Savanna/Savannah

Bare feet slap on blacktop. Another car slows to crawl over one of the speedbumps spread throughout the neighborhood, and I step into the sweet relief of grass. The familiar smell of a papermill covers it all, and a sticky wind thickens the air.

Blue skies burn like the skin of my shoulders in the afternoon sun, no clouds at all.

Like a fortress, the pool stands on a small hill in the middle of a savanna. All approaches to the perimeter are kept free and open, the only shadows cast are from a ten foot chainlink complete with barbed wire along the top. Standing guard within the concrete oasis, a woman in her mid twenties.

Tall, muscular, and severe, she served Uncle Sam in that strange time between Saigon and Grenada. Her uniform now is a bikini that combines with her long brown ponytail to soften her lines and accentuate her femininity, but the mirrored lenses of her sunglasses convey that she is all about business.

Each summer, this oasis is hers, and she is tasked with keeping away the lions.

The pool is private. It isn't a very exclusive club: either provide proof of address within the neighborhood, or pay $50 for the season. Not a member? An all-day pass can be had for $10. Cash only. No checks. Exact change, please.

It is 1985, and Jim Crow just goes by the new name, "Member's Only."

No one ever paid, because by default, the only people who were allowed in were residents.

There is a clear division between neighborhoods. On one half of the blacktop stand sentinels of live oak and Spanish moss, and in the shade of those ancient trees, lined up like aluminum soldiers, are the trailers. On the other side of that street, with no shade to speak of, stands the perfectly-aligned concrete bunkers of public housing. This skirmish line is never crossed without consequence.

The street itself is no-man's land.

This front encompasses only one side of the roughly oval-shaped neighborhood.

For weeks at a time, I sit beneath the watchful gaze of my stepmother. She teaches me to swim; I learn about Marco and Polo and Sharks and Minnows. Uno tournaments fill the hours that aren't spent in the water or caring for it.

If I could only learn to remember shoes.

Three of five days each week, I head back to the house for varied reasons.

Blacktop reminds me of the value of shoes in the summertime.

Sunscreen, too, is an afterthought. Peeling earlobes and tender back reiterate that lions, real or imaginary, aren't the only predators at the oasis.

Hiding within the soreness is an odd comfort, though. The pain isn't so much a hurt as it is a reminder of time well spent; another day poolside and carefree.

Nearly forty years later, the fence still stands in rusted testimony to the divisions that were. No oasis exists; there is only a concrete hole filled with memories.

Those memories still make me smile each night that I lie down and sheets drape across skin slightly burned by a summer sun.