The treehouse hung over an abandoned pool. We climbed it on sunny afternoons when we were supposed to be anywhere else. Three rotting planks up was aboard sitting in the V of the tree, a curve that looked mostly like a woman's breast, arms raised to either side and head tipped back. Up there, we bathed in sunlight and adrenaline.

Below us swam moccasins and toads. There were syringes in the bottom of the pool. On clear days you could see them through the murk. And there were plants, growing up from the bottom. We wondered, how had a condemned pool in the projects in Texas grown its own seaweed?

We loved the Keep Out sign that hung lamely by the gate. Our tree was forbidden not just because it hung over the pool, but because we had to step through the gate and skirt the pool's edge to reach it. Garbage was piled along the inside of the chain-link fence, propping in place. The walkway between the trash heap and the pool was barely wide enough for a skinny eight-year-old to pass through. I still don't know how my sister made it. She was chubby and eleven, but she picked her way lightly, admonishing me every time that if I fell in, she would let the moccasins have me and tell Mom I had run away.

I believed her.

Photo by Joey Banks on Unsplash

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