The Accident
(The Neighborhood I Grew Up In)
“Pain ran into my chest and spread to my arms. My chest felt instantly cold. I could feel my heart beating hard, and then I knew I’d made a mistake. “
A lot of the things I remember from when I was very small are the things that just stand out because they were important moments for me. I remember being about two years old in Virginia and being upset that I couldn't go play in the snow with my brother and our friends. I remember running from my first dog, Samantha, as she chased me around the backyard, up and over the swing-set slide. She was such a cool, big dog. And I remember kissing little, sandy-blonde-haired Ronda in the yard between our two houses when I was about five or six. My parents and my aunt had a nickname for her, "Raunchy Ronda." I didn't know about that nickname until I was in my twenties and told them about that first kiss. When I think back to it, I remember it being pretty darn good.
Of all the things I remember, one of the clearest memories in my head took place when I was about six years old, living in Poway, at the high end of a hill-sloped street called Hillcountry Drive. Our house sat one house down from the top of the hill. Across the street, two of the houses had swimming pools. At the height of summer, it was great. We often got to visit the home of one of the neighborhood couples, Al and Brenda, to enjoy the water. They didn’t have kids and they liked us to come to visit whenever we could, so we took the liberty of going over to swim in their tropical, bright blue pool; however, I did not really know how to swim. I never had lessons. My parents didn’t think it was a big deal and so I didn’t either. You could find me most summers clinging to the side of the pool, crab-walking along the concrete lip of it, skinny as a string bean and dark as a kid from India. The sun darkened me like you wouldn’t believe. It's my Mexican roots that bring it out in me.
Anyway... the accident happened in the middle of winter. It was after school and we were not at Al and Brenda’s. I’d gone over to see the kid two doors down from Al & Brenda’s. His name was Jay-Jay. He was a scraggly little blonde-haired kid with very few rules enforced upon him by his parents. They were very hippy-like if I remember correctly. Anyway... Jay Jay was a little pain in the butt. He was a year younger and ten times more immature.
It was cold out and early in the afternoon. Jay Jay and I were looking into the cold water of the deep end of his parents’ black-bottomed pool. He had this big single glass oval-shaped pair of goggles as you see in all the old movies. We took turns sticking our eyes and part of our face underwater at the deep and of the pool to see the things we’d thrown in: a rock, a shoe, and his toy boat that we sank with the rock and the shoe. I think that I instigated Jay Jay’s aggressive nature because I joked with him by putting my hands on his sides and pretending to shove him in, but holding him back from falling in for real. So, in retrospect, not really something nice to joke about. No joke at all, really. Maybe I provoked him, but the next time I knelt down and readied myself to stick my head in the water, I felt him kick my butt as hard and fast as he could-not to pretend, but a real shove.
It was cold that day, windy, and partly cloudy. I had on this very heavy wool and cloth jacket. It really did make me look like a sheep, now that I think about it.
Going under the water, the whole world changed. It got dark. All I could see around me were the black walls of the pool, then I turned over and saw the sun beaming in through the surface of the water. I had no chance to catch my breath, I went in so fast. All the air in my lungs left quickly trailing off in tiny bubbles. That wool jacket felt like it was made of rocks and I went straight down.
I struggled to swim, but I didn’t know how. I started to panic and I saw Jay Jay’s face looking down at me, a look on his face like fascination, like he was watching a fly whose wings he'd just plucked off. He sat, intrigued to watch it walk around out of its element. I remember trying to breathe underwater and it hurt. Pain ran into my chest and spread to my arms. My chest felt instantly cold. I could feel my heart beating hard, and then I knew I’d made a mistake.
Suddenly, white light erased everything and I was warm again like I had been sucked up into a vacuum. I suddenly found myself high up in the sky, hovering over the backyard of Jay-Jay’s parent’s house. I felt light, detached and everything was silent. There was almost no sound at all. I looked down behind the houses and saw the canyon and the creek which led to the pond. The pond was nearly dried up, just black and mucky then. I looked out and realized I could see all the way to the ocean, I was so high up. I tried to focus below me. I saw Jay-Jay sitting on the side of the pool and then I saw someone come out of the house. It was Jay Jay’s dad. He looked angry. He saw me in the water. Then, I saw myself in the water! I was a white lump of jacket fluff lying at the bottom of the pool and my arms and legs stretched out, limp, lifeless, and I just lay there face up on the bottom, unmoving.
Jay Jay’s dad pulled his shirt off as he got closer to the water and he jumped in quickly. I saw him pull me up and he kept trying to hold me right side up, but my head just kept lolling over. He walked up the concrete stairs at the shallow end of the pool with me in his arms, then he tipped me over. He hit my back and nothing happened.
I looked around from the sky and thought how beautiful it was there. It was so quiet. I saw our house and my mom was in the backyard watering some plants. I looked back at where I was lying on the pavement next to the grass. They rolled me onto the grass and beat on my back. Jay Jay's dad had me on his knee. There were a few people out there now. Jay Jay’s mom and older sister, and some other kid I didn’t recognize were all out there. Jay Jay’s mom had her hand on her mouth in horror, and I remember she was wearing a sleeveless top and I thought, “Isn’t she cold?”
Suddenly, I was on the grassy ground, coughing and throwing up water, and it was weird because it was like my lungs were expelling the water out like you’d wring out a wet washcloth constricting and squeezing in bursts. It hurt. I felt cold, sick, and embarrassed. Jay Jay’s dad got up and looked at me and then at Jay Jay. He just said, “You, go home.” And then to Jay Jay, “Get inside!”
My clothes were soaked. I remember my legs were shaking like I almost couldn’t walk. Jay Jay’s mom helped me stand up. I went out the side gate to the front of the house. It was a short walk up the street to my house and my mom met me at the door asking me what happened. I told her I fell into the pool. But that's all I said. She brought me inside and I don’t remember anything after that.
Years later I asked my mom if she remembered me falling into the pool and she doesn’t remember. I never really made a big deal of it since I thought I was in big trouble. I never really thought about how my perspective changed from being in the water and then being high in the air. It felt natural.
I know I’ll never forget that feeling though. It’s the feeling I tried to recreate when I wrote about a dream I had “The Silence.” Some things are hard to forget. “It’s the silence I remember most. The silence, and the air rushing by.”
