Fiction
Immersions

Karen Rosenbaum
Volume 23, No. 2

Clinging to her father’s slippery back, Carma rode the cold waves. It was wonderful but terrifying, and she squeezed her hands around his throat until he said, in between breaths, "Don’t choke me, daughter. Relax."

It was not possible to relax. He breathed over his right shoulder and tipped her towards the left. Her turn would last just a few minutes longer. They always did two laps around the wooden raft where the people who knew how to swim sat and sunned before splashing into the lake again. Now they were heading towards the shore where Mama stood, the sun behind her so her face was shadowed and where Bradley and Alex squealed and jumped in the shallow water and waited for their rides. They never seemed to slide off Daddy’s back or squeeze his neck too hard. Alex couldn’t even do the dead man’s float, but he wasn’t afraid.

Mama draped the blue sailboat towel around her. "Don’t go far," she said. "Practice your Articles of Faith."

Carma headed back towards the picnic tables. She already knew her Articles of Faith – as long as she could get started and keep the momentum going. She was pretty good at memorizing poems and, though the Articles of Faith didn’t rhyme, they had a kind of beat and sound to them. She especially liked the fourth one, the one with the "s" and "sh" sounds, "Baptism by immersion for the remission of sins." She hung the towel from the side of the table, found her glasses in their tin plastic case, then crawled under the bench into the shade. Tomorrow she would have to say any Article of Faith the Bishop asked. That was to prove she knew enough to be a member of the church. Last Saturday was her eighth birthday. Next Saturday she and Katie Toppler were going to be baptized in Las Vegas. Carma slid onto her stomach, unrolled her comic book, and started to read.

II.

"Now behave," Mama said as Carma and Bradley tussled in the back seat of the Topplers’ car. Katie was sitting primly behind her mother, who was driving, and Mama twisted around from the other front seat, where she usually sat in their own car. "She poked me," Bradley said. "Carma!" Mama scowled at her. "And on the day you’re getting baptized."

It was after the baptism she would have to be good, but Carma let go of Bradley’s wrist and squinted out the window at the sand and broken beer bottles. Mama had hoped Grandpa could come from Utah to baptize and confirm her, but Grandma wasn’t well enough to make the trip so old Brother Beck was going to fill in. Katie’s father wasn’t a member either, so Brother Beck had a double assignment. Carma didn’t like Katie very much. Katie wouldn’t play with Rita because Rita was a Catholic and her mother had run off somewhere and her father was dark and shrunken and had an accent. Carma thought Rita and her father had funny things hanging on their walls, but she liked playing with Rita in their backyards. Their backyards were separated by the back alley. Yesterday Rita said she had been baptized when she was a baby.

In the dressing room, Mama fastened a safety pin to cinch in the waist of the white cotton skirt. It belonged to Jewel Farnsworth, the oldest daughter of the only other member family on the block. The Farnsworths had three girls coming up after Jewel, so a white skirt was a useful investment for them. Carma’s hair was in tight French braids, bound by white ribbons. Mama said braids made her look like a fence post, but no one would be taking pictures during the baptism anyway. She marched Carma out to the edge of the font. Brother Beck was already there, wearing a white shirt and white pants and white belt but no shoes and socks. Of course she didn’t have on shoes and socks either, but the idea of old Brother Beck barefooted struck her as enormously funny, and she had to swallow to keep from snickering.

"Just hold your breath," Brother Beck said, "when I say the words ‘Holy Ghost.’ You can lean back on my arm a little." When it came time, she closed her eyes, held her breath, felt herself guided into the water. She was scared. She stood up fast without waiting for Brother Beck to help. "Her pigtail stuck out," said a man standing at the side. Brother Beck didn’t seem surprised. "We’ll go deeper this time," he said. He took her hand and began again. "I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." This time he pushed her down. She struggled to rise and came up spluttering. "Okay," said the man on the side of the font. "She was all the way under."

Mama toweled her off a little as she waited for Katie, who had short hair and went all the way under on the first try. Someone put up two folding chairs by the pool side, and she and Katie sat down, each wrapped in a white towel. Brother Beck put his hands on Carma’s head first. Drops were still running down her forehead. Brother Beck had a little palsy, and she felt his hands shake. Fascinated, she forgot to listen to the blessing. Suddenly everything seemed funny, and she had to strangle the laughs coming up from her stomach. She was shaking now more than Brother Beck, which seemed even funnier, and her cheeks ballooned and tears leaked out of her eyes. Then it was over and the reality of her mother’s presence struck her and she sat up straight and willed the convulsions to stop. "I was choking on some water," she said. Mama eyed her strangely. "I’m okay now."

Later she wondered if she’d invalidated the baptism. If not the baptism, at least the confirmation. She couldn’t possibly have received the Holy Ghost. It wouldn’t have come to someone who wasn’t paying attention and, even worse, who was laughing. Besides, she didn’t feel any different than before.

III.

She was the only ten-year-old in the Frog class. It was humiliating. In the summer, every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, she had to walk with her brothers to the school parking lot where the big yellow bus was waiting to take them to the lake. Everyone carried a towel, and Jeffrey Werner always snapped his at Carma as she walked down the aisle to the back where her friends from school sat. As soon as the bus motor rumbled, someone would start singing, "A hundred bottles of beer on the wall," but Carma didn’t pay much attention. She was worrying about the lessons. Tadpoles were just learning to float; Frogs were learning to do the breast stroke and the crawl; Class I’s had mastered the front crawl and were learning the back crawl; Class II’s could actually swim and were learning to dive off the raft. All Carma’s friends were Class I’s except Gayle and Rita, who were Class II’s. Even Alex was a Frog this summer. Bradley was already a Class I. 

This was the second year Carma would be a Frog. She had learned to float quickly, but she could not propel herself through the water and take breaths of air at the same time. 

The bus tires sounded gritty at the end of the asphalt. The kids stamped over the hot sand and into the cold water. Carma hesitated only a minute. Today she would swim to the raft. You could do anything you set your mind on doing. She would wave at her teacher and then swim back. Then he would graduate her immediately into Class I.

Right arm, left arm, right arm, left arm. It was okay as long as her feet were touching bottom. When she felt the bottom fall away, she stroked once, twice, but nothing happened. She couldn’t get her legs up. She started to sink. She batted her arms wildly and gasped, "Help!" but the water rushed into her mouth and she couldn’t even hear herself. Flailing frantically with both arms, she finally twisted around to face the beach. She felt one foot touch the sand. She stepped heavily back into the shallower water and looked about. No one was looking at her. No one could hear her heart pounding. No one had even noticed that she had almost drowned.

"I can’t go swimming," she said to Mama the next Tuesday. "I have an earache."

Mama looked concerned. "Stay in, then," she said. "But no reading under the cooler. Sit on the couch."

The earache lasted the rest of the summer. It disappeared as soon as Bradley and Alex came home from the last lesson of the year. Alex was not a Class I. Bradley was a Class II. Carma won a pen and pencil set in the library’s Tom Sawyer contest. She’d read more books in three months than any other kid in town.

IV.

"I don’t understand," she heard her mother saying to the doctor. One day she was well, reading magazines out in the back yard with Rita. They’d taken off their shoes and socks and were wiggling their toes in the sand and giggling about Eddie Fisher and James Dean. And the next day she was in the hospital with a temperature of 104. 

"Pneumonia is hard to understand," the doctor said. His voice echoed and he shimmered a little the way the desert sand did out the car windows when they drove to Las Vegas. Then she was on a bed someplace between sleep and awareness. People were doing things to her body, prodding, pulling, patting, always gently. Suddenly she was enveloped in ice or water and the heat diffused and she slept.

V.

She was tired when she staggered out of the front seat of Sister Pickering’s station wagon at the temple in St. George. They’d been on the road since five, and the twins, Joan and Jenny, had brought pillows and really seemed to be sleeping, but Burt and Mike were showing off for Katie, and even though Carma closed her eyes as if she were dozing, she heard their teasing voices bubble out of the back seat.

Fourteen years old! I’ll bet this is the first time you’ve been baptized for the dead," smiled the lady at the counter who gave her a heavy white jumpsuit that came down to her elbows and knees. "Two of you could fit in there," Mama would have said. Carma peered out of her dressing room. Katie seemed to fill out her jumpsuit. Joan and Jenny had braided each other’s hair. Carma folded her arms in front of her body, but she felt exposed and foolish.  Someone opened the door and she saw the font. She was stunned, silent. From behind, Joan nudged her into a seat. It wasn’t that the font was so big. She had imagined a rectangular pool, like the one she’d been baptized in but bigger. But the temple font was a high sculptured tub that flattened the backs of a circled herd of enormous white animals. "Cow!" she breathed. "Those are oxen," Joan whispered impatiently. "Sit down."

Jan Braithwaite

Oxen. Had Sister Pickering explained this while her mind was wandering? Her mind wandered a lot, especially during church – but oxen? A man called Katie’s name, and she stepped down into a circle of men in white. Carma had left her glasses in the dressing room. She squinted to see better. After Katie was neatly, prettily dipped three times, she disappeared through the locker room doors. Next was Joan. Carma looked over at Sister Pickering, who was smiling at the man at the podium. Carma sat up, very straight, in her chair.

"You will be baptized for three people," said the man who called her name, "two women and a girl who died when she was about fourteen. First, Emily Ann Newark."

"I baptize you," said the man who held her wrist, "in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." His brown eyes were the last things she remembered before she went under. Immediately she felt the terror. She thrashed upwards. "Her foot came out," said the man at the podium. "I baptize you," said the man with the brown eyes, and this time she clenched shut her eyes and her hands.

"That was okay, but close," said the man at the podium. "Take her down deeper next time. Young lady, try to relax."

She nodded, but each time the water rushed over her, she stiffened. Then it was finished. Her arms again clutched in front of her, she found the dressing room. She dropped the soggy jumpsuit on the floor and rubbed herself with the towel. She couldn’t get her face dry. Why, I’m crying, she thought, surprised. She looked for her underwear and realized suddenly that she hadn’t brought a dry bra or underpants. She dressed without them, feeling oddly naked under her dress, then sat on the bench, very still, mewing softly as she exhaled. Someone knocked. She made herself take long breaths, blotted her face again, and opened the door.

"Are you all right?" Sister Pickering said.

"I got water in my eyes," said Carma. Sister Pickering motioned her into a room with a small table and a heavy, white-haired man. He nodded toward the chair in the center of the room and looked at the paper on the table. Carma swallowed and sat. Her clothes felt rough against her body. Closing her eyes, she held onto the chair arms. There was heavy pressure on her head, but no tremor. She heard what was said, each of the three brief confirmations, but his voice seemed to come through gallons of water, muffled and dim.

VI.

The river roared and Phil and Nick roared back. Carma clutched the side of the dinghy and shuddered. Nick’s girlfriend Bev was sprawled on the other side, looking as if she weren’t even hanging on. Phil was at the oars, and Nick was in front. They were all wearing dirty orange life jackets over their swim suits. Nick and Bev were drinking beer. Nick slapped his bottle into a sling in the bow during the rapids.

"Pretty soon we come to Butter-churn," Phil said. He was all teeth and tan. She tried to remember how ex-cited she had been Tuesday in Geometry when he had asked her, "Would you like to come on my brother’s boat Saturday?" He was the only really exciting boy who’d ever asked her out. She’d only started dating last fall, and the boys who took her places, church boys, were not the ones she dreamed of. She’d been dreaming for years.

Phil rowed with firm, deft strokes. Carma had allowed herself to dream a bit about Saturday before Saturday actually arrived. She pictured them drifting lazily upon the lake, talking, laughing, getting brown. She’d shaved her legs carefully and borrowed Rita’s straw hat. She’d brought her dark glasses, her baby oil, four tuna fish sandwiches, and a sack of grapes. The lazy drifting she had imagined was limited to the calm spots between the rapids. "We’re getting in the river after the big rocks," Phil had said. "These are just baby ones." But the baby ones took her breath away so she couldn’t even scream.

Butterchurn was suddenly upon them. They tossed, fell, scraped the rocks on her right, and sped though the foam. Bev laughed, and Nick bailed with a plastic bucket. "Wet enough?" Phil shouted.

"I’m soaked," Carma shouted back.

And then it was still. Phil rested his arm over both oars and took his hat off with his right. Bev reached into the cooler, pulled out a Seven-Up, and handed it to him. Nick put the bailing bucket back under the plank and looked over at her. "Are you having fun, Carma?" he asked. He narrowed his eyes and looked suspicious.

"I’m pretty scared," she admitted.

"Of what?"

"I’m not much of a swimmer."

"You’re wearing a life jacket," Nick pointed out. "You get in the water, you’ll pop right up."

"What if I get trapped under the boat?"

"I’ll find you," Phil said quickly. He drained the can in three gulps and took up the oars again.

She turned to him. "What if you hit your head on a stone and are unconscious?"

Bev laughed. "One of us will get you. It would take more than a stone to knock out these guys." She offered Carma a root beer.

Carma hesitated. "How long before the next rapids?"

"Soon. Anyway," Nick said, fanning himself with his cap, "we’re all scared, you know."

"You are?"

"But we like being scared. Don’t you like roller coasters?"

"Well, yes," Carma said.

"And scary movies?" Phil asked.

He would probably never ask her anywhere again, but she told him. "Not much."

"You know what you are doing wrong?" Nick said.

"What?"

"You don’t yell. You need to yell. Here. Yell right now. Practice."

She felt silly. "Aaaaoooo," she said a bit more loudly than her usual speaking voice.

"Aw, come on," Nick said. "A real scream."

"Think of it this way," Bev said. "It’s like life."

"What is?"

"The river. We appreciate the calm spots more because of the rough spots."

"Naw, you’ve got it backwards," Phil said. "We appreciate the rough spots more because of the calm." He laughed, all teeth again. "I like both. I love both." He looked over his shoulder and tightened his grip on the oars. Hang on," he said. "Tumbler coming up."

Carma hung on. She bit her lower lip hard and tasted blood. They were streaking through the foam. Then the jolt thrust her up and she felt her hand loosening from the side and the next thing she remembered was the water rushing over her. She didn’t have time to flail her way to the surface. She was floating, held up by the life jacket, and Phil was holding out an oar and he and Nick were pulling her in, then reaching for her. Then she was in the boat. Bev leaned over and patted her and cooed, "You went swimming, Carma." Phil’s eyes looked worried, but he said, "Now you’ve been baptized and saved. You don’t have to worry anymore."

She shivered for a few minutes, then relaxed. They all took their places. Bev smeared a little zinc oxide on Nick’s nose. Phil started rowing again, slowly, moving the boat into the calm place between rapids. The water had been icy, but the boat and the sun were hot. Carma trailed her hand in the water and smiled at Phil. "What’s the next one called?" she asked.

The evening Rita’s father took them to dinner at the Golden Nugget, Carma learned how to swim. She learned without even touching the water. They had eaten chicken in a fancy almond sauce and the waiter had brought them a little lavender cake with sixteen candles for Rita to blow out, and afterwards they strolled by the pool, the three of them, and Carma was dazzled by the soft blue light under the water. In the pool were two women, and they stroked lazily, easily, one on her back, the other on her side.

What Carma wanted to do was slide out of the polka-dotted, dropped waist dress Mama had made for her for Easter and slip into the pool. She wanted to stretch out in the water and raise her right arm and bring it back high over her head and pull smoothly down. She understood immediately she had been doing everything wrong. She had been fighting the water instead of parting it with clean long strokes.

But now she knew. Tonight she would glide through her dreams like a dolphin. Tomorrow she would swim like a seal.

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