Call Me by My Name (7 page)

And his laughter came again.

I'd left my wristwatch on top of my shirt, and now I climbed out of the water and padded over to the lifeguard station to check the time. We still had ten minutes left and he was already close to swimming. I leaned forward to put the watch back, and in that instant something shot past me on the other side of the fence. It was a jogger, running at a labored pace only about ten feet away. He was wearing heavy gray sweats with the hood of the sweater covering his head. He navigated the sidewalk, then cut over past the bleachers to a path that took him into the trees toward the picnic grounds. When he didn't slow down, I figured he hadn't noticed us. I checked my watch again—it was 6:23. If he lived nearby, we could probably expect to see him each morning at about the same time. Most joggers I knew kept to a strict routine.

And this was how it happened. The jogger returned every morning at the same time, a man as routine in his habits as the sun itself. Only the color of his sweats seemed to change as he alternated between gray, royal blue, and navy. We ended each lesson as soon as he ran past us and turned for the trees.

Baseball had brought Tater and me together, but it was those mornings in the pool when we really got close. “I can't believe how cool he is,” I told Angie as we were riding our bikes home after the first week of lessons.

“Me neither,” she said.

“Sometimes I forget he's black. It's like he's anybody else.”

“Imagine that,” she answered.

As Tater's swimming skills improved, Angie came up with exercises to push him harder. One morning she removed the leather string from the pool key and tossed the key into deep water, and then she ordered Tater to dive for it. Because it was darker on the bottom than on the surface, he had to feel around for the key and test both his capacity for holding his breath and his ability to remain under. Angie used my watch to time each dive, and she challenged him to better his mark every time he went in.

“God, you're slow,” I'd say to him when he popped up for air. “Is that the best you can do?”

When he'd heard enough, he said, “Can you do better?”

I'd been swimming since I was five years old, but I still couldn't match his best time. Not pleased with losing to a novice, I challenged him to dive with me for the key at the same time.

“You mean both of us going for it at once?” he asked.

“Yes. And just to be clear, there are no rules prohibiting interference once we're in the water.”

“Interference?”

I was making it up as I went along. “Uh-huh. In other words, if I want to push or pull you away from the key, I can do it. And you can do the same to me.”

“What if I punch you in the mouth?”

“Sure. That too. It's anything goes down there.”

We stood a few feet apart from each other at the deep end. Angie climbed to the top of the lifeguard station and lobbed the key in the water, then she called out, “Ready . . . set . . .
go
,” and Tater and I dove in together.

He beat me nine out of ten times, but I roughed him up enough under water to keep the competition close. “What about you?” he said to Angie, after he must've grown bored with winning so easily. “Think you can take me?”

Now it was my turn to throw the key from the lifeguard station, and I did so with what I thought was theatrical flair. Rather than simply drop the key in the water, I posed like a ballerina dancing
en pointe
, then I segued into a baseball pitcher's motion as he comes with heat from the top of the mound. The key met the surface with a
pa-lunk
, and I waited until it had time to reach the bottom before letting them start.

Tater made it interesting, but Angie still dominated. The whole time I watched from high above, their bodies driving through the water side by side: his a dark spear probing the cloudy blue; hers a lighter one.

The winner resurfaced holding the key above her head. The loser pretended to be devastated.

I hated for those days to end, but the new school year was about to start, and it was time to give up the pool and summer.

At home Pops sat by the air conditioner with his paper and complained in a loud voice about “the blacks taking over.” What riled him was desegregation, a story that inspired bold headlines and had white parents scared for their children's future. While the rest of the country's public schools had integrated years before, ours were just now getting around to it, and only because the federal courts were forcing us. The situation was more than a lot of white families could accept. Over the summer two private schools had opened for those who refused to let their kids share classrooms with blacks. Rebel flags had started appearing in the back windows of cars and pickup trucks, along with bumper stickers showing the flag and the words “Keep It Flying.” Even Pops had put a sticker on the Cameo. But Mama and Angie had removed it one afternoon while he slept, peeling it off in ragged pieces with butter knives from the kitchen.

Despite his feelings about integration, there never was any discussion about where Angie and I were going to school. We'd turned fifteen on August 12, and we were set to be sophomores at the public high school—old enough to fend for ourselves. Pops might've railed against integration, but the truth was he and Mama didn't make enough money to send us anywhere else.

“Is it true we're all going to be going to the same school now?” Tater asked one morning in the pool.

“Yes,” Angie replied. “And we'll also be classmates. I just hope we have homeroom together. Wouldn't that be cool?”

Tater seemed to find such a scenario hard to believe. “I can remember, when I was little, we would have to step off the sidewalk if a white man was coming toward us. That man could be an unemployed drunk who spent most nights in the jailhouse. If he was white, you had to give him room.”

Our daily adventure in the pool suddenly didn't seem as daring as it had been when we started. Angie must've been thinking the same thing. “If the schools are integrating,” she said, “it's only a matter of time before the parks do too. And once South City Park opens to black people, so will the pool.”

“Incredible,” Tater said.

Angie looked up at a sky moving from night to day. “I can almost see a time when we eat in the same restaurants and attend the same churches,” she said.

Tater's last lesson was on a Friday. I heard a soft rain ticking against the house when my alarm went off, making it almost impossible to get up and drag my sleep-deprived body to the kitchen. Angie was already at the table. The rind of a tangerine lay in pieces on an open napkin in front of her. Next to it stood an empty glass with cranberry juice darkening the bottom. No cold biscuits for me today. But I did find a stale honey bun in a paper bag on top of the refrigerator. It must've been two weeks old. I bit into it and felt my molars sting in protest.

Tater was quieter than usual when we reached the pool, and I wondered if he, like me, was contemplating the end of our dark, dreamy hours together. He wore a raincoat draped over his shoulders, the bill of his cap poking out from under the hood. He followed us into the yard and we stripped at the foot of the lifeguard station, and then he dove into the deep end, the first of us in. We watched him swim under water all the way to the other end, from twelve to three feet, and he didn't come up for air once. He touched the wall, then swam back again. I marveled at his athleticism.

Angie had always worn a one-piece suit, but today she was in a bikini, a flowery number that left little to the imagination. She'd bought it only the week before, and when she'd tried it on at home and walked into the living room Pops had told her it was pretty, but sorry, he couldn't let her leave the house with it on.

“Go cover yourself,” I told her now.

“I am covered.”

“That ain't covered.”

She looked down at the suit. “But it's cute.”

We didn't say much else that morning. Tater and Angie swam laps and dove for the key, but I mostly floated on my back in the shallow end. Tater by now was probably my best friend, but I wasn't sure about all the other blacks I was going to have to go to school with. It bothered me that Angie and I were part of the generation that was being pushed together with blacks. Why do it now? Why not wait another few years, until Angie and I had graduated and were in college?

I was still floating on my back when I heard the jogger making his approach. He was earlier than usual, but he came up on his regular route, and I lifted my head off the surface and watched him as he ran the length of the fence. He wasn't running as fast today, and I felt my heart begin to punch against my ribs when he stopped and faced us. He stared out first at me, then at Angie and Tater. We'd made it this far. What were the odds that somebody would catch us on our last day?

He pulled the hood back, and I saw a familiar face. It was Junior Doucet, our baseball coach that summer. I climbed out of the pool and walked over to where he was standing. “So you knew we were here all along?” I asked.

He needed a moment to figure out the best way to answer. “I ran into your mother at the A&P a few weeks ago. She knew I jogged in the park each morning, and she asked me to keep an eye out, since she couldn't.”

Angie and Tater got out of the pool and came walking over. “It's Coach Doucet,” I told them, and then Tater repeated his name.

I felt pretty foolish at this moment. We'd thought we were being so daring, when we'd had a chaperone all along. “So you timed your run to let us know when we needed to head home?” I asked, even though I knew the answer.

He was facing Tater. “I'm sorry I didn't do a better job fighting for you earlier in the summer,” he said. “I hope this makes things right between us.”

“It wasn't your fault, Coach,” Tater said.

Coach Doucet shook his head, as if to say he knew better. “One day I suspect we'll remember this time and understand just how silly it was.”

And with that he pulled the hood back over his head and took off running down the trail through the trees.