One year, in fourth grade probably, I became fixated on the idea of a pool. The kids on the TV shows I used to watch usually had one, a dark blue one with fake wood paneling that rose from the ground in their lush green backyard. It was almost June, but already the humidity was creeping through the back alleyway and into the homes of everyone in the city. Mama flapped out white sheets on the carpet of the living room, because without an air conditioner, that was the coolest room in the house. The worst feeling was walking up to my room in the morning to get dressed for those last, hazy days of school and feeling like a blanket was dropping down on me, smothering me more tightly with each step upward.

And so I wanted a pool, to swim up and break through the surface of clean, cold water, grinning madly and tossing a volleyball to my brothers and sisters. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, of course. Mama never wanted to give me a straight answer when I asked why I was the only one. But a pool was do-able, a real possibility.

Mama resisted. “How can we put a pool like that in this yard?” she beseeched me. “The pool would be bigger than the yard, and would you bring the water to fill it?” I was nine and didn’t care, and so I sulked for weeks, pushing Mama’s food on my plate without eating it and not talking to her when she asked me how school was or if I needed my uniform shirt pressed.

And then one day, after June had started and the end of the school year was only days away, Mama grinned at me when I walked in the door at 3:30 P.M. Throwing my purple vinyl backpack on the armchair by the door, I raced through the dining room, past the kitchen and out the backdoor. And there it was, a pink plastic tub, about six inches deep, filled with water, with Barbie’s face swimming up from its shallow depths.

I went back inside, back to the chair, grabbed my backpack, and climbed up to my room. Mama stood uncertainly at my door, but I just told her I wanted to be alone. The air in my room was thick and sticky, but I stayed in it, sweating and shedding miserable tears, until it was time for dinner. A week later, I saw the pool in Nadia’s backyard, behind the flower shop, a shallow pink circle on her own cemented slab.