The Dragonfly

The short story sketch I handed in for my creative writing class...

The Dragonfly


I hate dragonflies and every damn thing they stand for.  My grandmother used to tell me that dragonflies looked for bad kids and would sew their mouths shut while they were sleeping. I only bring this up because it reminds me of the summer these words came to life.

It is the summer of 1980 and I am ten years old. In the middle of North Carolina, it is warm enough for the swimming pool to open every Memorial Day weekend.  It doesn’t close until early September over the Labor Day weekend. Every Saturday, my mother and I hang out at the pool. While sitting at the bottom of the deep end of a swimming pool, the world is so far away and there is not a sound to be heard except for my own heartbeat. Solitary serenity is always found at the bottom of the pool. I sit at the bottom looking up, where everything is shimmering—the trees, the sky, the clouds—I sit there until my lungs betray me.  After 69 seconds of blissful serenity, life looks almost hopeful. I rise to the top, breaking the clear surface with a huge smile upon my face.

School will be out for the summer in two short weeks.  It doesn’t matter that I sit at my desk day dreaming of the swimming pool instead of doing my math work because my teacher, Mrs. Rite barely notices anybody except for “knows it all Molly” who sits up front.  She walks past my desk every day without saying a word to me.  Surely she knows that I deserve at least a smile from her because of what I endure every day with Bonnie, who has made it her mission to make my life miserable.

Our apartment complex is called The Hedge.  I affectionately call it The Edge because this is the only place where the fifth grade bullies are not. Here, I am on the edge of civilization.  In my room, in the corner behind my canopy bed I made a pillow fort to catch my fall at the end of the day.  The pillow fort is almost as relaxing as the swimming pool, and when my mother is at work, it is total bliss.  My mother forbids me to leave the apartment during the summer months when she is at work. She leaves me with a list of things to do to keep me busy.  I scrub grout, the bottom of the dishwasher where the hard water is stuck like tarter on a hard to reach tooth, I change the sheets on the beds, and I make sure a clean towel is hung for my mother’s next shower.  I hurry through these tasks so I can sneak up to the apartment complex pool. It is my gin and tonic with a twist at the end of a hard day.

Summer vacation has finally arrived. It’s the first Saturday in June.  Most Saturday’s my mother sleeps until noon.  I usually go downstairs and watch cartoons until about 11:45, and then hide in my pillow fort with a book until my mother is ready to head to the pool. On this particular Saturday, my mother is in a good mood.  Today, she is up at nine.  When she comes downstairs, she doesn’t even fuss that I am still in my PJ’s and eating a bowl of cocoa puffs.  Instead she says with a smile on her face, “You want to go get a new bathing suit?”
Shopping is really not my thing, but I accept her invitation because I know this is her way of saying she loves me.

We head to the department store with the big elevator in it and the hum of fluorescent lighting.  The store always smells like cheap leather shoes.  But maybe that’s because we always enter the store in the shoe department. We go to the children’s department first to look at their suits.  My mother allows me to pick out the bright green and orange stripped one.  She usually forbids me to pick out anything with bright colors or stripes because she says they make me look fat.  That’s probably why I like stripes. We head to the women’s department, and after an hour of her trying on suit after suit, she finally decides on the stripped red, white, and blue bikini.

We arrive back at The Edge, and we run upstairs to put our suits on.  After putting on our suits and making the normal “snacks” my mother likes to take to the pool, we are finally on our way.  I barely get my towel on the chair and flip flops off of my feet before I jump right into the deep end—always the deep end.  “Serenity at last,” I sigh.
I do my ritual bottom of the pool meditation, and rise up when my lungs can’t take anymore.  I burst through the top of the water, and after wiping the snot and water from the usual places, I look around to find my bearings.  A dragonfly spots me almost immediately and makes its move. It’s slow and purposeful at first, just buzzing around my head. I freeze at first because I suddenly remember the story my grandmother used to tell me about dragonflies.
In between the frantic bobbing up and down I’m doing, I’m secretly looking for a needle and thread.  After a few minutes, it starts thwapping my head just like Mike did all through fifth grade to whatever kid happened to be standing in front of him when we were in line going to lunch, going to recess, going to the bathroom, going anywhere.  He’d flick his middle finger off of his thumb so hard; a kid couldn’t help but cry out.

The dragonfly, weaves.  It zags.  It zigs.  It is a fifth grade bully at my pool—on a Saturday—in The Edge, my harbor.  I’m thinking to myself, “How can this insect deem me to be bad?  Sure, I sneak to the pool against my mother’s wishes.  Sure, I caught the dish towel on fire when I was attempting to make peanut butter cookies last week.  But what have I done that is so tragic that my mouth needs to be sewn shut while I am still awake?”
I dunk down to the bottom of the pool several times in an attempt to shake the dragonfly, but it is determined to get me. The bottom of the pool, my quiet sanctuary is now my prison.  Just like the lunch room. Just like the third cubicle in the library.  Just like the last stall on the right of the girl’s bathroom.  Just like my freaking life.

In insane desperation, I bolt out of the pool to a sea of laughter and run across the hot asphalt parking lot with naked feet. It’s funny what pops into thoughts in a moment of panic.  As I am running, my feet burning, I remember reading a book of facts last year that said there was a dragonfly somewhere in Australia that was clocked at flying thirty six miles per hour.  I am convinced this is true because this dragonfly is hot on my tail. This damn dragonfly is running me out of my serenity back into apartment number D. I slam the door shut, and gasp for air like that Tuesday in March when I had to run all the way to The Edge from school.  I shut my eyes in quiet reflection.  When I open them, the dragonfly is hovering in front of my face.  It has thirty thousand lenses in each eye. All sixty thousand are aimed straight at me—and in its clutches; it’s holding a needle and thread.