Drowning Summer

By Phoua Lee

That summer we forgot to count the days.

For more than half of them, we played ball in the abandoned field near the corner store that was always out of milk but never out of cigarettes, the kind that my father liked to put between his lips on the dingy porch out back but never actually lit because he was trying to end his smoking habits. Those days of playing ball are the ones I remember most clearly.

With our bones aching and our hands callused from hard catches and hard throws, we marched home feeling like champions of a hard-won day. We three together were an odd group. Like fox, hyena, and wolf placed in a mismatched batch. Fox dragged his bat along and created a trail of sand from the field to his house. We took turns spitting on the pavement, mostly on the corner of Old Dinah’s ramshackle house with the spiderwebbed windows and the swaying wind chimes. Wolf, the most audacious of us, swirled his spit for a good ten seconds in his mouth and only released it when he accumulated a sizable blob. One time he took so long that I swore I saw the white drapes in her window moving, shifting, and I pinched his elbow and we bolted.

Who knew what she’d do to us.

Afterwards, we’d go to Fox’s house around the corner and strip down to our underwear and cannonball into his pool that was never clean but clean enough for us to enjoy ourselves. Fox laughed so hard that his eyes would squint even more than they already were, and Wolf’s dark skin gleamed like a polished violin and his laughter was just as melodic. The kids at our school told us not to play with him or his color would rub off on us, but we made waves in the same pool and danced in the same water, and he was not any less of a swimmer than me. Sometimes, for the span of a second, shadows flickered in Old Dinah’s window, the one with the spiderwebs. We could see it from where we were in the pool and we thought it a trick of the mind. Our arms ached good and we threw on our rumpled shirts—I wore Fox’s by accident—and moseyed on up to the Sundae Funday that was in its first year of business and Fox was the first in line with his eyes forced into crescent shapes by his smile. He ordered a simple vanilla with every topping possible and had the intuition it wouldn’t be cheap, so he combatted the price with a tragic story of how his fish died the day before and only a sundae could lift his spirits. The employee gave it to him free.

That’s why he’s called Fox. In a game of wiles against Fox, you never lost—you were manipulated into losing. Wily fox, he is. 

It was Wolf’s turn next. Sucker for mint chocolate chip that he was, he ordered just that. No toppings.

Fox whispered under his breath, “Ew.”

Wolf's coins spilled onto the counter as he unfolded a couple of dollar bills that were bent at the corners. He was always in a rush, or so it seemed. Like he was still stuck in Fox’s pool, swimming, swimming, swimming against time. Sometimes we’d throw a floater at him and he’d shout something ridiculous like “Stop trying to kill me,” but we were trying to help and I don’t think he wanted our help or knew that we wanted to help him, and sometimes I wanted to kneel at the edge of the pool and cry, “Wolf, Wolf, Wolf. You can stop now. You don’t have to swim anymore.” 

“Matcha coconut ice cream,” I told the person at the register.

“We don’t have that here…” She tagged on at the end, “...kid.”

I tried to be like Fox. I pushed a five-dollar bill forward using the tip of my index finger and waggled my eyebrows all the while. The worker just stared at me weird.

My shoulders slumped. “Fine, give me a banana split...lady.”

We feasted on our sundaes, cramming scattered toppings and melted fudge in our mouths, licking our spoons shiny like we were gonna reuse them later and this was the only way we could clean them. The weather took a drastic turn, from cerulean skies to a mass of roiling ashen clouds—a fitting finale to our chirpy summer. It began at first in scattered, dull taps, and my left knee throbbed when it showered a fine sheet of water. Fox tapped his squared fingernails to the pitter-patters, and Wolf adopted a more direct approach, tracing the veins of the water on the fogged window with his finger.

“Better get home before it gets worse,” I said, rubbing my lips with a napkin. 

Fox took off his oversized coat passed down from his dad and held it over him like a canopy. We huddled together under that little haven and sliced through puddles on our way to his house, like three fish streaking through water; lithe, agile, and swift-footed; our feet hardly making a dip in the miniature ponds.

Wolf’s feet, however, snagged on uneven pavement, and he went down with a slap to the ground. Thankfully, he was okay and we would’ve been relieved if it weren’t for the place—or, should I say, flowers—that he had trampled, and that was when it dawned on us that the dilapidated house and the patch of grass were beginning to look very familiar.

Fox, with his wily brain, reached the answer first and as he shouted it, he propelled droplets of rain forth from his lips. “Old Dinah!”

“She’s gonna make a potion out of my blood,” Wolf replied, brushing the grime off his pants leg. 

“You destroyed the only source of life in this hell-garden,” I pointed out. Wolf just glared at me. I got that a lot—glares. From the lady at the cash register. From my dad. From Wolf. “Quick, put the flowers back so they still look alive and let’s get out of here.”

“Flooooooooood!” Fox shrieked with that cracked voice of his—a voice that was on the verge of transforming into a deep pitch that could ask girls out to the drive-in theatre. He said it, not me. I took my eyes off Wolf’s scraped palms and widened them at the sight before me. Waves ushered towards us, teeming waters as tall as a house, filling the gaps of the street. Fox grabbed my hand and Wolf grabbed his hand and we all turned tail and ran. We were pulled under by the current but we tightened our grips and clung together like a chain. When I felt my chest burning from oxygen deprivation and my head about to explode, a bony hand fit itself into the crevices of my free fingers. With a yank, it tugged us free and hauled us from the water like we were fish on a rod. Fox fell atop me, and I pounded a fist to his back, expelling the water from his chest. We took eons just rolling there and coughing out water and groaning— 

Until Fox looked up and screamed once more. This time, “Old Dinah!”

Wolf groaned and laid back down, closing his eyes, pretending to be dead, I guess.

My eyes stuck on Old Dinah’s wrinkled face, I told her very sincerely, “I’m sorry for the flowers.”

She ignored me and turned to Wolf. I was not hurt by her indifference. I lied to myself that she ignored me because it wasn’t my fault, not because I lacked relevance.

“Every Saturday,” she told Wolf in that low, husky voice of hers. “Every Saturday you come here and you fix these flowers. You plant new ones until they look like they did before you arrived.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Wolf murmured, head down. For the first time ever, Wolf had been asked to fix something, the complete opposite of the destruction he witnessed on a daily basis. An angry father and a broken door went together like pairs in his house. You couldn’t find one without the other.

That was the first time we spoke to Old Dinah.

A week later, I was passing by Old Dinah's on my way to Fox’s house and caught a glimpse of Wolf in her poor excuse of a garden. She provided him with the equipment, I guess, because he was wearing rubber gloves and a bucket hat that covered his eyes when he looked down. Feeling chatty, I interrupted his work. I asked him if he’d been to Fox’s already and he told me he had, and he also told me to stay with him awhile because Fox’s parents were having a fight about who let the dog into the house because the floor was all muddy. I stuck to his side and followed him wherever he went. He went to get a shovel, I went too. Soon, Old Dinah noticed me from her porch and she ordered me to her.

“You look idle.” She put down the book in her hand and rocked back on her chair. “Looking for some work?”

I shook my head.

“Want a drink?” She gestured to the pitcher of lemonade on the small table beside her and I nodded my head, thinking it’d be rude to refuse. Plus, I could feel my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth.

Just as I was taking my first sip, she said something. She said, “I know you don’t have your mother, and if you do, she’s not around.”

I lowered the cup, feeling oddly displeased. “How do you know that?”

“Because, boy, you’re thin as that pencil tree I have out in my yard, and if you had a mother she’d be feeding you good until your fat hung off your bones.”

“What if it’s because I don’t like eating...or because she’s too busy to feed me?” I was fighting against her. I didn’t like that she knew me like that. It hurt to know I was transparent. Most of all, I think I was trying to convince even myself that I still had a mother.

“I know”—she picked lint off her blanket and flicked it elsewhere—“because you don’t smile like they do and you don’t laugh like ‘em either.”

I downed the lemonade, thanked her for the drink, and walked home. I didn’t even go to Fox’s house. Instead, I went into my bedroom and stared at the framed image of my late mom for the rest of the afternoon.

Later, I told Wolf and Fox about the conversation. Fox also swore he had weird encounters with her. The other day he was throwing a frisbee at his dog and it flew to her house and smacked her door, and she came out. His dog took to her immediately and knelt at her feet. She rubbed his ears and praised Fox for taking such good care of the creature, and Fox broke down, partly because no one ever really praises him. He babbled about his parents’ deteriorating relationship to a lady whom he didn’t even know, but he did know that he felt comfortable around her somehow.

That’s how he described their encounters: Weird, but comforting.

It was a concrete fact that my mother was gone, and whoever was gone stayed gone. But not Old Dinah’s son.

He came back.

Most of the flowers had been replanted already. Wolf was on his last day of work, and Fox and I were sticking to him when it happened. A boy older than us by at least two years materialized from the front door and watched us with glassy eyes that were all yellow and red-veined. His left arm hung at a weird angle and he dragged his foot when he walked. It made a heavy sound, like a rice bag being hauled across a floor.

Fox poked Wolf hard in the ribs and demanded to know who the boy was and what happened to him to make him look like that.

“He came back,” Wolf said.

“People just don’t come back,” Fox said. “Who is he?”

“Old Dinah’s son, Jonty.”

“And?”

“He died in a drowning incident three years ago in the river behind Old Dinah’s house.”

“Can he see us?” I asked, sneaking a glance at him.

“Yes,” Wolf answered, and I retracted the finger I used to dig my nose. “I’m just screwing with you. He can’t see or hear very well. When he came back he was covered head to toe in river-filth and shivering and Old Dinah had me make some tea for him. He drank it but it didn’t do any good—”

“Probably because he’s still half-dead,” Fox deadpanned.

“Yeah, well,” Wolf continued, “he can only eat in sparse amounts. It’s good for Old Dinah that he’s back. You should’ve seen how she cried and fell to hug his knees. She hasn’t left him alone for one minute—”

“He’s alone right now,” Fox interrupted again. We three turned our heads simultaneously to stare at him.

Wolf glared at Fox. “You know what I mean. She doesn’t let him go anywhere.”

“Maybe because he’s dead?” I suggested it seriously.

“Is that all that matters to you guys? Shouldn’t we just be happy he’s back?” Wolf turned his back to us and knelt to pat down the loose dirt around the flowers. “Imagine how you would feel if you were resurrected and all people ever spat in your face was dead, dead, dead. I’d blow a gasket.”

The next time we visited to check up on Old Dinah, Jonty lost a thumb. It detached from the joint the way moist bread disintegrated, wet and slimy. He was sitting on the couch being fed oatmeal when it happened. All Old Dinah did was kick the thumb under the couch and continue her babble about how pretty her new flowers were growing. Milk rolled off his chin. His jaw was stiff to the point of hindering his chewing and more oatmeal fell out his mouth than it did enter his stomach.

“Ma, I’m...full,” he gargled. She wiped his crusty lips with a patched cloth and saw us to the door.

“Every day I thank God for returning my boy to me,” she told us. “I’m glad I didn’t clean out his room when he died. It’s still the same as when he left.”

She closed the door behind us, but instead of leaving, we turned the corner of her home and knelt below the open window to her living room. 

“For dinner we’ll have pasta. Your favorite,” we heard her tell Jonty, who answered with a clogged exhale. There was the creak of the couch and a low sigh. “Why did you have to do it, baby boy?” 

We waited.

“Why did you have to jump in and save that little girl? I know it’s selfish of me to ask, but a mother’s love towards her son should be selfish.” If we hadn’t known Jonty was in the room, we would’ve thought she was talking to herself. “You were always doing that. Always hurting yourself to save others. What am I to do when the person I long to protect continuously puts himself in harm’s way?”

Jonty’s voice came in like a static radio, “I saw...her the other day.”

“You went out the house?”

“Mhm.”

“Why?”

“It was just down the street. You should’ve seen her, ma. She’s past my waist now and she’s a smart little thing. I traded my life for hers and it was worth it. She’ll grow up to do great things...I just know it.” Every word was accompanied with a heavy breath.

Whatever came next, we couldn’t take it. The moment we heard it start low in her voice, choked and horrible, we stood up and prepared to leave. We were only at her driveway when it was too late and we heard her weeping. The rising, twisted tone chilled our hearts.

Inside me, something churned. I wondered if I was lucky I didn’t remember my mother, that I was spared the pain of losing her.

We saw Jonty again later that week, but this time, he came to us. His foot—the one he dragged—was missing and he was leaning on a stick.  

“Can you take me back to the river?” he requested.

“You’re leaving?” Wolf asked.

“Mhm.”

“What about Old Dinah?” 

His foggy eyes pointed to the ground. “I don’t want her to see me go. She’ll be sad.” He gave us what was his best smile—grimy corners hooked up—and rasped, “To her it’ll be like seeing me die all over again.”

“You don’t want to stay?”

He shook his head. “She’s happy, but it’s not healthy. She can’t hold on to me forever. I’m falling apart everyday and I need to go back. It feels so heavy staying here where I’m not supposed to be.” 

I wanted to say, “But this is like we’re taking away her happiness and what right do we have to do that? Can we do that?” And then I realized that even with Jonty in the house she wasn’t truly happy. She constantly faced the fear of losing him all over again. He was there and she was happy, but he was there and she recalled the emotion of grief. It was a strange contradiction and it made my head hurt. 

In some way, his desire to leave afflicted us. It felt like he was giving up, but it wasn’t like we could tell him “no, you’re staying and we’re not letting you go,” so Fox grabbed Jonty's left hand and I grabbed what remained of his right. 

Together, we led him behind his house and through the waist-length grasses to the river with the rippling water that sounded like pennies hitting the bottom of a glass jar. Wolf stayed behind to take care of some business that he refused to tell us about. The closer we got to the river, the softer the mud became. The sludge squished between Jonty’s toes, but he didn’t notice. He slid a few times but Fox caught him, and I figured that was a lot like what life was like—slipping but somehow finding the balance to stay upright. When we finally reached the edge, Wolf appeared at our side. We looked at what he clutched in his hands and said nothing.

Jonty tested the water with his corroded toe, and I knew it must’ve been cold even if he couldn’t feel it because I once waded the water in nothing but shorts and wouldn’t stop shivering afterwards until I snuggled up in a fuzzy blanket. My skin crawled when I thought about it: I frolicked in the water where someone—and, who knows, maybe many people—died. Jonty didn’t stop until the water licked his knees. With a flick of his chin, he turned his head to stare at us.

“Will you come back?” Fox asked.

He shook his head. “I returned to give her a final impression. Our last moments weren’t extraordinary, but they were good and warm. I think that’s enough to help her move on.”

I understood it, and I wondered if Fox and Wolf got it, if the suffering they went through sharpened their senses to that point.

A few months back, my teacher gave us a list to check off all the things we’d done that differentiated us from one another. Watching someone die was on the list and I left it blank, but now I wonder if this counts—if watching Jonty submerge himself in the very thing that killed him counted as watching him die. Does it count if he’s made a friend out of death?

Jonty dipped further and further into the stormy blue river. A flat-sheet cloud hovered above like a blimp, muting the sun and casting a shadow over us. Every inch of his skin that disappeared beneath the ripples, every stuttering breath until his looming last one—I felt as though it were my own. We were watching a human give up, and even more, we were letting it happen. We knew that one day, we would be Jonty, wading into the river. We would eventually get to the river one day no matter the choices we made, or the dreams we pursued, or the people we loved.

The crown of Jonty’s head plopped below the surface. Silence ensued. The ripples in the water smoothed out like being flattened with a large iron.

Wolf was the first to move. He plucked the extraneous leaves from the flowers in his hands, then tossed the flowers into the water, right on the place where Jonty disappeared.

In one day Old Dinah again lost her son and her flowers.

We lost something too. Something harder to put our finger on. The darkening atmosphere urged us home. Our feet dragged on the pavement, no longer emboldened by the billows of youth. The lights were snuffed out in Old Dinah’s house, and a crippling wail punctured our ears, but we couldn’t tell if it was real or our imagination.