Virgin Mary Blue

by Marie Cartier

NICOLE STARED AT the blue water in the pool. It was so wet and so blue—Virgin Mary blue. It was so hot in Texas, she thought that over and over, ever since her parents moved the family to Fort Worth for her dad’s job.

They were living at the Naval Air Station. It was 1965 and they did not have air conditioning in their apartment: with its one bathroom, two parents and four kids. The heat was an animal. To escape it she played in the mud between the buildings. This was nothing like the woods of New Hampshire, but here they were and they weren’t going home—maybe ever. That’s what her mother said.

Nicole rarely saw Negro kids in New Hampshire, and she didn’t know why. She hadn’t thought about it before they moved to Texas. But being in second grade in a Texas school on the base, she’d seen Negro kids. And she’d never seen a teacher be so mean to anyone as the second grade Texas teacher was to the Negro boy in her class. She sent him out of the classroom for small stuff like standing up to tuck in his shirt, when they were all supposed to be sitting down.

Texas was hard. Texas was hot. She didn’t like it.

It was a relief to be in the pool. Dad said he finally found a pool “they could afford.” It wasn’t like going to the beach back home – but it was water. Nicole waded in the shallow end—slowly going deeper and deeper to the end where the water luxuriously lapped her chin. She closed her eyes.

Then her mother started screaming. Her parents had been lounging in chairs by the side of the pool. Both of them were now on their feet. An older white man in a T-shirt and swim trunks was yelling to two Negro girls who had joined Nicole in the pool, when she waded out of the shallow end.

He was grasping for the Negro girls with the long pool net used to lift leaves out of the pool. Nicole froze in place. Her mother was yelling, “Out of the pool, Nicole, now. All of you kids—out!”

The man kept yelling, too. “Coloreds make the water dirty. That’s it. They are not allowed. Can’t you damn kids read?” He kept chasing the Negro girls with the pool net. “I’m not cleaning this pool because they decided to get in it. They’ll leak their damn color all over the pool.”

Nicole was still frozen. She let her eyes swing to the two girls and she looked at their skin. Nothing was coming off. She started to say something, but then the pool stick knocked one of the girls, and the older girl looked at the younger one and shook her head. They waded to the ladder and climbed out, dripping clear water.

Her mother was livid. She yelled, “Out kids! Now, Nicole.” Nicole’s three sisters were already out of the pool.

“Your daughters don’t need to get out,” said the pool manager. “They are fine. They’re not gonna leak.”

Her mother turned on him, “If Negros can’t swim here, my kids can’t swim here. Are you out of your mind?”

The man was silent. Then he thumped the pool stick like a long torch, the net dripping clear water. “Suit. Yourself,” he said, explaining nothing. Nicole and the older Negro girl, who looked to be Nicole’s age, eyed each other. Nicole climbed out of the pool, and reached out to touch her. Her mother immediately pulled her back, “What are you doing?”

“Look, Ma, she is not leaking color,” Nicole said.

The Negro girl half-smiled. She rubbed her arm herself.

“She’s not, Mom,” Nicole protested. She looked at the pool guy. “She’s not.”

He cocked his head. “Y’all ain’t from around here, so I imagine it’s best for you to figure out how those of us who are from around here --do things.”

Nicole’s mother grabbed her father’s hands. “We don’t do things this way.” She looked at the Negro girls. “I’m sorry.”

The last Nicole saw of the Negro girl was of her leaving the pool with her sister—both of them wet with their towels around their shoulders—holding hands.

“Do they, Mom? Do they leak color?” Nicole asked as her parents hustled them out of the pool.

Her mother looked at her and just shook her head. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph…,” she muttered.

It would be two years later, in fourth grade in New Hampshire, when Nicole finally had a Negro friend that she could ask, “Do you leak color in the water?”

And the friend laughed. “No, that’s ridiculous. Who told you that?”

“This guy,” Nicole said. “I tried to ask my mother about it—the day she decided to leave Texas.”