My mother believed that
for a girl to make her way in society she should, in addition to speaking a foreign
language or two, know how to swim and play tennis. In the Catalan village where
she had grown up in the 1920s and 30s nobody did any of those things, much less
taught them. She had visions of country clubs and elegant house parties in my
future, and she wanted to spare me the embarrassment of sitting dry and bored
by the side of the pool, or being unable to return a kick serve on the tennis
court.
One summer, while we
were living in Quito, she heard that a former Olympic swimmer, señor Otero, was
offering a girls-only swimming course, and she signed me up. This was just
before I developed breasts, while I could still squeeze my twelve-year-old body
into my childish swimsuit, a cotton affair with tiny pink roses on a white
background..
In the dressing room, as
I struggled to cram my thick braids into a white rubber swimming cap, I looked
around at my fellow learners. These were no girls! They must have been in their
late teens or early twenties, but to me they seemed practically as old as my
mother, with fat white thighs and bathing suits that had built-in containers
for their breasts.
At an altitude of over
nine-thousand feet, Quito’s temperature year-round hovers in the 60s. The pool where we would learn to swim--“like
fishes, guaranteed!” according to señor Otero--was outdoors, under a sky that
in those days was untroubled by pollution, and with a view of the green slopes
of Pichincha, the lively volcano that presides over the city. The pool was
unheated.
Before we were allowed
to get our feet wet, señor Otero—balding, ripped, and wearing a tiny bathing suit—dragged out a number of
narrow wooden benches and arranged them around the pool. We were each assigned
a bench, and told to lie on our stomachs as senor Otero threaded his way among
our recumbent forms, explaining the scissors kick and the crawl stroke.
That exercise over, señor Otero led us to the deep end of the pool. “Señoritas, al agua!” he yelled, motioning for us to jump in. The
idea was that we would eventually surface, turn on our backs, and practice
floating. There was much shrieking as bodies hit the chilly water, but one by
one my classmates emerged from the depths and began to float. But I, stunned by
the jets of water forced up my nose by the dive, my muscles turned to stone by
the cold, just couldn’t do it. Every time I turned on my back, my feet and then
my legs, my pelvis, and the rest of me would gradually and inexorably sink.
When señor Otero blew
his end-of-class whistle I pulled my soaking-wet braids out of my swimming cap
and got shivering back into my clothes. At home, I lay in my darkened room all
afternoon while pool water drained out of my sinuses.
Twice a week, for the
rest of the summer, I went to swimming class. I suffered through the back
stroke, the crawl, the side stroke, the breast stroke and the butterfly. I also suffered from a kind
of embarrassment that I had never experienced before: that of being in a group
of half-undressed women presided over by an all-but-naked man. I was probably
the most naïve twelve-year-old in the western hemisphere, but there was
something deeply discomfiting about señor Otero prancing among us, telling us
what to do with our bodies, and sometimes helping us do it.
Whether it was because
of embarrassment, the mercilessly cold water, performance anxiety, or painful
sinuses, while my classmates mastered one stroke after another, I could barely
float. And summer was almost over.
Señor Otero’s course would
culminate in a demonstration before a crowd of parents, relatives, and
boyfriends, and would consist of each student swimming the length of the pool
in the stroke of her choice. For me, señor Otero made an exception: I would
only be required to float across the width of the pool.
One by one my plump,
pale classmates dove in and, using the crawl, back stroke, breast stroke, side
stroke and even the butterfly, emerged triumphant at the far end. When my turn
came, I took a deep breath and flung myself into the frigid water. I stretched
my arms out by my ears and tried to stay horizontal. I didn’t have far
to go, but when the cement wall was almost at my fingertips, I felt something
bump my hip. It was the head of señor Otero, who, not wanting to have a student
drown in front of her parents, had dived in to save me.
A couple of weeks later,
my parents went with some friends to El Tingo, a thermal springs resort south
of Quito, and they took me along. It was a weekday and the place was
practically empty. While the grownups were eating lunch I got into my bathing
suit and, ignoring the swimming cap, entered the pool. The sun shone down on
me, and in the warm water every muscle in my body softened.
Nobody was watching. I
lay on my back and floated a while, squinting against the glare. I felt like I
was dissolving in the glorious warmth that enveloped me, and dreamily, without
thinking about it, I began to do the back stroke. When my arms hit the cement wall,
I realized that I had made it across the entire length of the pool. I turned
over and tried the crawl—nothing could be easier! The breast stroke and side
stroke were a snap, and I even managed the fearsome butterfly.
My mother was delighted
with my sudden metamorphosis into a swimmer. But when it came to tennis, luck
deserted us. To this day, whenever I see a ball hurtling in my direction, I
turn and run the other way.
