Breathe and Count Back from Ten

“It’s the most awake I ever feel, and it’s like I’m dreaming.”

Natalia Sylvester introduces the way swimming affects Verónica by juxtaposing being awake and dreaming. Verónica describes how swimming clears her head and engulfs her in a trance-like calm. The sensation contrasts with the sensation of anesthesia after one of her many surgeries, when time disappears and she isn’t in control of her body.

“The way our neighbors slip Peru into every and any conversation with us, pronouncing it PAY-ru, like it’s a bouncy animal we owe money to, you’d think we’re the exotic attraction here instead of the springs down the road filled with mermaids.”

Verónica’s family experiences both subtle and overt forms of discrimination, bias, and stereotyping due to being from another country. She often feels as though others see her Peruvian ancestry as a novelty rather than a part of her family’s identity and compares the feeling of being dehumanized to being on display at the mermaid tourist attraction that exists in her city.

“I felt out of place all of a sudden, all right angles and stiffness. I wished I could be underwater, where a simple twirl made all the hardness of the earth disappear.”

Because Verónica feels at home and at ease in the water, she identifies strongly with mermaid culture. In the water, she feels weightless, she can move in different ways, and she isn’t held down by the pain of walking.