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Melissa Fraterrigo The Shark Swimmers |
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To us, they will always be the
family who swims with sharks. They will shuffle around with sun-bleached
hair, bronze skin, rough knees and elbows from years of submersion in salty
waters. They will continue to receive discounts at the Food Lion because
their grandparents and great-grandparents shopped here before there was a
shark show. Around town, they will be remembered as fondly as the local
newscasters. Though it’s been years since the
tourists visited our town the red awnings that line the beach still stand and
Saturday afternoons pass without interruption. We spend days at home mowing
our lawns, complaining to our wives, feeling the weight of regret circle our
knees. The shark swimmer’s shows were once
a common weekend activity. Before each show, small, dark men in caps released
the sharks from their pens. The sharks sped through the water, dorsal fins
slicing, streamlined bodies thrashing waves. The shark swimmers trained the
sharks from the moment they first lured them to the southeastern shore. During
When we were kids and we saw the
shark swimmers walking through the mall or buying gasoline for their yellow
wagon with the wood panels, we waved, placed one hand on the tops of our
heads like fins and wiggled them. The parents seemed to enjoy it—they
grinned, waved right back to us with their own version of the fin. One of the swimmers, Mariona,
was in the same school as us, yet we were too afraid to approach her alone
and out of water. She was red-headed, the oldest child and anytime we
motioned to her family she scooped her face behind her hand, annoyed to be
the object of our looks. We were just being friendly. We admired the shark
swimmers and their ferocious kicks. Each swimmer could seize the fin of a
Great White with bare hands, let the shark pull them for a few moments before
they had to let go, before the shark would turn, overly aware of pressure,
and the swimmers would dart toward the dock bobbing in the They were fast swimmers; they
spun through the water, their hands breaking waves like steely torpedoes—but
that’s not to say that their act was without injury. Not even they were exempt
from misery. No one talked about the baby, the almost swimmer, but everyone
remembered how sad we were that day. We still can’t help but think it never
should have happened, how she might have changed everything for Mariona, just a little eel of a thing. Mariona
had interests beyond water. Perhaps she dreamed of a life on land. She begged
to own leather shoes that covered her toes instead of the rubber flip flops
her mother always purchased for her. She yearned for a job running the
fortune teller booth on the boardwalk. She could determine if a person would
live a life of fortitude or heartache. Maybe she saw into her own future. It’s easy to say that all the steps leading
up to Mariona’s last swim were for some
indistinguishable destiny, some truthful moment. Even now, we can’t be sure. Right
up until her last swim she practiced with her family every day after school,
completed weight training alongside her father, stretched thick rubber bands
between her hands, built triceps and biceps to rival any member of the school
softball team. She ran miles on the beach between her parents, sweat dotting
her forehead, flushing her cheeks in such a lovely way. The family couldn’t
exist without Mariona. She was the one, quiet and
demure, who everyone came to see. She filled the bleachers. The showcase, the
headliner. The beautiful girl that swam with sharks. Mariona’s
skin remained white and powdery despite the months in the blazing sun. She
reminded us of one of the Cosmo cover girls, the way she poised her head,
looked at us in the bleachers without ever really seeing us. The suit she
wore accented the slim curve of her neck. It skimmed the lines of her body
like the wake the sharks made as they sped through the surf. It showed the
fine arrangement of her ribs as she poised to dive. The black fabric
contrasted her skin, which became a pale trace in the water until it looked
as if she might fade away before our very eyes. One time, she nearly did.
They were banking on her at seventeen; she had become the headliner almost
overnight. She was the only showcase the family had left. There were still
groceries to purchase and Lycra outfits and color programs to print. Every
one of the shark swimmers participated in the show. But as her parents grew
older, the responsibility shifted to Mariona to
perform the bulk of the spectacular, daring acts that would sell tickets. Mariona’s mother’s looks had begun to ebb. She could
still catch hold of the shark’s dorsal fin, but it was more difficult for her
to hang on; so she swam alongside the shark for a few minutes, waited until
she neared the dock. She impressed us with her powerful kick and grabbed the
fin for a few seconds before she let go and caught the ledge quickly, hauled
herself up the ladder. With age, she’d lost much of her original speed and
took to smaller tricks, towed behind two Scalloped Hammerheads, or trained
the baby Tiger sharks to swim in polygons, rhombi, and geometrical figures. Mariona’s father, a strong, stout man of fifty, did most
of the balancing acts. He held Mariona on his
shoulders while balancing on the skiboard, racing
the sharks in the section of waters roped off in 25 meter lanes. He always
won. He’d tried to vary his act in passing years, adding music, dolphins or
seals to distract, but he was no longer able to balance the entire family on
his shoulders. Mariona was the
one we came to see. She glided alongside the sharks, and the Great White
would let her fix her hands over its retractable eyes. We were there the first
time she performed what the papers called the miraculous feat which became
her trademark. It looked as if she’d been practicing for months. Mariona revealed afterwards in a rare newspaper interview
that it was the first time she’d attempted to lift herself on top of the
shark’s tubular body, on the rough skin akin to pumice. It seemed to her that
the shark dipped its head and scooped her onto its back. Once on top of the
shark, she positioned one arm in front of her and pointed one backwards for
balance. Mariona placed her feet in a plié on the shark, and bent her knees slightly; she rode
it like a horse up and down the coast to our heroic yelps and cheers. Minutes
after she jumped off the shark, Mariona stood on
the dock alongside her parents. Her mouth was twisted and we weren’t sure if
she was grinning at the wonderment of it all of if the sun had merely glinted
off the water’s surface and into her eyes. It was Mariona
who we saw at night once we closed our eyes, tucked into our twin beds. She flew
across water, anticipating the twisted motion of the giant fish, hair
whipping behind her, trim hips swaying as they tunneled through waves. Splash
bubbled on the sides of the Great White’s fin, its cunning teeth hidden. Mariona kept her arms suspended for poise, held her
fingers together perfectly, and moved over the surf with grace and ease. We
didn’t have girlfriends but we imagined that someday Mariona
would be ours. One night after the spectacular
feat we saw Mariona at the boardwalk standing outside
the fortuneteller’s booth. It was the only time she spoke directly to us. We
were waiting to have our futures read by the woman in a gold cape. “I can
tell you your fortunes,” said Mariona, shocking us,
her lilting voice pointing at us. “For free.” If it were anyone other than Mariona, we probably wouldn’t have followed her to a
bench in front of the bumper cars where she instructed us to sit down and
turn our arms toward her. She said she could read veins, traipsing
bronchioles, avenues of destiny. The candied lights from the Ferris wheel
shimmered in her fiery mane. Brad went first. He wanted to know if he’d be a
millionaire. “You will take over your father’s store,” said Mariona. Brad’s dad owned the Gas and Go near school. “I don’t want to spend my day
swiping credit cards.” Brad narrowed his eyes. We tried to calm him down,
told him this was just for fun. “I only tell you what I see,” said Mariona. “Well look again,” said Brad.
Tim Manzeti went next. His parent’s were in the
process of divorcing and Tim was barely coping. “Your mother will have a
change of heart; she will forgive your father’s infidelity,” said Mariona before moving onto another of us. Tim thanked Mariona,
even bowed to her, kept nodding his head. When Derrick opened his arms toward Mariona, she looked up at him, then at each of us. “Your
lives will be filled with happiness.” “Is that true?” we asked. “Sure. It’s the truth you want,
isn’t it?” She didn’t wait for our response. We watched her tall form blend in
with the passing crowd. For days after Tim Manzeti
had his fortune read, he paraded around school. He completed all his
homework, turned in an extra credit report on the Nevertheless, Mariona remained talented in our eyes. We’d see her in
the halls of Dwight D. Eisenhower High School curled over her books. We
wanted to approach her, ask her to Oogies with us
for a basket of fries, yet we couldn’t just approach someone like Mariona without a reason. On Saturdays though, we were
able to watch her glide over choppy waves, standing on the back of the shark
with its massive gills and pinpoint eyes. Mariona
never flinched. The shark darted through the water, always seemingly ready to
toss Mariona off into the jumbled waters. She could
have taken her act on the road and initiated her own show, just Mariona riding the sharks in the unpredictable waves. At that time we didn’t realize
how dissatisfied “Do you mind?” asked Mariona, covering her work with a wrist. “I was just thinking about your
boyfriend. I don’t think I’ve ever met him.” “That makes two of us,” said Mariona. “Freaky,” Dana told us,
shrugging her shoulders. It was during junior year that
Derrick said Mariona had taken a boyfriend. He said
he saw a boy pick up Mariona in a green Buick with
a bent fender, drive her to practice. He was positive that he saw Mariona and the man who worked the Jealous Jockey game on
the boardwalk holding hands downtown. “They were walking real slow and she was so close to him they almost looked like
one giant ‘M’ under the orange streetlights.” We asked him if he heard what
they were talking about. “I followed them a ways, hid behind the garbage cans.
They stopped at the corner of sixth and Waveland. He kissed her forehead and
then they went in different directions.” We all knew the man. He’d worked
on the boardwalk for as long as we could remember, dressed in concert
t-shirts and corduroys even during the hottest days of July. Surely Mariona could do better. She began sloughing off during shows. Mariona would let go of the shark’s fin too soon or kick
her heels up when her father positioned her on top of his shoulders. Mariona slid off his back, plopped into the water while
the sharks swam by in droves. She’d arrive late for shows or drum fingers while
waiting for her act to begin. One day a picture appeared in the paper
displaying Mariona with arms folded across her
chest standing on the dock, unwilling to get into the water. In the photo,
her father has both hands out to her, beseeching. Mariona’s
lips are placid, two steel rods. The headline read, “Mariona
Shuns Act.” Editorials disputed whether Mariona had
the right to quit swimming. Brochures, which advertised the act stocked every rest stop within one hundred miles. Tourists
visited our town to watch the swimmers. Some said her parents were too lax,
that she needed discipline, that swimming was her
family duty. Others said she should have the right to take a short hiatus,
that she was born into swimming and since she was nearly eighteen they needed
to provide her with choice. We thought Mariona was
too young to retire. We knew our Saturdays would never be the same if she no
longer performed. Several weeks after Mariona quit swimming, her mother announced her own
pregnancy. Maybe they sensed Mariona’s plan to
leave the show and put her swimsuit to rest. We can only speculate. By having
a child, Mariona’s act could be easily replaced;
interest in the show would remain constant even without the beautiful girl
balancing on the back of a shark. It would be her mother’s last child, no
doubt, and the town was thrilled with the idea of watching the pregnant shark
swimmer’s metamorphosis through the coming months. From the beginning, they
publicized the birth just as they had advertised Mariona’s
riding skills. It was decided Mariona’s mother
would birth the baby in the ocean, the youngest family member to swim
alongside the sharks. They posted weekly updates on her pregnancy in the
newspaper, passed out pictures of the little one swimming inside her mother.
Tickets sold for over forty dollars! We would all have the chance to watch
the birth. The focus shifted away from Mariona and her refusal to be a part of the act. She
helped set up the Saturday morning shows, carried fish in metal buckets for
the sharks, but mostly, Mariona would stand to the
side in shorts and a T-shirt, watching the show like the rest of us. One Friday evening we went to
the house Mariona shared with her parents,
determined to glimpse her sleeping. We hid in the low bushes across the
street. Their house was dark. Before we found her bedroom window the green
Buick pulled up. We watched her boyfriend park the car at the end of the
street and slink to the window near the alley. It opened and Mariona’s
red locks brushed his bare arms as she helped sneak him inside. We watched Mariona’s
mother swell and puff; her cheeks became rosy and youthful. The town enjoyed
her pregnancy. They held a name-the-baby contest at Hotz
Drugs. For one dollar, we took turns writing possible names for the future
shark swimmer on pieces of paper. The shark swimmers promised to draw the
name at random from the top ten entries and present the winner with a fifty
dollar gift certificate to Hotz’s. We each entered
two or three times. We suggested watery names like Aqualine
and Conchetta, Sandra and Shell. We never
discovered what other names had been proposed. We heard afterwards that Mariona had predicted it all, that she’d warned her
parents of the baby’s future weeks before the birth took place. Supposedly,
when they didn’t listen to her, Mariona wrote her parents letters and placed them beneath the blankets on
their bed in an attempt to warn them. When her father eased into bed each
night, the envelopes crackled, bent like an accordion, and in exhaustion, he
scanned them briefly and tossed it aside. Her mother was already asleep,
retiring to bed an hour earlier. Mariona’s parents
did not listen to her. She wasn’t swimming any more and as the day of the
birth drew closer, her face began to develop a
weariness around her eyes. On the day of the birth, they
induced the labor so it would coincide with the Mariona’s
mother was already in the water, back against the dock, arms propped up on
the edge as if lounging. The IV was fastened to one of the rails on the
ladder. She was wearing a bikini top we’d never before seen and her rounded
belly just capped the water. Her features were scrunched in pain. We watched
the rise of her breasts quicken with each breath. Her feet, attached to white
buoys, rocked with each wave. Her husband was at her side and the
obstetrician bobbed at her feet in his orange life vest. The labor was quick. Mariona’s mother tossed her head back, cried out once,
then again. With the final push, Mariona’s mother
gave a strong kick and the baby rushed out. The men in caps released the
sharks from their cages. We thought we saw the baby moving in the doctor’s
hands, in the red cloud of blood that would draw the sharks to the birth and
begin the baby’s first performance. Brad stood up to see better.
“Watch this,” he told us, running toward the water. He flung off his shirt
and sandals. Never had anyone but the trained swimmers entered the water with
sharks. The audience shrieked. The couple sitting next to us left the stands
partially covering their eyes. Brad began the sidestroke, his mouth just
clearing the surface. We bit our fingernails, slouched in our seats. The sharks thought Brad was part
of the show. They circled him, tail fins poised. That’s when Brad screamed
and his head went under and the bet was called off. Brad tried to hold his
breath, attempted to hide, the slivered points of teeth lurking. While Brad
floated underwater, the Great White nudged his hips, waited for him to grab
the fin. The obstetrician had the baby in
his hands, he later told the reporters, and he’d just pulled the scissors
from the vest and cut the umbilical when, naturally, another contraction
struck Mariona’s mother. She kicked the water and
pulled the can-shaped buoys under for a moment and with the upswing, they
burst out of the water, sharp waves ricocheted, one of which surprised the
doctor. He swallowed water, spurted and gasped for air, and the slick baby he
was holding slipped from his wide, sturdy hands. In the excitement of the
moment, none of us in the audience knew what had occurred in the water. It
wasn’t until Mariona dove into the waves and we
recognized that same vigorous kick that we realized something else had gone
wrong. Mariona’s red hair was hidden behind a mass
of foam and spray, whitecaps interrupted the uniform
blue-green. She punched the water, her hips a trough under the surface. She
dragged a sputtering Brad to shore. By the time she arrived at the dock, the
doctor had recovered from his coughing fit. He must have told Mariona’s parents that the baby had never even taken its
first breath of air, and the baby girl must have thought she was a fish,
swimming right out of the doctor’s hands. We watched as Mariona
and her father dove under the surface for long stretches. It didn’t take long
for Mariona to find the baby, her pearly white arms
outstretched, her arched legs still, in the starting position for the crawl. Mariona scooped the youngest of the family of swimmers
out from its slow descent, umbilical cord like a grape vine twisting behind
her. We watched the entire hospital staff rush to
the water in their beach-going clothes, clumsily splashing toward the dock. Mariona held the baby over her head and water glinted on
its virgin skin, light tracings of red hair. Her massive kick propelled her
body through the water and she passed the baby over to the obstetrician
standing on the dock alongside the hospital staff where they worked to
resuscitate, much more equipped for birth on land than in water, they’d later
admit. Mariona
treaded water with her father in front of the dock where her mother remained
attached to the buoys. Their forms bounced in the waves. The sharks swam the
perimeter of the dock, churning the now calm water, a trail of bubbles in
their wake; they were ready to begin the show. “She’s already dead,” said Mariona more to her parents than the hospital staff hunched
over the minuscule body. In the weeks following the
baby’s burial we were surprised to discover it
wasn’t the fault of the clumsy doctor nor were we to blame for failing to
stop Brad. The baby was a stillborn. Her autopsy report was published and
reporters from Mariona’s
parents approached the shore together, holding hands. Mariona’s
mother swam alongside her husband with a lackluster kick and a smile painted
across her face. Her husband looked as if he aged ten years, his chest usually
full and robust, curved inwards. Both of them were weighed by guilt. People
wrote letters to the newspaper scrutinizing the whole idea of a public birth.
They said that the swimmers had forgotten about the safety of the child. This
made sense to us. For the first time, we wanted to forget the swimmers who
made our town special. We were sure they’d stop
performing. Townspeople no longer attended out of memory of that fateful
Saturday, only tourists still frequented the show. We frowned at their eager
bodies leaning forward in the stands. Most said the swimmers ought to mourn,
that it was too soon to return to the water. Instead we took to loitering
outside the fence, which marked off the shore for their shows. One of these
Saturdays we were making plans to steal a can of beer or two from one of our
father’s stash, and go to the park, pass the warm can when we happened to
glance at the shore and saw Mariona step up. She
unzipped her shorts, pulled off her shirt and strolled across the beach in her
black suit, the ends of her hair just grazing her shoulders. We were
immediately transfixed; we stood shoulder to shoulder and clutched the top of
the fence with our hands. Her parent’s beamed, applauded her initial steps
into the water. They turned to watch Mariona pull
herself effortlessly onto the shark’s back. She
lifted her arms up till they gracefully arched over her head, placed her
hands on the Great White and kicked her legs up into a handstand. Together
they skimmed the water that way for several minutes. The crowd gave her a
standing ovation. We jumped up and down, high-fived
one another. Mariona was back! Even Brad was
excited to hear we hadn’t ruined her career. Years later we still don’t
understand her final show. Mariona seemed pleased
to return to the water. “Maybe she did it for him. Her boyfriend didn’t look
like the swimming type,” mentioned Derrick. He recalled her passion for
fortunes. “She couldn’t do it!” interjected Tim. The rest of us agreed she
might have actually seen into the future; what else could explain that
spectacular Saturday, with the brilliant sun and billowing clouds hanging
overhead when she retired from swimming for good. School was out for the summer
and soon all of us would be seniors, deciding between the army and navy or
going to work for our fathers, painting houses. A few of us would end up at
the community college, even fewer would get out of town, like Mariona. We snuck into the audience that
day when Mariona started the show, a rarity. She
took to the water in a burst of energy, blitzing through the waves alongside
the sharks, kicking with grace and power. We’d bought glossy photos of her
from the souvenir booth for ten dollars a piece and each of us joked we’d
wait until after the show and get her autograph no matter what. We held our
pictures in hand, careful to only touch the edges. In the water, Mariona placed one hand on the shark’s side and wrapped
her right hand around its fin. She waved at the audience, her teeth gleaming
stars; she smiled radiantly this time. Mariona held
onto the shark’s tail fin for some time before hauling herself onto its back,
anticipating the waves and motions of the shark with skill and mastery. She
was soaring over the water. We hooted, applauded till our palms stung, yelled
at the top of our lungs. She was in perfect form. The water beaded off her
like rain, skin glimmered as sleek as the animal she had almost tamed. Mariona
held a handstand for four minutes. We timed her. But then this is where our
accounts differ. Brad said it was a giant wave from one of the ferries
offshore. Derrick said she misplaced her foot when she tried to stand on the
shark. But a few of us, a careful few, think she purposefully flung herself
off the shark, sprung off its body and into the blue-green waves, once calm,
now choppy from her performance. We saw a leg cut up into the shark’s gills;
it tilted its massive mouth to the side, remained motionless. It refrained
from movement, waited, until Mariona, with a fist
slammed the shark right beneath its left eye. We heard her smack its thick
skin. The shark rolled its black eyes backwards and opened its jaws, serrated
teeth long accustomed to only the taste of tuna and dolphin. It only took one
bite, one chunk of flesh before releasing its jaw leaving Mariona
in the water, inhaling frantically on her back. She lost her left foot up to the
ankle. For years afterward Mariona continued to
show up on the shore on Saturday afternoons, her boyfriend alongside her. She
took to wearing a white hightop on her left foot,
some kind of orthopedic appliance tucked inside. She strode in the same
strong way and her hips compensated for the lost inch with a slight tilt each
time she transferred power from one shoe to the next. They’d sit together in the bleachers
watching the show with the rest of us and everyone would forget they were
even there, that Mariona once was the entire
performance. Mariona
set up her own fortune telling booth on the boardwalk. But we never visited
her there. At some point she and her boyfriend moved away and we lost track
of them. We can imagine that Mariona has her own
little girl now and that she takes her swimming in the ocean. And together,
they float on their backs looking up at the sky. The shark swimmers never were
the same after Mariona’s last swim. Their suits
grew shabbier, dingy. Her father began spending his time at Kilroy’s bar and his wife began to shrivel away. At some
point it was no longer worth watching their tired bodies toss in the surf. They
retired and put the act to rest. That day though, has remained in
our minds. Mariona’s final show. We were there. We
watched the ambulances scream on the sand, saw her mother hysterically
wailing as her husband carried Mariona out of the
water and onto the land. His daughter’s blood cloaked his arm and torso,
streaks dribbled from his swimsuit down his own legs. Mariona’s
face was ghostly white—she’d already fainted. We stood there in our own
circle in the bleachers, watching. The wind bent our photos of Mariona into halves, flicking them in quick succession,
nearly ripping them from our knotted fists. |
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Arts & Letters is supported by |
Arts & Letters Journal of Contemporary Culture Campus Box 89 Georgia College & State University Milledgeville, GA
31061 Phone: (478) 445-1289 E-mail: al@gcsu.edu
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GC&SU is a member of |
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