Two Sisters, Page 2

Leah’s hands gripped the wagon sides tighter in case Brooke decided to barge her way past Sally. But then Brooke relented and faced Leah. “Miss Bossypants says we can’t take the wagon in.”

  Leah looked up from the shade of her hat and nodded. Brooke had tried. She didn’t want to get her big sister in trouble. She climbed out of the wagon with the same precocious grace as when she’d sat down, then grabbed the lunchbox and the towels and held them wrapped in her arms.

  That gear, combined with the hat, left Leah all but buried beneath stuff. Brooke grinned at the sight then bent quickly and kissed her sister’s right hand, about the only piece of her body visible. Leah giggled beneath the hat. Brooke dragged the wagon to the bike rack and parked it parallel, blocking a half-dozen spaces. She looked over her shoulder to be sure Sally was watching. She grabbed the tube and raft and returned to Leah at the gate. She took the towels from Leah’s arms then led her past Sally who glared down at the Fulcher sisters but said nothing.

  They spread their towels near the shallow end amidst other young children running about and playing with their moms watching from the shade of the pavilion. Leah sat on the first towel Brooke spread out, the one with Snow White asleep in the middle of the anxiously peering Seven Dwarfs. She crossed her legs as in the wagon and from the continued shade of her sun hat looked out onto a dazzling world of light and motion, from the glittering spray thrown up from the pool (the water itself invisible from where she sat) to the brilliant white concrete to the colorful bathing suits and towels to the children themselves, scampering about and chasing each other and gesturing with open mouths and shouts of exclamation.

  Brooke lay down on her stomach on the other towel and stretched her already long legs out the way the teenaged girls did. She wished she had a two-piece suit like those older girls and had three times put one in the shopping cart at Belk’s and three times watched as Momma returned the suit to the hanger and picked out a pink frilly one-piece that Brooke called a “baby suit,” a pun that made Leah, standing beside the cart and watching this epic battle, giggle so infectiously that Momma and her elder daughter forgot their obstinate anger and joined Leah’s laughter. Leah had that effect on people, even her family, even then.

  Brooke watched her younger sister watching the world with wide eyes and a riveted gaze. She wondered what Leah saw, wondered what it felt like to be so captivated by everything unfolding around her. Brooke could never see things with that open curiosity and fascination. She only saw what was in front of her, in the way of her goal. But Leah saw it all, and the world was always so glad to be watched by her.

  Then Brooke decided her sister needed to see the world from a new vantage point—floating and weightless out there in the middle of the pool. That area was empty this early in the day, with the kids all confined to the shallow end and the adults either watching those little kids or at work and the big kids all still asleep on their summer vacation or engaged in some secret and shadowed endeavors. Brooke liked the middle part of the pool, partly for the freedom and space it gave her and partly because it allowed her to show off her natural grace in the water. It was the one skill where she surpassed not only all those her age but also girls a good deal older (not to mention that witch Sally Milton). She’d come to consider the middle of the pool her personal domain and stage, and hung out there for hours on end—doing backstrokes and butterflies, front and backwards somersaults, underwater handstands and jackknifes, or just floating easily on her back, in silence with her ears below the waterline, immune to the world around her but surely shaping an impressive and graceful figure.

  But all that was when Momma was here, taking care of Leah. Today that was her job, and she couldn’t leave Leah alone. So she’d take her with her, introduce her to her domain, her favorite spot on earth. Leah would love it.

  She untied the raft and unrolled it on the pool apron. The bright orange plastic was soft and supple. She blew up the raft with quick, huffing breaths. Leah laughed at her cheeks puffing out and her face turning red. At one point Brooke stopped to catch her breath and said, “You want to do it?”

  Leah shook her head beneath the bonnet, looking demure and serious.

  The look made Brooke laugh and shake her head before returning to her task. When she finished she punched the raft’s taut skin in satisfaction. Then she sat up and slid off her shorts and T-shirt, trying to ignore the pink little girl’s suit that action revealed. She then sat opposite Leah and took off her sister’s flip-flops and shorts. “You want to leave on the hat and T-shirt?”

  Leah looked confused, staring first at her sister then at the tube still rolled up and tied.

  “You don’t have to get wet,” Brooke said. Though Leah always wore a bathing suit to the pool, she rarely ventured into the water. Its feeling against her skin was almost too much to process. “You can stay on the raft.”

  Leah looked doubtful.

  “I want you to feel what it’s like to float on the water. I’ll make sure you stay dry.” Brooke nodded confidently.

  Leah looked from her sister to the raft then back again.

  “Come on, Lee. Give it a try.” She stood and extended her hand.

  Leah finally reached up and took it.

  They walked together, Brooke guiding Leah with one hand and holding the raft with the other, around the edge of the pool to a spot beyond the young children playing in the shallow end. Brooke dropped both the raft and Leah’s hand and jumped into the waist-deep water. She then reached back and pulled the raft in beside her. Leah, now a head taller, stared down at her sister.

  “Come on, Lee. I’ll support you.” Brooke raised her arms toward her sister in a gesture caught between offer and insistence.

  And for once Leah didn’t hesitate. She stepped forward into those arms and beyond, out over the water.

  Brooke was caught off-guard and almost lost her balance at the sudden weight. “Whoa, Lee!” she said before steadying herself.

  Leah tucked her legs up under her torso to avoid touching the water.

  Brooke turned and held Leah over the raft, but the raft began to drift away. Brooke started to stumble after the fleeing raft. She feared she’d drop Leah in the water or bash her against the pool apron. Either way she’d betray her sister’s reckless trust. She began to fall toward the water, trying to hold her sister above it but knowing she was doomed to fail.

  But just then Leah reached out from Brooke’s arms and grabbed the raft and pulled it toward them. This allowed Brooke to drop her on the raft rather than in the water. Leah knelt in the middle of the raft, on her hands and knees. A little water sloshed onto the raft but not much. Freed of her cargo, Brooke let her body continue its fall into the water, pushing the raft out in front of her. Leah looked back over her shoulder under the straw hat, a smile on her face at the successful transfer (had it ever been in doubt?) and this new floating weightlessness. Brooke smiled back then, using the fast fading pool bottom as a springboard, launched herself in a shallow dive that took her under the raft and all the way to its front. She turned her body underwater and rose up facing backwards toward the raft. Leah was still looking over her shoulder to where Brooke had been. Brooke said, “Boo!” and tapped the raft. Leah faced forward to discover her sister, her hair wet and slick like a seal’s, floating there in front of her. Leah’s eyes grew big at the wonder and newness of it all.

  “You O.K.?” Brooke asked.

  Leah nodded.

  “You like it?”

  Leah’s broad grin was a generous affirmation.

  “Watch this,” Brooke said. She disappeared under the water and out of sight.

  Just as Leah began to feel panic, Brooke’s arm rose up out of the water to her left and her hand ringed Leah’s wrist. Then Brooke’s other arm rose from the other side of the raft and found Leah’s leg. Leah giggled at the touch before Brooke let go and surfaced on the right side.

  “Pretty good, huh?” Brooke said.

  Leah nodded.

  “Even if you can’t
see me, I’m always here,” Brooke said firmly.

  And Leah believed her.

  Brooke was beside herself in delight at having combined her two greatest passions—swimming and care for Leah. They had the center of the pool all to themselves. For Brooke at least the world began and ended right there, everything she needed; and maybe for Leah too, so happy was she to be out here with her sister. But her joy was offset by a cringe of fear every time Brooke disappeared beneath the water. Also, she started to tire of crouching on her hands and knees, wished she could maneuver into a sitting position but was afraid she’d fall off if she moved too much. Pleasure and fear alternated with each appearance then disappearance of her sister.

  Brooke in her boundless enthusiasm reeled off every aquatic maneuver she knew and several new ones. She wasn’t showing off for Leah, who couldn’t see most of her moves anyway (and had already watched them from poolside many times). No, she was just thrilled with the day and the chances it offered, impassioned in the possibilities for them both. She swam circles beneath the raft, did twirls, rolling corkscrews, walking handstands along the pool bottom.

  From that bottom she saw a shadow cross above and felt a roiling of the water, or was it the brush of a hand? She surfaced and spotted Billy Alexander, a fifth grader who teased and tormented her mercilessly,