Hasna Muhammad - Swimmer Girl

 

I learned to swim in summer camp when I was five or six years old. I held on to the edge of the cement pool. I put my face in the water and blew bubbles. I turned my head from side to side to breathe, lifted my feet and kicked my legs behind me. I had to let go of the wall to learn to tread water and to float. First, with someone's hand at my back and then all by myself. I moved my arms and legs to get from here to there, and there kept moving from someone's arms a few yards away to the middle of the pool and then the end of the pool where my feet couldn't touch the bottom. 

 

In pictures of me as a little girl, I am in a bathing suit. I'm standing by a pool, jumping in a pool, diving in a pool, laughing and giggling with my brother and sister, with my father's arms nearby. I wasn't really swimming, but I was having so much fun. And now, I love to swim. Over time, I learned how to really swim. And now, I swim laps for fun and exercise. 

 

I swim in open water, but most times I swim in pools. I swim in public pools, private pools, indoor pools, outdoor pools, 25 yards, 50 meters. I swim every chance I get in any pool that I can. My dream swim is in the center most lane of an outside Olympic sized pool. It's 80 degrees and sunny outside. There's a blue sky and wisps of clouds overhead, and I am doing the backstroke. 

 

I am all by myself and completely naked. [audience laughter] I had to let go of the inhibitions about my body in order to swim. My breasts turn into my belly. My belly turns into my butt. I have a varicose vein down the entire length of one leg, and my thighs rub together when I walk, but I am out there in my one-piece competition bathing suit letting it all hang out. [audience cheers and applause] 

 

That's because I am a swimmer girl and I love to swim. Now, I live right near Danbury, about 35 miles from New Haven. I swim three or four times a week at one of two Ys in Connecticut, and that gives me a choice of four pools. When I swim, I don't ever see anybody who looks like me swimming laps for fun and exercise. Now, I'm not talking about water aerobics. I'm not talking about wading in the water with your sunglasses on. I'm talking about swimming, freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, back and forth, a mile at a time, counting yards, practicing drills, racing the clock, swimming long, hard and fast for about an hour. I don't see anybody who looks like me swimming laps like that. 

 

Now, maybe I have to go to a different pool on a different day or at a different time, because black women do everything everywhere all the time. I cannot be the only one. [audience laughter] I was raised by two staunch hardcore artists and activists. And I was raised during the vortex of the Black Power movement, the Black Arts movement, the women's lib movement, and the civil rights movement of the 20th century. So, being black and seeing black in female is my lens for everything. 

 

So, when I am, in my car, getting ready to go for a swim at Y in Connecticut, and this black man driving a black Volvo SUV with a black girl as his passenger pulls into the space next to mine. I take note. [audience laughter] We get out of the car together at the same time, and we say hello to each other. And inside, I'm saying, yes, black people. [audience laughter] I forget my mask in the car, so I go back, they go in the building, I lose track of them. But when I get into the women's locker room, I see the girl. 

 

She's about 13, 14 years old. She's tall. She's got a crown of hair over her head. And she's standing at the end of the bank of lockers, frozen still, but she's wearing a bathing suit, looking down at the swim cap in her hand. This girl is going to the pool. This girl is going to be swimming. This girl better not take up my favorite lane. [audience laughter] 

 

I say hello to her again, and I make a mad dash to the locker, do a Superman change, so that I can get the lane that I want. Close the door, turn around and she’s still standing there. But this time, she's stuffing her dry hair into her swim cap. I want to say to her, baby, you got to wet your hair before you put on your swim cap. That way the water gets in the cuticle, you put a little conditioning in there, then you put on your swim cap. That way the chlorine doesn't damage your hair that much. 

 

But I didn't want to embarrass her. She looked so uncomfortable, like she wanted to be invisible. So, I kept my mouth from a stranger closed. I said, have a good swim. She mumbled something back, and then I went on and I took my shower. When I'm wetting my hair, I'm thinking, you know, maybe I should have said something to her about her hair, but she'll see that my hair is wet and then she'll learn that she should wet her hair too. 

 

I get poolside, and this girl is in my center lane. [audience laughter] She obviously did not take the obligatory shower you're supposed to take before you get into a pool. All the other lanes are taken except for the one right next to her, so I claim that. I want to say to her how happy I am to swim next to her, somebody who looks just like me, albeit 50 years younger. 

 

I wanted to tell her, ask her, did she know that there was a time when black people weren't allowed to swim in pools, when even with the submersion of one toe the pool was emptied, that most black people don't know how to swim, and most people who drown are black and brown. But I didn't want to interrupt. Her father was squatting on the deck talking to her, and she was listening to her father. She was listening to her father, but she was looking at me. It's not the look that I get when I come on deck and all eyes scatter. It's not the look that I get when I talk about swimming in standard English. It's not even the look I get when people see that I tan, like all over. [audience laughter] 

 

This girl was looking at me to see how I navigate this space. She was looking at me to see how I be in this pool. So, she watches me as I pull out my fins, and my kick, and my pull buoy and my paddles and place them on the deck. She sees me cup my forehead with my swim cap and tuck my wet hair in. She sees me put on my goggles and straighten the strap. And then, she watches as I slip into the pool and glide streamlined into the liquid cool. 

 

My skin awakens all at once. My legs are straight, my toes are pointed, arms with my ears, my hands are stacked. The only thing I hear is my exhale as the water parts to let me through. I see the reflection of the water shimmering above me. I see the shadow of my body passing over the bottom of the pool that gradually deepens below me. I start an underwater stroke. When my body signals the need for air, all my chakras tingle. So, I rise up and take a breath and come back down, rise up and take a breath and come back down. When I'm about a foot from the wall, I curl my body into a ball and flip over. 

 

Bubbles swarm everywhere. I'm upside down, my knees are bent, my feet are on the wall and I push off, roll over and start to swim. By that time, the girl is swimming too. We are swimming laps, peeking at each other over the lane dividers. She's faster than I am, but I'm steadier than she is. I see a lot of bodies in the water. But when I see her brown arms and legs piercing the water, doing freestyle and flip turns, I feel like a proud mama bear. She stops to watch me too. She stops and treads water and watches as I pick up speed and start to sweat and focus on my workout. When I take a break between sets, I notice that the girl and her father are gone. And once again, I am the only black person in the pool. 

 

I finish my workout, do my cooldown, then I play like that kid in camp. I make angels in the water, dive backwards, swim upside down, do flips and handstands, and then I run to the shallow end, pack up my gear and get out. That's when I notice that the girl and her father are back. She's in her street clothes and he's braiding her hair. As I pass them, I want to ask, have you ever heard of the Harlem Honeys and Bears? Have you ever been to blackgirlsswim.org. Do you follow those black Olympic swimmer girls? But I don't want to intrude, so I just smile at them like I smile at everybody else on my way into the locker room. 

 

When I'm in the shower, I am kicking myself for not saying anything to that girl. There she was, somebody who looks just like me was swimming right there, and I didn't say any of the things that I thought to say. My mother would have said something, my grandmother would have said something, but neither of them knew how to swim. [audience laughter] I'm an educator, and I missed the opportunity to teach this child. 

 

When I'm getting dressed, I'm thinking, well, maybe she didn't want to hear anything I had to say anyway. Maybe she's just a Gen Z teen, unburdened by the racist history of black people and swimming. Maybe she doesn't want to be seen as black. Maybe she doesn't identify as a girl. Maybe she just wants to be a spiritual being, having a human experience, swimming. I mean, isn't that what it's all about? Just being? 

 

When I get to the parking lot, I see that black Volvo SUV and I decide, I'm going to tell her everything. Maybe she waited for me because she felt glad to swim with me, because she gets those looks too. Maybe the lifeguard made her prove that she could swim before he let her into the deep end. That's what he did to me. By the time I get to the car, I see that the girl and her father are not in it and they don't come even though I linger before I pull out and drive away. 

 

Every time I go to that pool, I look for that black swimmer girl. I haven't seen her yet, but I know that she and other black women and girls who love to swim are out there. I know because I'm not the only one, and there will be more. I know because for about an hour on a Sunday morning at a Y in Connecticut, there were two black swimmer girls swimming laps for fun and exercise. We were defying the assumptions about black people, black girls, black women and swimming. It didn't matter what I said or didn't say to this girl. She saw me and I saw her, even if no one else did. I wasn't alone. We were together and we both belonged, even if just to each other. Have a good swim.