The Thong Also Rises by Jennifer L. Leo Read Free Book Online

us we would be staying with her until Lemon got fixed. Allen begged her to take us to a real hotel like the one in Cincinnati with the vibrating beds. I asked who Aunt Sherry was and why we’d never heard of her. “She’s your Uncle Jack’s first wife,” Mom told us, “they were divorced before you were born.”We’d never met Uncle Jack either. I’d only ever heard Mom talk about him in that tone she used with her adult friends. “The last one he married was going to get deported,” she’d say. “He was old enough to be her father.”
    Aunt Sherry came to get us in an old blue pickup. Allen and I rode in the back and ping-ponged around the truck bed every time she pumped the brakes. “You two O.K.?” Mom would holler from inside the cab every now and again. Aunt Sherry wore short cut-off jeans and cowboy boots, and we could see her boobs through her t-shirt.They weren’t like the boobs in Dad’s nudie magazine, the same magazine I once whipped out in front of our babysitter and she nearly died of a coronary. “What,” she gasped, horrified. “What would your father say if he knew you were reading Playboy at the dinner table?”
    â€œHe lets me read the articles,” I lied and then tried not to spill macaroni on the grown-up girl’s privates. No, Aunt Sherry had real swingers, more like my mom’s, and it made Allen and me giggle.
    It felt like forever before we finally pulled into Aunt Sherry’s driveway. She hopped out first, and Allen and I staggered to stand up on our sea legs. “Now you kids,” Sherry spoke to us slowly, “stay away from Bruno the attack dog and don’t go near his duck ’cuz they are friends. And if the geese give you any trouble wave your arms in the air and pretend to be bigger.” As soon as I heard the words dog and attack in the same sentence my hands got clammy and my eyes rolled back in my head.
    â€œOh come on, Colie,” my mom tried to coax me out of the truck two hours later, “you can’t stay out here all night.” I could and I would. I could not fathom being mauled or pecked to death.
    â€œThe rattlesnakes will get ya, if ya stay out here at night,” a deep voice rumbled that apparently belonged to my Uncle Brooks. Uncle Brooks wore black socks with sandals and his legs were plastered with mosquito bites, but his authority on rattlesnakes had me bee-lining for the house.
    â€œDo I look bigger than the geese?” I screamed mid-sprint, flailing my arms in the air. “Dad, open the door, here I come.”
    â€œYou look like a big ’tard is what you look like,” Dad scolded when I reached him. “Run with your arms down, sissy, it’s faster.”
    â€œOh honey,” Sherry said soothingly. “The geese are out back for the night.”
    Two days had passed when Aunt Sherry decided she had had enough of us asking why there were thirteen dressers in one room and none in another, or why we couldn’t drink water from the tap, or why Uncle Brooks only wore one sock when he fell asleep in the yard. “We’re going to the pool,” she announced after breakfast. “Get your little swimmers on, let’s go.”
    â€œYippie, yippie,” Allen and I jumped up and down. “Let’s go, let’s go.”
    For as long as I can remember my dad and brother wore matching Speedos to the pool—a father/son ritual our whole family agrees haunts my brother to this day. Dad would parade around proudly in front of the pool girls when Mom had her glasses off; my brother’s little orange trunks fell off without fail on the slide. By the time we reached puberty, we forbade our father to sit with us at the beach. “Don’t come near us in that ball buster,” we’d warn him.
    â€œAll the Canadians wear Speedos,” he’d tell us proudly. “Why shouldn’t I?”
    â€œBecause