Swimmer’s Ear
Emma Burton
Eleanor pulled the water to either side of her body as though it were a curtain, then kicked her legs like a frog’s to propel her through. The heated water felt like an embrace over every part of her body. It supported her from below and surrounded her on either side. She breast-stroked to one side of the pool, then back, then there and back and there and back and there and back again until she’d exhausted her limbs sufficiently and it was almost time to pick her daughter up from school. Before she left, she heaved herself out of the water and dripped over to the other side of the pool where they kept the medicine balls and where the water was deep enough for the divers to slice into the water from their lofty platform above. As she walked around, she passed and observed a younger mother sitting with her toddler in the baby pool adjacent to the big pool. The toddler, with his floaties constricting his chubby arms, splashed his mother, and his mother splashed him back, and they both laughed. They continued for as long as Eleanor watched them, splashing and laughing. When she reached the other side, Eleanor lifted a dark blue ten-pound ball from its mesh enclosure on the pool deck where it sat clustered together with other balls of various weights and jewel-toned hues. She held the weight close to her chest with both hands, then jumped into the pool, letting the ball sink her until her feet collided with the bottom. Her ears strained under the pressure so she released the weight and fluttered back to the surface. On her way to retrieve it, she equalized the pressure in her ears by plugging her nose and blowing out until she felt a satisfying pop. She pulled the medicine ball to her chest again, already aware of her shortness of breath and the weight of the ball which seemed to have tripled five meters underwater. She kicked against its heaviness, feeling her quads burn as she gradually rose to the top and took in a humid lungful of air. She dropped and retrieved and dropped and retrieved and dropped and retrieved the ball until she feared she wouldn’t be able to make it to the surface another time and it really was time to fetch her daughter from school. In the pickup line at her daughter’s school, Eleanor edged her car forward as mothers and fathers collected their kids. She felt her hair drip down the nape of her neck from her wet bun, sticking the thin fabric of her shirt to her upper back. A wet ringing sound started in her right ear, then intensified, then stopped. It felt as though it had plugged itself with water, like someone had run a faucet into the ear until it was full, then turned the water off. Eleanor could not hear more than muffled voices from her right ear, and when she covered her left ear, it sounded as though she was obscuring her hearing in both. She pulled on her earlobe and shook her head to one side. The car behind her beeped to tell her to move forward in line. She spotted her daughter, and waved while tugging at her ear with one hand. Her daughter made her way toward the car with a slow plod. Eleanor remembered when her daughter used to sprint to the car when she saw it arrive, but now Clare was eleven, in fifth grade, and no longer sprinted to the car when she saw it arrive. “Why were you late?” Clare asked Eleanor after hopping into the front seat. “I was hardly late, there’s a line of cars behind me,” Eleanor said, still tugging on her ear, passively irritated by her daughter’s tone but more preoccupied with her sudden hearing impairment. “Besides, don’t I get a hello?” “Hello.” Clare angled her body toward the window and pulled her legs into the car seat. Eleanor kept her hand at her ear as she drove. Clare looked over her shoulder at her mother. “What are you doing?” 27
