but it was true

i thought i saw seaweed encrusted treasure and a mermaid. i still can see it- algaed and melty, magical and encompassing. it was the fourth of july and i must have been about four. we were still cooking steaks on saturdays while "hee haw" played on the 6 inch screen of the TV on top of the refigerator. dad was still waking up at 5am to play raquetball at the YMCA before work; he was still coming home at 5:30, setting his briefcase down beside the table i got to decorate for chrismas (kitty, whose lake house we were at on that fourth of july when i was four gave me a porcelain christmas figurine every year, heavy and detailed) to bend down as he hugged me. he was still calling me itty and mom was still working from home in the backroom that got the most sun, the room off the deck that was all windows.

it took hours to drive to smyer lake. my mom's best friend kitty, the one she called sister, had a lake house there, a narrow musty one with the kitchen on the upstairs floor and rooms of bunkbeds downstairs. kitty wasnt married, but years later at her 40th birthday party my mom threw for her, she and her then boyfriend danced to paul simon's "diamonds on the soles of her shoes" all wrapped up in each other in our living room, my dad sneaking in to film them and then singing loudly along, all of them with eyes closed and heads thrown back. i stood, my seven year old body half covered by the polished wood door frame to the hallway, burning the image into my memory so that one day i could find the part of me that belonged inside of that moment.

fourth of julys are thick in alabama, thick like the lake, thick like the trees surrounding all of the houses. theyre dense and wonderful and end up laying in your lap, drifting to sleep with tiny murmurs.

kittys parents were there that time, i remember her father's huge bulbous rocky terrained nose and how desparately i wanted to squeeze it. her mother, the steely painted lady who never hugged me, sat at the dining room table with one hand on it and her legs crossed as my parents, kitty, and her father made hamburgers and potatoey things. i was crowding them in the kitchen and mom, her hands held up, greasy with hamburger, told me to go chat with mrs. rowell. i stood behind one of the chairs, timidly. grown ups were supposed to ask questions, i knew that. i knew it wasnt my job. i said tiny-ly, "hi." and she smiled with no teeth and said hi back, and i ran onto the deck through the sliding glass doors and down the stairs.

there were two lawn chairs in the dirty grass before the water. in a few years my mom would get stung by wasps and swell up so badly she had to be hosptialized, and dad would take a picture of her and i sitting in those chairs right before they decided to make the trek to the doctor, my mom's face exhausted and accomodating, like the ones of her holding me when i was a few minutes old.

the day was beginning to take a bow. i walked to the dock, the dock with the slippery, mossy stairs, and sat on the side. my legs couldnt reach the water but it felt so good to dangle them there, hovering above this whole cartoony world i imagined living beneath me.

i had been in water before, i swam and i was good at it. but the way i remember it, this was the first moment i realized that i could see my reflection in the water. at first it was just my feet and the tip of my head as i leaned over the wooden dock, but it was so wavering and glossy that i kept leaning more and more

and then it was the mermaid and the treasure boxes- endless blonde hair suspended all around me, the promise of an entirely different kind of magic than i had ever let myself think about. i remember sinking slowly but steadily, feeling as if there were no bottom, no floor holding me to any one sight. it was vast and deep and i was just starting to see what all was there- past the murky water there were fish, scales like sequins, and dolphins and rusty, huge keys. there were answers down there- answers to questions i hadnt yet thought to ask. and it was all mine, all mine

his splash was like a gun shot- alarming and dangerous. i remember his open eyes and huge terrified bubbles swimming out from beneath his mustache. i didnt look back at all of it, i just let him grab me and go. i didnt want to share it with anyone, what i had found...

it hurt being back on the dock. they were all sharp edges, all corners jutting into my face as i lay there, watterlogged and mesmerized.

mrs. rowell had followed me out to the deck. she had watched it and screamed. the hamburgers burned, my father cried, and the fireworks were underwhelming.

that year for christmas, kitty strayed from tradition for the first and last time- she gave me a small glass mermaid, reclining on a rock. on the card that i still have, that i didnt understand for years, she wrote, "we couldnt believe it. but it was true."