Under the Lake I Heard My Grandmother Call Me Home

People who have never drowned think it looks like the movies, all splashing and shouting. It does not. Drowning is quiet. I know because I did it, all the way, and the last thing I heard above the surface was nothing at all.

I was nineteen and stupid the way nineteen is. We had been swimming out to a float in the reservoir, and I had eaten too much and swum too soon and gone too far. My legs cramped first, then my arms felt like wet rope, and the float that had seemed close was suddenly a long way off. I went under once and came up. Went under twice and came up. The third time I did not come up.

Here is the thing nobody warns you about. When I finally stopped fighting, it was not terror. It was relief. My lungs quit arguing. The green water above me held the sun in wobbling coins, and then even that dimmed, and there was a darkness that opened like a corridor, and I moved into it without swimming. There was a light at the far end, small and steady, and I was not afraid of it. I was curious. I was going toward it the way you walk toward a lit window in a cold field.

And then my grandmother was there. She had died when I was seven, and I would have told you I barely remembered her face, but I knew her instantly, the way you know your own hands. She was not old and sick the way she was at the end. She was young and she smelled like the bread she used to make, and she said my name, my whole name, the way only she ever said it. She said, not out loud but straight into me, this is not your turn, go back, your mother is not finished needing you.