To Protect Bathers From Drowning
by J.M. Young
I’m not supposed to be in the line of deep lifeguards. I’m a registered shallow guard who has miserably failed the deep guard test, not once but twice. It's now or never: my last ditch-all attempt at freeing myself from swim diapers and roving the three-foot-deep piss ponds.
The other female guards kneel to pull off their red swim shorts, but I stay in mine, my hands balled into fists in my pockets.
“Annie, you’re up!” My trainer, Rudy, tapped his clipboard.
Swim the Olympic-sized pool back and forth thrice, whichever stroke we wanted. Got it. I can do that.
I walk on the edge of the pool towards the deep end, my heart thudding with each footstep.
*
I used to love swimming.
I had spent the summer of fourth grade entirely waterlogged, doggy paddling in my neighbor’s pool with their golden retriever, Weaver. She’d swim with me, all black gums and a white-toothed smile, with her long-nailed paws headed in the direction of floating lizards, and I’d rush over and scoop them out before she could get to them.
Mrs. Kong would gently chide me. “Why are you bothering to save them? They’ll just fall in again.”
*
The first two passes of the pool are easy. I swim them underwater because my breaststroke is laughable compared to my competition, the former swim team champions turned lifeguards.
Maybe if I don’t come up for air, that will impress them? My breath-hold isn’t all that bad. I push my feet off the wall and start my final pass.
My lungs are burning. In a normal scenario, I would’ve come up for air by now. It's just a little farther. Not a big deal. I blow out all the air through my nose slowly.
Bad idea. The lack of oxygen hurts worse. There are specks of black in my goggled vision. Should I just come up? Not breathing isn’t a requirement.
Suddenly, something shifts inside me, and the pressure lifts. I most certainly can swim this length without coming up for air. I swim two more strokes when the top of my head collides with the wall.
The water displaces by my side, and I feel Rudy hauling me up by my armpits in an instant. “What was that? Are you all right?”
I try to hold in my coughing and rip my goggles off. They get tangled in my wet hair. The “real” guards stare down at us, whistles and practice rescue tubes at the ready.
“I’m fine. Just a bump.” I splatter back at Rudy, my head smarting and my goggles hanging in my knotted hair.
“I know you want this job, Annie. But showing off doesn’t make a good lifeguard.” He sighs and gives me a gentle smile. “You need to accept your limitations and work with them.”
I sheepishly nod and get out of the pool, quickly yanking my things from the beach chair.
*
My parents had told me not to take advantage of our neighbors’ hospitality, but I was at the Kongs’ pool almost every afternoon when I was a kid.
Mrs. Kong liked to remain fully covered from the sun with a wide-brimmed hat while I towel-dried Weaver. I remember Weaver’s large tail thumping excitedly near my feet when Mr. Kong came home from work earlier than usual that summer day.
He had stumbled near the pool’s edge and chucked both of his shoes into the water. They bobbed on the surface like sailboats until they became waterlogged. He watched them for a moment, then straightened his shoulders and walked off into the deep end.
He sunk to the bottom as if bricks were tied to his feet.
Mrs. Kong smiled at me. “He does that instead of taking a bath.”
Mr. Kong resurfaced a few seconds later. He pushed himself up on the side, hitched a leg over, and stood in his socks, fully dressed and sopping wet.
I didn’t say anything. I figured chlorine killed germs. That’s why it wasn’t a big deal when people peed in pools.
Weaver barked at him as he limped past us back into the house.
I could see him through the sliding glass door in the New-Yorker-Magazine-wallpapered study. He picked up a framed golden heart with a purple ribbon off its hook on the wall and shattered it on the ground.
*
The next portion of the deep guard test was where I had failed the first time. They sat us down in a dimmed portable to watch a lifeguard warning PSA made in the 90s. It features videos of three separate children drowning to death, and we are expected to watch.
The classroom is always cold. I break out in gooseflesh and pull on my white polo, covering my chest with my arms. It has to be easier watching this the third time.
The child goes under the hot tub water. The adults mill about, not noticing. The bubbles are no longer rising. By now, I can tell the difference between the air bubbles and the jets. I try to control my breathing. My stomach lurches. I glance at the wall clock instead of the still water.
I won’t walk out shaking like last time. I have to finish the video.
The child remains underwater.
*
It was one of the last days of that summer, and I knew my swimming days were numbered as the air had already started to take on a chill. Weaver was barking like mad, her nails scraping the sliding glass door to get out onto the pool deck.
“Don’t let her out again, Annie. You both just got dry.” Mrs. Kong stayed seated inside with her gooey pastry. The television light flickered across her face.
I followed Weaver to the sliding glass door and looked outside. Mr. Kong was in the pool, face-down and floating.
“Mrs. Kong?” My voice wavered. I flipped the lock on the door and flung it open. He wasn’t moving.
“Help!”
I rushed to the edge of the deep end and knelt to pull him out or flip him over, but he was too heavy. “Help!”
Mrs. Kong ran outside, let out a scream, and jumped into the pool. She gathered him into her arms and hoisted him up to me. I grabbed under his arms while she pushed the rest of him up onto the pool deck. Even the smell of chlorine couldn’t hide the sickly-sweet stench that radiated off of him.
Weaver was all over him, barking at his calves, as Mrs. Kong pressed both of her hands to the center of his chest over and over again. “Call 911!”
I ran back towards the house but stopped when I heard him coughing. He turned his head to the side and vomited into the pool.
*
“Blow your whistle, spit it out, so you don’t choke, then jump feet first and retrieve the brick.” Rudy holds up the slimy black brick and expertly chucks it into the 12-foot-deep wave pool.
The final task takes place in the main attraction of the water park: an artificial wave pool with a sand bottom and zero-depth entry beach. This was where I had failed the second attempt at passing the deep-water test. I didn’t jump.
The “real” lifeguards drop off the wall and disappear straight down into the wave pool. They are so self-assured with their perfect timing, one jumping as soon as the other swims into the breakers. The brick is held aloft in the air for a triumphant moment, then released back into the depths for the next one.
I take my place as the last in line, watching the guards that passed the test high-five and hug each other. They pick each other up and twirl, sending chlorine drops raining and darkening the concrete.
*
Mr. Kong had raised himself on spindly shaking arms and wobbled into the house, wiping residual vomit off his chin. Mrs. Kong and I followed the puddles of water into the bedroom closet. He dumped the hamper's contents and then began ripping the clothes off the hangers.
“I think it's time for you to go home. It’s almost dinnertime. Please come walk Weaver for me tomorrow?” Mrs. Kong didn’t look behind her to see if I had left, but I couldn’t move.
Mr. Kong kept rummaging through hat boxes with trembling hands. He lurched over to Mrs. Kong’s extremely organized side of the closet and chucked her purses off the shelves. A little blue tile sailboat broke off her straw bag and cracked on the wooden floor.
“Please sit down for a moment.”
Mr. Kong ignored her and parted her heavy fur coats to reveal two pentagon-shaped glass bottles, filled to the brim with brown liquid. He pulled out a Swiss army knife from his belt and inserted the tip into the bottle, twisting it.
“Stop it!”
I had never heard Mrs. Kong raise her voice before.
Mr. Kong sat on the floor with the bottle at his lips. Weaver circled once and laid down beside him. The amber fluid trickled down his chin, and he didn’t pause for breath. His nostrils flared for air. He was drowning in it.
*
I try to regulate my breathing, but each breath comes in quicker. I can’t do this.
“Annie? Sometime today would be good!”
My big toe is barely over the edge of the wave wall, and I want to cry. I can’t even see the black spot at the bottom of the 12-foot-deep pool. The other lifeguards around me are quiet. Or maybe that’s just the roaring between my ears.
“Annie?”
I slowly turn to face my trainer, ignoring everyone else standing on the wall. “Thank you for giving me this…third chance. I’m sorry.”
“No.”
“What?”
Rudy grabs my shoulders and turns me back around to face the wave pool. “You’re going to jump and get that brick.”
*
“Not again.” Mr. Kong moaned on the floor, still clutching the bottle. “Not again.”
I stepped backwards out of the closet door frame.
“We might have to cancel swimming tomorrow.” Mrs. Kong said as I retreated out of the room.
I glanced back and saw her deftly pick up the strewn shirts and slowly hang them in the closet, one by one.
*
“I can’t. It’s just like last time.”
Rudy’s voice drops to a whisper. “When the video plays, I watch my students for their reaction. The others pop their gum and play on their phones. You care, Annie. You will make a great deep-water lifeguard. Have courage.”
I turn my gaze to the 6-foot waves made by the wave machine and try again to steady my heart rate.
I remember Mrs. Kong as she held her husband while he spewed the contents of his stomach into the pool. “You saved his life, Annie! You saved his life!”
I scan the bottom of the pool for my brick. That is the black square I am meant to save. Not again. I won’t quit again. I blow hard on my whistle, and it lets out its shrill alarm.
I walk off the wall.
The tremendous burst of water forces my goggles from my eyes to my forehead. I keep swimming down, willing my body not to be moved off course by the current. My ears are popping, and I am pretty much swimming blind.
I reach out, scraping my hands on the abrasive concrete of the wave pool floor, when I finally brush the slick brick with my fingertips. I quickly clutch it to my side and kick towards the shore. The man-made tide pushes me forward until my feet find purchase on the zero-depth entry bottom. I stand and walk out of the water, softly depositing my brick on the sand.
Clapping. I hear clapping from the wall. Rudy and the other deep guards are clapping for me.
They applaud like Mrs. Kong did when her husband came home with his green medallion, indicating his 90 days of hard-won sobriety. Her loud, enthusiastic applause had woken up Weaver’s newborn puppies that were snuggled in my parents’ laps.
I smile.
“Great time! Go tread water!” Rudy waves one hand at me, the megaphone in his other.
I run back into the waves and dive, swimming with broad strokes, feeling that same joy I used to have as a kid. My fellow guards jump in after me with victory whoops. Farther out, I begin to dog-paddle.
ABOUT THE CREATOR
J.M. Young is a playwright, author, and content writer with a passion for theatre for young audiences. Her work has appeared with the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts, Orlando Family Stage, and in literary journals including Wild Musette Press and Twenty-two Twenty-eight. As a graduate of The Florida State University with dual Theatre and English degrees, she remains biased towards the Sunshine State and is based in Orlando, FL.
Instagram: @jmy117