I got a nose bleed at Aldi this week, and I thought of Gina.
Gina and I were on a club swim team together in fourth grade. Gina swam the backstroke. I swam the breaststroke. When we’d practice, she’d swim in front of me, her feet churning out froth that tickled my forehead. Like swimming through freezing cold pasta water on a simmer.
“Stop chasing me,” she said once, when we got to the pool wall.
“I’m not,” I said, picking off my goggles and rubbing out the fog. Both of us were breathing heavy.
“Don’t chase me. You’re too close to my feet.” She pushed back off the wall, feet pounding the water.
I pushed off a few seconds after.
She could see me, if she craned her neck, as her arms flew over the top of her head in a rhythmic left, right, left, right. I saw her like a stop motion picture, just a second at a time, each time my head would push up through the surface tension and I would catch a breath. The world outside would swoop back in—sounds and lights in one big rush—then disappear again as I would duck back into the water to glide into my next stroke—
WHAM!
Sounds and lights and pain rushed in with the outside world as I came up for air, just feet from the far wall of the pool. Gina swam by me on the return side of the lane—left, right, left, right—and I realized what had just hit me in the face, what was causing the lights of the pool to dance around me in time with purple-black spots was a foot. Gina’s strong pasta-water-simmering-foot. Right to my nose.
The line of fourth grade and fifth grade swimmers behind me were trying to pass me. Some of them pulled their swim-capped heads from the water to glare with their froggy goggle eyes.
Keep swimming. I pushed blindly off the wall.
Keep swimming. I could barely stand the feeling of the water against my nose.
I didn’t recognize the pool through the hazy view my eyes reported. Like a dutch angle in a movie, but blurrier. And with more pain and pressure between my eyes that I’d ever felt before.
Listen, in fourth grade, I ran from pain. Sprinted from it. I was a fourth grade pacifist who chose swimming because it seemed like the least contact sport where I could peacefully exist in my head for two hours of exercise—oh, and no sweating was a bonus. Now here I was, sweating after a kick to the face, wondering if Gina knew she kicked off of my skull instead of the wall. Wondering if I even had the will to tell her after she’d warned me I was too close.
I can’t remember how I made it to the other side of the pool. I squeezed myself into the corner of the lane and had to excavate my goggles from inside of my face. They came off with a sickening pop. Some of the pressure released. My nose was already starting to swell.
Carefully, I tapped the back of my hand to my nose. It hurt to touch, but there was more snot than blood. Tenatively, I leaned over the pool grate and blew.
“Gabbie—you good?” Coach Bri asked. The coach that told me I’d love being an adult, because then you can go home at five and kick off your underwear and bra and not have to put either on again until the next day.
I panicked. Telling the coach seemed suddenly like the worst idea I could have. Because telling her meant that I was admitting I was hurt, and admitting I was hurt would get Gina in trouble, and she’d warned me.
But just standing in the lane would get me in trouble too. And Gina was coming back to the wall. If she saw me standing there, she’d ask if I was okay. If she asked if I was okay, I would probably cry.
And that would be terrible.
I shakily put my goggles back on. They slipped right back into the divots from where Gina’s foot sunk them into my cheekbones. Suddenly, the nosepiece holding the lenses together was far too small for the growing size of my nose. My head pounded.
I slipped back under the pasta water and joined the never-ending loop of swimming fourth graders, around and around in our lane.
Gina’s married now. That’s how most of my stories end these days. I’d never met another Gina after her, either.
Except when my old broken nose started gushing blood, and I held my grocery list up to my nostrils to try and staunch it, panicking, because asking someone for help suddenly seemed like the worst idea I could have, an Aldi worker stopped stacking boxes and looked at me.
“Oh no! I get nosebleeds all the time. Hang on!” she said.
Before I could start protesting that I was fine, she was back with a tissue bag.
“Here,” she said.
I gingerly swapped my soggy grocery list for the tissues.
“Thank you, I’m so sorry,” I said, words tripping over each other. “That doesn’t usually happen to me.” And there was more snot than blood anyway.
But she’d given me a tissue, even when I hadn’t wanted to asked for help. Because I was an adult, and while I found Coach Bri’s reasoning for why I’d love being an adult still strange, I did love that most days I could get through an Aldi trip without crying or bleeding all over their floors or asking for help.
How many times can you ignore the same life lesson when it literally hits you in the face?
But no kidding, when I finally looked up, guess what her name was?
Mary.
But still.
I thought of Gina.
Gabrielle Eisma graduated Calvin with a BFA in studio art and writing in 2022. She’s from Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she now works as a writer and illustrator for books for (mostly) children and middle grade readers.
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I loved this post! Have to admit to my emotions as I felt I was the one in the pool swimming. Not just 4th grader emotions, we all have had these feelings. Thanks for sharing your experience
forth grade pacifist sounds like a great band name