The Swap - Robyn Harding Page 0,11

dad; Gwen and her lover Janine; Vik; and my brothers, Leonard and Wayne, filling an entire row of folding chairs. My heart pounded with dread as I waited to receive my diploma. When my turn came, I would have to walk across the stage, shake hands with Principal Graph and pose for a photo. I hoped my entourage wouldn’t clap too loudly, whistle, or cheer, thus drawing attention to their numbers. I felt guilty for being ashamed of them, but I was.

And then there was the issue of my name. My full name that would be announced as I crossed the stage to receive my diploma. As the story goes, the precise moment I slid from my mother’s womb into the tepid paddling pool set up in our cluttered living room, a tiny blue bird had alighted on the windowsill.

“Look.” My mom pointed at it with a trembling hand.

My father saw it, too. “Is it a robin? A sparrow?”

If only.

The doula placed my slippery, squirming body on my mother’s chest.

“It’s a swallow,” she said. “I’ve never seen one perch on a windowsill before. They usually prefer wires or fences.”

Oh, the poignancy! They knew. They just knew. My parents considered themselves artistic, spiritual beings. They convinced themselves that calling me after this little bird was poetic, when really, it was just literal. And kind of lazy.

As a kid, I liked my name. Being named for a bird was unique. I read up on swallows, focusing on their positive attributes like their streamlined shape and their ability to fly all the way to Mexico in the winters. I ignored less-appealing factoids like the property damage caused by their habit of pooping off the edge of the mud nests they built on the side of homes and barns. (Really, this was a sign of a very clean bird, but I still didn’t like to focus on it.) Bird imagery became a personal theme, its form appliqued onto my lunch box, my backpack, and the sleeve of my denim jacket.

And then came middle school.

It was about four days into seventh grade when Kai Boyd, a short, sporty boy with a smattering of freckles across his nose (they gave his face a misleading innocence), approached me.

“Hey, Swallow.”

“Hey.”

“So . . . do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Swallow?”

Unfortunately, my naivete resulted in an honest answer. “Uh . . . yeah. Of course. Everyone does.”

“She does!” he shrieked. “She swallows!”

Maple Dunn was kind enough to explain my answer in a detailed, sexualized context. That’s when I shortened my name to Low (and, possibly, lost interest in sex). My parents were hurt by my rejection of the highly meaningful moniker they had chosen for me.

“Swallows are tiny little birds capable of great feats,” my father said. “Just like you.”

“You can’t change to please other people,” my mom added. “Do you want to live your life as a conformist?”

But I wasn’t tiny or capable of greatness. And I certainly wasn’t a conformist. (If I had been, I would have had more friends.) In the end, my parents understood my decision, but insisted on calling me Swallow when we were at home. I grudgingly allowed it. Mika Minty was now crossing the stage to a chorus of cheers from her popular friends and polite, supportive applause from her parents and brother. With the alphabetical roll call, I knew I would be next. I was prepared for the snickers and whispers. While the kids who had grown up with me already knew my full name, the others didn’t.

“Swallow Morrison.”

As I stood, a male voice rang out from behind me.

“And she does!”

There was a chorus of gasps and titters, stern looks from the school administrators on the stage. My face burned with anger and embarrassment as I moved toward our principal. All I needed now was for my multitude of parental figures to make a show of themselves, and my humiliation would be complete.

I heard a whistle—the shrill, two-fingers-in-the-mouth kind. To my knowledge, no one in my family possessed that skill. Looking into the crowd, I saw her. Freya was standing, smiling, clapping. Everyone saw her—beautiful in a summer dress topped with a jeans jacket, her blond hair gleaming in the faint glow of overhead pot lights. This cool, beautiful, stylish woman was cheering for me: tall, friendless Swallow Morrison.

“Go, Low!” she cried, and I couldn’t help but smile. I felt special, cool . . . chosen. (A month later, when we received the photo of Mr. Graph handing me my diploma, I was beaming.)

Eventually,