“I guess,” my brother said.
“You guess. Well, OK, then get ready.” Chris ran around the pool and jumped on the diving board. He lifted both of his hands to the sky and yelled, “For the Gainer!”
My brother and I stayed close to each other. The sun shone on Chris, who with his arms raised looked like one of our dad’s old softball trophies, now boxed away in the dark part of his basement. We watched Chris unbutton his fly and drop his jeans. It was the first time I had seen boxer shorts in person. They were as white as his body, and I felt like I should look away, but I didn’t. I was eager to see the move, to be there when the secret was revealed.
Chris stepped to the edge of the board and rubbed his hands together. A V of birds glided the sky, calling out to one another. Chris took a step back and raised his arms like he was holding a rifle. He mock-shot each bird, one after another, pow! bursting from his lips.
“Don’t want them telling their little bird buddies, do we?” he said, and laughed. He stepped to the edge again. “OK,” he said, and took a deep breath. “Here we go.”
I grabbed my brother’s arm, and we watched as Chris bounced once on the board and sprang into the air in a motion we had never seen before. He jumped forward but did a backflip, his body somehow upright as he entered the water. There was a big splash. When it died my brother and I looked at each other like what was that. I wanted to say that that was the most amazing thing I had ever seen.
A large fly drummed my ear as we stood by the shallow end, waiting for Chris to pop up. After a few seconds, we started to worry. Maybe that super move had taken everything Chris had. Maybe he was a goner.
My brother fast walked to the deep end. He got up on the diving board and peered into the water below. The trees shook. My brother looked at me like he was about to do something he didn’t want to do.
“Don’t,” I said.
“He needs help,” my brother said, and did a few baby bounces on the board.
“Please don’t.” I had to pee again, even though I just went.
“I’ll be right back.” He put his arms out to the side, ready to dive. But as he took the final step to the board’s edge, Chris’s head popped up. He shot water from his mouth like a fountain and turned to my brother.
“You ready to try it?” he said, as if nothing had happened. He swam to the side and got out of the pool, his soaked shorts nearly see-through.
“I can’t do that,” my brother said.
“Sure you can. You can do anything, my man, because you’ve got me for a teacher.”
“What about the tattoo?”
“Forget the tattoo. This is bigger than that. You get this down, nobody will mess with you. Can’t you see that?” My brother appeared unconvinced. “Fine,” Chris said. “Come here.” My brother walked away from me and stood next to Chris, who put his hand on my brother’s shoulder and whispered something into his ear. I watched my brother’s face change, saw him smile. Chris pulled away and my brother nodded. If a stranger were to drive by, they might think the two were father and son.
“Now,” Chris said, “are you ready to try it?” Chris patted him on the butt. “OK, then get on up there.”
My brother hopped on the board. I jumped into the shallow end, to get a better view, and because I was cold and felt far away.
“You’re not going to master it in one day,” Chris said, “but that’s OK. We got all the time in the world, my man. None of us are going anywhere.”
* * *
Our mother never came to the pool. The rest of that day my brother worked on learning the Gainer. Well, Chris made him work on the front dive first. He said my brother had to crawl before he could walk, which meant he had to dive before he could flip. I watched from the border of the shallow and the deep, and throughout the day, stepped closer and closer to where my toes could no longer touch.
On our way home, my brother and I walked side by side. My towel was wrapped around me like a skirt. My brother’s hung on his shoulders like he was a prizefighter.
“Did he tell you what the tattoo meant?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Will you tell me?”
“Maybe.”
“Did he tell you not to tell me?”
“No, he didn’t.”
“Tell me.” I had stopped but my brother kept walking. He was almost at our building’s pea-green door.
“OK,” he said. “But you can’t tell Mom.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Or Dad. Not about Chris, either. That’s part of it.”
“I won’t.”
“And you have to make me a sandwich.”
“OK.” My brother waved me to the door. He cupped my ear and whispered what the tattoo meant, but I didn’t know what that word was. I asked him to explain. He stood up straighter. He said, “You’ll understand when you’re older.”
two
I DON’T THINK he knew either. I don’t think my brother knew what the tattoo meant. But we agreed not to tell our mother about Chris. So I couldn’t ask her. When questioned at dinner, over a plate of beans and toast, how was the pool, my brother said “fun” and “good.” I bathed my toast in baked beans and kept my mouth shut. I thought someday I would be able to lie to my mother, but in the meantime I was glad I had a brother.
The next few days our mother said the weather was bad and unsuitable for the pool. At night, on the local channels, our county was displayed on a small map at the bottom right corner of the screen. We were warned about severe thunderstorms, flash flooding, and told to watch out for the occasional tornado. My mother would stare out our sliding glass door, which led to our small third-floor patio, and say, “Bad weather,” like the weather had purposely done something wrong, broken some rule. This happened so much that week I started to get mad at the weather with my mother. We would boo the weatherwoman when she gave us bad news. And when she dared show her face the day after a mistaken forecast, we pointed our fingers at the TV and said, “You’ve got some nerve.”
* * *
My mother had to work the last night of that bad weather run. She ordered us to stay in and lock the doors. We’re under a tornado watch the entire night, she said, so no going outside. After she left, I took her spot at the glass door and whispered, “This is bad. This is bad.” I tried to make my voice sound like my mother’s, but I actually liked it when there was a big flash of lightning. When, if I was looking in the right direction, the world shined a brief light on the pool.
My brother came out of our room for a big bowl of cereal. He poured what had to be half the box into a large Tupperware bowl. He opened the fridge but I already knew we were out of milk. “Did you drink the last of the milk?” he said.
I was staring out our sliding glass door, thinking of Chris and watching the rain beat the glass in sheets. “You did,” I said. “You and your huge bowls.”
My brother came to the door and stood by me. We stared at the darkness together. “Make us some milk,” he said.
“No,” I said. “You do it.”
I hated mixing the milk. My mother never said we were poor, now that we were living alone in this apartment, in this part of the city, but certain situations said it for her. Whenever we couldn’t do something it was because there wasn’t the money. And when at school I remarked that the milk in the carton tasted better than the stuff I had to mix at home, I got looks.
“What if I pitch to you tomorrow?” my brother said.
“You won’t.”
“I will. I swear.”
I didn’t answer him. My brother was always promising things, things that rarely came true, and used those promises to get what he wanted.
“Fine,” I said. “But you also have to teach me the Gainer, once Chris teaches you.”