Swimming by Nicola Keegan

sincere marbly owl. He is one of those priests who are never bored. He concentrates hard and wakes people up with a modulating voice, unlike Father Tod, who mumbles, frowns, sighs when he loses his place.
    I make my eyes into two fat O’s and aim them at Roxanne, who looks back. What?
    My brows answer back, puzzled. Can’t you see?
    The Glenwood Junior cello players are present; sitting behind cellos with their knees splayed, dressed up in different shades of dark, aligned like the smudge of a hand on a window. The cello tune they choose turns out to be brain-blastingly hollow. Bron usually sat next to the oily boy with the short pants. She called him oily boy but I know his name is James.
    Mother pinches my arm hard with her fangs and I put my face forward. I am wearing my dressy dress from the year before, but it’s too tight and my neck is sticking out of it like a giraffe’s, my movements physically restricted by cloth, so when people hug me, I jolt like Frankenstein. I explain: My dress is too tight and they look at me as though I were speaking Chinese, so I stop.
    Sister Joy plays the organ. The sound reverberates along my spine. Hopeful angels glide up toward God’s pearly feet. Up and up and up they go, zooming like gliders in an air without glitch. Clouds thin into wisps, disappear into nothing. Time ticks metallic ticks, chalice clinks on marble, nail from flesh cuts through wood, cello string taut under padded thumb.
    Bron’s class is back for Christmas vacation, weeping friends and enemies alike, sitting together with their heads bowed, their parents behind them in Christmas scarves, ties, earrings, and shawls. Leonard’s team is here; the bearded doctoral candidates I’ve always seen in jeans and flannel, dressed up in corduroy and tweed. They clear their throats and do things with their eyes that involve shifting, rolling, squinting, the long unnatural blink. Astronomer Gerald pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, squeezing both of his eyes shut. I watch him until my mother’s fangs bite into my arm like a dog.
    Dr. Bob is sitting behind us with a dry-eyed Linda, the nice nurse, and the uncontrollably weeping Sheila, the awful one.
    Leonard looks like someone folded him up and seated him with strict orders: Don’t move . Dot follows the ceremony by heart with her lips. She feels me looking. Her face seizes; her look is tender and damaged, suffering and sad. My dress is crushing my rib cage, pulling tight at my armpits, cutting off the circulation that leads to my brain. Quit looking at me with those goddamn cow eyes , I clench, and she turns her face away.
    Roxanne disappears into Roxanne. I close my eyes and she surges out of the darkness swinging one fist. She has a fixed steady stare that waters readily into blank, says: You can’t make me go up there to no one in particular. One of Leonard’s hands tells her to do as she likes.
    My legs straighten; my feet start to move. Bron’s face has been emptied like a puppet without hand. I genuflect, make a sign of the cross and, for the first time in my life, a good poem: O empty God You Vast Wastrel O warty moon O fritter . The French say vide like weed with a v. Her turtle-neck gleams with a million silver sparkles. I look at her face and something snaps into place and clarifies; it’s factual, hideous, mathematic, luminous.
    The Dolphins are five pews behind with Coach Stan and his wife, Emily. They try to catch me urgently with their eyes, but I am uncatchable and will remain that way until I get caught.
    The incense holder swings from Father Tim’s skinny hands, puffing clouds of frankincense and cinnabar. My eyes wizen into squint. My throat constricts. I want out.
    Mom has a series of nervous breakdowns, one right after the other. They make her eyes fade into her head and her hand veins stand out. She wears an unfortunate hat I’ve never seen before with a veil she pulls down, which turns the face I know into the face I