Hurt People

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ALL WE WANTED was the pool. It waited in the center of our apartment complex, sleeping beneath a blue tarp. Sometimes the wind snuck under the tarp and puffed it up as it passed, giving the pool an irregular, visible pulse.

My brother and I walked by the pool every spring day after school. This was in 1988. He would grab the gate’s bars and stare. I touched the bars too. I wanted the pool because I wanted whatever my brother wanted, whether anyone said I could have it or not.

Now it was summer. School was out, the tarp was off, and the rest was up to our mother. We asked to swim every day after Memorial Day. Our mother hadn’t said yes yet. It’s too cold, she said. I’m too tired. You just ate.

We didn’t give up.

We pressed her in every way we could. My brother was a real good arguer. A teacher once told my mother he would make a good lawyer someday, and in a city where there were more prisons than restaurants, that could be a good thing.

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