Palindromes
Anna entered my life a mystery, and left the same way. She started mid-semester of my junior year at Dixie Heights High School, 1970. Her family moved to the U.S. from Belgium. She reminded me of Audrey Hepburn, who I’d fallen in love with while watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Anna’s pale, unblemished skin looked dramatic against her black pixie haircut, her thick brows, dark eyes accentuated by eyeliner and thick mascara. I wasn’t allowed to wear makeup to school even though I complained that my eyes disappeared because of my blonde lashes. She stood out from me and the other students with our long, straight hair; and she dressed like a goth before it became popular—black body-hugging dresses that reminded me of Morticia on “The Addams Family” TV show.
She competed on our school’s swim team, winning first place in fly and breaststroke every meet to my reliable second place finish. Her bathing suit was glossy black. I couldn’t stop staring at the skeleton tat on her right bicep—a skull with large, exotic flowers blooming from ear, eye, nose, and mouth holes. Toward the semester’s end she quit the team due to rotator cup tendinitis, similar to bursitis my mother suffered from because of bowling on two different teams year-round.
In Speech Class we were assigned to give a fifteen-minute talk about ourselves, which terrified me. We also needed to prepare it as a paper, between 1500 and 2000 words. What would I say about myself for that long?
Anna’s speech began with a request that we call her Anna. Her full name was Leigh Anna Lee. She wrote it on the chalkboard in elegant, slanted cursive, the last stroke of each word a rising spiral. Tapping each word with the chalk, she said her name was almost a palindrome, “a word, line, number, or sentence reading the same backward as forward.” Palindrome, she added to the blackboard. With a graceful turn of wrist, she moved her arm back and forth, waist-level, like an ocean wave advancing and retreating.
The collar of her solid black swing dress was embroidered with white spiderwebs. Patchworked white bats cascaded along her hipline, wings stretched open—an inverse silhouette. When Anna told us she’d sewn the dress, someone snickered. Mom began teaching me to sew a year ago, but I didn’t have the confidence to wear my homemade clothes to school.
My first name was Anna, which was a perfect palindrome. If I changed my middle name, Lee, to match the spelling of Anna’s first name, Leigh, we’d be palindromes of each other—reverse twins.
Anna revealed her birthdate, 25th of September, 1952 (2591952), (seven days before mine), was a palindrome, same as her four siblings’ given names: Otto, Bob, Hannah, and Ada. She spoke in the level, self-assured tone of a seasoned actress. Mesmerized me with her precise recitation of other palindrome words. Eye, ewe, eke, gag, pop, (poop, someone behind me whispered), deed, noon, radar, refer, tenet, reviver.
In Belgium she’d lived in a city named Ghent that was 607 kilometers, equivalent to 377 miles, from the North Sea where her family visited the Nieuwpoort beaches in summer. Goosebumps rose on my arms, because there was a town in my own state of Kentucky named Ghent, fifty miles away, and one named Newport (pronounced same as Nieuwpoort) four miles away.
She told our class that Ghent, Belgium was known for its medieval monasteries dating back to the seventh century, and castles built in the 1000’s. The Ghent Belfry, a tower between St. Bavo’s Cathedral and St. Nicholas’ Church, held a fiery dragon which guarded the city. She said a canal flowed through the city, linking the Meuse and Scheldt rivers to a lake and other canals.
Anna loved to kayak. “Another palindrome,” she said. Her family’s backyard butted up against the forest that edged Doe Run Lake. “It’s an amazing feeling to paddle for a few strokes, then just glide, like you’ve slipped inside the water’s seam.” She closed her eyes, and floated her hand, as though caressing the lake’s skin.
Someone whispered, “Give me a break.”
I sat in the front row. I could see her dangling earrings—hovering bats—ready to swoop for an insect.
She hoped to one day own a racecar, “Yes, another palindrome.” Loved the music of Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane and The Doors; her favorite songs: “Purple Haze,” “Somebody to Love,” “White Rabbit,” “Break on Through,” “People are Strange,” “Touch Me.” I owned and adored the albums of those same groups.
Students called Anna belittling names, behind her back of course. After her talk, they added kook to their list of labels. I wanted to tell her I loved her speech, but never found an opportunity before our junior year ended. Rarely saw her in the halls, cafeteria, or school parking lot—as if she vanished when classes ended. Once she died, her mockers deified her.
I’ll never forget the last day I saw Anna at Beechwood Swim Club, the Thursday before Labor Day weekend. I didn’t know she belonged; had never seen her there before. I spent almost every day at the pool during summer vacation, either in swim team practice, lifesaving class, or working the concession stand. I wondered if Anna’s family had just bought a membership, and if she’d join the swim team.
My stomach fluttered when I approached her on my way to the diving board. All in black—swimsuit, sunglasses, wide brim straw hat, flipflops—she sat on a dark beach towel in an Adirondack chair. I smiled and waved, but she didn’t respond. She might have been asleep. I couldn’t tell with her extra-dark lenses. We weren’t friends. I’d never spoken more than a few words to her during a school swim meet.
Her shoulders gleamed golden with suntan lotion. A silver lizard bracelet circled her left wrist, and an exquisite new tattoo graced the bicep of the same arm: a black lizard with Jim Morrison’s face superimposed over its midsection, Lizard King inked in its spiraling tail.
I owned the Doors’ Waiting for the Sun album that contained the song “Not to Touch the Earth,” which ended with Morrison proclaiming, “I am the Lizard King, I can do anything.” A chill traveled through me.
I intended to dive off the 3-foot springboard but found myself climbing the ladder to the 10-foot, heart rate rising with each step. It wasn’t the first time I jumped off the high board, but I’d never dived off it. All summer I tried to overcome my fear of heights. I walked to the end, bounced a few times, returned to the ladder. Arms at my side, head level, I took five measured steps, swung my arms first behind, then above me, as I raised one knee to hurdle into the jump. I rose above the board, tucked chin to chest, folded myself in half to touch my toes, straightened and tightened my body, reached for the water with pointed fingers. What a rush—to break the surface, slice through cold water, push hard off the concrete bottom to burst back into air and sun.
Four days later, on the 7th of September, they pulled Anna’s body out of Doe Run Lake. Our senior year began the next day. Apparently, she went kayaking alone, which wasn’t unusual. On the local TV news interview, her parents kept repeating that their daughter was an excellent swimmer, a champion kayaker back in Belgium.
You can imagine the rumors at school, students whispering that the 7th of September, 1970 was a palindrome date. That she was born and died on a palindrome date. So what, I wanted to scream at them.
I can still see Anna sunbathing that day. When I returned to my beach towel after executing a perfect jackknife, I put on my sunglasses and turned toward her as I dried off, fifteen feet away. From the armrest of her chair, a transistor radio dangled by the strap of its leather case. I couldn’t distinguish what song played, but her lizard earrings swayed along with her shoulders, reminding me how she floated her arm in a fluid, dreamy wave during her palindrome presentation.
Toward the end of her speech, she revealed she was the youngest child, and her mother’s easiest delivery. She curled her hand closed, raised her arm, let it fall, fingers unfurling like a fern frond. “Mom said I just slid out.”
I hope Anna slipped into death the same way. Mouthing words to her favorite song as the water tucked her in.
Karen George is author of the poetry collections Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), and forthcoming Where Wind Tastes Like Pears. Her prose appears in Adirondack Review, Louisville Review, Stirring, Atticus Review, Inscape, Still: The Journal, and Hemingway Shorts Vol 6. Her website is: https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.