Alice is in the Swan Pond
They’re pleased with me. I’ve done as I have been told, finally. The voices are humming
now, with a slight drumming sound in the back of my head. The water has already soaked my
hair and my back and my ankles. Finally I’ll be so beautiful. I’ll be perfect. The water is
wrapped around my tiny wrists like bracelets. Bracelets. My mother used to always wear them.
She was wearing them when she dropped me off at this clinic. I remember because they were
clanking around while she was talking and driving. “Be good, Alice” she said “And eat. You
have to eat. We’re not spending all this money to send you to this godforsaken clinic just to have
you waste away.” We pulled into the long driveway. I thought of how pretty it was here. Like a
stone castle a princess would live in, like a picture in the fairy tales I’ve read. “My god!” my
mother screeched. “Look at the time! I’m going to be late for your brother’s tournament! Here’s
your bag. Go inside. You can check yourself in. I’ll see you later.” So off I went, through those
daunting log doors.
Right now, I can see those doors. When I look over the top of my big toes I can see those
doors right through the grass. Now the water is running onto my concave tummy. It tickles me,
just the way Claire would tickle me after meal time. “It’s alright you ugly goose,”she would say.
“As long as you follow my lead you’ll be fine.” Claire is my best friend at the clinic. She’s only
a few years older than me so we stuck together like the pieces of oatmeal in our morning
porridge. She always called me her ugly goose, but after I’m beautiful, that won’t work. And I
can’t have her calling me her beautiful goose…
Moments before my eyes go under, I see the swan. It’s one of many that gather in the
swan pond. And I know right away that when I become beautiful, I’ll be like the beautiful swan.
Just like Odette in the ballet “Swan Lake”. My oldest sister Emily and I went to go see that for
my birthday. “You could be like that girl one day, Alice.” She had said, pointing at the lead
dancer. “You’ve been dancing for years now, and all of us see how good you are.” The ballet
dancers were leaping into the air, all as light as feathers. That’s when I realised that to be perfect
like those swans I had to be graceful and weightless.
That is what the voices had been trying telling me all this time, for years now. But how
was I supposed to know? How was I supposed to know that- oh, God. The water is inside of
me. It runs into my lungs, and into my stomach. For just a second I want cough and get out of
the pond. But I know I can do better than that. To transform you have to persevere. Like when
I was still at home in London with my family and I would be hungry. So hungry that for just a
second I’d want to give in and eat. But I’d persevere and run upstairs and throw myself on my
bed and hug my pillow until I fell asleep.
I do that now. I pretend that I am lying on my bed hugging my fluffy blue pillow to my
chest, and relax. I imagine what must be happening in my body. I imagine the water rushing
into my limbs. It goes into my shoulders, through my elbows, into my palms and stops in my
fingertips. I stretch out my palms to the sky to help it along. The water flows in and out of my
rib cage which protrudes from my skin. It becomes so concentrated that it could almost become
a fountain of swan water out of my belly button. Then it’s rushing down through my thighs,
rushes past my knees and down into my invisible ankles. It fills my feet, weighing them down.
Then, in a flowing grand finale, the water surges into my head. It overtakes my brain and parts
of the world around me start to lighten. Little spots amass around the sides of my world, turning
the brown, murky water around me whiter and whiter. The dots close in on my vision and then
my world and my pond and the swans disappear.
I’m flying. All of a sudden, I’m flying. I must be a swan now; I’m so high in the air.
Down below me I see my discarded human body floating just below the water’s surface. “Her
name was Alice, but now she’s just a swan.” The voices say as their goodbye. The human in
the water is not me anymore. She has a different soul. Her white hospital gown floats around
her, and her ash-blond hair encircles her head like a halo. Her blue eyes are still open, and her
ankles are linked together. Her arms are floating palm up in the water. She looks so calm and so
aware. So ready to welcome her death.