My father carried me up the stairs. I remember that. I remember him talking to me in the car, the whole way. Like some kind of music, not stopping. I closed my eyes in the backseat and clung to his voice, feeling like I was spinning, like I was on a carnival carousel, those scary painted horses at the county fair, and it was going too fast and I wanted to get off, and so I pictured my father standing at the edge, spinning past, spinning past, and I tried to get to the edge so I could jump and he could grab me, like when I was little, and we were in the lake and he was trying to teach me to swim. Reaching his arms out: Come on, you’ll make it, he said. And because he said so I closed my eyes and jumped and I didn’t drown. His hands around my rib cage in the green water, lifting me up and out into the blinding sun, holding me over his head while I spat and laughed and gasped. So we swam through the dark, in the car, with his voice like his hands, guiding me, keeping me afloat. And he promised me I wouldn’t drown and I didn’t.
