Breath

When I was a child, I lived on an island near the equator. My days were spent swimming in pools, as carefree as a dolphin in the ocean waters. Water was my friend, and I revelled in it. I breathed air when I was on land, but in the water I breathed life. I would swim at night in my grandmother’s pool, holding my breathe for minutes. One, two, three. Under the thin membrane of the water surface, the eerie pot lights cast green shadows throughout the murky night water. The clean and pristine pool, filtered a beautiful blue during the day, was a different character in the night.

I imagined dolphins, pink and blue, gliding along with me as I flitted through the waves. Everyday I’d run down to the pool in my red and yellow swimsuit, and they’d be there, always waiting for me, in my mind. My parents dismissed my fantasies as child’s play, but even though they couldn’t see my dolphin friends, I knew that they were there. I believed I was one of them. Mammals who breathed air but in the water breathed life.

My grandmother would sometimes come into the pool, and she could hold her breath underwater almost as long as I could. She was rather large, so I was sure she was half whale, just like I was half dolphin. I still have a photograph of her sitting as solemn as a rock under water, her legs crossed, her eyes closed in peaceful content, the sun’s fragmented rays dancing patterns over a body through the ceiling where water meets air. She was so serene, like an old water god asleep for centuries, waiting and watching. I was a water nymph, darting circles around her, my rock.

The days of my youth ended when I left the island. The first time I stepped into a pool in Canada, I was excited to hear my dolphins’ voices again. Those voices that I missed so dearly. But when I put my ear into the water, I could not find them. I held my breath. One, two, three.

But they did not hear me. They did not come with me, and no matter how deep I dived, I had left my dolphins behind.

My tears mixed slowly into the pool water, cold and distant. After that day, I avoided swimming like the plague. I forgot about my dolphins. I grew up. I breathed air.

It was the day after Mothers’ Day when we got the phone call. I was studying for my exams at the time. My mother shrieked as she held the phone close to her ear, grasping for something substantial to grip onto reality. I ran down the stairs, tripping twice, my heart beating in my chest.

“Ah Mah passed away this morning,” my mother said, her lips white, her knuckles gripping tight on the phone.

“What?”

“She had problems breathing,” my mother whispered, close to tears. My legs sank when I realized she was talking about my grandmother, my rock, my fellow spirit of the pool.

I involuntarily held my breath as if I were underwater. One, two, three. One, two, three.

But I was not underwater, and nothing was the same anymore.

A guttural cry emanated from the depths of my throat, making a sound from somewhere deep within myself that I had hidden for so many years. I ran to the basement and enclosed myself among the long coats hanging on the racks, curling myself into a ball, crying, crying, and crying.

I had never cried so much in my life. Not even when my dolphins were lost. Because now I had nothing left. Nothing left of my first love. I breathed air, breathed in, breathed out. One, two, three. But no matter what I did, my grandmother would never breathe life again.

My soul died along with her that day of the phone call.

After coming out from under the coat racks, I refused to cry. I was stronger than this. I needed to ignore my pain in order to do well on my exams. But inside I felt like I was broken into a million pieces. I must have seemed so unfeeling, so cold, so distant, just like the dolphins that had left me. But it was my way of shutting out reality. I did not want to breathe life. I continued breathing air, tasteless but effective.

My last exam finished on a sunny afternoon. I took a deep breath of relief as I sat down at the terminal, waiting for my bus to take me home.

Life? Where is life?

I immediately repelled those thoughts. My nose breathed in and in out. In and out.

What is that smell?

I turned to my right and there an elderly lady sat beside me.

That smell.

I could feel the tears threatening to overwhelm me.

That smell.

It was just like how my grandmother used to smell. The scent of her perfume. Breathe in, breathe out. I breathed air.

Life? Where is life?

My tears finally broke through the wall I had been hiding behind since the day of the phone call. Since the day I left my island. Since the day I realized that my dolphins were gone. I could not breathe. My nose was blocked. The lady beside me pretended not to notice. I wept like a baby as the barrier in my mind finally let go of all my childhood memories. Memories of my grandmother. Memories of she who breathed life.

Life? Where is life?

I cried the whole way home.

I returned to my island the year I graduated from high school.

My island? It was no longer what I remembered it to be. The fields where I had played in became large properties of retail estate. The pools where I had swum in had been rebuilt into multi-level parking lots.

Going back to my grandmother’s house was difficult. The house, which had been filled with so much laughter and joy before her passing, now felt empty and barren. Memories flitted through my mind, ghosts of a past I could never retrieve. My grandfather now lived alone in that house, but he was no longer the proud man I knew. Without my grandmother, he seemed to be nothing but an empty shell of a person. His mind was no longer sharp. I held his hand and helped him remember my name. We had all become ghosts, haunted by our past.

I stood by my grandmother’s pool on the last day of my visit. The pool where I had spent most of my childhood days. The sun was just beginning to set into evening twilight. I was wearing my swimsuit, red and blue now.

One, two, three.

I dived into the water, sleek and beautiful, just like I used to do.

I sank below the waves, swimming deeper and deeper. The cold water felt like heaven on my face, the drag of the current, the low hum of the underwater gods. I closed my eyes and relished the feeling of home.

When I opened them, the light from the sun refracted on the edge of the water, sending a golden-yellow beam to the bottom of the pool. My eyes blurry, I thought I saw my grandmother with me again, underwater, serene and peaceful. Not dead, but just sleeping. Still breathing.

And then suddenly she was gone. My tears, unannounced, began mingling with the chlorinated water. Horrified, I realized that I was floating upwards, and I desperately tried to swim down to the bottom of the pool. I struggled like a mad seal to stay underwater, but the air in my lungs kept pushing me back upwards, back to the sky, back to reality. It was then that I suddenly heard singing in my head. The melody was so sad, so melancholy, and sounded like the voices of a thousand dolphins. I stopped fighting the waves and relaxed my limbs.

My dolphins came back for me. But their song was no longer the same. They sang their song of mourning, and it pained my heart because it was beautiful. Or was it beautiful because it pained my heart? My mind was filled with so much sorrow. I screamed underwater, and the bubbles blew out from my mouth, releasing all the air I had kept inside, all the pain that I had hidden deep within my being.

The waves carried me back to the edge. I rose up from the water, walking out onto the steps of the pool, the song still playing slowly in my mind. My face was wet.

I did not look back until the pool was almost out of sight.

And when I did, the water rippled, as if my dolphins were saying goodbye. I breathed. One, two, three.

Then the water became as still as night.