I got a 1980-something pickup when I found out I was pregnant the first time. The thing had long stopped trucking. Five years after getting pregnant the second time, I lined the bed of the dead truck with plastic and filled it with a hose. When it was full enough, my daughters splashed and kicked their feet, happy enough to ignore the empty space in the driveway.
Real magic was making something out of nothing. I had done it once before when my daddy left me. I was sixteen then and popping like Bubbalicious. I could turn heads in overalls, give body and curves in a choir robe. I was too busy being newly fine to worry about the disappearance of a man who only ever talked to us mean from the other side of a Budweiser forty ounce.
I settled in the corner barely submerged and hugged my knees like old friends.
“Can we have ice pops?” my oldest asked, all angles from her elbows to her chin. She always wanted to know what was next.
“You can swim,” I said. “Or you can eat ice pops.”
“Swim,” cried my littlest.
The little one was more like me than me. Took my whole face, the slant in her eyes and the big round cheeks. Looked about like God hit copy paste or produced the next generation of the same make and model.
An hour in and the water in the back of the F-150 felt warmer now, how I imagined the tide of a small Caribbean Sea. The islands were us. Our skin was brown as earth. We were unclaimed.
The oldest began dunking her head like she was trying to rouse a storm from still water.
My little one slapped the surface like a water god.
“Stop it. Stop it,” she cried, seeming to take her big sister’s rough play as a call for help of Heaven.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re having fun.”
I grabbed my littlest one and let her wipe her eyes on my shoulder.
After my daddy left, my momma cried enough for the both of us, had bloodshot eyes all through my junior year. Nothing stopped her blues, not my college acceptances, or prom, or me pulling up with a new-to-me truck and news of my oldest.
The day was most gone when the girls said they were both done, were sure they were done, couldn’t take any more of the sun-warmed water. Our sea had over-pruned their fingers and was no longer capable of cooling our coastal selves. Now was the time for ice pops.
From the hot concrete, I instructed the girls to hold on, and I let down the bed. A wave hit me first at the chest and then at the waist. My girls bobbed and settled in the puddles that remained in the plastic, looking like little beached beauties. Their plaits were a little rougher for the water, but their smiles were still as pretty as anyone might please.
“Do it again,” my oldest screamed.
“No.” My little one jumped into my arms.
“I can’t,” I said as our small Caribbean slipped away. “That was a one-time trick.”
Summoning the strength of a phantom pickup, I carried both girls back in the house, got some towels, and set them up at the kitchen table with their ice pops. I could do this. I could make a sea out of a Ford in middle Georgia, a meal out of beans and dogs, a whole world out of three abandoned daughters.

Ra’Niqua Lee, PhD (she/they) writes to share her particular visions of love and the South. She is a 2024 NEA fellow and assistant editor for the Loveliest Review and Split Lip Magazine. She is an ATLien by birth and mother to magical twins. Every word is in honor of her little sister, Nesha, who battled schizoaffective disorder until the very end. For her, always.
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