In person, Turks and Caicos looks the same as it does in pictures —
cloudless sky, sparkling sand, perfectly turquoise water — except
that, of course, the water actually moves. Before I left New York,
several people assured me that its ocean was ‘‘practically like bath-
water,’’ promising me that, in saltwater, almost anyone could fl oat;
I would barely even have to try.
From my lounge chair, I watched the waves — what looked, to
me, like a thrashing, unknowable sea — move with the same force
as water being lapped from a dog’s bowl. If I stood at the edge, the
ocean licking my ankles, I could see straight to the bottom, a gen-
erous layer of glassy light blue spread over sand. Still, I was trying
not to succumb to dread. I told myself I would get in.
I drank two complimentary mimosas — I couldn’t possibly swim
now, I had been drinking — and eavesdropped instead. My beach
neighbors were older: a couple perhaps in their 70s, pale and mostly
unmoving over the course of the morning. The husband snored the
hours away. At one point, he awoke as his wife returned from the
water, announcing, ‘‘I think it’s good for you.’’ He seemed satisfi ed.
I assumed she was talking about the weather. He stood up, grabbing
fi rst onto her arm and then onto his cane.
The two dawdled to the water’s lip while I peered at them over
my book. The husband took a few steps, turned and handed his cane
to his wife, then dove in. His head reappeared after a few moments,
and he threw his legs up and began fl oating on his back. The wife
deposited the cane back at their lounge chairs, then rejoined him
in the water.
I knew the water wasn’t that deep. Earlier that morning, two not
particularly tall French tourists swam out to show me exactly how
far you could go and still have your feet on the ground. ‘‘C’est si bon!’’
The couple was in only up to their shoulders, treading and talking. I
admired their ease in the ocean in the same wide- eyed way I admire
anyone who can do something I cannot: whistling, snapping fi ngers,
driving a car.
The husband lay happily on his back and shut his eyes in the bliss
of relaxation, spreading his arms out wide, barely moving; the wife
splashed around him. My skin burned with envy under S.P.F. 30:
They were having the time of their lives, and I was hiding under an
umbrella. I decided I would get in. Later.
ost people I know who swim learned before they could ever consider
being afraid. At 28, I didn’t have that luxury. When I asked my moth-
er why I never took swim lessons growing up, she reminded me
that I already had a serious childhood extracurricular: competitive
tap dancing. (I have a vague memory of getting into a pool during
the national championships in Las Vegas and slipping under the
surface when I tried to cast onto a fl oaty and inhaling through my
mouth. When I emerged, coughing and sputtering, I angrily, dra-
matically announced that I had just drowned.) I spent my summers
indoors, either at dance camp or vacation Bible school, where I lied
about my age in order to be in the same Bible study as my friends,
who then ratted me out for sinning. Later, in high school, I stared
down the swimming requirement to graduate but then switched
schools; in college, and beyond, no one ever asked why I never got
into the water.
Three of my four younger sisters at some point took a summer
swim class, but none of them ever really learned anything. I was
worried that we were reinforcing an ugly stereotype: that black
people, because of racism or urban flight or an inherited avoid-
ance, don’t know how to swim. Desperate, I asked my mother if
anyone in our family knew how. ‘‘Girl,’’ she said indignantly. ‘‘I
know how to swim.’’
According to her, everyone who grew up in the 1970s knew how
to swim. ‘‘We didn’t have all these distractions,’’ she said. ‘‘If there
was water, you just went into it.’’ She learned when she was 7, at the
Y.W.C.A. in New Haven, Conn., where I grew up. She described her-
self as ‘‘fearless’’ in the water — ‘‘city kids weren’t scared of nothin’ ’’
— but not enough to open her eyes when she was submerged. She
pulled her mouth away from the phone and asked her husband, who
grew up in the South, where he learned how to swim, to further her
point. He learned around the same age, also at his local Y. Later, she
texted me my great- great- grandfather’s 1917 military census, where
he self- identifi es as a good swimmer. ‘‘I just don’t know where you
went wrong,’’ she said.
Yet she hadn’t been in a pool in 15 years. She and her husband
had recently traveled to Hawaii on vacation, where she got her feet
wet, but she otherwise stayed on the beach, relaxing and making
sure her husband didn’t drown. She wasn’t scared, she insisted; she
just didn’t want to go in, listing her reasons for avoiding the water
in order: hair (she didn’t want to get it wet), weather (she prefers to
swim only when it’s extremely hot), tan (she wanted one!) and sharks
(they’re closer to shore these days, you know).
A year and a half ago, I was in Hawaii, not swimming, too. I was
run-down and exhausted, my brain the consistency of a chewed-
up eraser. A friend had told me that the water in Hawaii would be
healing. Every morning in Honolulu, I woke up at 4 a.m., bought a
coff ee and sat on the beach, watching the sunrise and the surfers,
listening to the Beach Boys’ ‘‘Pet Sounds.’’ One afternoon, I let the
water wash over my ankles and burst into tears of sudden relief.
But I never considered actually swimming — I didn’t even pack
a bathing suit.
I was the water’s groupie, shyly hanging on its outskirts, waiting
for the gumption — or invitation — to go in. Five years ago, want-
ing space to think and not fi nding enough in my three- bedroom,
three- roommate apartment to do so, I rented a house for a weekend
on Rockaway Beach, in Queens. I had never spent much time on
the beach before, but I fi gured the water might be nice. I bought a
deli hero every day and ate it while staring into Jamaica Bay. Two
years later, I convinced my old college roommates to book a trip
to Puerto Rico, where they swam in the water and I took pictures
posing next to it. A friend and I took a trip to Miami last spring,
where I — emboldened by a rum punch — entered the hotel pool
up to my knees, dancing wildly, while she stood chest deep. That
summer, I rented a houseboat in a marina on Rockaway Beach,
spending a week stalking the beach every morning, content to
watch roller skaters and burger eaters on the boardwalk, never
once considering getting in.
In December, when a reporting trip took me to Los Angeles, I
spent all my nonwork hours either walking along Venice Beach,
listening to ‘‘Pet Sounds’’ again, or at an open- air restaurant half-
way between my hotel and the beach, where I was mesmerized by
the barefoot surfers ordering chia puddings and avocado toasts,
wetsuits dripping onto the menus. I bought a collection of essaysM
P. 46 The Voyages Issue
Icon illustration by Francesco Muzzi/StoryTK