In Case I Lose My Footing

Billy lost a toe in the fall. They sent a letter to families before the start of swim lessons, I guess they wanted to get a head start on any questions or conversations about it. The thing is though, all they mentioned was that Billy lost a toe over the summer (his pinky toe on his left foot) but there was no mention of how it happened, or if we could talk about it. Just that it happened and Billy might be a little self conscious about it.

I suppose the letter had good intentions, but alerting a group of ten year olds to the absence of a toe only draws more attention to it. We learned nothing that first swim lesson back. If we hadn’t already been somewhat experienced, a kid might’ve drowned from being distracted. Our minds were coiled with trying to get a glimpse of the foot.

In unison we realized that the toe hadn’t come off earlier that day and had been gone for a month or two, and had been dealt with in the proper medical manner. Any hope of seeing a gaping hole or mangled flesh had been defeated by modern medical advances, namely a needle and thread. This, however, only paused our fixation. We observed Billy dive, tread, and cycle through the strokes, with no difficulty. Perhaps even, he had become a better swimmer. I think we all expected him to swim, constantly angling left. I see one boy contemplate the advantages of losing a toe, and its effect on hydrodynamics. He quickly abandons this thought.

The lesson ends and the gaggle of shivering, red eyed ten year olds shuffle to the locker room. We have entered a room of secrecy, sheltered not only from the eyes of perverts, but from earshot of adults (who frankly must all be wondering the same things as we are). We are not interested in comparing our dicks like we were last summer, nor are we interested in claiming that we did indeed have an armpit hair, but it must have come off in the pool. Instead we form a circle around Billy. A council, a jury, a deposition.

We have been waiting and so has Billy. He dries himself and prepares for the onslaught.

“How’d it happen?”

“Did it hurt?”

“Did you cry?”

“Did you have to go to the hospital?”

“Was there a lot of blood?”

And finally, a well intentioned, and overlooked question: “Where’d it go?”

This last question strikes us all as stupid, but as we ponder it for a moment, it becomes reasonable.

Billy does not wish to divulge the means in which it departed his body. He says there was a lot of blood and no he didn’t cry he’s not a baby and yeah he had to go to the hospital and they stitched it up and he can walk fine and he doesn’t wanna talk about it anymore.

Silence.

Then- “I don’t know where it went…”

Each week the questions still come, though fewer each time, and Billy keeps his vow of silence. I master the backstroke that fall, but am unable to keep my toes from curling on top of the diving board which causes them to cramp. Eventually we lose interest in Billy’s toe when we return to comparing our dicks and we all see our first uncircumcised one. Billy seems a little disappointed that his baby toe, which went to market and didn’t come back, has lost its appeal to a bit of a foreskin.

We prepare ourselves for the end of the swimming lessons and school year and the beginning of summer and the subsequent adventure of middle school. Someone with an older brother brings in some axe body spray and says it’s crucial to middle school. We nod in agreement and pass it around. We begin to walk out the door, with a wealth of knowledge in swimming, the aesthetics of dicks, and irresistible aroma.

Billy stands “It got caught in the lawnmower.”

We put our pubescent future on hold and turn to Billy.

“I was mowing the lawn and wasn’t looking and was picking something up and it took off my toe. I cried.”

We are satisfied with this admission, though we are all trying to work out just how exactly it happened.

Billy exits my daily thought very quickly as I discover the need to keep up with new trends in middle school. I learn that the piano is still cool but the cello is not, so I make a difficult choice. I learn that frenching is cool and baseball cards are not, so I make a difficult choice.

I learn that saying swears is cool and saying your prayers are not, so I make a difficult choice. In the 7th grade I have lost track of the trends and have grown my hair out and stopped washing it. The popularity I held the previous year has crumbled and I eat lunch with a girl who’s good at math and likes manga.

When my grandma is diagnosed with cancer and goes into assisted living I am tasked on weekends to mow the lawn outside her trailer. I bemoan that my social life will suffer and my father and I both know this to be false. He drops me off at the trailer while he runs some errands. Her TV still only gets 3 channels and I recall how a few years back I watched Barry Manilow on Good Morning America and decided to learn piano. There’s still a picture of John Paul II above her bed in the back of the trailer. Her fridge still only has jell-o and sunny d in it. There’s crosswords that are completely filled out, but every answer is wrong somehow.

I mow her lawn with a rusty manual mower. I watch some mullet boys go by on low rider Schwinns and a chain smoking woman with a metal detector. The blade of the lawn mower is curved and sticks at first. Once I get it going it is smooth and blades of grass nick my ankles. Soon the sounds and sights leave me and it is just me, the mower, and the trailer. There is a school dance coming up soon and I don’t want to go. At the last dance, all the girls avoided me and I left early to watch American Idol. I am consumed by the blade gliding, it is effortless and powerful. I remember how popular Billy was as I remove my shoe. I push the mower back and forth in the same spot, gaining momentum, forever marking this patch of grass as slightly more worn then the rest of the yard. I am not concerned with pain, in fact it doesn’t occur to me at all. I imagine the line of girls wanting to dance with me to that one slow Rascal Flatts song they play every dance. I don’t care that I will probably dance out of rhythm, leaning to one side. Everyone clamored to sign my cast last year and I can only imagine the crowd this will draw. I inch my foot closer when the van pulls up with pesticide for the weeds and draino for the pipes. My dad has brought burgers for us and my shoe goes back on. I skip the dance but finally cut my hair.

Months later, the day after Valentines Day, my grandma passes away. My dad tells me before driving me to school and I tell no one. There once existed a desire in me to elicit popularity through tragedy, or at least the severing of my toe, but now it rightfully escapes me. I am silent throughout the day and come home to my dad listening to the same Wilco and Billy Bragg song on repeat.

Years from now I will elicit notoriety and attention through similar melodramatic acts in the form of drunken antics, but I will keep my toes about me. A few years after that, when I get my act together, I will have forgotten how to swim but remember the importance of baseball cards. 

Devon Mello studied Written Arts at Bard College and currently lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island as a teacher.