A long time ago I was fat. Walking a mere seven blocks to the casting agency where I worked rubbed the insides of my thighs raw. At my desk I’d discreetly smear Vaseline between my legs while registering a parade of hopeful, thin beauties. It seemed to me, because my head was unusually small and my body unusually big, they answered my questions slowly and carefully like I was some kind of nit-wit. I wasn’t. And fat notwithstanding, I had my share of good features. My skin was silky smooth, creamy and luscious; I could have been an ad for Oil of Olay. And my fingernails, well, they were exceptional. I took great pains with them and everyday painted them with pretty polish. When there wasn’t an audition going on, I thumbed my well-manicured thumb through women’s magazines whose advice I’d never considered, until one day a full page ad for the YMCA grabbed me. Why Not Be A Winner? Take This Month’s Challenge! Join Today! I was savvy about ads and rarely influenced by them, but something about this one, the idea of being a winner, must have appealed to the loser in me.
The Carmine Y wasn’t far from my SoHo office so I dashed over there on my lunch hour. The bulletin board posted photos of monthly winners climbing stair masters or lifting weights and little conversation bubbles over their heads touted success: I climbed 1000 floors! I lifted a subway car! The newest challenge, Swim Around Manhattan! was about to begin. 28.5 miles of swimming in the pool.
I signed up. The sweet skinny girl at the desk said, “You can do it. It’s less than a mile a day. I’m sure you can.”
A feeling a certainty washed over me. I knew I was up to the challenge. I knew I would swim around Manhattan.
Back at work I told my boss I was taking the month off. Just like that. I said my husband Harold showed up with cruise tickets for a second honeymoon. Harold would have never done that but I liked her thinking he would. Harold hated to travel. Harold hated change.
That evening I told Harold my plan and, no big surprise, he was totally against it. He insisted I stay working. But I refused. He said I didn’t have time and we didn’t have money for such nonsense. I said I had nothing but time, and it was a paid vacation He said he didn’t want me wandering around all day. I suspected then, he had someone on the side and thought my being on the loose might inconvenience him. Harold was a short man with a paunch below and a bulge above his belt. His expression was so pinched that he always looked to me as if he’d just sniffed at dirty socks. I was no longer attracted to him, but I knew someone else might be, stranger things had happened. Sometimes I wondered why we stayed together. But we were used to each other and we had a great apartment. Harold had his good side too. He was a great cook. Most of all he loved to cook fish. He loved to cook it and eat it and he loved, although I didn’t know it at the time, Mei Ling, the fish monger in her stall, one block off Canal Street.
That night, after we’d reached a stalemate, Harold served a Salmon en Croute with potatoes au gratin and swiss chard hollandaise.
“Eat up,” he said, encouraging fatness, “Eat up!”
The next day I bought a swimming suit without a skirt. My fat bulged from the legs, over the top and even through the crisscrossed straps on the back. I wanted to crack the three-way mirror and throw the stupid suit in the trash but instead I bought it and marched to the Y.
I’d come at the wrong time. There was only one lane open for lap swimmers and the rest of the pool thronged with screaming, splashing kids. I swam anyway. A gang of boys leaped and dove like dolphins alongside me and laughed at my flabby flesh. I was a monster. A giant jellyfish squished into a skimpy suit. After 4 laps I was not only humiliated but exhausted. I couldn’t imagine a mile, but still, I went back the next day, and the day after that.
My feet itched. I bought flip flops to protect them from the fungus but the itching kept on. I discovered the harder I kicked the less they itched so I kicked harder. The pool was over chlorinated and burned my eyes. I tried goggles but after a week felt confined and threw them away. Oddly enough I saw more clearly without them.
My feet stopped itching. My eyes stopped burning. My breathing, which in the beginning was gasping and ragged became smooth and easy. Within a week I could swim a mile without stopping. I could swim underwater an entire length. I got stronger. I got thinner. I stopped jiggling.
I was born with a slight web on my fingers and toes. You had to look hard, but it was there. My digits worked and wiggled just fine but rings didn’t quite fit down to the ends of my fingers and if I separated my toes, a thin membrane spread between them. Webbing is a tremendous swimming aid.
I adored swimming. I logged mile upon mile. I went faster with every kick and pull. I savored the shimmering, ever-changing light in the pool from the sun shining through the windows. I loved watching the other swimmers, their smooth flowing bodies on either side of the lane lines. And I relished the safe satisfying feel of water sliding over me. I think I was happy for the first time in my life.
I expected to be famished, but I was never hungry. At dinner I’d nibble and poke at my food. I got thinner and thinner.
Harold was thoroughly annoyed. He didn’t want to hear about my swimming which was all I was interested in, so we rarely spoke. He told me I couldn’t hang around a pool all day. He told me to go back to work. He kept trying to get me to eat.
I loved swimming but I knew there was something more than love going on. I was changing. And some of the changes well, they were fish-like. I tried to tell Harold but he said the only change in me was that I was crazy. I told him how I swam better underwater, how I only came up for air at the end of an entire lap and that I used to come up at least 6 times. He said it was because I was in better condition. I said no one lost the kind of weight I’d lost, not so fast, not just from swimming. He said I hardly ate, and pointed to my untouched scrod. I tried to joke with him, jolly him up, told him how I was afraid I’d become the strange New York Fish Woman, how little children would stare at me and how he might make a fortune telling our story to the National Inquirer. But he wasn’t having it. He stayed sullen and silent.
I took a constant baths. I examined my skin. At the pool my skin had a bluish tinge, like the walls and floor of the pool. In the tub it was a pale, chalky white. My skin’s delightful creaminess was gone. It was rough. My nails, underneath their glossy polish, were soft. I knew it had to be the chlorine. Too much chorine. But not so much that I would quit.
One evening, while I was submerged in the tub, timing how many minutes I could hold my breath, I saw Harold through the water, blurry, gesturing and yelling. I heaved myself up.
“All you do is bathe and swim! You have to stop! Get out of that tub!”
Surprised by his outburst, I climbed out, wrapped myself in my robe and followed him. In the kitchen he demanded I eat and scooped scallop stuffing from a huge yellow fish.
“Look at this beautiful fish,” he said.
“Is it a carp?” I asked. “A giant gold-fish?” I suddenly felt sick.
“No, no! It is a Song Loon, Mei Ling says it’s a chameleon fish. Mei Ling says it changes all the time. In the Hudson it’s greenishbrown, in the air it turns pale, and now look, the Song Loon’s taken on the copper color of the pan.”
He told me Mei Ling’s nephew caught it in the river. That we were lucky. Such a rare fish. I noticed he was starting to sound a little Chinese himself. He was angry when I didn’t eat it, but it made me queasy. Lately I could only eat little fish: shrimp, shad roe and the occasional sardine.
The next day Harold and I had a huge fight. He said if I didn’t stop he would have me committed. He said I had to go back to work. He said I had to eat. I pretended to give in. I was tired of fighting so I said I would work, I would eat, I would quit swimming.
He left the house before I did, but just in case, I wore my bathing suit under my clothes. I knew if I went back to the pool Harold would smell chlorine, I was never able to wash away the bleachy smell from my skin, but if I didn’t go back I would lose the challenge. I had a perfect plan. I would swim in the river and still report my miles to the Y. I would really swim around Manhattan.
I walked to Battery Park, and there, where the Staten Island Ferry docks and the two rivers meet, I slipped off my sandals and took off my clothes. I looked up at the bright white sun, opaque in the morning haze, looked down into the river, took my deepest breath, rose on my toes and dove.
Sweet, cool water flowed over me. I headed east along the shore line and as I swam I thought, why rise to the surface, why breathe? Water is all I need, and although something within me screamed no, I gulped and swallowed. Water streamed into my lungs, I braced for icy pain, but there was none. There was only air and breath and strength. I could breathe! I swam on. My arms fell away, my legs fused together, and my suit, silly suit, slipped away. My naked skin sprouted green golden scales. I closed my lidless eyes and could see! Hundreds of fish surrounded me, beautiful and free. Then right before me a minnow flashed. Food, I thought, feeling hunger like never before. I needed food for fuel, not pleasure, not comfort; I only needed food to swim. I chased the spinning, sparkling minnow , lunged and struck. Sharp metal hooked my mouth. I was caught, pulled up hard. Frantic, I pulled back, swimming away, then was jerked again towards shore. I swam side to side but was yanked in, tugged up and up, and as I broke the surface I saw them. The boy with the pole. The man holding the woman’s hand and the woman pointing, crying out, “Harold! Song Loon, Song Loon!” I leaped high in the air, splashed down, rose again. I twisted, jerked hard and tore myself free.
I dove deep, turned away from the shore, and laughing as only a fish can laugh, looped Manhattan then swam to the sea. 
This article appears in January 31 • 2003.