Memoir of a Fateful Summer

     I remember her eyes best of all. They were paisley. Not paisley like the pattern, but the colors - brown and green and gold in mottled swirls of iris. She liked Cheezies, I could tell. Her paisley eyes flitted from the back of the green vinyl seat to the shiny orange cellophane in my hand and then back to the seat again. I held out the open bag. She blushed and one corner of her mouth twitched upward. Her hand followed her gaze and she reached in, methodically, emancipating a single powdery Cheezy from the bag, looking down at her bruised knees as she silently popped the treasure into her waiting mouth. I popped another into mine and, in unison, our cheeks collapsed as we sucked the cheese treats till they disappeared on our tongues.

     That's how we became friends. It was a silent friendship, mostly. A mutual, introverted, wall-flower friendship. We spoke in rhythms and movements and rituals. Like the Cheezies ritual, which took place every day after that for almost two weeks, at three-thirty pm on the bus ride home from swimming lessons. I didn't know her name yet. I wouldn't learn her name until later, when it was too late.

     It was 1972. The orange bus lumbered along Highway #52 like an old locomotive in the fever of the August sun. Heat waves danced on the highway in front like fairies, stealing away the mirage pools just before our tires could make a splash. I sat in the front seat with my new friend, both of us too awkward to push past the imposing faces behind us to a more venerable spot. In the front we'd be the first to arrive.
     I'd never particularly liked water, or pools, or instructors who insisted that your head must break the water's surface to become a proficient swimmer. Just last summer I'd invented five ways to be sick during swimming hour - one for each day at junior camp. The camp counselor and my mother must have collaborated, because here I was - my first summer in swimming lessons.
     My fingers curled around the quarter in the pocket of my pink polyester shorts. It was small recompense to get me on the bus each day, swimsuit and towel in tow. It was the purchase price of a bag of vending machine Cheezies and a new friendship.
     Chlorine kissed our noses as we disembarked. I liked the smell; it was a clean smell and it drew me willingly into the confines of the first open change stall. I exchanged glances with my friend before swinging the teal-painted door shut. She would wait there while I changed then I, in turn, would wait for her.
     My feet danced lightly on the cold, cracked concrete as I pulled the tie dyed T over my head. I lay my clothes neatly in a pile on the bench. She would stack her outerwear on top where they would await our return. There was a distinct disparity between her and I, although only superficial. Placing her generously patched and fraying clothing on top of mine, I reasoned, would reduce the likelihood of change room thievery. I double checked the pocket for my quarter.
     We moved out into the open pool area like Flossie and Freddie, the Bobbsey twins, holding hands, close at each others heels. This was where the chopping block came down. We could no longer ride shotgun from here.
     Edging in gently next to another girl in roll call line, I pulled my Josie and the Pussycats towel tighter around me. The breeze was cool and, as the goose bumps rose on my calves, I imagined the prepubescent hair on my legs standing on end like flags in a windstorm. I dropped the towel a little lower.
      “Debbie? Gloria? Jeffrie? Brenda?”
     Our instructor checked each name off her list. I glanced around the pool for the familiarity of my friend. She sat on the concrete at the far end of the pool, knees bent up to her chin, shielding her from unwarranted attention to her faded, stretched out swimsuit. Her class hadn't started yet. She looked like a dusty, bygone china doll.
     “Okay class, jump into the water and give me ten bobs.”
     Bobs. Why must we always start off with bobs? I slipped silently into the tepid water and turned my back to the instructor. Holding my nose between pinched fingers, I bobbed, my face never fully breaking the surface. Somehow, miraculously, I was the first to achieve ten. I turned to watch the others, still bobbing, luxuriating in the feel of water in their eyes, noses and mouths, on top of their heads, in their ears. They were sea creatures and I a ground mammal. I bounced on my tippy toes, up and down in the water, enjoying the feeling of buoyancy. Perhaps my pretty floral swimsuit would distract them all from my inadequacies.

     By the end of the first week I'd come to realize that not all instructors were required to get wet in order to be swimming teachers. My instructor, Margie, was that variety. I wondered what possessed her to put on a bathing suit before leaving the house in the morning. She could have stayed in a housecoat for all the effort she put in.
     “Not like that class, like this.”
     We would stop and rub the moisture from our eyes as she'd demonstrate – poolside – her arms drawing on great heaps of air, balancing on one leg while kicking like a dolphin with the other. She looked like the perpetual motion drinking bird my dad kept on display as a conversation piece at home.
     Each class would eventually end with a race to the pool steps, a clamber back to our reckless summer lives, free of tutelage and responsibility.
     I was usually the first back to the bus, reserving “our” seat and waiting while the others returned in twos or threes. Eventually my friend would board, her brown hair tangled and dripping. It was no great feat for her to find me on that bus, we were parallel personalities, kindred in so many ways, drawn together like opposing poles. We came from two different worlds and found a solidarity in this new one.
     We knew nothing of each others lives, not even a name. We shared Cheezies and trivialities. Perhaps too many details would muck up the mystery and the vulnerability of what we had. I didn't question it then.
     The last day of swimming lessons finally arrived but something was different. Everything was different. My friend was not on the bus, not in her usual spot, not smiling her crooked tooth smile as I plopped down in our seat. Her spot was cold and it left me cold as I shuffled in. Perhaps she missed the bus and her parents would drive her in.
     My friend did not arrive. She was not there to safeguard the change room door, shadow me to the pool or share a celebratory bag of Cheezies on the way home. She was not there as her instructor called out her name, not there to collect her badge. I wished in that moment I'd known her name. How would I ever find her?
     I lost myself over the next few days in the hot, hazy summer cycle of play and boredom. Then suddenly I saw her. Not the way I'd expected; not waving from a passing car, or skipping with a group of friends. It was an image; a likeness looking back at me in black and white familiarity, the face that drew me to the newspaper on our kitchen table. She stared back at me from the front page and for the first time I learned her name; Renata.
     Renata Wiebe, the newspaper stated in tiny font underneath the picture of my swimming lesson friend. She looked happy, completely unaware of the large, bold faced letters above her threatening to squash her from the page.
     Gruesome Slaying Shocks Community. I didn't understand. Found dead Friday morning...nearly decapitated...father used a butcher knife. Was this a joke? Lost his job just weeks prior...family was soon to be evicted from the home they'd been renting...Renata was eight years old...mother and younger sibling safe in police custody.   

      My mother entered the room and drew next to me, brushing my bangs from my face. She swept the newspaper from the kitchen table, away from a young girl's curious eyes.

     “Don't you have something to do? A friend to go play with?”
     I shook my head. I wanted to tell my mother that Renata was my friend, that we both liked Cheezies, but the words wouldn't come. I wanted Mother to say that the paper had made a mistake, but she flipped it over on the counter top, front page down, smiling a worried smile. A worry that sits behind a mother's eyes, fretting over the world her child must grow up in. Fretting over another degree of innocence slipped away, victim to a dark and hungry reality.
     I curled into my bed and watched the sunlight dance on the purple bedspread beside me. Closing my eyes I tried to be there, in her last moments, in her house on Second Street. But I was lost; I couldn't find my way through the unfamiliarity of this foreign place, a land so barren, ugly and bereft of humanity.
     I thought, instead, of the wind in our hair as we won the battle with a jammed bus window, wobbly fountain pen tattoos scrawled onto our arms, and giddy giggles behind pursed lips as we kicked a rotten apple core toward the bus drivers unsuspecting feet. I thought of Cheezies.