The Manny Files book1 (16 page)

Belly looked out the window and forgot we were playing mushpot.

“Look, an airplane,” she said, and pointed to the sky.

“Belly’s in the mushpot,” we yelled in unison.

“No, I’m not,” she whined, then crossed her arms and stuck out her tongue.

She’s a sore loser when we play mushpot.

We pulled up to the swimming pool, and everybody who was in line for the high dive looked over toward us.

“Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand …,” blasted from the open windows of the Eurovan.

We unloaded the bags of towels and sunscreen. Belly stopped just outside of the gate and started taking off all of her clothes. Kids pointed at her and laughed. Lulu pointed to the
SWIMSUITS MUST BE WORN AT ALL TIMES
sign.

Lulu hates rule breakers.

Sarah waved to me from the end of the high dive. She did a perfect pencil drop into the water. No splash. I ran over to meet her at the ladder.

“Isn’t today the day you’re supposed to jump off of the high dive?” asked Sarah.

I had told Sarah that if I didn’t jump off of the high dive by August 16, I was never coming to the swimming pool again. I don’t know why I chose August 16, it just popped into my head and out of my mouth.

We swam all afternoon. India sat on the side and flipped through the pages of the September issue of
Vogue
magazine.
BIGGEST FALL ISSUE EVER,
it said on its cover. India marked the pages that had ensembles that she liked.

Belly slept underneath a towel next to India.

Lulu sat on the other side of the pool by a boy named Fletcher and his friends. She had told India that Fletcher was the smartest, cutest boy in her grade. She doesn’t know that India told the manny. Fletcher had freckles and a gap between his teeth when he smiled. He did really good dives off of the high dive.

I wish I had freckles.

The manny went to the concession stand to get India a Sprite. I went with him to help him carry. India sat with Belly to make sure that if she woke up, she kept her swimming suit on.

On his way to the concession stand the manny passed Lulu and Fletcher. Lulu was sprawled across the
CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES
beach towel that her friend Margo had
brought her from Washington, D.C. She sat like somebody was taking her picture, with her arms behind her, her back arched, her knees together, and her legs crossed at the ankles. She had on a two-piece swimming suit. It was her first bikini. She had gotten her first bra a few months before. It looked like a tank top to me, except it was short and had a bow on the front. It didn’t look like Mom’s bras. Mom’s bras are so big that they fit on my head like a hat.

Fletcher was lying on an old, bleached-out blue bath towel that had a hole in it. He was talking to the boy sitting on the other side of him and not to Lulu.

The manny looked at Fletcher, gave a thumbs-up sign, and said, “Wassup, dawg?”

“Nada, bro,” said Fletcher.

The manny looked at Lulu.

Lulu didn’t look back. I think she was hoping that the manny would go by without saying anything to her.

He looked at her and said, “Do you and your friends want anything from the concession stand?”

The color came back into Lulu’s face and she said, “Sprites, please.”

The manny and I came back with Sprites for Lulu and all her friends.

He said, “Catch you on the down low, homeslice,” and he winked at Lulu.

As the manny walked away, Fletcher said, “That guy’s cool. You’re so lucky, Lulu. My aunt watches us, and she never takes her hair out of curlers, even when we go out to dinner. It’s so embarrassing.”

“Yeah, he’s cool.” Lulu squirmed uncomfortably and sipped her Sprite. I could tell she didn’t mean it, but I could also tell that she was happy Fletcher was talking to her.

I said to Lulu, “You’re so mean to him and he’s so nice to you.” She glared at me, so I ran to catch up with the manny. I dropped my Sprite and it spilled all over my feet and made them sticky. I jumped in the pool to wash them off.

I didn’t want a Sprite anyway. My stomach felt just like it did the time we played baseball in PE and it was my turn to bat. I ended up hitting a foul ball that hit Mr. Rolls, our PE teacher, in the head. He had to go to the hospital to get stitches. Craig told me that I had probably killed him. We spent the rest of PE class in the library watching a film about caterpillars turning into butterflies.

I liked it, but I pretended to be bored.

Mr. Rolls had to get four stitches. My mom and dad sent him a gift certificate to a nice restaurant to say that they were sorry.

“Don’t worry about jumping off the high dive,” said Sarah. “It’s not that bad.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m just waiting for the right moment. I don’t want to wait in line.”

Really I didn’t want the line waiting behind me.

Just then the manny yelled, “We’re leaving in five minutes.”

“Guess you better do it,” said Sarah with a worried look for me.

I climbed out of the pool, and my swimsuit fell down below my equator. That’s what Uncle Max calls it when your crack shows. Lulu says that Uncle Max is childish sometimes. Mom always says he’s childlike. I pulled up my suit and thought that this was not a good start. I walked over to the line for the high dive. I hate the line for the high dive. You have to stand on the ladder with your face right next to somebody else’s bottom. I stood under Robin, my old swimming-lessons teacher. Water kept dripping from the bottom of her swimsuit onto my head.

I hoped it wasn’t pee.

She turned around and said, “Are you just
climbing up for the view, or are you really going to jump this time?”

I said, “Your swimsuit top looks a little loose. You’d better tighten it.”

She glared at me and climbed up the ladder.

It was finally her turn, and she gracefully dived from the board.

When she came up, she said, “Oh, my gosh!” and grabbed her top.

It was my turn. I climbed up onto the board and walked to the very end. Sarah was by the ladder. She looked like a toddler from that high. I looked down into the water and then back at the seven or eight people standing in line on the ladder.

They were already heckling me to go.

“Come on.”

“Don’t be a wimp.”

Robin yelled, “Hey, Keats, do you want us to bring you your dinner up there?”

I looked at the water one more time and shivered. I imagined how much a belly flop would hurt from that high up. My legs were shaking. I took my shaky legs and walked back toward the ladder. The line started to move backward to let me down.

“Keats, you can do it,” I heard the manny
yelling. He sounded like that gymnastics coach who cheered when the girl vaulted with a broken leg. The manny was standing there with his shirt on and all of our bags packed. Lulu, India, and Belly were standing next to him, looking up at me on the high dive.

Suddenly I turned around and ran as fast as I could to the end of the board. I leaped off and put my arms straight out like wings. I could feel everybody’s eyes watching me. The air felt light, and everything was in slow motion. I felt like an angel. I hit the water and got the biggest wedgie of my life, but I pulled it out before I came to the surface.

When I came up out of the water, the manny fell to his knees and ripped his shirt off. He began whipping his shirt around in circles like he was Brandi Chastain, the soccer player who had done that after her team won the Women’s World Cup. They show a clip of Brandi Chastain doing that every time there’s a women’s soccer game on television.

Sarah swam to me and told me that my jump was “fantastical
and
spectacular.”

I climbed out of the pool and could feel my ears smiling, even though I was trying to pretend that it was no big deal.

The manny carried me out to the Eurovan on top of his shoulders like I had just made the winning home run of a baseball game. The kids at the pool stood by the chain-link fence and watched us until we were inside the Eurovan.

We got into the van, and the manny’s cell phone rang. It was Mom. I tapped the manny on the shoulder and whispered, “Tell her I jumped off the high dive.” He didn’t.

They spoke quickly, and then he hung up.

“Your mom said that we should go celebrate by going out to dinner and then ice cream.”

“I scream,” said Belly, and she screamed.

Instead of ordering a vanilla cone, I ordered a banana split with whipped cream and nuts. The manny asked me to tell my jumping-off-the-diving-board story three times. By the third time I had decided that I knew I was going to jump the whole time and I just pretended to walk toward the ladder for dramatic effect.

Lulu rolled her eyes.

When we got home, I ran in to tell Grandma that I had finally jumped from the high dive. I started screaming the news even before I reached the living room.

“Grandma! You won’t believe it. I jumped …”

I ran into the living room. Uncle Max, Mom,
and Dad were sitting on the couch. Their eyes were red, and they had balled-up Kleenex in their hands.

Grandma’s big, shiny hospital bed was gone.

And so was Grandma.

I’d never been to a funeral before. Nobody that I knew had ever died. I wore my suit, the same one that I had worn out to dinner with Grandma in New York City. There was still a Balthazar matchbook in the coat pocket. I held on to it during the memorial service.

Grandma’s funeral wasn’t like the funerals that I’ve seen on television. On television people sob uncontrollably and yell, “Why? Why?” Mom watched a movie on Lifetime once where a woman threw herself onto the casket and had to be dragged away by her teenage children. The next week, in a different movie, the same woman was trying to find her kidnapped child. She had a very traumatic life. I don’t know exactly what
traumatic
means, but I think it’s what makes dark circles underneath your eyes, like the ones Mom had the first year of Belly’s life.

Instead of a casket Grandma had an urn. She had been cremated, which meant that her body had been burned, so that she was now ash. She had told Mom that she didn’t want to take up space after she died. Instead she wanted to be thrown into the wind so that she could “dance forever around the world.”

Uncle Max stood up at the service and talked about how much fun Grandma had been. He said that one time when he and Mom were little, Grandma had chased them all over the house and even outside, pretending like she was going to put them in the basement. I looked over at Mom, and she winked at me through the tears in her eyes. Uncle Max and Mom had locked Grandma out of the house and jumped for joy because they had won the game. Grandma surprised them by punching a hole through the screen door with her fist and letting herself in. They stood in disbelief, and Grandma grabbed them and tickled them until Uncle Max peed his pants.

Grandma’s canasta friends were sitting behind us. They laughed at the story. I could hear June’s chuckle turn into a cough. I turned around, and she mouthed “Hi” to me and blew her nose with an embroidered linen hanky, the kind you put in the washing machine when you’re done instead of throwing it away.

When Uncle Max was done with his story, he
came back over to sit with us. He sat next to the manny in the row in front of me. When Uncle Max sat down, the manny put his arm around him, with his hand on his shoulder. Uncle Max dropped his head into his hands, and his back started to move up and down. The manny rubbed his shoulder.

I started to cry when I saw Uncle Max cry.

Lulu held my hand.

I looked over at India, who was holding Belly on her lap. India was wearing the pearl necklace that Grandma had given her.

Three more people stood up and told funny stories about Grandma. The time she changed clothes in the back of a cab in Las Vegas. The time she ordered a pizza because there was a spider in her bathtub and she needed somebody to kill it. The time a ballpoint pen poked through her purse and she didn’t know it. She walked around the mall for an hour and a half while the pen drew a big blue spot on the back of her white pants, right on her bottom. She went around the rest of the day asking strangers, “Does this big blue dot make my butt look big?”

I didn’t know that there could be so much laughing at a funeral. Dad said it was because Grandma had laughed so much in her own life.

June got up and said that Grandma had told her that some of the happiest times of her life had been in our living room this summer.

June said, “She had everything that she wanted. A garden. Opera music. And her grandchildren.”

The manny looked back at me and smiled. His eyes were red, and I could tell that he had been crying too.

I thought about Grandma’s favorite opera,
La Bohème,
and the girl, Mimi, who died with people around her who loved her.

Grandma was like Mimi.

When all of the stories were done, Lulu played the piano and we all sang:

On the way home from the funeral service Mom held the urn with Grandma’s ashes in her lap. It was a fancy urn with gold trim and red jewels. It looked like if you rubbed it, a genie might pop out and grant wishes. I’d wish for Grandma to come back. The manny drove Uncle Max’s Honda Accord behind us. Uncle Max sat in the passenger seat, and the manny had his right arm up with his hand on the back of Uncle Max’s
head. I watched them from the back window of the Eurovan.

Grandma’s canasta friends came over to our house to eat the food that they had brought over the day before. India called it senior-citizen cuisine.

Deviled eggs. Pimento cheese sandwiches. Ambrosia.

I looked up
ambrosia
in the dictionary. It said that it was anything that looked or smelled delicious. The ambrosia that Grandma’s canasta friends brought over should be called something else. It looked like the pink stomach medicine that Dad drinks out of the bottle during tax season. It smelled like Lulu’s kiwi pectin shampoo-and-conditioner combination.