I'm Down: A Memoir (30 page)

“But Marni’s not crazy. She just has shitty parents.” The princess who lived in the glass house on the sea was not a princess at all.

“I don’t know,” Lilith said.

“Trust me,” I said. “You’d be crazy, too, if you had her parents.” And I suddenly wanted to get away from Lilith and everyone she worried about. I no longer felt like I could navigate the kind of problems my friends had. They seemed much worse than being poor. I looked around the pool deck at all these preppy swimmers and I felt so out of place in all this whiteness.

“Excuse me,” I said to Lilith, “I’ll catch up with you later.”

“Where are you going?” Lilith said.

But I was already walking away and just said, “Sister.”

When I found Anora, she was sitting on the bleachers quietly watching our teammate Janie, a blond, eighty-pound fourteen-year-old dance around with her Walkman to an NWA song. She bobbed her neck and moved in a little circle as she sang. I don’t think she realized just how loud she was, because she had her headphones on:

“’Cause she’s gotta bunch of kids nappy heads and all dirty . . .”
She pumped her hands to the beat, indicating that she was a
gangster. She was completely lost in the music and her Walkman as she closed her eyes and sang,

“And she’s getting pimped by a mhhmph whose thirty . . .”

My sister and I both knew the song well enough to know that
mhhmph
was the N-word.

The next line of the song Janie forgot, and sort of mumbled but came back in to say way too loud,
“But I heard that she sucks a good dick!”

I watched her bounce around the pool deck a bit more, singing about how big her dick was and then I turned to my sister and said, “What the fuck is the matter with white people?”

My sister didn’t even look at me but just shook her head and said, “I-do-not-know.”

S
UMMERTIME
. We had two swim club workouts a day, which meant Anora and I lived in the water together. In the one year since she had started swimming, Anora was such a presence on the team that I seemed like her shadow. The upper-middle-class decorum that surrounded us in and around the pool had little to no effect on her. She wore her Polo puffer and cornrows, she didn’t deal with people she didn’t feel like dealing with, she tuned out their grunge music like she was allergic to it, and she swam like a motherfucker. And as a result people worked to please her, and those that didn’t, couldn’t stand her. Either way, she didn’t care. In fact, the only person she seemed interested in impressing was me. Why, I had no idea. I was faster, but she was well on her way to breaking all of my team records. And now that we didn’t share a room, we had nothing in common.

Summer also meant it was time for CAST to do their annual swim across Lake Washington. This was a 2.7-mile swim, which wasn’t that much for us in the pool, but adding cold, waves, and boat traffic made it a palpable challenge. Anora seemed pissed off by the very idea of swimming across the lake for fun.

“Why?” she asked when Dan announced the swim. We had finished practice and he was standing on the bulkhead like Caesar.

“Did you ask why?” he asked, amazed at Anora. He often found things she said amazing. “Are you really a swimmer? You’re asking me why we should swim across Lake Washington as a team?”

“Sounds awesome!” I said to Ari and Janie, who were in my lane. I had been geeking out on the idea of a lake swim since Dan had mentioned it, and I already saw myself winning it.

“It’s not a race, Mishna,” Dan said, reading my mind.

“What do you mean it’s not a race?” Ari said.

“There’s a boat alongside so you can’t break ahead of the rest of the team.”

“What about the last leg?” I asked.

“You can do whatever you want with the last leg.”

“Kiss your butt good-bye,” Ari said, looking at me.

“I’m not doing it,” Anora said.

“It’s not optional,” Dan shot back. “There’s no
I
in team.”

“I’m sorry,” Anora said. “I just don’t understand why I would do that. Especially on a weekend.”

“Just to finish a swim across the lake,” I said sarcastically. We didn’t do anything just to do it. There was always winning involved.

And Anora announced to everyone, loudly, “I’m only doing it because Mishi is doing it!”

That weekend I had a dinner with Dad. It had been six months since I had lived with him, and over the previous month I had started agreeing to a couple dinners during which Dad took me someplace that was convenient for him, but not particularly wonderful for me, and always left me stranded for hours longer than I wanted to be and not wanting to have dinner
with him ever again. On this particular night he announced as we got onto the on-ramp of the interstate that he was taking me to the Sarge’s house in Tacoma, a military suburb of Seattle. The Sarge was Yvonne’s father, who was a veteran and not particularly fond of white people or my father. He lived in a split-level ranch house, and it always seemed surprisingly big for him, considering I never saw him anywhere other than the kitchen and a leather La-Z-Boy in the den. It was like the rest of the house was haunted by the ghost-of-marriage-past, and he was able to keep the spirits at bay by staying in rooms with TVs.

Yvonne adored her father and doted over him, constantly cleaning and organizing things for him. When she wasn’t doing that, she was telling him what he needed to be doing for this or that little health problem he had.

But that night when we walked into the front door of Sarge’s house, Yvonne was not parenting her dad at all. The second we walked in the house, I could sense there was something off.

“Goddamnit, Yvonne! Just give me the shirt!” we heard Sarge spit from the kitchen. We made our way into the kitchen to see Yvonne pleading with her father while standing over a pile of his clothes.

“Sarge,” Yvonne said desperately, “this is how I always fold your shirts.” It always seemed odd when she didn’t call him Dad.

“Yvonne, why you such a problem? I never taught you how to fold a shirt! Or you stupid?” Sarge asked as he freshened the yellow tumbler of rum and Coke he had been walking around with. Anora, Andre, and Yvette watched silently.

“I’m doing it right,” Yvonne said again.

“You ain’t doing anything right,” he said. “You come over
here like you’re helping, but you ain’t helping! I got a way of doing things!”

“Dad,” Yvonne pleaded, “this is how I fold. This is how Mom folded. We all folded your shirts this way.”

“Don’t you patronize me!” he said. “I’m your father! Tell me, what have you done with your life that I should listen to you?” He trailed off. “Messed-up little girl done messed up your life.”

“Dad, don’t be that way,” Yvonne said, sounding fragile. “I’m doing really good with John.”

Then Sarge repeated himself, “Mess up your life!” Dad looked worried. “And another thing . . . You just never had no kind of standards for yourself!”

“That’s enough, Sarge,” Dad said. “You been drinking, and you’ve upset Yvonne.”

“Oh, let her be upset! She always upset about something.”

Dad just stood looking really big and way too close to Sarge, and said in a low voice, “Either you put an end to this . . . or I will.” Dad’s authority surprised me. He had always been eager to please Sarge, but there was no eagerness in his voice and no threat either—just the facts.

Sarge got quiet as he decided whether to chill or fight Dad. After an electric thirty seconds, Sarge’s angry disposition relaxed and he laughed, “Shoot . . . You all ganged up on me tonight!” And smiling, he grabbed a box from under the kitchen counter.

“Cigar?” he asked Dad.

Dad accepted the cigar, and at the same time he took Sarge’s bottle of rum and put it out of reach on a high shelf. And Yvonne took a deep breath and went back to folding.

Sarge looked over at me. “Hey, girl. You back around?”

“Yes, Sarge. Sort of.”

“Oh. Your dad been so sad without you around. You know he talks about you all the time.” I looked at Sarge, surprised. “You don’t believe me? Always ‘Mishna won city championships for swimming.’ ‘Mishna got straight A’s.’ What else, John?”

“Mishna plays the hell out of that violin,” my dad said.

“I’m not that good,” I said, but I was relishing the compliments, even secondhand.

“Come on,” Sarge said to me deviously. “You can help me cook.”

“Is that dinner?” I asked, pointing to the pot on the stove.

“No, your dinner is on the grill outside. That there’s for me. Come take a look.” He watched as I bent over the pot and gave it a stir. I saw the familiar sight of broth and entrails and knew immediately that he had brought me over there to try to gross out the white girl, but I was more grossed out by the smell of cigars and rum on him.

“You know what that is?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, brushing it off. “They’re chitlins.”

“What did you say?” The humor dissolved instantly and the angry guy was back.

I cowered a little. “Chit-lins?” I said nervously.

“Little girl,” the Sarge explained, “those are a food that have been with black people for generations, and you’re giving it some slave pronunciation.” He looked at me sternly. “They’re called
chit-ter-lings
.”

“Yeah,” I said, knowing he was inferring racism. “But everybody calls them chitlins.”

“Everybody who?” the Sarge asked.

I kept silent.

“Chitterlings,” Sarge snapped. “You don’t believe me, we can look it up in a dictionary.”

“Sarge!” my father warned him.

“Chit-ter-lings,” I said slowly.

But my sister was fearless, and sitting at the table, she cried out clear as a bell, “More like shit-lings!”

I looked over at Yvonne, who was giggling to herself a little over her father’s wash. And it was good to see her smile.

When it was time to take me back to Mom’s house, Anora came with me and Dad. She was super excited that it was the three of us in the van and kept bouncing in her seat, saying we should go somewhere else before I go back to Mom’s.

“Like where?” Dad said, open to the idea.

“Dancing!” my sister screamed, not getting that in the book of things that I would never do, dancing with my little sister was number two. It came right after going dancing.

“I’m going to bed,” I said, really busting my sister’s bubble so that she folded her arms and pouted.

“Hey,” Dad interrupted, “your sister told me you all’s team is swimming across the lake.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s gonna be pretty cool, I guess.”

“Well,” Dad said. “I want to swim with you all.” I couldn’t imagine what was making him want to do something so crazy.

“I don’t think that’s such a great idea, Dad.”

“Why?” he asked.

I could think of a million reasons why my thirty-nine-year-old dad shouldn’t get into the water with a dozen twelve to eighteen-year-old swimmers. In fact, the first ten reasons started with the word
herniated,
and then you could just fill in the blank.

“Well,” I said. “We swim a lot-lot. And we are pretty efficient at it. Plus, our endurance . . .”

“Why don’t you worry about your own self?”

Now Dad was just pissing me off. It was so completely
ridiculous to think that an old guy who didn’t work out that regularly could get into the water with twenty athletes at their peak and not expect to hold us up. I was gonna be the one stuck waiting with him while Ari and Janie swam to glory.

I urged him to be reasonable, explaining that none of the other parents were going to try to swim with us.

“That’s ’cause they aren’t in the kind of shape I am,” Dad said.

“But you’re not a swimmer!” I said. “I’m a swimmer! I do this five hours a day! Every day!”

“That’s fine,” Dad said. “I won’t try to swim with you.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, knowing that I was going to lose this one, and my best bet was to start negotiating. “But if you get too far behind—” Dad looked hurt and incredulous that it would ever happen. “—will you get in the boat so that we don’t have to wait for you?” He looked at me like I was being mean, and not totally realistic.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, which not only didn’t answer my question, but also brought up a new one: “Who the hell does he think he is?”

The swim started at our teammate Teagan’s house because she had lakefront property. There was her awesome house, then behind the house a backyard, and then where the backyard would have ended, there was a dock and a boat. We arrived on the late side, and as we entered her living room, most of my teammates were already jacked up on root beer and bouncing off the walls.

“Mishna and Anora!” someone called, and then everyone repeated it as we filled our hands with chips and plopped down on the couch. I started communing with my teammates while at the same time sizing them up as competition. Ari and Janie were there, and they were the likely favorites. But there was
also a dark horse in Teagan who wasn’t necessarily the fastest, but worked hard and probably had more endurance than any of us. I was trying to gauge how much of a role endurance was going to play in the last leg, but my eye kept being drawn to Dad across the room, looking quiet and out of place. He didn’t talk to the other parents much, but instead walked around Teagan’s very glass living room, admiring the view and looking like a kid who had been left out of tag. He was about as far from cool as I had ever seen him.

Anora walked over to me with a can of Coke in her hand and looked at Dad and saw something completely different. “Aren’t you glad we are all doing this as a family?”

“Um, no,” I said.

“Why?” my sister said, tilting her head to the side.

“Aren’t you afraid Dad won’t be able to keep up and we’ll all be stuck treading water every five minutes while he tries to catch up to us?”

My sister thought about it for a second. It was clear she hadn’t even considered the idea.

“If Dad can’t make it, that’s his problem,” she said.