A week later, with the heat still holding, I ran into Dinitia Hewitt
downtown. She had just come from the pool and had her wet hair pulled
back under a scarf. "Brother, that water felt good," she said, drawing out
the word. "good" so it sounded like it had about fifteen Os in it. "Do you
ever go swimming?"
"They don't like us to go there," I said.
Dinitia nodded, even though I hadn't explained. Then she said. "Why
don't you come swimming with us in the morning?"
By. "us" I knew she meant the other black people. The pool was not
segregated, anyone could swim at any time—technically, at least—but
the fact was that all the black people swam in the morning, when the
pool was free, and all the white people swam in the afternoon, when
admission was fifty cents. No one had planned this arrangement, and no
rules enforced it. That was just the way it was.
I surely wanted to get back in that water, but I couldn't help but feel that
if I took Dinitia up on her offer, I'd be violating some sort of taboo.
"Wouldn't anybody get mad?" I asked.
"'Cause you're white?" she asked. "Your own kind might, but we won't.
And your own kind won't be there."
The next morning I met Dinitia in front of the pool entrance, my thrift-
shop one-piece rolled inside my frayed gray towel. The white girl
clerking the entrance booth gave me a surprised look when we passed
through the gate, but she said nothing. The women's locker room was
dark and smelled of Pine-Sol, with cinder-block walls and a wet cement
floor. A soul tune was blasting out of an eight-track tape player, and all
the black women packed between the peeling wooden benches were
singing and dancing to the music.