Swimsuit Scraps
The summer after my sophomore year of high school, I tanned in the sunny patch of grass behind the toolshed, where no one could see me from the house or yard. I had procured two hand-me-down bikinis from a friend, one white and one cerulean blue, and my mission was to bronze my winter-pale stomach, listening for my mom’s footsteps through the grass, arms hooked through T-shirt sleeves in case I had to cover myself quickly.
I was tanning for a pool party, where I would see a boy I liked, though it wasn’t just about the boy. I wanted to be someone else—no longer the eldest daughter to strict Catholic parents, but someone glamorous and unencumbered, like girls at school in low-rise shorts and tank tops that rode up to show a sliver of skin. Each afternoon, I reassessed the lines on my skin as they gradually grew deeper.
The pool party happened to fall on the same night as youth group. My dad agreed to let me go only on the condition that he’d pick me up from the party early and take me straight to the church basement.
I bubbled with frustration on the drive. “Can’t I miss one week?” I pleaded, but my dad wouldn’t budge.
“Be ready right at eight,” my dad said as I jumped out of his pickup.
“Fine,” I replied, though I secretly hoped that time would cease to exist and I’d never have to see my dad or youth group again.
I joined my friends, along with my crush and some upperclassmen girls, in the backyard. I stripped off my cut-offs to the white bikini underneath, forcing myself to straighten my back, self-consciously perched by the side of the pool. A feeling of fresh exposure washed over me, but after a few minutes, it felt normal to be nearly naked, freeing even.
“You look so good,” one of my friends lowered his voice to tell me. “This must be helping with…” He gestured at my crush, who was eating potato chips with upperclassmen girls and not looking in my direction.
Soon, my crush disappeared inside with a group to play Rock Band, and I stayed soaking in the hot tub and cracking up with my friends. I skimmed my toes through the surface of the water while we talked about sports and teachers, watching the foam collect and disappear. It occurred to me I should check the time, but my flip phone was on the deck and the summer seemed to unfold with possibility, the way it did whenever I was somewhere I wanted to be.
“Is that your dad?” someone said suddenly.
I looked behind me, and my stomach dropped. There he was, awkwardly tall and stoic on the lawn.
“Is it eight o’clock already?” I said, flying out of the hot tub. I felt a flash of air on my mid-section before wrapping myself in a towel and scurrying inside to change.
“Give it to me,” my dad said when I hopped into the truck, stinking of chlorine.
“I don’t have it,” I lied. “I borrowed a swimsuit from a friend because I forgot mine.” The damp fabric was crammed into the bottom of my beach bag, too valuable to surrender.
My dad was silent. He drove me to church, then picked me up two hours later. At home, he and my mom questioned who I borrowed the bikini from and why I thought it was okay.
“I didn’t mean to do anything wrong,” I pleaded. “I just wasn’t thinking.”
My parents weren’t convinced but also didn’t know how to respond, given my insistence it was a mistake. This changed the next day when my mom found the white bikini top spread across my bedroom windowsill where I’d left it to dry. My parents knew I lied.
“How can we believe anything you say?” my mom said.
“And,” my dad piped in, lines on his face pinching with disdain. “It looked like the party was just you and a bunch of boys.”
My parents grounded me for the rest of June and most of July, and I sunk to my knees on the kitchen floor. My dad lectured about trust and how it couldn’t be regained, while I hardly listened, thinking only, don’t make me stay inside all summer, three precious months fading fast from view.
Later, my dad took me to confession, and my mom sat me in front of the computer to watch YouTube videos about how the male brain perceives female bodies. On Sunday, my grandma patted my shoulder in the church pews. “I know you won’t do it again,” she said as tears spilled from my eyes.
I’d been careless about getting caught but couldn’t deal with the aftermath, the worst of which was the perception of me as some kind of out-of-control teenager. I couldn’t stand my dad’s hard frown across the dinner table and the way my mom seemed to shuffle past me with disgust in common areas. I resented being the bad kid when all I’d done was wear the same kind of bathing suit as every other girl I knew.
So I came up with a plan. Somehow, I still had both swimsuits in my possession, so I took the blue one, my least favorite of the two, and chopped the fabric with scissors. I shredded the pieces smaller and added clippings from white spandex underwear, hoping my parents wouldn’t notice this was an entirely different suit.
I collected the shards into a plastic bag and approached my mom with my best downturned remorseful expression.
“I can’t believe I ever wore this,” I said, dropping the bag of blue scraps in her lap with feigned repulsion. The white bikini was safe in my drawer for later use.
At first, my mom was confused. I tried not to squirm when she ran her fingers through the jagged scraps, but she didn’t seem to register anything amiss. She gave me a long hug and rubbed my back. “It was just one mistake,” she said. We both got misty eyed, and I almost forgot the moment wasn’t real. My mom brought the scraps to my dad in the TV room, and I heard his tone soften in surprise.
I went back to my room, turned on the radio, and called my most trusted friend, the one who gave me the bikinis. “I’m an evil genius,” I whispered, passing the story off as hilarious, how easily I fooled my parents. “Whoa,” my friend said. Her reaction was more stunned than giddy. “They gave me no choice,” I said.
We got off the phone, and I sat on the carpet for a long time. I hadn’t felt guilty about wearing the swimsuit, but now I couldn’t shake the feeling I’d done something bad. The false apologetic gesture was more manipulation than I should have been capable of. I’d carried it out so callously, no hesitation. Maybe I was an out-of-control teenager.
Swallowing my guilt, I spent the coming weeks sulking around the house as I served my punishment. I did my chores and participated in household banter as my parents watched with approval. I spent lazy afternoons barefoot at the edge of the driveway, talking to friends who rode by on their bikes. The sun beckoned high and bright in the sky. It wouldn’t be long before I retrieved the white bikini from its hiding place and resumed my post behind the toolshed again.
LIZZIE LAWSON is a writer from Minneapolis, MN, with fiction and essays in The Rumpus, The Sun, Wigleaf, Passages North, Redivider, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and more. She received an MFA in creative writing from The Ohio State University and currently teaches at Augsburg University and The Loft Literary Center. She can be found on social media (@lizziemlawson) and at lizzielawson.com.
ANNA KIRBY is a community college English instructor living in North Carolina, USA. Her collages have been selected for juried exhibitions across the country.
