Take It Back By Pamela Slea I wanted to jump. The…

Take It Back

By Pamela Slea



        I wanted to jump.

        The thought lingered in my head, along with the melody that played in the

background of the film I saw that night. Funny thing is, I didn't even remember hearing

at all ­ until I'd left the theater and was walking through the streets trying to think of

something else, and I found myself humming it.

        I was walking home and thinking about all the reasons I shouldn't do it, and

trying to warm up from the out-of-control air conditioning in the theatre. Midsummer

warmth rose up from the pavement, thawing me, comforting me with its quiet. I was

thinking about the apartment, about my key going into the lock and running a bath. But I

knew that there was no way I was going straight home that night. I fingered the plastic

baggie in my pocket.

        I had seen a midnight showing of a documentary on birds, "Winged Migration".

No talking, just lots of birds flying flying farther than we could imagine, all over the sky,

all over the world, with that music playing, loud. And there I was, Caroline Shuster,

twenty-three years old and never getting anywhere. Cause I saw those birds and I saw

the water and I just wanted to jump so bad I couldn't stop thinking about it.

        When I was a teenager my Dad used to think it was so weird that I would go to

movies alone, but I don't see why everybody thinks it's such a social thing, to sit together

in the dark like that. I liked to be silent by myself.




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       I felt brittle and crystallized from the movie theatre. My bones clattered and

clanked in my jeans and my sandals squeaked on the damp cement still warm from the

sun that set long before. Traffic ran by in waves, but it felt like everyone was asleep

already, the cars in a monotonous drone of driving without thinking or seeing. Alone, in

a zone, they got where they needed to be.

       I put one foot in front of the other and ended up at Boston Common again, the

park in the center of the city. The streetlights illuminated parts of the midnight scene with

an orange hue. The big trees and the leaves and shadows and water were all moving,

reflecting, mocking me.

       The swans in the pond were not sleeping. They swam like taxicabs around and

around the pond uselessly and unabashedly. I imagined them encased in crystal like me,

separated from everything else, parting the water, and watching the drops of water roll off

in streams from their glassy backs.

       To try and distract myself, to slow things down, I threw a rock. Watched it plunk.

I wanted to skip it but I didn't move my wrist in the right way and so it just dropped,

useless and heavy, to join some other rocks and minerals. Lucky pennies and unfortunate

quarters. My palms started to sweat as I watched the breeze rattle the leaves and the

water, and I knew I had to jump.

       I thrust my head around to see that I was alone, and I pulled my tee shirt up over

my head and folded it quietly on the bench and one by one I placed my jeans, my sandals,

my bra and panties neatly underneath in a pile so that no one would mistake them for

someone's discarded items. I'd never had a problem before, but it was always worth

making the effort. Safety first.




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        I took a deep breath. I shook my fingers and cracked my neck.

        The approach is simple, I'd start on the far end of the path that leads up to the

edge of the pond (where the children feed the ducks fifteen meals a day), three running

steps and a hop, followed by a dive into the murky and algae-infested waters. Into the

forbidden duck and swan territory in the middle of the city.

        The cold water felt shocking and intimate, like the surprise meeting of a

childhood enemy as my fingers began their search over the green and black tinged floor

of the pond. Experts. They can tell quarters from rocks in a fraction of a second as they

whiz their way across the slimy line of children's sacrificed wishes.

        I take them back.

        With every kick of my legs and my arms I could feel my hair brushing against my

face and my back, standing up and searching the water; a team with me, no eyes and no

ears in the black waters we scrambled in that all-important first dive before I had to come

up for air. I always got a lot more in that initial dive than any other time I went under, so

I tried to make it last as long as I could.

        I never stayed for too long in one spot, even if I felt like I could get more if I

stayed there and dug, I saved my energy for the ones that reached out for me. The ones

that wanted me. I flew across the bottom of the pond and scared the fishes and the turtles

(and whatever else is down there) with the accuracy and the expertise of my probing

hands. I could almost feel them swimming away, terrified by this alien jumper.

        I reached through the seaweed or the litter (I never quite knew what any of it was

with my eyes closed) and searched all though it, grabbing the underwater plants to propel

me along until my hands were full and my lungs and stomach were pulling in on my




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chest with the weight of oceans. That's always the point where my eyes want to open

and see where I am, but I knew it was a mistake to give into that. My burning eyes would

make the first trip under into the last.

        I let my feet touch the bottom and leapt up to the surface in an explosive whoosh

of sound and motion and release. My mouth entered the atmosphere first and in one great

inspiration of air I kicked my way clumsily, my fisted hands in front of me, hopping on

the water to the edge of the pond to deposit my earnings. The film that covered me as I

waddled toward the edge, treading water, was comforting. Like a bubble that surrounded

me.



        Two weeks before she died, my mother took me to Boston Commons, and she

would throw these silver dollars in when she would make a wish. Big, shiny dollars that

she would take out of the bank especially for this wishing game. Every day she took me

there she would wish, and the people around would throw in their money and sit around

and smile and laugh. I was seven years old. I thought of the shiny, perfect silver coin

floating down down into the water like a feather, and I wanted it. At that moment I

wanted to see it down there, to grab it and hold it and not let go. I didn't even look at my

mother's face, I just ran to the side of the pond, hesitated for just long enough to hear the

shriek of my mother as my little legs bent in anticipation of the jump, and went into the

water where the sounds were light and easy. The water was cold, and I went down into

where the coin went.

        When I surfaced my mother grabbed me by the collar, her blonde hair whipping

in the wind and she pulled me out of the pond and I cringed and screamed and squirmed




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from the expression on her face, something I had never seen before. I think it was

mortification, disgust.

        "That's dirty, Caroline! You don't do things like that," she hissed. My palm was

holding a lump of dirt and moss, and inside the wet soil was not the silver dollar, but one

lone penny, 1958, murky and dirty, hanging from the tentacled roots of the underwater

plant that had held it there.

        But I did things like that. I always did.



        Quarters and dimes used to be all I would bother with, but in the last few years

I've realized that passing up pennies can be a terrible waste of a trip. I can get hundreds

of pennies from one pond, and not only is it gratifying; it is special, the act of cleaning

them in vinegar afterwards and watching them shine. Giving them to the man at the gas

station and watching him gawk at my inconsideration, my audacity in paying for my gas

in pennies like a child.

        "Is this a joke? I'm not going to take this!" The heavy accented man cried with

his fist raised. But of course they do. They have to, it's money. It's fair. I count them

out one by one and make neat little piles of shiny copper pennies on the counter.



        I can't jump during the winter, of course, but I think about it. There was one year

in high school that I didn't do it at all. I would go to the park and try reading and

drawing, instead. I would look at the trees and the happy families taking pictures and

laughing. I would jot down a note or two: "fat fat woman shakes whole face when she

laughs," "the homeless lady sleeping on the bench could be dead. Is not, I checked." I




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thought I was ok then, that I wasn't so needy, but looking back I think I was just kidding

myself. The urge was always there, it doesn't go away. But maybe I always wanted to be

caught. Maybe I wanted somebody to figure me out.

        No one at school ever knew, and I don't think they would've cared, either. I was

invisible. I didn't talk all the time like they did, or laugh at their jokes. I was so invisible

that they would start telling each other secrets right in front of me like I wasn't a real

person. Like I wasn't there at all.

        "I heard that Catherine is sleeping with Billy."

        "No, she's just giving him head on the bus ride home. They're not serious. But

don't tell her I know. Billy told me not to tell..."

        After a while when they would talk to me and I wouldn't answer, they just didn't

even try, and I would look up from Chemistry lab, and look them in the face, but they

never looked at me, because I didn't say anything.

        I didn't mind. Makes for interesting possibilities. I would stay up at night

thinking of ways I could use all my information about them as blackmail. But what did I

want in return? Those kinds of girls never have anything interesting like a journal to read

or a skeleton in the closet, just money. I'm interested in dirt, and they're interested in

make-up. Even the black lipstick girls, they're all the same.

        So I stayed by myself and watched, mostly.

        But then I would feel so guilty or lonely sometimes, especially when the weather

would get warmer - I never even knew why - but I wasn't able to get it out of my head,

and that's when I would start to get shaky, and I knew the only way to get rid of the shake

is to jump.




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       I pulled myself out of the water with my plastered hair sticking awkwardly to my

face and back and I stumbled my way back to the bench. I felt exposed and dirty but

refreshed. Satisfied. I put all my coins into the plastic bag I brought with me. I always

have a few baggies with me, even when I'm pretending to quit.

       "Quite a show you put on there."

       I screamed. I didn't remember ever screaming before in my entire life, and the

sound was oddly uncharacteristic. Very high pitched. I always fancied my scream would

be more masculine. I stopped myself and looked to the voice, out there in the darkness.

It was soft, shy almost.

       "Ok mister, just turn around." I couldn't see him properly, my eyes still stinging

from the water, and I froze, taking in the shock.

       "Oh. Well, I didn't mean to scare you or anything." His voice was young,

earnest. He moved a bit closer and I could make him out in the orange light of the

streetlamp. I pegged him at about nineteen or twenty. His blond hair fell over his eyes,

and he kept jerking his head to the left to get it out of his face. For some reason, I didn't

think to run away. I didn't think anything.

        "Well I'm naked. Turn around."

       "You're in public." He shrugged, but didn't move any closer. Apparently he

thought this whole thing was very funny.

       "Just because I take off my clothes in public doesn't mean you have the right to

disrespect me, now turn around so I can put my clothes back on! Jesus." He obediently

turned around. My hands were sticky as I threw on my shirt and jeans. The jeans clung




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viciously to my legs as I jerked them on. A lump in my throat and my stomach made me

anxious. This guy could be anybody.

         He started yelling over his shoulder with his back to me. "That's probably not the

best place to take a dip. Don't you think it's gross? That pond is polluted." I wanted to

hurt him. This is not amusing, this is crazy, and I didn't appreciate him making a joke out

of it.

         "Everything's polluted. Take a culture of the inside of your mouth and you'd be

disgusted." I went back to getting my things together. I didn't know what to feel. I'd

run it through my mind before, this scenario, but always it was me running away, flying,

running. This was so ordinary, so quiet. A swan behind me fluttered its wings. I didn't

know what to do. I looked at his back over there, white tee shirt.

         "You should go away. I have my clothes on now, show's over." I held my

baggies and my sandals in my hand and held my breath, waiting for his response. He

turned around and looked at me long, like he was figuring out whether I was serious or

something.

         "Why do you do that?"

         I stopped, like a trapped rabbit my muscles tensed and this time I really wanted to

run. I wanted to make it home without giving him any clues of who I was. I wanted to

just get the hell out of there right then and start sprinting towards home, baggies jingling

like a circus clown and forcing one heavy leg over the other, my feet sledgehammering

into the pavement.




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          But I didn't. I wanted to know who he was and why he wasn't running. Why he

wasn't laughing anymore. This was the first time and I thought for some reason that

maybe he could understand.

          This was my chance, maybe my only chance to see this part of myself from

someone else. He was a person, after all. Must be thinking something.

          "So then, what do you think? Bet you've never seen something like that before."

My voice was fluttering.

          "Like what?"

          Like someone acting insane. Not able to control herself. I started to feel a panic

welling up inside of me again. This is not something I wanted anyone to know. No one

had ever seen before, and I've never told, but this is my chance, I thought. He seemed

pretty harmless, standing there, young and interested, like he might even answer.

          "Do you think I'm crazy? This is a serious question."

          "I don't know, I guess I'd have to know your motivation."

          "Gas money." Oh, why not. "And because I have to." My shame subverted my

eyes to the ground and I wanted to leave. I started grabbing at the last of my belongings.

          "Well, yeah, gas prices are pretty up there, but..."

          "No, I mean. You don't know me. This is bad." I looked up at him. He was

closer now, and the breeze from the trees ruffled his hair. He looked like he was

interested in what I was saying. Like he wanted to know more. Like maybe he wasn't

scared.

          "There are worse things, I think."




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       The night air was incredibly cold on my slimy skin. The walk home after a jump

was always itchy and with that came a combination of shame and pride from a job well

done, but this time there was only the stuffed-up thrill of panic to guide me through the

streets with this stranger, this man, walking beside me slowly, not talking, all the way

back home. He walked beside me, so I guess he wasn't really following me, I guess we

were walking together.



       My hands fumbled into my back pocket and I held my breath while I held the key

in my hand.

       "You have to leave now. I'm going inside." I looked into his eyes and felt like a

twelve year old, vulnerable, sheepish.

       "Hmm. Yeah." I noticed how tired he looked. His expression was still oddly

cheerful.

       "You know, you seem so interesting to me. I want to see you again." A car drove

by and pulled me out of my illusion. My mouth wagged in the air for a moment and I

sputtered out:

       "I'm very busy." My bags jangled in my hands and I shrugged my shoulders. I

looked at the door lock. I thought of us at a coffee shop, of us being together and making

small talk, and all the while he knew all about what I do. How could I be expected to tell

him about my job, about my life, when everything is so different now? Now that he had

seen me. I looked back at him, his face so ready for anything. It seemed innocent.

       "Look, I'm not very good at meeting people. Maybe I'll see you around."




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       I caught my breath outside the door of the tiny park-view apartment as I watched

him step backwards, still looking at me.

       "Go on." I whispered, and I stepped inside and shut the heavy door behind me,

and went up the stairs to my apartment.

       I tried not to enjoy the stench of myself as I threw my findings into the

Tupperware container in the doorway. On the walkway to the shower I peeled off my

filthy clothes and left them in a trail behind me lying on the floor like clues to a murder

leading up to the bathroom. No one will ever find out. He can't tell because he doesn't

know who I am.

       I let the water warm up while I was outside the tub. I don't know how I turned

out like this. The shame, like a coloring bruise in my chest began to sink me from the

outside in. I shook and tried to get it to settle somewhere else but it stayed and I stayed,

kneeling on the bathroom floor next to the bathtub with the hot water from the shower

steaming up the mirrors and the walls, and me, naked, sobbing, on the outside.




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