Sprinkler

A perfect summer day in Takoma Park: huge lazy bumble bees droning over the flowers, the humidity heavy as porridge and the backyard peppered with a million buttercups.

My dad was dressed to the nines watering the flowers along the back fence, his back to me. I was horsing around in my bathing suit with the hose, spraying dandelion puffs into oblivion and generally just making a mess. 

“Dad!” I called, waving the sprinkler around teasingly as he bent over, presenting a perfect target. He straightened up and saw me. Out came the admonishing finger.

“Don’t you do it,” he wagged at me. “This is a new suit.”

“I’m not,” I whined. “I was just pretending.”

I turned away sullenly and drenched an entire planet of clover, grabbed a handful and tasted them. Not as good as the onion grass. I yanked a blade out and gnawed on it, the hose dribbling into the earth. 

The sun and humidity increased their conversation, several bees joined in, and the sleepiness factor of the afternoon jumped by a good sixty percent. I heard the broken song of the ice cream truck a few blocks away. Kids shouted on the basketball court in the schoolyard across the street. My father continued to bend temptingly over the flower bed, in his perfectly pressed dark suit. 

In that moment time slowed down and the universe seemed to expand in slow motion. I could see molecules and light and sound, but as though I was in a neighboring galaxy, everything seemed far away. I floated above my body and watched as a graceful perfect arch of water sprayed over the afternoon light. Rainbows glistened in its curve. Wildflowers bobbed their heads in encouragement. Clouds of butterflies circled above me, and somewhere in the distance a meadow lark sang, but its dreamy song seemed to be eclipsed by some sort of snorting. My consciousness slammed back into my body and my brain noted with interest that my father had spun on his heels to glare at me, clouds of steam issuing from his ears and a broad wet patch slowly inking its way across his new suit. I looked down. The smoking hose hung from my sweaty hand.

As my father began his charge, time snapped back online and shouted to self preservation, which sprinted back into the game and urged me to become ambulatory, the sooner the better. I took its advice, dropped the hose and ran.

Past the side of the house, out onto the sidewalk I raced, my nine year old pace effortlessly outstripping that of my angered father’s. Running came effortlessly to me then. My breath in my ears, my heart chugging, I noisily flew, knowing I could do this forever. My father was falling behind, but his yelling was still close enough to spur me on.

In the midst of this merriment, a simple epiphany revealed itself: I’m nine! Where the hell am I supposed to go? This sudden, heavy truth slowed my steps and I allowed myself to be caught and bundled back to the porch steps to receive my paddling. 

Fear opened my lungs, eliminating the need for vocal warmups. I let out a perfectly swooping preparatory yell as my father launched into the first few smacks, but stopped, surprised, in the middle of the next wail. The truth is that my inch thick red white and blue bathing suit had become so waterlogged that it was like I was wearing a hazmat suit made entirely of bubble wrap. My father’s disciplinary action felt as light to me as a butterfly making a three point landing on my backside. Hard on this heels came the realization that this information, joyful though it made me, would not please my father. 

Self preservation, suddenly free with the advice, urged me to turn on the siren in an attempt to divert suspicion, which I gladly did, false though it sounded to my ears. I tore the air with Oscar worthy wails. They were so believable that my father, usually so hell bent on not sparing the rod, let me off easy after two or three thumps. I launched myself into the kitchen, subtly poking myself in the eye to generate tears and perpetuate the fiction. My mother, turned from the stove and gathered me up in her arms, then tucked me into a kitchen chair with a warm peanut buttered chapati. I was unsure of how long to cry, so decided to fake weep for about three or four bites, whereupon I would pretend to lose myself in the yumminess of the food. That was my first ever production decision. It was a good one. My father stormed in to the house to change from his ruined suit, then joined us at the kitchen table and said grace, blessing the food, our family and friends, and the world in general, but neglecting to pray for the sins of his eldest daughter, which I took as a sign that forgiveness, or at the very least, leniency, had already been granted.