alex behm

The Cassas Girls

The Cassas girls sit on the curb outside the McDonald’s on Water Street and wait for an SUV to pull through. It’s one of those days where everybody has to squint all the time because the sun is so loud. The whites of their nails are stained from digging rocks out of the pavement and their hair is unbrushed. Monica has a sunburn on her shoulders that’s turned white, that peels. Jennie has an overbite and a busted bottom lip. They wear swimsuits underneath tank tops and mesh basketball shorts that have been stained by the sun.

When ya think they gonna come through up here? Jennie says.

Monica shrugs, rolls a tar-coated stone between her fingers. I dunno.

What time ya think it is?

She shrugs again. A white Ford rolls in front of them and their shirts rustle in the breeze.

Jennie tucks her knees in and holds them. She rocks forward and back on the hot pavement. You think we’ll make it up to the pool?

A red Cadilac pulls through. Here’s one. Monica looks at Jennie. Stay put. She stands up and her bare feet tap on the concrete as she runs to the open driver’s window. Mister, hey, mister, she says, ya got two dollars?

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They walk five blocks to the Rec Center because that is where the pool is. Inside the rusted chain link, a girl sits at a makeshift desk under a rainbow beach umbrella. Her name tag says Shay.

Monica slaps two George Washingtons on the plastic folding table and does not look the girl in the eye. Instead, she watches Shay mark two tallies on a sheet of white copy paper. The soft side of her hand is stained in blue ink.

The girl stamps the bony part of their wrists with what appears to be a frog in abstraction. Monica brushes her fingers over the lines and it smears. You’re good, Shay tells them. Monica thinks about the cool of the water, all it might wash away. Her shoulders sizzle.

Monica leads them to a spot in the yellowed grass where there are no deckchairs. They peel off their clothes and make a nest of their things in the grass tossing the empty backpack on top like a cherry. Before Monica sees her sister running, she hears the whistle, the splash, the dissolve. Time goes soft underwater. They spend the afternoon doing dolphin dives in the shallow end. They take turns pushing one another under the water until all that’s left is bubbles, bubbles; they hold their breath.

Jennie does broken laps across the length of the pool, stopping to catch her breath. Monica opens her eyes underwater and hopes to see shiny things, things like loose change, but all she finds are the blurred boundaries of her hands, the dark at the ends of her nails. Her shoulders throb in the chemicals.

She bobs to the surface and wipes water out of her eyes, paddles to the ladder in the deep end—blue with peeling paint. Her sister hollers from the diving board, Monnie, Monnie, watch my start! But by the time she folds over and tumbles into the water in a half somersault, the guards blow their whistles. Everybody at the pool stops splashing. They go limp and drag themselves onto wet pavement to go home.

Yes, everyone does, except for the girls in the caps and mirrored goggles collecting near the deep end. They wear matching one-piece swimsuits that look new, marbled red and black, and have towels with embroidered names slung across their shoulders. Their hands rest, anxious, on their hips and their fingernails are lacquered red.

Monica stands in the grass that swells into a puddle of mud. She scans for Jamie and finds her on a bench, watching as the swimmer girls dive in between the lane ropes pulled in taut lines over the deep end.

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A red car with a rattling bumper bops by and honks at them as they walk home in the setting sun.

Who izzat? Jennie asks.

I don’t know, Monica tells her. I don’t know.

They go in silence as chlorine dries in their hair. The air is sweet tonight, sweet like Splenda.

Hey, Jennie says, picking at a hangnail with pruned fingers. Ya think I could be on the swim team?

Monica pauses and looks at her. She imagines her sister learning to dive, walking her to practice. Maybe they’d wear flip-flops or have one-piece swimsuits that didn’t sag, that didn’t go limp. Their clothes cling to their bodies, the straps of Monica’s tank top cut heavy under the weight of that water. Yeah, she says, maybe next summer.