The Sibling's the Thing (Or, Broken Bones and Unpaid Bets)

The Eye-Dancers

May 31

In The Eye-Dancers novels, siblings play a sizable role--and a dominant one in Joe Marma's case. This naturally evolved during the writing of the stories, but also it is a reflection of the siblings in my own life. As the youngest of four children, I know firsthand what it's like to share a household with multiple siblings growing up.

In my case, I am more than seven years younger than my next-oldest sibling, so there is an age gap--nothing that matters now that we're adults, but back when I was a little kid, my siblings were already in high school. They seemed like full-fledged grown-ups to me. And sometimes, they were tasked with watching me--especially when we visited the neighbors' pool across the street.

My family used to have a pool when I was too little to swim. But by the time I could actually use a pool, it was long gone. And so we'd use the pool in the backyard of the neighbors' house--kitty-corner and across the street. (In fact, these neighbors were the same family the Marmas were inspired by in The Eye-Dancers!)

I remember especially the summer I was eight years old, I would go over to their pool every day. Joe and his brother did not use the pool much, and so it was usually just me--and sometimes my brothers. My mother would often be there, too, to supervise.

But one time she tasked my brother Dave to watch me. He was outside the pool. I was the only one in the water. "Don't throw anything into the pool!" my mother had warned us before we crossed the street and I jumped into the pool. She knew I liked to play "diving catches" in the pool, where someone would throw a ball several feet away from me and I would dive to try to catch it before it hit the surface of the water. As luck would have it, that day, there was a volleyball in the neighbors' backyard, not ten feet from the pool. How could we resist?

"Dive!" Dave said, and whipped the ball just out of reach. I dived, reached for the volleyball.

Crack! My left pinky snapped back, the force of the ball rivaling a Nolan Ryan fastball.

Houston Astros Nolan Ryan pitching

"Ow!" I grabbed my finger, the pain immediate and sharp. The game ended as fast as it had begun.

I wound up with a broken pinky for the summer. My mother was not pleased.

Another time, later that same summer, once my pinky had healed enough for the cast to be removed, my other older brother, John, made a wager with me. He was in the pool with me. He knew I liked to submerge and swim underwater from one end of the pool to the other multiple times, seeing how many laps I could complete before needing to come up for air.

"I bet you ten bucks you can't make it across the pool underwater six times," he challenged. My record was four. Six was a stretch. But I accepted the challenge.

"Ten bucks?"

"Ten bucks," he reiterated. In the 1980s, to an eight-year-old, ten dollars was a fortune! I was all in.

"You're gonna owe me," I said, and dove under. I made the first two laps easily. The third was a little harder--I was starting to feel the lack of oxygen. The fourth lap--my old record--was harder still. Then the fifth--I was venturing into uncharted waters, never having stayed under this long before. But I made it, tapping the far end of the pool.

Can I make this last lap? I wondered. I seriously considered coming up for air, losing the bet. But I wouldn't give my brother the satisfaction. I kicked off the side, determined to complete the final lap.

My lungs felt like they would rupture; I was getting woozy. But I made it, tapping the side of the opposite end and surfacing. I gulped in the air, letting it slide down into my lungs like a healing balm. I couldn't talk for several seconds, gasping, regaining my wind.

Finally, I said, "I want my ten bucks!"

My brother swam up to me. "I can't believe you did it!" he said. "I didn't think you had a chance."

"Fork it over," I said. "When we get home."

"What? The ten bucks?" He smiled. I didn't like the looks of that smile. "Here. Ten bucks."

And he proceeded to hit me on my upper arm. Ten times.

"There!" he said. "There's your ten bucks!"

I laid into him, told him it wasn't fair. But all he did was laugh.

Now, decades later, I look back at both of these scenarios and smile. I sure wasn't smiling when they happened! But now they are treasured memories. It is memories such as these--little things, anecdotes, small events really, but monumental in their own way--that inspire me to write. To capture something of the spirit of youth, of my past, of life in a previous century.