Dana Henry Martin
LITTLE WHITE LIE
I went under the water. I went under. I spun around in my lifebuoy
until I couldn’t tell left from right, up from down. I went under.
Under the Earth. Under the Sweetbay Magnolia. Under our home’s asphalt
shingles and carefully laid red brick and the patio cover and the patio
and the slide and the pool’s exquisite Moroccan tile border.
Under as far as I could go on my own, as close to the Underworld
as I could get. You were Demeter. I was Persephone. This was my fluid
fate. I had to go. Go under. To the bottom, all the way to the bottom.
I held my breath. I lost my breath. I came to the end of my breath.
The pool, a liquid grave, a transition point from life to death.
I held my breath until there was no. Until there was no. No breath.
I kept my eyes closed to make sure I was completely lost: in this wetness,
in this moment, the Oklahoma sun highlighting the waves I’d made.
Me, below, invisible. (Here is where he hung in the water like a buoy.
Where he pulled me close and taught me how to hang there, too.
It’s all in the lungs, he said. Take a deep breath and hold it.)
Drowning has a way of telling you what matters. I suddenly wanted
to live as suddenly as I’d wanted to die. I swam toward the surface,
but my spinning tricked me. I opened my eyes as my hand skimmed
the drain. I was at the bottom. My lungs demanded that I suck
the water in. The chlorinated water. The glimmering water. Where were you,
Mother? Sleeping? Passed out? You were there but you weren’t there.
I decided it wasn’t my time. Screw the Persephone myth. Screw death.
Screw you, a little, too, Mother. Your water was vodka. Your air was smoke.
Why should you find me slumped against the pool’s concrete
or floating like a bloated toad? Mother, I kicked hard. I breached
the surface and gasped. Messy as a pigsty, crushing as a load
of gravel, this was my life, my ugly life to live. Mother, I came inside.
I came inside. (It’s OK. You can hang onto me, he said as I began to sink.
He held onto me like a pool toy, like a woman, like one of his little white lies.)