I was a small girl in a red one-piece swimsuit too long for my body when I was marched shivering down a dock on Lake Virginia in Winter Park, Florida, and a silver-haired man with no shirt scooped me up fast and said, “One, two . . .” On two he threw me. I sailed through the air like a toy and hit the water hard. It felt like breaking through glass. But underwater my body slowed, and falling turned into something else altogether. I opened my eyes. I was amazed by what I saw. Edges of endless darkness. Reeds. Flat fish with gold eyes. I didn’t open my mouth. I moved my pale hands through the cathedral shafts of light. Sinking through the water, I felt the mucky, soft bottom like flesh, its sticky suction. I drew up my legs and hung there in the middle place, between the bottom and the surface. My memory of hanging there in the water is of a transcendent moment, suspended in space and time.