I stood on the edge, my outsized five-year-old head staring down at a pair of skinny white legs. My toes were wrinkled, shriveled up like used sponges sopping-wet, clinging to the floor. They wouldn’t move. No matter how much I willed them to. They were stuck to the ceramic floor. Like peanut butter to the roof of your mouth or superglue between your fingers after the art experiment you did when your mom wasn’t looking. My feet wouldn’t move, so I glared at them. Fiercely. Angrily. Move, just move, I thought. If I hadn’t been five years old and a Baptist I would have sworn. But I was both, so I only stared.

Then I looked out and saw the water. It was so deep I knew that it didn’t have a bottom. My dad was the tallest man I knew apart from Michael Jordan and he couldn’t touch the bottom. He just floated there waving his arms and quietly telling me to jump. But I knew I wouldn’t float. I’d sink straight down through his arms to the very bottom and stare up angrily at the world and die prematurely. At five years old. What a horrible way to go.