Read Online The Sea of Light by Jenifer Levin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jenifer Levin
Tags: Fiction
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old books, new metal filing cabinets, a computer, stacks of paper on the dark wooden desk. I step in like stepping into a cloud. For a second my eyesight goes the way it has done ever since, tunneling into the hole of me so I must shut my eyes and spin, and when I open them there is the face of this woman materializing again out of the cloud of pleasant fancy light, there is the kept-in-shape body attached to the face, and things are beginning to clarify here in the light and the calm.
We talk. The usual things. I don’t remember specifics. It isn’t too hard until she asks that question: What about the bad times, the rotten splits, and how do I feel about it? Then no more smiles from me, no more nice. I cannot answer, which is very rude but what can I do? Thinking of things you cannot tell about. Those times after the hospital when I stayed awake all night waiting for the morning alarm to buzz, triumphant because I’d lasted the black time through without sleep or nightmares but dreading the hole of the morning. Dragging my butt through another goddamned day, not concentrating. Falling asleep everywhere—on the starting block at the club for Christ’s sake, and in class—leaning against a busy hallway wall nodding out until the booksack fell from my hands and people passing by thought I was stoned. Professors trying to get my attention.
I had to drop out. Then bag it completely for a while, no more school, no more workouts either. There was this thing with people’s faces, that they seemed so far away all the time, voices too faint to hear even when they were right in your face. Disgust at the way things looked and sounded. Fear at the strangeness of it all. The mindless, motherfucking exhaustion. And whenever I shut my eyes, skin floating away on the water. Jesus, forgive me. The continual taste of blood. Forgetting how to flip turn.
Forgetting? How to flip? Shit, Delgado, you’ve been doing it since the age of six. Wrists swiping pool lights, deftly turning underwater. But there was the day it eluded me. Getting to the other end of fifty meters and forgetting what to do. See, it was like it fled my reflexes utterly—how to turn—I willed it, I swear I did, but the body I’d been left with would not respond. How do you feel about that, Delgado—huh? Well. How would you feel, lady?
But I answer Lousy—some of the truth, not all. When she says the thing about money and how it will not hurt my pride I want to say Pride? What is that? but say nothing. She needs me to give something here and now. A promise. Tell her I will try for her the way Sager said always, always to try and win no matter what, but this is no longer the Babe of old here, folks, this is the new one a.k.a. The Hole, and I can’t promise anything to any would-be coach, not yet.
In fact I’m starting to feel like I did back in high school days, a little coy, a little cagey, when all the big guns would come around personally to make recruitment pitches and have these serious talks with Mom and Dad in the living room, then take us out to dinner. The phone kept ringing so much we unplugged it. But whenever I was face to face with one of those guys and he was giving me some earnest rap about how great the University of Such-and-such was and how I would fit right in with the program and how they would tailor this and that for me, for me alone, I would do my number on them: I would smile the nice innocent jock-girl smile and pretend to not quite understand all of it, to sort of zone out. And all the time I was waiting, waiting for an offer I could not refuse. Waiting to be challenged and seduced. All the time my moron jock-girl smiling silence said to them things they never would have guessed. Like, My mother is whitebread DAR, sir, but my father’s name is Felipe Delgado, his skin gets very brown in the summer and so does mine, and he suffered a lot before coming to this country and he struggled very hard to make a go of it here—so how much of
We talk. The usual things. I don’t remember specifics. It isn’t too hard until she asks that question: What about the bad times, the rotten splits, and how do I feel about it? Then no more smiles from me, no more nice. I cannot answer, which is very rude but what can I do? Thinking of things you cannot tell about. Those times after the hospital when I stayed awake all night waiting for the morning alarm to buzz, triumphant because I’d lasted the black time through without sleep or nightmares but dreading the hole of the morning. Dragging my butt through another goddamned day, not concentrating. Falling asleep everywhere—on the starting block at the club for Christ’s sake, and in class—leaning against a busy hallway wall nodding out until the booksack fell from my hands and people passing by thought I was stoned. Professors trying to get my attention.
I had to drop out. Then bag it completely for a while, no more school, no more workouts either. There was this thing with people’s faces, that they seemed so far away all the time, voices too faint to hear even when they were right in your face. Disgust at the way things looked and sounded. Fear at the strangeness of it all. The mindless, motherfucking exhaustion. And whenever I shut my eyes, skin floating away on the water. Jesus, forgive me. The continual taste of blood. Forgetting how to flip turn.
Forgetting? How to flip? Shit, Delgado, you’ve been doing it since the age of six. Wrists swiping pool lights, deftly turning underwater. But there was the day it eluded me. Getting to the other end of fifty meters and forgetting what to do. See, it was like it fled my reflexes utterly—how to turn—I willed it, I swear I did, but the body I’d been left with would not respond. How do you feel about that, Delgado—huh? Well. How would you feel, lady?
But I answer Lousy—some of the truth, not all. When she says the thing about money and how it will not hurt my pride I want to say Pride? What is that? but say nothing. She needs me to give something here and now. A promise. Tell her I will try for her the way Sager said always, always to try and win no matter what, but this is no longer the Babe of old here, folks, this is the new one a.k.a. The Hole, and I can’t promise anything to any would-be coach, not yet.
In fact I’m starting to feel like I did back in high school days, a little coy, a little cagey, when all the big guns would come around personally to make recruitment pitches and have these serious talks with Mom and Dad in the living room, then take us out to dinner. The phone kept ringing so much we unplugged it. But whenever I was face to face with one of those guys and he was giving me some earnest rap about how great the University of Such-and-such was and how I would fit right in with the program and how they would tailor this and that for me, for me alone, I would do my number on them: I would smile the nice innocent jock-girl smile and pretend to not quite understand all of it, to sort of zone out. And all the time I was waiting, waiting for an offer I could not refuse. Waiting to be challenged and seduced. All the time my moron jock-girl smiling silence said to them things they never would have guessed. Like, My mother is whitebread DAR, sir, but my father’s name is Felipe Delgado, his skin gets very brown in the summer and so does mine, and he suffered a lot before coming to this country and he struggled very hard to make a go of it here—so how much of
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