Day 49. nonfiction

Family Story

In the summer, my family goes to my grandparents' house often. Summer in Whittier is dry, brown, and hot, too hot to even sweat. We bake, and we hang around the pool, the kids swimming and the parents pretending that just being near the Barbie blue of the water cools them down. One summer, one day stands out for me: I had just finished seventh grade, my sister, tenth.
The sun ducked behind the hill. Connie, my sister, and I reluctantly got out and laid on the still-hot grainy cement, leaving wet shadows of us. We stared at the pruney canyons in our fingers and my dad joked like he always did about throwing us in, jostling Connie and me near the edge.
I'd been thrown in before. My dad pretended to be sorry about it, and I pretended to care, making a big show of wringing out my t-shirt. But Connie was a monkey-- he'd try to throw her over and she'd hang on his arm, terrified and delighted when it worked. It was like watching stage wrestling: I cheered for both of them, and my mom half-averted her eyes, sighing, but smiling. And she wasn't just a monkey-- she was a strong monkey, a super monkey. Even after I grew six inches in two years she would seize me and swing me around, or pick me up like she was bringing the bride over the threshold, or lift me like I was jumping a fence, grabbing me around my thighs. Sometimes I liked it, and closed my eyes and flew. Most of the time it drove me batshit insane.
This time, Connie seized Dad, and for a beautiful moment we watched as his six feet two inches left the ground, and almost touched the water, and then did, and then he plunged in to his waist, and then, Connie, still on land somehow, tried to pull him out, but from her angle, it was a sideways pull, not an upwards one.
He slammed into the side of the pool. I told you she was a strong monkey.
Connie burst into tears as my dad clambered out and started placing all the items in his pockets on the pavement. Phone. Keys. Then the wallet, which in six seconds had become completely soaked through. He pulled out card after card, receipts, to-do lists, all looking like they had been lost in a flood, or in the Titanic. My grandpa went for the hair dryer.
Later we found out my dad had broken two ribs. They jangled when he laughed. For months, we heard "don't make me laugh!" whenever we were making a joke or spilling our milk or tripping down stairs. Even after his ribs had to have knitted together, he said it, a habit.