The Damage That White Onlookers Inflict

One summer when I was about 7, a white girl almost drowned me.

We were splashing around in Lake Winnepocket on a sunny afternoon. The lake was crowded as usual, and Kelly—as I will call her—offered to carry me out to the big rock. The big rock was about 25 feet from the shore, and served as a marker for where the lake bed took a sharp dip and got dangerously deep. Most of the younger kids who swam at Winnepocket knew not to go past that rock, whether they could swim or not. I didn’t know how to swim, but I loved