Life After Death: The Shocking True Story of a Innocent Man on Death Row

weren’t pliant and flexible the way professional-quality fins are. These were as hard as bricks, like petrified frog feet. They would have broken before they bent. My grandfather tossed them to me and said, “Put ’em on and try ’em out.”
    I carried them out into the backyard, where a four-foot-deep pool had sat for a couple of years. It had never been drained or cleaned since its initial setup, so the water was dark green and disturbing. Odd-looking bugs skimmed along the surface, looking for someone to bite. I did not relish the thought of having to splash about in that muck.
    I sat on the rickety ladder and attached the flippers tightly to my feet. Standing on the ladder, I launched myself out into the middle of the pool and began kicking. My efforts were futile, and I quickly found myself thrashing around on the bottom. I began to wonder if perhaps these flippers were made for imaginary swimming and not intended for actual water wear. Whatever the case, I thought,
To hell with this,
and decided to get out. The problem was that I couldn’t stand up. The rock-hard plastic flippers made it impossible for me to get my feet under me. Frantic, I managed to get my head above the water one time for what I believed to be my final gasp of air. What sight did I behold as I was drowning? My grandfather, hands on hips, chuckling. Next to him stood my sister, also giggling, as she squinted against the sun. My terror evaporated in the face of the rage that swept through my small body, and I managed to get a hand on the ladder and pull myself up.
    For a few moments I could do nothing but cough, sputter, and try to expel the water from my nose, which was making the inside of my head burn like fire. When I could speak, I snatched off the flippers and began to shriek in outrage, putting the finger of accusation on them both. “Stupid! You’re both stupid! I’m telling Mom!” I shot into the house like a scalded cat, my grandfather shouting after me, “Don’t you drip that water on the rug!”
    I found my mother inside folding clothes. In a rush I spit out the entire sordid story, my bare foot stomping in fury. After hearing that my sister and grandfather had stood by laughing as I nearly drowned, she simply continued to fold clothes. Brow furrowed, she lit a cigarette and expelled a stream of noxious gray smoke into the air before suggesting, “Don’t put the flippers back on, then.” I was dumbfounded and my feelings were hurt. I had expected to be fussed over. Instead, no one took my trauma seriously.
    Sometimes my grandfather would pass on bits of strange and highly suspect information to me, often involving the nature of feet. He had lots of time to think on these mysteries, as he spent most of his days sitting quietly in the flea market, waiting for someone to come and offer him a deal on some of his wares. He once obtained several large boxes of socks, which he proceeded to put on display. I hated those socks. There was nothing even remotely interesting about them. I strolled through the flea market inspecting all the other booths, which always held strange and fantastical devices. When you came to my grandfather’s booth there was nothing but a bunch of boring socks.
    I was eating my usual summertime lunch of a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and washing it down with a Scramble soda, when I started to suspect that all white people were as disdainful of those socks as I was. Every white person who approached the booth seemed to show no interest in the socks, and would almost turn their nose up if my grandfather attempted to draw their attention to his discount hosiery. I also noticed that almost every black person who happened past would buy at least one pair, sometimes several. This struck me as highly peculiar.
    “How come only black people are buying the socks?” I asked Ivan in between bites of sandwich. He eyed me over the rim of his cup as he took a sip of coffee. “Because they don’t want their feet to get cold,” he answered eventually. There seemed to be some deep mystery to me here. Was there some special reason they were being protective of their feet? Did white people not care if their feet got cold? I know that I myself was opposed to cold feet, yet I had no desire to purchase flea market socks.
    “Why?” I blurted in frustration. “Why don’t they want their feet to get cold?” He looked at me as if I had gone insane, frowned, and shook his head before answering with “Because