Tarius Montayj Jones | The Ripples

The water from the swimming pool ripples gently, mimicking the onrushing high tide that is flinging itself against the shore at Surfside Beach. It is close to midnight, and the way the waves crash feels almost silent—like they do not want anyone to know it is actually happening. The ripples, you see, are alive.

~ ~

When it rains, the Duggan children will play. Rain without thunder and lightning is beautiful to us. Sometimes, when the ditches are filled high enough with rainwater, us Duggan children dive in and doggy paddle, pretending to swim, the ditch being both deep and shallow enough to allow this pretense, and still allow the non-swimmer to feel secure and that drowning is an impossibility.

Sometimes, instead of dogpaddling, we race popsicle sticks in the ditch while it still has a powerful enough stream. The popsicle sticks bounce across the little ripples of the ditch water. These ripples are gray—and show the reflections of the Duggan kids as they look into them. Sometimes, there is a reflection from the trees above. We are in the water in our reflection, so being physically inside the water must also be easy, natural.

~ ~

The ground by the basketball court is dirt that turns to mud or clay when the rain begins to fall. The Duggan kids don’t know. We do know that the rain makes the dirt area like mud and clay in The Park. The Park after the rain is clay. The clay is mud. It is too thick to swim in; it is too shallow for swimming; it is not for swimming, only imagination and play. But imagination can send each of us into the muddy, clay puddles—to the imagination of swimming.

~ ~

The reason I didn’t learn how to swim, despite the imagination, is simple. . .

There used to be a pool in the neighborhood when the country was still segregated, though segregation in Conroe, Texas, looked differently than segregation in most places. Conroe never had full-fledged segregation because the major black communities never had grocery stores, just corner stores, so shopping for groceries and clothes had always been integrated on some level.

However, the schools were segregated just like the other American schools. Conroe had two high schools: Booker T. Washington for black students and Conroe High for white students. Then, because Conroe’s segregation was structured differently, the separate but equal doctrine provided both schools with their own swimming pool, though Conroe High’s was bigger. The two races were not allowed, either legally or insinuatingly, to swim together until some point in the mid-80s. So, almost everybody knew how to swim because the opportunity wasn’t hindered during Jim Crow.

But once the schools integrated, Booker T. Washington underwent its first demotion. It became a junior high school and received little funding even though both black and white students attended the school, because it was still located in Duggan. The pool, like other black businesses, felt the merging of integration. First, it became okay to swim in some of the white pools, and some people chose to do so, abandoning the pool set aside for them during segregation. Then, that pool in Duggan, because it wasn’t being used as often and because only the neighborhood-bad-actors used it, went uncleaned. After that, the city finally drained, filled it with dirt and concrete, paved over it, and built a band building.

~ ~

The water from the segregated swimming pool bedazzles from the reflection of the sun, from the soft ripples, where colors are born and live inside a sea blue home. The ripples are windows, and in these windows, there are eyes of purple and yellow and gold and silver. The eyes yell at the Duggan children, “Jump in!” The color in the eyes, together, will protect them; the ripples will keep them afloat.

~ ~

Even though the past generations mostly learned how to swim in the neighborhood, my generation grew up without that benefit. Tall Timbers Apartments had two basketball courts but no swimming pool; Wilshire Apartments, better known as “The Bricks,” was too small for a pool area. The white apartments across town and the quality hotels had pools, but also had watchers, so sneaking into those pools was more problematic than what it was worth.

With Booker T. Washington’s pool no longer a factor, that left the YMCA, who charged one fee to get in and a separate fee for anyone looking to swim. Some of the neighborhood kids would sneak in by climbing the fence when the lifeguards weren’t looking, but the two times I tried I got caught.

So, that left the Motel 6, which was the only motel that didn’t consistently check who was in their pool—you know, if the kids diving in were actually connected to any motel customers. 

One weekend, my cousins Lante and Robert, my friend Mike, and myself, met up at Reginald Jefferson’s house over on the backstreet of Avenue E. We were still ten and eleven, and Reginald Jefferson was about thirteen or fourteen. Looking like a small band, we marched to the Motel 6—down the long stretch of Silverdale road that turned into Gladstell once we crossed the railroad tracks that separated Main Street from Duggan, then across Interstate Highway 45. On the way, Reginald Jefferson recounted to us his swimming history.

He said he had learned how to swim from his older brothers tossing him in deep water and letting him fend for himself. He mentioned how they told him that they would do it every day until he learned and would kick his ass if he told on them or cried.

When we made it to the Motel 6, the pool was empty. The ripples hadn’t been disturbed in what was still the morning. Everybody kicked off their shoes and dove in except me. I slid in the three-foot area and stayed close to the edge.

~ ~

The water from the swimming pool has a set of ripples that begin to slow down. They start a domino effect. Other ripples that once mimicked a silent crashing high tide become low tides shying away from the shore. The water stands still, and the ripples struggle to stay alive, struggle to keep the children that it beckoned with its eyes afloat.

~ ~

I looked to see Reginald Jefferson dunking Mike’s head under the water. Mike struggled to get loose. Lante and Robert, knowing Reginald Jefferson was playing, roughly, laughed. Mike asked him to stop, like saying, “Come on man,” and splashed water back at Reginald Jefferson.

I left the edge of the pool and sat in the chair. Reginald Jefferson finally decided to let Mike go, then got out of the pool and walked over to me, innocently.

“Why you get out, T?”

“The water too cold.”

Mike splashed water our way. “You play too much, Coon,” using Reginald Jefferson’s nickname that he got because his long, skinny but muscular body and skinny face, actually looked like a coon.

Reginald Jefferson asked me if I wanted to learn to swim. I had completely forgotten about the story he told us on the way, so I just stated that it was hard, and I couldn’t do it. Then he started talking about different swimming positions that he knew how to do, about how I just needed to learn to let my body float, or how I could backstroke like the Fatback song—or how I could paddle like a dog, like how we did in ditches after the rain. He stated that he’d show me. The entire time he spoke, he laughed with his words.

When I refused, he just said that I would have to learn someday and either I let him teach me or pay the YMCA all that money they were charging for swimming lessons.

I agreed to start in the three-foot area probably because it reminded me of dogpaddling in the ditch—not too deep, not too shallow. There is no other reason I can think of that led me to agree to his persuasive tactics. We walked to the edge of the pool—close to its pleasant ripples. Reginald Jefferson walked behind me, almost like a sergeant, but I didn’t think anything of it. That is why I was caught off-guard when he ducked down, grabbed me by the legs, lifted my body, and tossed me into the deep end, diving in behind me.

It happened quick—my body splashing into the pool like a stalled airplane crashing into the ocean, far away from landfall—but also in slow motion. I could feel the wind slapping my face as I cut through it from the toss. I looked up to the sky initially because that was my savior, then closed my eyes just before I hit the water in preparation of danger.

I panicked because my body seemed to immediately sink straight to the bottom. Where the fuck were those colors in those ripples that offered protection? Water rushed into my eyes, burning them, as well as rushed into my nose and ears. I imagine I was like a fish out of water in that moment, splashing and kicking and flailing my arms out of pure panic, swallowing and choking on that nasty pool water like the fish would on that nasty, polluted air. And to complete the comparison, yelling whenever I was able to get my head out of water after my feet touched the bottom and I leapt back up—or however I was able to avoid staying under every second while inside the ripples—through that panic: “Get me the fuck outta here! Get me out!”

Then it felt like waves were pushing me from side to side, up and down as my body seemed to bob in defense. I assume I kept floating to the top from bouncing on the pool’s floor, but it could have been from the fight-or-flight instinct and that I was really on the verge of swimming. I don’t think the ripples knew what to do in the presence of Reginald Jefferson. But the panic that tossed me around and made my arms wave as if I’d been sinking for days and was trying to fly my way out clouded that possibility.

“Get me the fuck out, mutha fucka!” I managed to yell again.

Panic blocked me from the simplicity of my own rescue—I could have held my breath and walked the pool’s floor into a shallow section and extricated myself from that mess.

~ ~

The ripples teach the Duggan kids about stereotypes. They understand that a generalization is when an idea of what a person, thing, idea, or place is becomes attached to that person, thing, idea, or place—much like a leech attaching itself to a host mammal.

The ripples say that stereotypes can be both positive and negative. Some of those little fuckers add to the quality of our life, to our character. Being a fast runner was a good stereotype because it meant success in our childhood games, such as tag or hide-and-go-seek. Then, some of those other little fuckers are only there to take away, to make our lives a living psychological hell—even some that tend to add to the quality of life. And that would be in the form of popularity or cool, something that the environment taught me could be gained, not just through sports or drugs, but through fighting, and fighting meant the development of and clinging to a type of mentality that defied all authority outside the household.

~ ~

That last yell, that last mutha fucka, must have had an effect on Reginald Jefferson. Some sort of signal, at least, had been registered that at least on that day, his attempt at playing swimming instructor had reached its conclusion. He transformed from the pool villain into the pool savior. It seemed my body shook—a sort of relief of being rescued—and it seemed like my brain was not fully satisfied of being saved. There was that anger at being tossed in the pool searching for where it belonged in that confusion. But momentarily, the fear produced from the experiment and the rescue held the anger back. That was for my own good—my own mind and body protecting itself. One poke in the eye or one blow to his head, and he could have found a way to extricate himself from the rescue and leave me stranded once again.

~ ~

Stereotypes often become associated as negative, even when they’re not negative. Eating watermelon, once upon a time, was turned into a Jim Crow caricature. Eating bacon, as far as the I know, wasn’t presented as a racial caricature. Why? One is healthy, the other not so much. (Side note: in one of my mother’s pregnancies, she had to eat watermelon because she couldn’t hold down regular drinking water). Then, there is the economic reason to get a group to view the eating of watermelon as negative. According to oral family history, my great-granddaddy—Daddy’s daddy—said the demonizing of watermelon hurt the business for black watermelon farmers. My great-granddaddy and great-grandmama—Big Daddy and Big Mama—used to be watermelon farmers.

The people bought into the caricature, stopped buying the watermelons from the black farmers, but started sneaking to buy the watermelon from white watermelon farmers. Not the poor white watermelon farmers, only from the big ones, the ones who control stereotypes. To them, buying from the poor white watermelon farmers was the same as buying from the black watermelon farmers.

Then, there is the demonization of criminality—granted, as children, we truly adored being labeled as criminals, depending on who did the labeling and depending on us being able to get that label by committing only petty offenses.

~ ~

Reginald Jefferson finally pulled me to the edge of the pool. I climbed out, body dripping with water, eyes still bucked from panic, heart pounding rapidly because it needed time to settle back down. I was pissed off—at him, at the pool, at the ripples, at the everything—too on edge from the murderous pool water dripping from my body to react, to exact immediate revenge.

Reginald Jefferson said that is how you learn and sought Robert’s agreement—something that came with ease because he didn’t want to be Reginald Jefferson’s next victim. Robert was still in the embryo stages of learning to swim.

Out of the pool, water dripping from my body onto the warm concrete, I didn’t say another word. The angered eyes inside my head, induced by watered fear, did the talking for me. I wanted to punch him in his nose, but my body shook inside from the experience. I managed to give him the middle finger because of the smirk plastered across his skinny little face and walked home alone.

~ ~

But then, the ripples digress—to prove a point. This isn’t about watermelon or bacon or crime or anger. No. This is about the other stereotype—the dogpaddling in a ditch—swimming.

Swimming—or the inability to swim—is one of the black stereotypes that has an ounce of truth while it also has an ounce of historical inaccuracy.

The ripples whisper to the Duggan kids about the digressions of stereotypes to show what historical oppression can do to a group. The ripples, again as high tides, this time not flinging against the Surfside shore silently, but loudly, beautifully, rhythmically, asks: Would you be able to swim if you had a Jim Crow separate but equal law blocking your chance? Would you be able to swim if, during America’s Peculiar Institution, a multitude of codes were put in place to stop you from learning life skills—even though you still learned those life skills you were legally blocked from?

~ ~

Because Reginal Jefferson was such a devious person, we never knew when he was being sincere. I just knew I would get him back in The Park later on, where the dirt and mud and clay was too shallow to allow any swimming. But when I didn’t see him at The Park for two days, I walked to his house with a baseball bat, planning in my mind that I would break his ribs with one or two or three Kirby Puckett type swings.

~ ~

There go those pesky stereotypes again. Anger. Criminalization.

~ ~

Luckily for him, he didn’t answer the door, and I wasn’t crazy enough to go inside someone else’s house to fight, though the thought did cross my mind on that first revengeful visit.

Even though I wasn’t crazy enough to rush into Reginald’s Jefferson’s house, I was crazy enough to go back about three or four more times, with my bat, over the course of the next week, early in the mornings when his mama was at work. The results were always the same—no answer. I grew frustrated. I wasn’t going to beat him silly with the bat and break his ribs anymore. Maybe one good hit in the legs or back and then pounce on him with my own fists. That was the only satisfaction for me at the time, and it eluded me, like a jackrabbit eluding a coyote.

A kid—even one from the Duggan streets—can only stay in his revenge state for so long. Pretty soon, we would all be together, at The Park playing basketball or in Tall Timbers Apartments playing Spread Eagle as if we’d never had any beef, as if the ripples swept through and made the Motel 6 event nonexistent, as if the swimming stereotype had never been tested.

~ ~

Stereotypes—such as criminalization, or anger—are ones that can kill individuality because an entire group of people is categorized as that stereotype by the ruling class or the media or the city’s district attorney or the chief of police or the school principal. Black men are often stereotyped, compressed into one person, one criminal, so that they all appear the same in the eyes of a racially driven system. Thus, the idea of invisibility is real and those who do not experience this form of invisibility, this form of stereotyping may consciously refuse to understand the ripple’s message on stereotypes.

~ ~

Reginald Jefferson never came out because that same day at the pool, he had gotten sent to juvenile for possession and delivery of a controlled substance; that is, he had sold crack cocaine—real drugs—to an undercover police officer several months before the day of the pool.

~ ~

And quietly peeking his head from beneath the thin sheets of judgment is that pesky, criminalization stereotype again . . .

~ ~

And yes, some of those pesky stereotypes usually come into fruition when they have some ounce of truth, even if this truth only relates to a small percentage. But even these truths, no matter how small a percentage, become enlarged because, even though they are usually cross-cultural, cross-racial, and definitely cross-class.

Society just isn’t run by the ones getting labels attached to them but by the ones applying labels. So, it was easy for students like my friend Carlton to be placed in ABU, whereas someone else may not have been for doing something behaviorally similar. But then, there goes that tricky shit on race again because ABU had more white kids than black. The only common factor was that none of the ABU kids came from families that appeared to have much paper money or access to influence.

~ ~

I let my revenge idea go after that, which was devastating to my young self. That person—that kid—wanted to initiate an element of pain. But, perhaps, Reginald Jefferson not answering the door was for the best. And even knowing the type of person that he was, he wasn’t the enemy on that day; my fear and embarrassment were. So, that pain that I wanted to bring to him as a kid would have still been displaced.

But more importantly, more devastatingly than letting go of revenge, I also let go of the idea of learning to swim—a life skill that had been arrested and placed in juvenile just as Reginald Jefferson had been—and, incarcerated by fear, that vital life skill would never again find its way out of the soft ripples again.

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Image: Logan Voss Unsplash remixed