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I
COULDN’T TAKE my eyes off my kids. Guy, age six,
and Bruno, nearly four, jumped into the pool
with shouts of glee, as if they could swim, only
to sink, still grinning, to the bottom. On our
first visit to Forest Vale pool, their
overconfidence frightened me.
Once
I determined that they could tiptoe in the
three-foot shallow end of this pool, where all
the little kids were swirling around, I relaxed
a little. There were a couple of dads ribcage
deep, holding their red cups of beer over the
splashing, ducking heads of their daughters.
They would block any beach balls or toddlers
from drifting into the deep water. I pulled
myself out of the cold water, settled on a
strappy lounge chair, and watched the
driveway.
Minivans
and SUVs crunched down the long, potholed
driveway every half-hour or so, delivering more
of my children’s classmates and their parents.
So far, everyone here was White. I assumed some
of the Black or Latino families from school
would show up soon.
Allison
had been inviting us for weeks. “You guys should
come to the pool,” she said, as we squeezed past
one another in the hallway each afternoon.
What
pool? Did Hapeville, the small town where our
kids went to preschool, have a public swimming
pool tucked away somewhere? We lived in
neighboring East Point, a city south of Atlanta,
Georgia, with no public pools.
I
asked if the pool was public or what, and she
was cagey. “Eh, you’ll see.”
Author Hannah Palmer explores
how systemic racism has limited access to water
— including pools, lakes, and rivers — in
Southern Black communities, and shares her
personal quest to find shared spaces to
swim. |
