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room’s windowed wall. In the late-day sun, his gray hair, thick as steel wool, shone almost silver. With his fists plunged into the pockets of his satiny red jacket, a gleaming whistle dangling from his neck, he announced that we were forty-one strong this year, twenty-two boys and nineteen girls, an encouraging number in his estimation. He was particularly pleased, he said, indicating those of us new to the team, with the addition of nine freshmen.
    Our practice, he explained, would begin with a simple warm-up. He would time us in heats of four to check our individual speeds. He reminded us to avoid splashing as we kicked, to pull at the water with deep strokes, to breathe only when necessary. Before my turn to race, I silently recited these directions, trying to recall simultaneously all of the pointers Poppy had given me in summers past.
    By the time I finished the two required pool lengths, my chest pounded as if it would explode, but, much to my delight, I discovered that my time, though far from the fastest on the team, was better than many.
    “Not bad, not bad,” Coach Hadley pronounced. I needed to learn proper flip turns, I needed to correct the alignment of my elbows, I needed a rubber swim cap to eliminate drag, but he could see that I had potential. He patted my shoulder, the same sign of camaraderie I had seen him give some of the returning team members earlier in the practice. I nodded to show my eagerness to comply, biting the sides of my cheeks to keep from grinning.
    When I returned home that evening, Mama was already home from work, quizzing Sarah on the capitals of the fifty states for her upcoming geography test. She waved a hand at me, but did not look up from Sarah’s book. “It’s nearly dark outside. You must be worn out.”
    “Only a little.” Then as Mama left Sarah’s side to spread the floral cloth on the dining table, folding five paper napkins into neat rectangles, setting out knives and forks and glasses of water, I described all that Coach Hadley had taught us that day. Mama nodded but said nothing so that I wondered if the topic held no interest for her. But the following evening, she told me she had a surprise. In the sporting goods store near Broadway Paperie, she had come across two magazines with articles on swimming. Managing to browse through them during her lunch hour, she had been impressed by the nuggets of information they contained, the descriptions of physical techniques as well as mental exercises that would most certainly be to my benefit. “See. Take a look, Ruthie.” She opened to a two-page diagram in one of the magazines. “Physiologists have studied how our bodies move best through water, secrets most swimmers don’t know. This is the newest research.” Over the next several days, I found these materials opened on the dining table when I arrived home, Mama’s reading glasses resting on one of the glossy pages to mark her place. As I washed my hands at the kitchen sink or unpacked texts and folders from my schoolbag, she would read aloud tips. But Coach Hadley had already critiqued our every move. He had shown us how to visualize our performance before we entered the water, how to dive from the starting blocks for maximum speed, how to angle our fingers and point our feet, how to roll our necks gently as we breathed, conserving motion. And for many afternoons after the cool-down, he had drilled me on my turns until I could tuck my body into a tight coil, propelling myself from the wall like an arrow.
    “Yes, Mama. I know! These are things we practice every week!” And I would rotate my arms like a windmill to show off my new expertise.
    “Oh, well then—” Mama shrugged, and the sports magazines were stacked with her other reading material on the kitchen shelf underneath the telephone. But now and then, when I mentioned some new skill I had learned in swim practice, she turned to glance at the magazines, as if she still believed they held information of