I’ll never forget my first time.
It happened in the summer of 1982. It was a hot August day in southwestern Ontario, and the cicadas had just begun their early-afternoon chorus. I was ten and a half, and sitting beside a pool.
Richard Van Dyke, our host that day, was a wealthy farmer whose solid red-brick Victorian and surrounding barns and acreage were a few miles down a gravel road from our once-white clapboard rental on the highway. Really, it was his wife Rachel who’d invited us to their new pool and who was entertaining us that day. Entertaining our mother, that is. My two brothers and I were mostly left to our own devices.
When we arrived, we were told that the four Van Dyke boys were out in the field. They were all quite a bit older than we were, and my brothers and I were such a self-contained unit that their presence or absence made little difference to the three of us.
After shyly greeting Rachel and thanking her for the invitation, I went into the pool house and changed into my new navy two-piece. Then I sat down on the toilet to pee. When I reached for the toilet paper, I noticed a needlepoint sign on the wall above the roll. It said, Welcome to our ‘ool.’ Notice there’s no ‘p’ in it. Let’s keep it that way.
I chuckled. I wiped. I washed my hands. I left the pool house and strode onto the pool deck. My brothers were already in the pool, playing a game that involved tossing quarters into the water, watching them sink to the bottom, then diving to retrieve them as fast as they could. Being the strongest swimmer of the three of us, I liked my odds of beating them. “My turn!” I shouted as I took a running dive into the deep end.
My mother and Rachel were already settled in matching lounge chairs. My mother wore a floppy hat and long floral skirt, which she pulled up to her thighs to sun her legs. Each time I came up for air, I overheard snippets of their gossip. It seemed the new minister’s daughter had a “reputation.” I heard the words “parading” and “hussy.” Then a few minutes later I emerged to hear the phrases “palliative care” and “those poor kids.” I knew they’d switched to talking about a family from church. The mother was dying of cancer. She’d been a first-grade teacher at the Christian school, and the three kids were twelve, ten, and nine, the same ages as my brothers and me.
Our coin-retrieving game was interrupted when the Van Dyke’s only daughter, a young woman of twenty-one they called Jo, came onto the pool deck with two trays of open-faced sandwiches. Ham and cheese on thick slabs of white bread, richly slathered with real butter. She set the trays on the picnic table and retreated to the house, then returned with a pitcher of pink lemonade and a tall stack of plastic Tupperware cups. My brothers and I looked at our mother, who nodded, and we got out of the pool, sat with Jo at the picnic table, and timidly helped ourselves to a sandwich and cup of lemonade.
A few minutes later, I saw Mr. Van Dyke approaching from the direction of the barn. His four boys followed him in a loose single file in order of age led by RJ, who at nineteen was already being groomed to take over the farm one day. As they came closer, a change came over Rachel and my mother: they stopped talking, patted down their skirts, sat up as straight as their lounge chairs would allow, and placed their hands in their laps. They listened and smiled with what looked like genuine interest as Mr. Van Dyke stood in front of them and described the chores they’d gotten done that morning. I took my half-eaten sandwich and cup of lemonade and sat in a chair next to my mother, listening to the cicadas buzzing nearby and to the adults’ droning talk of milk yields, gas prices, and the rain they hoped would hold off for a few more days so they could get the rest of the straw in. My brothers had also moved and were sitting cross-legged on the deck nearby, watching the bigger boys lumber towards us. Jo had disappeared, presumably back inside the house.
The Van Dyke boys looked like carbon copies of one another. Each one of them was shirtless and wore cut-off denim shorts, work boots, and grey wool socks. They were all coated in grimy sweat from a morning spent filling the barn loft with bales of straw. They fell into their places at the picnic table, devoured the sandwiches and guzzled the lemonade. The youngest, fifteen-year-old Jack, belched and I saw RJ swat him in mock punishment for his rudeness. They all wiped their grinning mouths and then rubbed their hands on their jean shorts.
My brothers were silent except for their chewing. I finished my sandwich and set my now-empty cup on the deck next to my chair. Then I drew my knees up to my chest, wrapped my arms around my shins, and watched as the three younger Van Dyke boys stood, took off their work boots and socks and cannonballed into the pool. My brothers stared at them in unconcealed awe, then set down their cups and jumped into the shallow end. They took turns swimming through each other’s legs while stealing furtive glances at the bigger boys, who were wrestling and dunking one another in the deep end.
RJ stayed where he was, leaning back in a chair opposite mine. I took him in with mild scientific curiosity. My parents were separated and it had been a few years since I’d seen a grown man in nothing but shorts, but I remembered my father’s efficient, athletic physique and nearly hairless body. RJ seemed to belong to an entirely different species. He sat with his hands clasped behind his head, revealing armpits full of dark brown hair. His broad chest and long torso were tanned and hairy and his thickly muscled legs were stretched out in front of him, the heel of one unlaced boot resting casually on the toe of the other. His denim shorts were light blue and frayed, and his legs were covered in short, curly hair.
I looked away, afraid to be caught staring, and turned instead to watch my brothers. By now the other Van Dyke boys had gotten out of the pool and toweled off and were getting their work boots back on. My brothers had taken their place in the deep end and were dunking each other. I just knew that soon one of them would end up in tears. I thought of going to them to break it up, or suggest a new game, but I stayed where I was, watching the scene unfold.
I shifted to sit cross-legged in the chair and turned my attention back to RJ. I took in his dark stubble, his sweaty brown hair, and his burnt forearms. Then I noticed that he was staring at me. He looked me up and down, and I saw his gaze settle on my small, just-budding breasts and then on my bathing suit bottom between my legs. I saw his eyes go soft, then blink several times. I saw him raise his eyebrows. I saw him lick his lips and swallow hard. I felt a warm tingling sensation in my pelvis and lower abdomen. This was a new feeling, and it confused me. At first it was not unpleasant, but then a realization came over me that I should be afraid. That I should get away. But I froze. My hands gripped the arms of the chair. I looked down and away to avert his eyes. I could not move.
Suddenly my mother leaned toward me, grabbed my knee hard, and nearly spat as she whispered, “Put your legs together and sit properly.” I felt a deep flush come over me. The heat traveled upward from my abdomen to my knotted stomach, passed through my dry throat and finally settled in my cheeks. Tears of shame burned my eyes. I wasn’t used to being singled out for reprimand by my mother and did not understand what had happened—why was she so angry at me? All I knew was that something bad had transpired and that I had caused it.
I placed my feet side-by-side on the pool deck as I’d been ordered to do. But then I stood up and walked over to the pool edge. I jumped in, swam underwater to the far corner of the deep end and came up gasping for air. The other Van Dyke males were gone, but RJ was still on the pool deck. He was standing now with his back turned to me. I could see my mother smile up at him, shielding her eyes as though from the sun. She leaned toward Rachel in that intimate way she had, said something I couldn’t hear, and then tossed her head back and laughed. As though she’d already forgotten what had just happened between us. As though she’d swatted it from her memory like an annoying buzzing insect. As though I were of no consequence. I went back under and swam to the other end of the pool. I repeated this four or five times. Still, RJ lingered, idly chatting with my mother.
By now I needed to pee. Badly. I could feel the pressure on my bladder, but I knew I must not get out of the pool and be seen “parading” in front of RJ. I thought about the needlepoint sign in the pool house, and about RJ’s armpits, his cut-off denims, his Adam’s apple, his appraising stare at my chest and my crotch. I felt my mother’s nails so sharp and shocking on my knee, heard her admonishing whisper. The heat in my pelvis returned and intensified. I just couldn’t wait another second. I felt a hot flow of urine escaping my bathing suit bottom as I emptied my bladder right there in the deep end of the Van Dyke’s ool.
At that moment, I saw RJ leave the pool deck and stalk back toward the barn. I swam to the shallow end and climbed out. I put on my baggy t-shirt, lay down on my stomach on the sun-warmed deck, and covered myself with the faded brown bathroom towel I’d brought along. I rested my cheek on my forearms and watched my brothers, who were now attempting front flips off the diving board. I had mastered those the previous summer and part of me longed to join them, to be one of them, a key element in our triad as I’d always been. But they seemed so far away as they laughed, shining and golden, there in the deep end. I felt a heaviness in my limbs, a weight I couldn’t quite name, that pinned me to the deck. I didn’t move. Instead, I lay there on my own, closed my eyes, and blocked out every sound but the buzz of the cicadas.
