A New Record

by Leah Karels

The average human can survive without air for only three minutes. My waterproof Timex informs me I’ve been down here for one minute and forty-nine seconds. Today I need to break four.

Wide open behind clear goggles, my eyes scan the familiar ivory-tiled bottom of my parents’ pool. I drift, as always, in the shallow end, only three safe feet between my surface-floating body and the smooth, supportive floor. My father apparently has not cleaned for a while; scattered leaves dot the bottom, and a penny sits tails-up in my periphery.

Timex now reads two minutes, and I think back to my first experience with static apnea with an almost frightening clarity: it is my eighth birthday party, just three weeks before my family’s move from Alabama to California. Clustered in a circle on the steps of a heavily-chlorinated Holiday Inn pool, six girls in fluorescent bathing suits squeal numbers. The pool water surrounding my submerged head muffles their shrill synchronized chant. Moments before the fragile tissue of my heart feels ready to explode, I surface for a tremendous gulp of air. A gleaming grin spreads across my face as Chrissy, Mary, Lindsey and three other girls whose names I cannot now remember (though they almost surely also ended in “y”) erupt in peals of giggles.

I didn’t realize, then, the remarkable power of submerging my head and maximizing the seconds I could hold oxygen in my burning lungs. But the difficulty of making friends in a new school became intrinsically paired with the triumph of forming new records. Though I couldn’t control the callous taunts of girls in my class, I could push myself to hold out just two, three, four seconds longer in the shallow end of our new pool. I wasn’t there to stop the white Cadillac from hitting Barker on the day after Christmas, 1997, but I did work my way up to a minute and a half just two weeks after the vet suggested we put him down. For me, age thirteen meant hideous braces and unexpected pubescent weight gain, but it also meant breaking the two-minute mark. I learned how to expertly conquer the hopeless feeling of floundering in daily life with the absolute self-control of holding my breath by the steps of the pool.

Two minutes and thirty-eight seconds: I recall being fifteen and receiving a scribbled yellow slip in English class; Principal Westwick, his half-rimmed bifocals slipping down his glistening nose, stammers when I arrive in his office that he’s t-terribly sorry to have to tell me this, but he’s just received a call from my mother that my grandfather has p-passed away. I will of course be allowed to gather my belongings and leave school early today. As he speaks, I focus on his crooked tie, its knot beginning about half an inch to the right of center so that its dusky blue checks graze the pocket of his sweat-stained shirt. As Mom makes calls in the kitchen later, I drown out her cracking voice by submerging myself in the faded evening blue.

The key is to move as little as possible. Moving the body costs oxygen; remaining still is crucial. I’ve taught myself to relax muscle by muscle: toes to feet to calves, all the way up to neck and jaw and tongue.

Three minutes, four seconds: once again, it is senior year of high school. Sarah and I arrange to pull our mailboxes open at the same moment on April 1. Instead of containing the overstuffed “Welcome to Brown!” envelope hers does, my box has an implacable 4 1/8by 9 1/4white one, my name uniformly printed both on the front and the top line of the enclosed one-page letter. I throw the rejection into my trash can and practice for the rest of the afternoon.

Adam once asked me, would I rather die by drowning or burning to death? Morbid pillow talk, to be sure, but at that point we were still invincible. The idea of death floated in a distant and hazy periphery and we were instead surrounded by the safe blanket of night, he stroking my hair as I rested my head on his chest. When I wouldn’t answer, he responded to his own question: he’d heard that once a drowning person’s lungs fill with water and he passes to an unconscious state, he experiences an unimagined peacefulness for the remaining seconds of his life. That terrified me more than anything. I saw an image of a placid smile plastered on my submerged face, stars exploding behind my eyes and the trusty Timex ticking away as I floated in lazy circles around my parents’ pool.

This memory causes me to flash suddenly and inadvertently on the mascara-streaked face of Adam’s mother and the eerie serenity in her eyes as she released me from that final hug. I feel a prickling panic and almost lose focus, but do not allow myself to exhale under the water. Doing so, I’ve learned, gives momentary relief but ultimately shortens submersion time. Instead, I close my eyes and refocus on reaching four minutes.

Three minutes and thirty-seven seconds: this afternoon, immediately after leaving St. Helena’s hospital, I drive to my parents’ house. At two p.m. on a Wednesday, neither is home, so I slip through the creaky back gate and quietly strip down to my underwear, realizing for the first time that I have not changed in three days. I throw my stale jeans and wrinkled t-shirt in a pile by the shallow-end ladder. After splashing in, I begin the usual relaxed “breathe-up” inhalations and carbon-dioxide purging exhalations. Finally allowing the chlorinated surface to lovingly cup my face, I gently push into the familiar float position with relief, allowing the crushing sorrow of the morning to float similarly away into the clear backyard air.

An evolutionary mammalian diving reflex supposedly accounts for humans’ ability to hold their breath underwater longer than they can on land. Our bodies, just like those of whales and dolphins, instinctively conserve oxygen when surrounded by liquid. Heart rate drops, blood pressure rises, and circulation gets redistributed to vital organs, buying the body extra seconds. Professional divers harness this innate mechanism to push their bodies toward six, seven minutes underwater. Eventually, though, the Darwinian instinct stops helping, and even the most practiced apneist can’t prevent the brain from shutting itself down.

Three fifty-one: as my lungs swell with fire and blackness tickles the back of my eyes, I consider for the first time allowing myself to stay submerged, testing Adam’s theory to see if indeed the gentle serenity of letting go surpasses the gritty satisfaction of holding on longer than the time before. How ironic that Adam, who dreamt of ending his life in peaceful oblivion, instead spent these last weeks in excruciating consciousness. Stomach cancer, Dr. Wilkes warned us right away, was among the most painful types. Feeling Adam’s hand crushing the carpals of my own, making me gasp for air in the sterile hospital room, I did not doubt her.

Four minutes, a new record: I should at this point yank my head up, let the oxygen rush deliciously back into my lungs, stop the watch and dry off and sit next to Adam’s mom at the funeral and regain control of my life and move forward from here. But I don’t. I let myself keep floating.

A pleasant tingling begins in my toes, moves to my feet, then to my calves, eventually working its way to my neck and jaw and tongue. The Timex continues counting, but I no longer see it. My eyes, still open, are fixed on the penny dropped to the smooth bottom of my parents’ pool. A gleaming grin spreads across my face.

This is how it feels to let go.