Pool Mermaids on Motorcycles

While she was on the back of a motorcycle somewhere in the valley I was splashing around in the backyard pool. It was the golden hour for teenagers, the small glip of time from school finished until our parents came home from work.

The garden was dried up and hadn’t smelled of fresh grass in years. Only dust, determined weed and my mothers poor roses she tried to water and nurture lived here. The smell of my moms flowerbed and the chlorine covering the patio.

It was that early autumn I had just started to accept the fact that I was a teenager, and no longer a child. I was by no means a popular kid in school, hadn’t really found my clan in that cruel jungle of people and preferred to stay at home after school. Our house was up in the hills, far from the beach but it had this pool. It really should have been cleaned, but we just kept pouring chlorine in it, thinking it would cover it. The little dead birds in the mornings were just tossed out and the bottom started to turn green.

Enjoying my time alone and twirling my finger in the pool, I was making a tiny whirlpool in the chemical water laying on the inflatable mattress. A door slammed and I bolted off the mattress into the water. When I resurfaced I saw my sister through the window coming into the house.

She used to dream about riding horses over the open fields up in the mountains where the air was fresh and the grass was green. Now she rode on the back of motorcycles deep into the valley where there was only dust, sand and smoke from the bikes gathering and partying.

We had once been close. We used to play around in the pool together and had a matching set of mermaid dolls. That had been our thing. We dreamed about the deep sea from the high mountains and wished for the transformation the mermaids had on the tv shows. Becoming something else, something magical different from the boring self. We used to twirl our fingers in the water, making small whirlpools and my sister claimed it transformed into our mermaid dreams. My mermaid doll had turquoise hair, she had pink. Of course they had matching glittering tails. We used to dive to the bottom of the pool and let them swim freely.

Now, the backyard and our house was her hell and I was now alone in the pool pretending to be a mermaid with a pearl necklace and waist length wavy blue hair. When I hung my upper body on the side of the pools I let my legs filter together, making small kicks pretending I could swim away. When I ducked under when my mind cluttered too much above the ground, I saw my pale skin turn almost translucent underwater. I felt as real as a mermaid then, and the pool was my ocean, I was heir to this kingdom.

I was too old for the game, but too young to join her into the valley and frowned when I realized she had brought someone with her. I had never seen him inside of our house before. I hid low in the water when they came out to the patio as she kissed him lightly and told him to stay a minute.

He wasn’t really that handsome. Perhaps more pretty than handsome. He dressed bigger to look bigger, his hair was bland, his face something you would forget after he left the house. He did have a pair of expressive brows though that I liked as people with bigger brows had more honest faces and were easier to read. My sister had said he was a singer of some sort. I didn’t know anything about that, I only knew him as one of those that drove off on his bike with her clutching to his waist on the back. The one driving her away.

He turned and saw me floating in the pool, only half of my face above water. He introduced himself by name. Freddy. I was surprised. From the pictures I had always called him something like Cole or Liam, but when looking closely he really did look like he would hang out more with the stoners under the bleachers than the jocks in the cafeteria. I didn’t even know if those clans existed in real life yet. My tribe has always been here.

“Hi,” I said and resurfaced, swimming to the shallow end and taking a sip of water. When I looked up he was still looking at me. When meeting my eyes he quickly looked away and I suddenly got confused. I looked down and saw my bikini had moved and was showing more cleavage than I would have worn on the beach. Water was dripping down my wet skin and my long hair was plastered to my shoulders. I warmed up under the sun and the gazing look, sipping the cool water, letting my hand glide over the bikini bottom. He was still considering whether to look my way or the opposite. This was the first time a male had ever looked at me that way. Like I was a woman and should therefore not be stared at. I didn’t mind it.

“Here Freddy,” my sister said when she came out and handed him a bottle of beer and Freddy finally got something to look at. Dads beer. I knew there would be trouble later tonight when he found out. She just didn’t care, but it would be me hiding in my bedroom when the yelling started. I sometimes enjoyed it when she got grounded and our father mentioned that he wouldn’t have the same problem with me when I got older. But I never forgot that weekend my sister was forced to stay in her room. She sat by her window and looked out.

“You will be able to do everything you want,” she said and I wasn’t sure she was mocking or assuring me. She said since she had already done all the bad things first, they wouldn’t bother being so harsh with me. She said I was welcome, and I couldn’t figure out if the tone was bitter or pleased.

“Oh, you’re here.” she said. She just saw me, but didn’t even look my way.

“Don’t mind her, she’s my little sister.”

I had grown. She no longer called me baby sister. She stopped calling me baby sister the minute our mother started comparing our path to womanhood. Wondering why I had gotten my period earlier, how come my sister got such a nice tan while I looked ashy all year. What clothes fit best on who and who had the darkest circle under our eyes while we were only trying to eat some breakfast.

She told him she would just be a minute while she changed and gave me a warning look before she disappeared.

He came over taking a sip of the beer and asked me how the water was. He put his hand in the water and smiled.

“I used to love pools when I was a kid,” he said and there was something I recognized in the tone of voice.

“The pool is the only place you can stay a kid forever,” I said and gave a couple of splashes towards him and he gave a little laugh. The laugh worked like a light on his face. It was cute, and all of him turned cuter. I wondered what my sister liked about him. Was it to make him laugh like this?

He reached out for something and I thought it was my arm. He stopped when he saw how I flinched and smirked. He picked up something next to me and waved it dry. A white feather that had landed as a bird soared over, or perhaps even remains of one of the dead ones.

We continued talking and I could see his glances. They were fleeting, discreet and if I hadn’t been looking for them I wouldn’t have noticed. He talked about his motorcycle, how he had saved up to buy it. I told him I had never been on a bike before.

“I can give you a ride sometime,” he said and I was about to say “really” and gleam as a child. Instead I glided away from the edge of the pool and from him.

“Then who is gonna give my sister a ride?” I asked and he didn’t answer. I swam over to the ladder and climbed it out of the pool.

He jumped up to grab the towel hanging over one of the chairs. I thanked him and was about to wrap it around my body when I changed my mind. Instead I flung my hair to one side and dried that instead as I was just standing there, dripping wet. I forced my ever changing body to follow my commands, to copy the magazine covers and posed my hips.

“Can I have some?”

He gave it to me and I took a sip of his bottle. It was bitter and bubbly, leaving a nasty aftertaste and I tried not to make a grimace and told myself it was just like soda. I liked the rush of the bubbles though. I gave it back and he immediately took a sip as well.

I reached out and he flinched for a second. I smiled and took his hand holding the feather. I let the now dry fluffy feather tickle my palms. I was tracing the lines on my hand, the map of my fortune.

“Can I have this?” I asked him and he gave it to me without protesting. I felt then and there that I could have asked him for anything and he would have given it to me.

High heels clicking down the stairs made me take a step back and my sister came out to us. She stopped in the door when she saw me standing there, not in my usual baggy T-shirt and shapeless jeans. She looked at Freddy turned towards me, clutching the now empty beer bottle she had given but I had helped finish.

“Freddy, let’s go,”

She had changed into a shorter shirt, tighter top. Her makeup layed heavy and she was reaching for an age no one accepted her into yet. Even I looked older than her, bare faced and splashing in the pool like a child. She saw it and hated me for it.

“Yeah, I’m ready,” Freddy said and walked to her, still looking at me and waving goodbye. My sister grabbed his arm, her fingers like claws to his hoodie, marking him hers. Her eyes had changed and she finally looked at me. I had seen her look at people with those eyes. It was other girls, other women, not her little baby sister. I smiled and waved goodbye with the feather in hand.

That night I kept fantasizing about the back of motorcycles and trying to recall the bitter taste of the beer. The feather was placed on my nightstand all dry and fluffy again. I wasn’t even thinking about Freddy, how he had looked at me. When I looked in the mirror that night, someone else looked back at me with my blue eyes, someone older, someone that knew how to wink and tilt her head so the hair would fall perfectly over the shoulders. I had stolen my sister's perfume and the sweet scent of flowers covered the smell of chlorine from the pool.

Because of the yelling from my parents when my sister came home too late, too drunk, too little clothed, and too careless sneaking in I couldn’t sleep. I saw her from my window as she stumbled over the patio, thinking she could sneak in the back. She walked with her heels in hands, trailing along the edge of the pool. I was scared she would fall out and I kept watching her. She dared put her toes in the water and a sweet smile spread on her face. She crouched down, clutching her knees for support as she twirled her finger in the pool water.

For a time she was just sitting there, looking into the dark pool, we didn’t have those fancy lights on or anything. Then my father saw her and came barging out and the night screaming began. I was unable to sleep in the ruckus and got out of bed as my heart started beating fast and I felt restless.

I started to go through my closet, tidying away clutter trying to block the screaming out. Lining everything up perfectly and sorting things according to color usually helped. In the deepest part of my closet I found them. I didn’t think I was looking for them but I must have and the two mermaid dolls that had crossed my mind earlier today appeared sitting in a dusty corner of my closet. Why did I have both? I took them to bed with me and when I heard my sister cry herself to sleep in the bedroom next door after being yelled at, I stroked the pink haired mermaid and gave her the spot closest to me before finally falling asleep.

I came down to the kitchen the next morning and heard humming. It was the golden hour again, mom and dad had gone out doing their weekend shopping. My sister was in the kitchen flipping pancakes as she was humming a tune I didn’t recognise. She spotted me by the door and her whole face fell into a smile.

“Good morning, do you want breakfast?”

My sister worked in two moods. She was either the summer solstice with the sun shining at all hours, forever bright. Or she was the winter solstice in a darkness that consumed her and no light could enter. I was suspicious, waiting for her to blow up on me. I remembered well that look she had given me yesterday. Today there was a big sis smiling at the baby sis. I ran upstairs and retrieved the dolls from my bed.

“Look what I found,” I said, pulling out the mermaid dolls we had matching. She took the pink doll and gently stroked the hair. She put a couple of pancakes on my plate and laughed.

“Remember that time we threw them from the roof? They had plastic bags on their arms as parachutes.”

“Yeah, you can still see the crack on your shoulder,” I said and pointed while stuffing my face with her pancakes. I wanted to freeze the moment, to grab her hand and make her stay the way we were. I wished our parents never would return.

“You're right. She got a big dent in her. She’s a bit broken now.”

“Now, they look great, I found them in my closet, well kept, just a little dusty.”

My sister put her doll down next to her and with each doll by our plate we ate the sweet breakfast in the morning light.

“Dad yelled a lot,” I said and the room darkened. I wanted to let her know I hated when he yelled at her.

“Some things you just have to endure,“ she said and I asked why, but she was already far away from the conversation.

She was no longer the water creature I was. She had turned to fire. She was now a phoenix in flames, burning through life, relationships. She was flicking lighters and wore red lipstick now. She was pure passion while I was still splashing around in the shallow end of the water trying to learn how to swim.

She pulled out her phone and leaned over to me, ready to share a secret. I mirrored her and we met in the middle of the table.

“Listen, he wrote a song about me,” she said, almost reverting back to the little girl I had used to know her as. There was also a challenge in her words, and I realized she thought I had mocked her getting yelled at by dad. She put the song on, placing her phone on the kitchen bench as she loomed over the phone, like she could dive into it and meet Freddy. She was fading away again, and I could feel it.

The song was at best average having been written over the course of the evening, at worst an offense to music. It certainly was an offense to my sister. He sang about how wonderful she was. How her skin was so bright, how the hair floated in the water that one day. He sang about her blue eyes, a sea of its own.

My sister bobbed her head to the tune and mimed along with the lyrics, happy with herself. I remembered the cute smile he had given me as I was splashing in the pool.

“This isn’t you,” I said. She looked up, annoyed that I disturbed the shaky voice from the phone. “The one he is singing about. it’s not you.”

She shook her head, a warning. I realized she knew it perfectly well. She said it was, grasping at the last straws, the vague lyric that could have talked about anyone.

“You don’t have blue eyes.”

She stood up and turned off the song.

“You fucker,” she said and grabbed the mermaids by the hair. Barefoot she stormed out to the patio and threw the mermaids in the pool. I smiled and let my finger filter through my hair. Could it really be floating that way?

My sister left the house before my parents returned and I was once again by myself in the shallows. I dived into the pool and found the mermaids at the bottom, sitting almost as if they had been waiting for me. Their hair floated in the water and I tried to remain with them, just for a little while at the bottom of our opal blue tiled sea. Their smiles were everlasting plastic, their hair would never grow and the dents on their bodies would never heal. They were not the transformation, I was and I needed air.

I left the mermaid dolls on the bottom of the ocean and resurfaced, the sunrays stinging my eyes together with the chlorine. I was floating in the pool towards the deep end and found another feather I picked up. It was okay, they could stay there for a little while longer.