “Keep your arm loose.”

“I know what to do,” you said. 

“Danny, you don’t have to do this, man,” your brother said.

“Shut. Up,” you yelled again.

“It’s ok,” I said. “It's ok.” Words bulged against my cheeks, but I swallowed them all. After a few good throws you asked, in that raspy voice of yours, 

“Are you going to the pool party Saturday?”

“It's at my grandparents' pool,” I said, catching another short hop. 

“Oh, duh,” you said, readying yourself for my toss. 

“Are you going?” I asked, trying to play cool.

“I think so,” you said. I wondered how many pushups and sit-ups I’d need to do before then to not hesitate when taking my shirt off. I wondered how many miles would flense the winter blubber I’d stockpiled. 

“What about the end of year dance?” you said, rearing back for another throw. 

“I don’t know,” I said. 

“Well, I'm going,” you said, your brow creased as you threw. “Got a dress and getting my hair did and everything.”

It was then, for the first time, that I pictured myself in a suit. I threw arching lobs in your direction. Nothing with any zip. I still had my cleats on and each throw twisted turf beneath my feet. My jersey flapped around my waist while further down saw blotches of dirt like birthmarks against my pants. Eye black, like leaky mascara, ran down my cheeks. My dad always joked, asking me what it was I had cried about. The future, maybe. Or the past, depending on which me you asked. I caught each of your tosses with one hand because you used two. I pretended not to care too much because my teammates were around – one of them being your brother. But each time I tossed the ball, and you opened your arms out like one of those arcade claw machines I felt the warmth spread in my face. When you threw with your whole body – your arm cocked way back behind you like the weight of the throw might keel you over – I had to bite the inside of my cheek. The other boys laughed. They said you threw like a girl. They laughed in the typical carefree fashion of ten-year-olds. They laughed but not in the way I wanted to. Each time I caught the ball I wanted to write my thoughts on it. But I knew you’d only throw it back. Your last throw was the best. I caught it right at my chest and that was when you decided it was over. You ran up to me smiling. The sunlight made a blinding star in your braces. As you caught your breath you told me you wanted to pitch in the big leagues with the boys one day. 

“I could be the first. That last throw proved it.”

“You gotta do more than just fastballs though or they’ll tee off on you,” I said.

“Well, I got time,” you said, gripping the ball in different ways to show me all the pitches you knew. “My daddy said I’m already throwing harder than a lot of y’all.” I looked into my glove like there was something more than leather in it. My fist rolled along the circular dimples. 

“You could out-pitch a lot of guys I know,” I said, not moving my eyes from my glove.

“You mean that, Danny?” you asked. Your voice, my name. I felt the warmth spidering over my face again. 

“I mean that.” I chanced a few looks at you. You had your arms crossed with the ball in one hand and your pink glove draped across your elbow. You didn’t fidget. Never moved.

“This the most I ever heard you talk,” you said. 

“I don’t have a lot to say.” I tried putting my hand in my pocket though my pants had none, so my fingernails only scraped my leg. I played it off by scratching my hip.

“Don’t you feel trapped up with all them words floating around in you?” I shook my head. I tried for the pocket again. “Would you talk to me?” you asked.

“I am now,” I said, red-faced. You grinned, revealing the red of your braces. Your big, marble eyes lit up a little. In the sunlight I noticed your freckles like a network of islands across your cheeks. Even now, I remember that face. 

“Thanks for throwing with me,” you said. 

Anytime, I thought. But I only smiled, nodded, and stuck my thumb up, never speaking the words. But you said we had time. Remember? Under the Bridge by the Chili Peppers began to play through the ballpark speakers. You started mouthing the words. Told me you loved this song. 

“Me too,” I said, but I didn’t know the lyrics like you did.

“It makes me feel good,” you said. 

You had eyes for a 14-year-old playing JV at a school across town. One of those naturally skinny, country club, white dudes who had every girl from Charleston to Greenville knocking on his door. An apathetic romantic who collected girls like library books, keeping them under his arm until he got bored and exchanged one for the other. The type of guy to never hesitate with his shirt at a pool party. The type of guy that thought he was funny because girls laughed at his words like there were cue cards off screen. The type of guy I secretly drooled over while analyzing myself in the mirror. Shirtless, I’d look at my lingering baby fat stores, mole dotted marshmallow stomach, and gaping belly button that drooped over my waist like an open-mouthed frown. Weight from cheeseburgers, and ice cream, and late-night popcorn that sure as hell didn’t hinder me when I sent balls 20 feet over the fence. But at night I gripped the love handles like maybe I could peel them off with enough effort. The down south colloquialism would say I was big boned. I had some giant swarming in my blood. My dad elbowed my ribs to play football and my mom signed me up for weight classes in the hope I could metamorphose the fat into muscle. Every adult I met asked for my birth certificate and every kid my age asked me what I ate. On the field I dropped bombs like a b-15 but off the field I was just an oversized goof getting stray looks from strangers. At pool parties I would pretend to have a rash so I could wear a shirt and when I didn’t do that, I’d keep only my head showing to not embarrass myself. If a girl saw my stomach, I’d combust into a red-faced cloud. But you. You always looked me in the eyes. Even that day, at the pool party, me dripping wet like a beached seal with no towel to cover up, you still looked me in the eyes. You asked me how long.

“How long did I stay under?”

A few months prior, on April 10th, my hand hovered over my landline. I picked it up, punched in half the numbers and put it back on the receiver. Just like this, over and over, my heart pounding against my chest. My mom stood to the side; her hands clasped under her chin. My fingers shook. I had to keep wiping away the sweat. 

“She’ll love it,” my mother said. I had my fingers around the phone, trying to will myself to move, but all I could do was look over at my mom. “Honey”, she said, and put her arms around me. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, my vision blurring. “I’m just scared.”

“Of what?”

“What if she thinks I’m creepy.” I wiped my hands along the inside of my pockets. I took a trembling sip from water I wasn’t thirsty for. My mom rubbed my shoulders and said,

“You’re thinking too hard. Here, I’ll dial the number for you. All you have to do is talk.” I took a deep breath,

“Ok.”

I held my breath between each dial tone, counting them off in the small hope you wouldn’t answer. I could say I tried. What else was there? My heartbeat had abandoned post and moved up to my brain. The dial tones buzzed on and on.

“I don’t think she’s gon—“

“Hello,” an older woman’s voice said.

“Um”

“Hello.”

Hello, my mother mouthed beside me, forming the word like she was stretching her jaw.

“Hello,” I managed. 

“May I ask who’s speaking?” Danny my mother mouthed in another stretch. 

“Danny,” I said. 

“Oh, hello Danny. Luke isn’t in right now, but I can certainly tell him you called.” I stood there breathing through the phone like a stalker. Sentences passed on sky banners through my brain. I could only stand and watch.

“Hello,” she said again.

“Anna,” was all I could muster.

“Anna?” she said, like I had mispronounced it.

“Yes ma’am.” My mom was doing little hops to my side, an ear-to-ear grin tightening her cheeks. “I want to tell her happy birthday.”

“Oh,” your mom said as sweat ran down my armpits. I scratched my arm that didn’t itch. My heart jumped on a trampoline into my throat before plunging, with dead weight, into my stomach.

“Oh,” she said again with a tinge of excitement. 

“Is that okay?”

“Yes, yes, let me go get her.” Crumpled noise came through the receiver. My mom held her palms out and I gave her a thumbs up. She mimed a breathing exercise, pinching the air at her mouth and inhaling, exhaling, in, out, in, out. I closed my eyes and breathed. 

“Hey Danny,” you said. Frozen again. I breathed through the phone like the words choked on arrival. My mom ran through the exercise again.

“Hey Anna,” I finally managed.

“What’s up?” I imagined you standing in your kitchen, your tongue poking out like a little probe, wondering what I wanted.

“I just uh—“

“Wanted to ask me how I throw such a sick curveball?” I laughed harder than I should’ve. My heartbeat slowed. I breathed easier.

“No,” I said, chuckling. “It’s not that. I just wanted to say happy birthday.” You didn’t say anything for a bit. I thought of you scrunching up your face like you tasted something awful. But that was only me, thinking. 

After a moment you said, “Thank you so much, Danny.”

“Of course,” I said. “I hope you eat some good cake.”

You laughed. “I definitely will.” We were silent for a moment. Summer light bled through the blinds, and everything was warm. I couldn’t stop smiling. “Thank you for calling,” you said after a moment. “It means the world.” But it meant more to me. 

“Goodbye, Anna.”

That’s all it would’ve taken. A phone call, a few words. I’m sorry, Anna.

I had so many dreams of you. Dreams of you in red poppy fields with red petals in your hair. Dreams of me cowering in a cave, scared to death of a storm that you said was only a feeling. I dreamed of you sleeping among that field of poppies, but your face rippled as if underwater. I told you to come up now. Come up now, please. But you couldn’t hear me.

Do you remember when there was no drug in the world but canned soda and sunlight? I haven’t heard a cicada in what feels like decades. Haven’t seen a firefly in longer. Do you remember when we said goodbye? Summer never breathed the same without you.

I search the crevasses of my mind but can’t place my finger on the day I woke up differently. But I know it all traces back to you. When your eyes closed, mine began to open and I felt the tainted pulse of the world. When we were young, we used to say there was no day but today and now it only feels like a relentless torrent of tomorrows, yesterdays, and forever.

One afternoon, long after you were gone, my mom pulled me into her office. It was winter, with sheets of ice hardening the windows and cold air gusting through the drapes. I felt a change like a growth spurt in my heart. She sat at her desk, the computer glow illuminating her eyes. Her glasses dangled from a beaded chain around her neck as she turned the monitor towards me.

“I was just browsing around,” she said. “For someone, one day.” A lab grown diamond; princess cut with a yellow band.

“I don’t know, Ma,” I said.

“It’s affordable.”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

That brightness dimmed in her eyes. I looked out the window into a frozen landscape, stagnant and without pulse. Leaves long gone to dust. Flowers keeled over and dead. I looked for something like you for so long. I thought I was only a child. The infatuation would falter with age, and I'd grow to know love like a suit I could finally fit into. But you never left. My mom hugged me from behind. Mists of rain fell like ash. You never left.

At the pool party, you told me to watch you go underwater.

“Watch how long I can hold my breath,” you said.

You smiled a warped grin while submerged beneath the surface, the bubbles rising and popping from your puffed cheeks. You huddled at the bottom of the pool with your arms around you like a meditating mermaid. Kids roared and slapped the water around you, but neither of us really heard them. My internal clock said 20 seconds, 30 seconds as I stood there cold and dripping, my arms around my chest. I wanted a towel, but nothing could uproot me. I wondered how it must’ve felt for you. Your eyes closed. Floating in darkness like a womb, willing yourself to stay under. 40 seconds, 50 seconds. You were well past anything my little lungs could muster. Did you have to stay under so long? Would it have felt the same if you had come up earlier? I would’ve been happy with you either way. For whatever that’s worth.

“You can come up now,” I said but you couldn’t hear me. “You can come up now.”

Perfect Day by Lou Reed came on through my father’s loudspeaker. Could you hear it? Did you see me from down under? What was your perfect day, Anna? Everything moved around that moment where you held your breath and I held mine, wondering how long you could keep yourself under. 55 seconds, 56 seconds, I wondered if your hair was stuck in the vacuum and your smile wasn’t a smile and the bubbles were little floating screams bursting to silence at the surface.

“You can come up now.” 

A minute, a minute and one second. I kneeled onto the hot cement and squinted my eyes into the rippling picture of you. I watched you from behind an aquarium glass. Lines of light waving across a mirror of blue. A minute 10. A minute 11. Please come up. I reached my hand out. I wanted to pull you up. But you came up without me. You sped to the surface in an explosion of bubbles, breaching the water like a mullet, as you pulled a resuscitating breath of air.

“Oh my God,” I said, truly impressed. “How’d you stay under so long?” You breathed and coughed, choked, and laughed.

“It’s… it’s like…” you pulled in gusts of air, elbows resting on the side of the pool. “It’s like floating,” you said. “You just have to stay under. It’s only a feeling.”

It’s only a feeling. I sat there watching you catch your breath. Watching you breathe. The sun bled orange through the patchy oak branches. The moment swirled around us in a hurricane of memory, but I didn’t catch it. Neither did you. I wouldn’t for 13 years. Was that what they said to you? Was that what they promised? It was only a feeling?

“Wow,” you said, wiping the water from your face. “That felt awesome.”

You made me forget. All this time I thought I was someone else. Someone good. 

The night of the dance, your face ran through my mind like an uncaged bull I had no intention of taming. My dad asked me if I would try to dance with you. He told me I looked too sharp to pass up. I didn’t respond to him. Only adjusted the tie around my neck. I had on a hand-me-down navy suit with a white undershirt tucked into freshly ironed khakis. All complete with a suffocating tie. The shirt pressed against my belly and the belt was down to its last loop, but dad gave me a thumbs up while mom gave me the whistle. Some of my older sisters' friends even pretended to swoon, rolling their eyes with the back of their hands on their foreheads. 

“If she doesn’t dance with you, just call me,” one of them said, leaning down close to me with her hand formed into a phone on her ear. I blushed; I felt good. Even still, those two words, what if. Your face swarmed behind my pupils like a ricocheting bullet. Maybe this could work. Just maybe.

Your face emerged from the fold. Beneath the strobe light chandelier and all the party city vomit thrown across the middle school gym. You, in that sequin dress, the light refracting like stars upon you. “Come on,” you said, your arm outstretched. I was transfixed. Catatonic before you like your hair was made of snakes. I looked behind me. “Come dance,” you said.

“Me?” I said.

“Yes you, silly.” You smiled and I felt a little lighter.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, you helped me throw, let me help you dance.”

I was only 10. We were kids, remember? But for a flash of lightning, I felt the weightlessness. I felt like you must have, there at the end. Your hands on my shoulder, my eyes in yours. Your eyelashes curved over pupils I’d never let go. Irises I could’ve closed my eyes and fell into. Freckles dotted your cheeks like summertime kisses. A glint of your braces shone in the chandelier light as we swayed back and forth, back, and forth, dancing and dancing. 

“If I were to dip, would you let me go?” you asked.

“Of course not,” I said. 

“It wouldn’t be hard to hold me that low to the floor?”

I shook my head. “That’s just part of the dance.”

Something like a lens change happened in your eyes. A flickering moment. And slowly you leaned your head on my shoulder. We swayed under spotlights like somber moons. I could’ve died then and there.

Again, the pool party. The crux of all this. You had ice cream on your cheeks. Chlorine in your hair. A three-pronged leaf fell on your shoulder as a butterfly floated above you, never fully landing. You sat across from me while we ate cake and laughed because I had icing on my nose. I photographed your open-mouthed smile. The one that flashed your pruned lips and the pieces of yellow cake you tried to cover with your hand. Your blonde hair was plastered to your head like a mannequin’s and your mascara blurred like a shadow around your eyes. I saw you smiling, relishing a feeling, eating cake like a kid, and telling me to wipe my nose. You, emerging from the surface with a back-to-life breath and me, amazed that anyone could stay under for so long. 

It was only a feeling. It didn’t hurt. The neighbors had started a bonfire. The smoke drifted in curls like an old lady’s hair slowly fading. It drifted like a cloud across you, and you closed your eyes in it. 

“It’s all over you,” I said.

“It’s okay,” you said. “I like the smell.”

“We should tell them to stop. It might make people sick or something.”

“No, it won’t,” you said, your head leaned back with an opened mouth smile. “You worry too much, Danny. Just relax.”

Memory is weird like that. It tucks away moments of time to unfurl like a flower, decades into the future. I don’t remember the kind of ice cream we had. I don’t remember what I did before or after that day. I don’t remember anyone else there. But I remember the pitter patter of my ten-year-old heart. I remember you. 

I would see you again at your grandfather’s visitation. At the end of the line, you composed yourself for everyone, but deep down I knew. Those familiar shadows drew black threads around your eyes like enough mascara could cover the grief. You held your hands against a ruffled white dress. Your cheeks glistened with the remnants of tears. My mother and sister hugged you. My father shook hands with yours. All of them blessed your heart. When I got to you, I didn’t know what to say. Was this falling? Was this feeling? I wondered if feelings could break people. If one feeling could kill a piece of you, so your whole life was spent searching for something else to feel. I only looked at you. You were confident in ways that I wasn’t. I couldn’t reach out to touch you. I never could. If I did, there wouldn’t be anything to write about. There’d be no feeling lingering right beneath my skin, wondering if you would ever come up from the water.

When we feel, do we do so with skin or soul? When we hold on to words do they churn deep inside until memory wields them like a dagger? When I think of you do you think of me? Are you up there looking down? Are you underwater? Are you still chasing that feeling? Have you given it to me?

“What’s that on your arm,” I said. You had a band-aid across your shoulder right under the strap of your dress. You sniffed and wiped your nose.

“I had to get my flu shot.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said.

“I hate needles,” you said. “My mom had to sit with me and get me ice cream after.”

“That makes it a little better, then.”

You looked down at the floor and wiped your nose. People walked around us, patting your shoulder, and leaning down to whisper to you.

“I’m sorry about all of this,” I said. 

You sucked back a few breaths. “I wish he would’ve told me he was going.”

“I know,” I said. “He might not have known, though.”

“He had to have felt it.”

“Maybe.”

“I should have called him or something.”

“Yeah,” I said, and I stayed there for a second wondering what else to say. I wanted to reach back and wrap my arms around you. I wanted to scream all the words I swallowed. Instead, I left. And you were gone. Forever, gone.

So, you left. You chased a feeling. Middle school to high school to days spent sleepwalking, possessed by a feeling. Euphoria or paralysis, a dream like falling. I saw you in the in-between. Those sober moments where I could stop and remember. I saw you feeling and saw your eyes careening towards adulthood. You replaced your mascara with deep-seated fatigue. Navy haloes rimmed your eyes. I thought about throwing you a message like that softball we tossed between us, wondering if you’d throw it back. But my finger only hovered over your name. Maybe you would’ve remembered. Maybe your paralysis was akin to my own. Maybe we could’ve found one another. But I wrote words instead of speaking them, forever shackled by the anxieties of what if.

But I still hold those two words, what if, because what if I would’ve called? What if my mother would’ve been there to dial your number? To mouth the words? 

That last dream. The one that should’ve woken me in a cold sweat. You lay sleeping among the poppy fields, their stems curving to swallow you up. I could see each and every vein like topography jutting from your skin. Your eyes had retreated, scared of something.

“I’m leaving,” you said.

“To where? When?”

But you didn’t know.

I imagine how it must’ve been there in the end. An overwhelming feeling or lack thereof, I can only guess. I think of that cavernous room. Those slouched over husks, drained of their souls, who never knew you at all. They never knew the first thing, yet they had the privilege of holding your hand as you passed. Did they call you on your birthday? Did they dance with you? Or did they promise it was only a feeling? I can only hope the euphoria gave you peace. That you never felt the tremors.

In every nightmare, I imagine that last dose you took. In each one, I see your face as it was at 12. You, in your flip flops with birthmark freckles spanning your cheeks. You, in that starry red dress you wore to the dance. You, in winged eyeliner, your hair done up in French braids. You, laughing at the feeling. You, smiling with it as your eyes rolled. You, asking me if I’d hold on to you as you dipped. You, sticking out your tongue as you guided the needle in. 

So, a few months ago, 13 years after we threw that softball, I saw your name in the paper. Your name, a paragraph of ink, and two tombstone letters, O and D. I thought of you holding your nose and going under. Reading your name made me 10 again. I was on the pool's edge watching your face like a mirage beneath the water. I was crouched there, kneeling against the hot cement, my arm outstretched. I was 10, then 23 and you were here, then gone. I wrote you a story you would never read.  

You can come up now.