Flounder by Lyzette Wanzer
He could not remember how to surface.
The water folded over Daquan’s head as he sank. His limbs, leached, flopped like dead fins, lesson and memory a decade removed. Crawl, breaststroke, backfloat. Swimming was supposed to be like bicycling, never forgotten.
For bicycling, it was true.
Just last week, he had straddled Miguel’s ten-speed Diamondback at the senior graduation party, skimmed off like a pro past lawns, trees, fences, curbed cars. No-hands ease—despite not having ridden since third grade.
The water grew cooler as Daquan descended. But no bubbles yet, he was not losing air. His panic thrummed, a covert ostinato, but his lungs did not explode. His dark braids fanned in a demi wheel like spin-cycle flannel.
The lake was quiet.
How would Grandfather get the news? By phone, a ringing at midnight?
Uniformed officers at the trailer’s front door, somber, caps in hand?
A bright fish arced upwards, striped dorsal fin veiling its wake.
Daquan wore denim cutoffs, his white tee still on the dock. The image poured in: Brentwood High shirt crumpled between two curving deck chairs, sunglasses reflecting a capsized view of the sky, the clouds’ lathered faces. Mimosa trees on the shore opposite, flamingo-pink fronds’ lithe fingers stretching earthward. At the pier, the lake’s burnished finish had drawn him past the contours of doubt, bid his reliance on the memory myth. He had believed. He had leaped.
A tube of sunlight sliced the water. Daquan wrapped his arms around the buttery column. His fingertips brushed his ribs, nipples.
He and Grandfather had lunched at the trailer, as they had nearly each day of the fifteen years Grandfather had raised him, so invested in the meal that speech rarely figured. Chicken thighs, oregano and thyme, prunes, dill and cilantro, radio, Paul Anka’s venturous voice, swing-top wastebin, red sponge on the counter, stink of cigar ashes, eucalyptus gel.
Daquan curled around the sun column, a dark prawn, gazed above at the glory of the sun shaft, mouth in a beatific ring like the boychoir singers at First Baptist singing Veni Sponsa Christi.
He tasted only temperature, cold. But no bubbles yet.
How would Grandfather know how beautiful this had been? That this journey had not been all kicking and gasps, flailing, spasm?
A second fish, emerald, nuzzled Daquan’s shoulder, met his eyes. Two more grazed his knees, elbows. A spectral train of them complexioned the water with chromatic scales so that he could not tell whether they were rising or he, just sinking. They carpeted him with their specular bodies. Had it been possible, he would have laughed.
Still, no bubbles yet. Now, that was something.
He wished Grandfather could know.
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About the Author
Lyzette Wanzer
Born: New York City
Now Resides: San Francisco, CA
Online: www.redroom.com/member/lwanzer
Bio: Lyzette’s stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Potomac Review, Callaloo, Tampa Review, Pleiades, Journal of Experimental Fiction, Yalobusha Review, and others. She is a two-time winner in the annual Soulmaking Literary Awards. She has received writing residencies at the Blue Mountain Center (NY) and Kimmel Harding Center for the Arts. Lyzette is also a literary event producer, and has curated panels at the San Francisco Public Library. The 2009 event, Festival of Shorts!, focused on the sudden fiction form. Lyzette has presented her work at conferences, including the Popular & American Culture Association 20th Century Languages and Literature, College English Association, Women, Gender and Sexuality (CA) conferences, and (dis)junctions: Malappropriation Nation.
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image by BassOvercast.
