“Better be warmer tomorrow, if anyone’s going swimming.”
Lauren, Jamie, and I take our positions at the dining room table. My sister looks at the salad bowl and crinkles her nose.
“Come on, Kit, let’s eat!” Dad bellows. “It’s dangerous to keep a hungry man waiting.”
Jamie shakes her head. “I thought my sister had you better trained. I swear, I’m never getting married.”
“Unless, God forbid, you fall in love,” Mom says, appearing in the doorway with a tureen of chicken and dumplings. Everyone applauds. It’s my favorite giant soup bowl—its two long-eared white rabbits serve as the handles.
“Wait, wait, I almost forgot,” Jamie says with excitement. Mrs. Wiggins slips under the table as Jamie dashes to the family room to dig through her satchel.
Mom sighs. “Can’t it wait until—”
“Absolutely not! I thought it would be fun to talk about something different over dinner. Find out what the girls’ opinions are for a change.” Jamie is the grooviest aunt ever. When she sits down again, placing a thin black book next to Mom’s fancy salad bowl, a curtain of long red hair falls forward, brushing her arm. Jamie is beautiful. Even Mom says so.
“A book?” Dad lifts an eyebrow. “Okay, James, talk. But if my dinner gets cold, we’re eating at your house next time.”
“Before we dig into another one of Kit’s beautiful meals, I want to present Lily with this gorgeous homemade ribbon for taking first place in last week’s Race to the Pilings!” Pressed in the book is a purple ribbon with my name in silver glitter. “Ta-da!”
My stomach does a backflip, nearly knocking me out of the chair.
Lauren reaches for the ribbon. “Can I have one too?”
“Only when you become a master swimmer like your sister, Lima Bean. Only when you brave the dark, cold, treacherous waters of Peace Lake,” Jamie says dramatically, “to reach the half-submerged pilings of the ancient Floating Doughnut Shack.”
“Ancient?” Dad says, pouring wine. “It only burned down ten years ago.”
“We’re talking halfway across the lake, Paul,” Jamie says. “That’s impressive at any age.”
Mom’s suspicious. “What have you two been up to?”
Jamie looks at me. “You didn’t tell them?”
Mom doesn’t like it when Coach Betty moves swim practice away from the YWCA. “The team went to Peace Lake,” I say.
“Again? I don’t remember being notified. What if—”
“No what-ifs. No big deal,” Jamie says, helping herself to the Waldorf salad. “Other moms came along; there was plenty of supervision. I was up there already. It was a beautiful day—just a hint of fall in the air.”
Mom looks confused. “Did you bring a slip home, Lily? Did I see it?”
I nod.
“Did I sign it?”
I nod again. It’s true but my stomach hurts times pi. The only thing worse than lying is making Mom feel bad.
We take turns passing her our plates and watch quietly as she serves each one of us a dumpling that she smothers with chicken and gravy. She finally slips into her chair. “Huh,” she says, surprised at herself.
Mom forgot to buy gas last week too, and a tow truck brought her home. Her car was full of groceries and when the truck guy helped bring them inside, Mom said he “made some crack about all the wine I bought. He thought we were having a party. It’s none of his damn business what I buy.”
Everyone eats until Jamie pats Mom’s arm. “I forget things all the time,” she says, finishing her second glass of wine. “It doesn’t matter. The lake was great, Kit. The water was delicious and the girls are such strong swimmers. Of course, Lily took the cake.”
Lauren perks up. “We’re having cake?”
“You’d have been proud of her, Kit!”
Don’t be proud of me. I didn’t get to the pilings; I had to stop. My body weighed a ton, and I was out of breath. I dog-paddled in place until Theresa and Carol swam by, then joined them swimming back to shore. They reached the pilings but I didn’t. On the beach, Jamie stood next to Coach, clapping her hands and whistling. Mom and Dad like it when I do something with “kids my age,” but it only mattered that Jamie applauded. When she did, I forgot all about the pilings.
Kind of. If I had a time machine, I’d take back everything that happened that day.
“But Peace Lake is hell and gone,” Mom says. “I should have remembered.”
“It all worked out,” Dad says. “No harm done. Lily’s an ace swimmer, remember?”
“Don’t patronize me, Paul. It’s important that I remember.”
“Ta-da!” I hold up the ribbon. This time it says, Liar.
Lauren loves round things. Eggs, baked onions, pancakes, Cheerios. She wolfed down her dumpling, made circles in her gravy, and pointed at Aunt Jamie’s book. “Are we going to talk about your book?”
“Yes,” Dad says. “What is it?”
“Only the most amazing thing with the most amazing pictures you’ll ever see,” Aunt Jamie announces. Her eyes twinkle.
“Have you considered a career on stage?” Dad asks.
Jamie pats the book like Reverend Mike does after he reads a Bible passage to the congregation. “It’s called A Child Is Born.”
My parents exchange looks. “That’s really not appropriate for the dinner table,” Mom says. She picks it up and puts it down again. “Were you actually going to explain all this to the girls? These are things we talk about as a family. You should have asked us first.”
“It’s about the miracle of life, not the act of procreation.” Jamie takes a big gulp of wine.
“I know what it’s about,” Mom says.
Ever the copycat, Lauren says, “I don’t want to look at the book.”
“See?” Aunt Jamie shakes her head. “Ignorance is contagious.”
Mom sighs. “More salad, girls?” Lauren and I both stare at her. We’re kids; we don’t eat rabbit food. “Garlic bread?” Mom unwraps the foil log. “Still plenty left.”
We all reach for it.
“Do you know,” Jamie says, tearing off tiny pieces she quickly stuffs in her mouth, “that we’re all one sex until Mother Nature decides what she needs us for?”
When Jamie says sex, Lauren covers her ears.
“Chromosomes determine our gender, but before XY and XX play out, the fetus has everything it needs to be both sexes. The embryo is male and female. We even have tails like tadpoles do, for a while anyway. Far out, huh?”
Maybe I’m a boy and a girl. Maybe my tail is stuffed up inside me. “Yeah,” I say. “Far out.” I lean forward with excitement, resting my elbows on the table.
Mom points at my plate. She wants me to eat up but it feels wrong to eat chicken right now. We studied chicken embryos in class, even though the incubator was accidentally turned off one weekend and all the eggs died. Frieda said something was wrong with the baby chicks and God didn’t want them to live. Mom said the custodian probably tripped over the plug.
“It’s called . . .” Jamie looks at the ceiling. “Um . . .”
“I’ll