No, No, Nanette

This is a story about a touching experience.

 

Overweight, bronze men in Speedos with thick, gold necklaces embedded in their chest hair are as essential to swimming pools as small, friendly children with nothing better to do than follow me around the pool asking to race. I had long since discovered that children are much like cats: regardless of how friendly they are on a regular basis with normal humans, when they detect a hint that someone is not a cat person, or in this case, a child person, they decide right then and there that they will be your new best friend. The harder I try to squirm away, the harder they try to prove that they are the most stubborn, cuddly critters in the world. Cats and children both cling to me like a small piece of shrink wrap passed back and forth from finger to finger.

Over the summer of 2004, my family and I moved my older sister to Waldorf, Maryland. After a day of hauling boxes, moving furniture from one room to another and back again, and hanging pictures in every possible room as if marking territory, my parents and I left my sister to finish hanging her clothes up in her closet, organizing her garments by season and color, a science I had long since given up on trying to understand. Instead, my mom, dad, and I chose to spend the rest of the day relaxing at the hotel pool.

My mom settled into her lawn chair with one of her books with the willful woman with the seductive curves and the stubborn, intuitive man with the perfectly chiseled and polished abs. For most of my childhood, I thought my mom was rereading the same book over and over again. My dad stretched out on the chair next to my mom, took off his glasses, and closed his eyes. I, on the other hand, had to carefully prepare myself to relax. The towel had to be laid out across the chair just so, my books had to be within reach, – oh yes, there were multiple books, along with a crossword puzzle book; I’ve always made sure that I had no reason to be bored by limiting myself to one source of reading material – shoes at the end of the chair facing out, and my cover up folded neatly and sitting on top of my shoes. If there is a way to be feng shui at the pool, I was pretty darn close. Finally settled in, I took in the scenery around me. Mainly, the other people. There were only a few people taking cat naps in the sun, relaxing from whatever it was that brought them to Maryland, be it business or pleasure. To my immediate right, though, was a family that attracted me for their . . . artistic beauty. There was my token overweight bronze man, soaking up as much sun as his bloated mass could absorb, eyes closed in deep concentration of his efforts. His wife, a stick thin European woman with blonde-hair, sat next to him in a two piece bikini listening to politics on a travel radio, idly flipping through a magazine. At a picnic table with an umbrella next to my chair sat a girl with curly brown hair twisted haphazardly into two braids. She wore a blue bathing suit with big white flowers, and she was drawing with a pencil, staring at the paper with as much focus and determination as Van Gogh drawing Field with Cypresses. In between puzzles in my book, I looked up and observed the girl. She flicked her pencil on the table and held up her drawing, eying it carefully. She furrowed her brow, and I half expected her to cup her chin in her hand and make some analysis of the symbolism behind her pencil strokes. Instead, she marched it over to her mother and thrust it into her hands, waiting for criticism. The air about her reminded me of a girl I went to high school with who walked around the school convinced that she was better than everyone else, and talking to everyone as if they had already come to that same conclusion. Her mom looked up for a moment, then mumbled something, and the girl returned to her seat with the drawing. She looked over at me, and our eyes met. Fatal mistake. The moment you make eye contact, with cats or with children, they know exactly how you feel about them, and determine their next course of action from there. I focused on my crossword puzzle, but I could feel her staring at me. The sun had all the weight of the girl’s stare to pound into my shoulders, and I felt as though I were being pressed into the lawn chair. I looked up at the pool. The water in the pool was a playful shade of blueish green, the vibrant color that seems to shout, “oh, c’mon, you aren’t really just gonna sit over there all day, are you?” Well, what is a giant hole in the ground filled with water for but to ease the weight of the summer sun? Maybe without me sitting so nearby, the girl would turn her glare to someone else.

I jumped in the water and swam slowly underneath the surface, spinning and gliding as if I were flying through the air. The water was the perfect temperature, embracing my arms and legs like a well-meant hug. When I resurfaced, I spread out my arms and legs and floated, staring up at the sky. There was a splash, and water flew into the air and fell down, poking me in the face. I remained floating, but I heard the sploosh, sploosh, sploosh as someone shoved their way through the water. “Excuse me.”

It wasn’t really a request; it was a demand. And it was coming from the girl. Was I in her way? It was a big pool, that couldn’t be possible. She repeated the command. “Excuse me.”

I stood up and turned to her. Her belly stuck out in front of her, and she bobbed up and down in the water. “I’m Nanette. Do you want to race?”

I was caught off guard by how adult like she sounded when she spoke, but, nevertheless, I politely declined to try and out swim a . . . something year old. I can never tell how old children are. She was obviously old enough to swim without water wings, but not old enough to be hating her parents and every person around her. I excused myself from the pool, disappointed that the water would not be a safe haven from Nanette. I lay out in the sun, closed my eyes, and tried breathing calm, cool breaths. Inhale . . . exhale. Inhale . . . exhale. The sun washed over me and I felt the water evaporating from my arms. Time passed by until my breaths became even and meditative. My skin was dry, but the water that had soaked into my suit kept me cool. Inhale . . . exhale. “What should I draw?”

            Nanette was dripping water onto my chair. It splashed on my crossword puzzle book. I squinted up at her. “Can you draw a butterfly?”

            She stood there, hands on her hips. That pressure on my shoulders was returning. “Okay, but how many?”

            My dad stood up to go swim, and I sat up to join him. Without thinking, I spat out my lucky number. “Five.”

            She retired to her picnic table while I swam. My dad and I stood by the edge of the pool, and I rested against the wall, my elbows resting on the ledge. A shadow loomed over me. Her tone echoed that of an impatient police officer. “Okay, but even if I draw a butterfly, I still need a background.”

            I closed my eyes. Were her parents aware of their daughter’s overeagerness to connect with the world? “How about a tree?”

            Nanette grabbed one of her braids and flicked it over her shoulder. “Alright, but a tropical rainforest, or a meadow with ponds?”

            Okay, I was an art minor, and I was impressed. Annoyed, but still, I wasn’t so sure many normal children asked questions like that. Purple cat or red elephant maybe. I chose meadow with ponds. She left me in peace for a bit, and I returned to my chair to read. Nanette brought her drawing over to show me. In the center was a grid of tiny flowers, and she had quickly drawn in patches of long blades of grass. She had drawn the outline of a lumpy mountain in the background with a lone tree on one of the bumps, and there were blobs of clouds resting on the mountain. It wasn’t going to be framed and sold in a gallery, but there was, in fact, a meadow with a pond, and five butterflies hovering over it. In the bottom left hand corner, in the formal cursive taught to children in fourth grade and lost by fifth grade, she had written, “Nanette age 7.” I thanked her and said in some jumbled form or another that it was very nice. I tucked it in my crossword puzzle book so that it would stay dry.

            A brother and sister jumped into the pool with Styrofoam noodles, and Nanette eagerly followed. She bobbed up and down in the water until she was in between the two children. “Can I swim with you guys?”

The girl and boy exchanged looks. The boy looked back at her. “Do you know how to play Shark?”

“Yes.”

            Shark. A game where one child swims around growling and gnashing their teeth while the other children swim away screaming and squealing. And we blame our fear of sharks on Jaws. But they played Shark. The boy hopped on his noodle and pointed to Nanette. “You can be the shark first!”

            Nanette jounced in the water and waggled a finger at the two children. “Okay, but you can’t go past the four ‘cause I can’t swim out there.”

            As soon as Nanette turned around and started counting, the boy and girl paddled their noodles behind the four foot marker. They turned and faced each other and started talking. Nanette spun around. “Heeeeey, I can’t go out there.”

             “You can’t, but we can.” He pointed to her, then to himself as he said this. “And you can’t play with us when we’re over here, but when we want to play with you, we’ll come back over there.” He pointed to where she was, then poked the water in front of him to accent his point.

I don’t know that I have ever wanted to dunk someone under the water so much in all my life. True, I don’t like children. I didn’t like these children. But Nanette wasn’t rude, or cruel like these two. She was just . . . a child. She wanted to play. Watching her, I saw myself back in elementary school, running across the playground with tears in my eyes after a girl told me she didn’t want me around her. I expected Nanette to wade over to the edge of the pool, tears in her eyes, and sulk. Maybe even cry. But she didn’t. Instead, she waded over to the edge of the pool, clung to the side, took a deep breath, and plunged underwater. I sat up. Oh, c’mon, Nanette, they’re not worth killing yourself!

She resurfaced. “Twenty hippopotamus!”

I sighed. Of course. If you aren’t playing Shark, you’re seeing how long you can hold your breath underwater. I was impressed by how mature Nanette was. She didn’t let those two children make her think she was inferior. In fact, she acted as if the rejection meant nothing at all. And for that, she deserved better than to have to sit by herself counting how many hippopotami it would take to drown her. I joined her in the pool, and offered to swim with her. “Do you want to time how long it takes for me to swim laps?”

“Okay, Nanette. Okay.”

She swam back and forth, and I timed her, subtracting a hippopotamus every now and then.