Will Power
Caitlin
sat in the moving car and tried to imagine the color blue.
Light blue, shining and deep, like the clear water of a
swimming pool. Caitlin tried hard. She knew she should be
able to remember what things looked like. She had only been
blind for two months, and she had been able to see for twelve
years. In her mind she could picture the green of the hills
around her home. She could imagine her baby sister’s
dark brown hair. But light blue, perfect water-blue, always
eluded her.
“Here we are,” her mother said. “We’re at the pool.” Today was the first day since her parents’ van had overturned on the highway that Caitlin was allowed to get back in the water. The doctors said her skull fracture had healed. Her eyes would never heal. She would never see again.
Caitlin opened the car door and waited for her mother to come get her. She held her mother’s arm while they climbed the steps to the pool entrance. In the locker room she could hear whispers from the other girls.
“She was the best junior swimmer in the country.”
“Everyone said she would be in the Olympics for sure.”
Caitlin pretended she didn’t hear. The Olympics were all she’d dreamed about. At the last Junior Nationals she’d won five gold medals. She had planned to move up to the Seniors this year—until the van skidded out of control.
“Hey, Caitie!” A sudden touch on her shoulder made her jump. “Sorry,” the voice said awkwardly.
“It’s OK,” Caitlin said. “You just startled me.”
“It’s Jenny,” the voice said.
“I know. I recognized you.”
Jenny was the second-best swimmer on the Junior team. She swam breaststroke faster than Caitlin. Now, Caitlin realized, Jenny swam everything faster.
“I just wanted to say good luck,” Jenny said.
“Thanks.” Caitlin wondered why no one else had spoken to her. She and Jenny had never been close friends.
She got into the water slowly. It lapped around her, cold and inviting. She pushed off slowly and began to swim.
Three strokes later, she hit the lane marker. She corrected her course and stroked out again. She hit the marker on the other side. She floundered and clutched the lane marker, sputtering.
She stroked out again. Hit the marker. Again. She switched to breaststroke, her least-favorite stroke. Without warning, she hit the wall hard.
Caitlin persevered. She swam six laps. They were the slowest six laps of her life. Her legs trembled from exhaustion, and her hand was swollen from banging it into the end of the pool. All around her she heard waves slapping, people shouting, her coach whistling.
She
didn’t belong here anymore.
She got out of the pool and stood until her mother came to help her. “It’s only your first day, Caitie,” her mother said.
Caitlin shook her head. “I can’t do this.”
After that, Caitlin stayed at home. She took physical therapy and started learning how to be independent without her vision. She learned to walk with a white cane and to read Braille. In the fall she would return to school.
She would not return to the pool. She still could not remember the color blue. She stopped trying.
Her old coach brought her a brochure on the Paralympics. He read it out loud to her. She could swim against serious athletes who were blind or physically challenged. When he left, Caitlin thought for a long time.
After getting her mom’s OK, she took her cane and walked to the bus stop on the corner. When the bus came, she asked the driver to tell her the stops. She arrived at the pool.
The girls’ locker room was empty, but Caitlin heard voices coming from the pool. She found a bench by the side of the pool and sat down. The warm smell of chlorine enveloped her. When practice was over, she asked someone to find Jenny for her.
“Hi, Caitlin. What’s up?” Jenny sat next to her. Caitlin could hear her wiping her face with a towel.
Caitlin explained her problem. “I need help from someone who can read.”
“No problem.” Caitlin thought she could hear Jenny smile.
They
took another bus to the library. Caitlin held Jenny’s
arm, which was easier than using her cane, and Jenny remembered
to tell her whenever they came to a step. Jenny led her
to the stacks and filled her arms with books. They found
a table, and Jenny began to search.
Caitlin fidgeted. She heard Jenny turn pages and sigh. She heard her open a different book.
“I could swim in the Paralympics,” Caitlin said to break the silence.
“You could,” Jenny agreed.
“I might do them anyway,” Caitlin said. “They might be fun.”
“Sure,” said Jenny.
“The only problem is,” Caitlin continued, “to swim in the Paralympics, I’d still have to swim straight.” Caitlin had decided that she could probably learn to swim straight and slow. Her question was, could she learn to swim straight and fast? As fast as she used to swim? Faster?
Jenny sighed. “I’m not finding anything here. It doesn’t look as if any blind swimmers have ever made it to the Olympics.”
Caitlin felt so disappointed she nearly cried. “I just don’t want to be the first,” she said.
“Why not?” Jenny asked. “Why does it matter?”
“It just does.” It did matter. If no one else had done it, maybe it couldn’t be done.
“Listen to this,” Jenny said. “There’s something here about a shooter—”
“A shooter?”
“Target shooting. With a rapid-fire pistol. Károly Tákacs, from Hungary, won the gold medal in 1948 and 1952. This says that before that, in the 1930s, he was the European pistol champion.”
“So?”
“So in between, his right hand got blown off by a grenade. He was right-handed. When he won the Olympics, he shot with his left hand.”
Caitlin couldn’t even write her name with her left hand. “Wow.”
“Yeah.” Jenny turned a few more pages. “Here’s another one! Equestrian—the first female dressage medalist ever, Lis Hartel from Denmark. She had polio. She couldn’t feel her legs from the knees down. She couldn’t walk.”
“But she could ride,” Caitlin said. She felt hope rising like a bubble in her chest.
“You can’t see . . . ,” Jenny said.
“But I can swim.” She could learn to swim straight and fast. She could learn where the walls were. It would be hard, but she felt ready, now, to take on the challenge.
“I’ve missed you at practice,” Jenny said. “With you around, I had someone to try to beat.”
“Now I’ll try to beat you.” Caitlin was grinning. “I’ll be at practice tomorrow.”
They put away the books. Caitlin held her friend’s arm. Outside the library, she felt the hot sun. She closed her eyes and imagined, perfectly, water-blue.
