My grandmother was doing the breaststroke in the YMCA's steamy haze. Her face was cupped by water; water spread away from her. She cut onions this firmly but never with this much pleasure. Her legs extended out and she sailed, gliding.

My grandmother's eyes were open as she swam. She watched bubbles roll along her arms: tiny fish scales, blue coins, disappearing when she surfaced. Head down again, she saw her shadow on the tile below, ascended and saw herself undulating on the thin underside of the water's surface. The reflection of her arms, silver and shimmery, curved down as she reached up and through them and drew a muggy breath.

Then she was down, immersed again, pulling the water close and releasing it. She was mother of water, cradling it, father of water, abandoning it, tilting up her face for a morsel of air and then bringing her face down as if returning to a conversation.

As she swam she sometimes turned her head and watched the other swimmers glide back and forth like fish in an aquarium. She could see the headless sidestroking bodies of ladies who kept their hair dry, and the frothy wake of girls who swam with abandon. She watched their shadows on the bottom of the pool, vague as cloud-shadows. But then she noticed something strange. My grandmother skipped a breath and stayed underwater to stare. It was the shadows of their long wings that attracted her attention.

The pool was filled with angels, washed pale blue by the water's light as they glided between the black lane markers.

When my grandmother lifted her head, blinking to clear the haze from her eyes, she saw her father sitting at the edge of the pool, his feet dangling in the water. She swam to him. He leaned down and peeled the rubber bathing cap from her head and then reached for her hair and slowly unraveled the braid she had done in the locker room, without a mirror. When he finished, she sank back into the blue-gold water and her hair fanned behind her and around her, like a mass of words that are finally spoken.