Well he’s my favorite now, because of what you’ve said. The old man looked up at the signs above the tank. Randall Halimeda Ghost Pipefish.
A light flutter of fins, and the fish turned away, became nearly invisible, so thin, suspended in nothing. Some days I waited here and never saw him, only a black tank nearly empty, a dark wall of rock in shadow, a few drab seaweeds along the bottom, camouflage he never used, as if he knew all was staged and no predator coming. This tank could seem like nothing, and then it could dazzle.
Well, the old man said. You see that and it’s hard to care about the others. And I have to say, I’m surprised at how many fish here don’t look like fish. A leaf giving birth to stars is exactly right, and you’d never see that on your plate.
I don’t eat fish, I said.
No, no. I shouldn’t either. I’ll stop.
I love them too much.
Yes.
What was your favorite fish until today?
I come from Louisiana. Long ago. And they have giant catfish there, fish you wouldn’t believe, living down in the mud. They’d never get one in this aquarium. The real world is too big.
What do they look like? I’ve only seen regular catfish, and small tropical ones from the Amazon, white with black spots.
These are plain. Dark backs, black or brown, rough-looking with some spots, but no regular pattern. White bellies, an obscene white like fat. They look almost like tadpoles, baby frogs, because the belly is so big and rounded and the rest of the body in one long slab, much slimmer. And it doesn’t look like flesh. It looks like yuck, like whatever makes frog. But it’s hundreds of pounds, longer than a person and much thicker. With stubby little front fins like arms that didn’t grow. Long white tendrils around a big hole of a mouth.
It sounds awful. Why is it your favorite?
Because they make dinosaurs possible. If you look long enough at a catfish that big, and think of it lying around in a shallow muddy river, you can imagine the huge leg of a dinosaur stepping into that river. You can go back a hundred million or two hundred million years and touch the world before we existed. Those catfish are leftovers.
I want to see one.
Well maybe someday we’ll go to Louisiana together.
I want to go now.
Me too. We could travel and see a lot together. Mexico, maybe, and see manta rays doing backflips.
Really?
Yeah. They leap out of the water there, doing backward somersaults. You wouldn’t believe it. Huge manta rays, and you can see fifty of them, or a hundred, all at one time. The Sea of Cortez.
Promise you’ll take me there.
I will.
S
teve came to dinner, his harmonica in his T-shirt pocket. I was waiting for him to play, but my mother had made me promise to behave and not ask for anything. Think of yourself as a barnacle, she had said. You are a barnacle, just enjoying the water and maybe collecting a little plankton, but not moving or asking anything.
So I sat glued to my chair, encased in my calcium carbonate shell, and I had my small fan out, waving in the current, ready to collect anything interesting, but so far it was boring adult talk about nothing.
We were having hamburgers, my mother’s specialty. She mixed green onions with the ground beef, several eggs and bacon bits. That was the hidden bacon. Then she had big strips of bacon across the tops of the burgers, and a lot of barbeque sauce. Potato salad on the side, and barbeque chips and pickles, orange soda. She called it picnic dinner, and I was savoring every bite because I would be a vegetarian soon.
Steve was jolly. He wasn’t fat, like most jolly people, but he’d sort of shake up and down in his chair laughing as if he were fat. And what my mother was saying wasn’t even funny. He’d bring his napkin up to his mouth with both hands to wipe the barbeque sauce, even though it was only a small paper napkin, and when he did this, you could see how big his biceps were. He was wearing a black T-shirt that had nothing on it. Just these big veined biceps bulging under pressure and then relaxing again.
What’s your favorite fish? I blurted out finally. There was no easy way to do it. They were going to talk all night without me.
Caitlin, my mother said.
It’s okay, Steve said. Favorite fish. There are so many. Your mother says you go to the aquarium every day.
I do.
What’s your favorite fish there?
I asked you first.
Steve leaned back and did his jolly bouncing chuckle. It’s been a while since I’ve heard that, he said. That brings me right back to the playground.
Well?
Okay, he said. I worked on fishing boats in Alaska a few summers, and my favorite fish was the halibut.
I like halibut.
They’re pretty cool.
So why are they your favorite?
My mother nudged my foot under the table and then gave me a look. Think barnacle, she said.
Come on, I said. Tell me.
Okay. I like them because they have both eyes on one side of their head, both resting on top and the other side of their face is blind, without eyes, always buried in silt or mud, faced downward into nothing. I like that blind side to them, the idea of it. It says something about us, I think.
So deep, my mother said, and threw a balled-up napkin at him.
I like that, I said.
Halibut used to be my favorite for a different reason, Steve said. I used to think they started with one eye on each side of their head. Swimming along normally, like any other fish, like a salmon. But then they hit puberty, and one eye migrated over to the other side of their face and their jaw twisted up in this grimace and they could no longer see straight and had to hide on the bottom.
Hm, my mother said.
Oh, sorry, Steve said.
No, I think it’s great you’re talking about puberty to my twelve-year-old daughter, ha.
Sorry.
It’s fine. As long as it’s about fish, she’s fine.
I don’t see what the big deal is, I said.
That’s exactly right, my mother said. And we hope to keep that going another year or two.
What about you, Sheri, Steve said to my mother. What’s your favorite fish?
I never get to go into the aquarium. I just pick her up. Being a parent is a lot like running a service: taxi, laundry, cooking, cleaning, tutoring, counseling, excursions.
You must have a favorite, though?
I don’t have time for favorites. I work, I take care of Caitlin, and that’s it.
Sorry, I said.
No. No. God, you must both think I’m awful right now, that I’m a terrible mother. I love you, sweet pea, and I love everything we do together. I’m just saying there’s not time to focus on anything else.
Steve had his napkin up, in both hands, as if he were going to wipe his mouth, but he wasn’t moving.
Sorry, my mother said. You must be wondering why you’re seeing me.
Well, you’re hot. That’s one reason. Steve did his chuckle bounce, and my mother smiled despite herself. And you can wrestle containers and cranes, so that’s useful. In case I’m ever in a situation where containers are coming after me.
My mother gave one of his biceps a love punch.
But what’s your favorite fish? I asked.
Maybe from childhood, Steve suggested.
She never talks about that, I said.
Oh.
Wow, my mother said. There’s no limit to how far I can sink during this dinner. Okay, one fish. I must be able to think of a fish. I’m thinking of the supermarket, the fish section, but I’m guessing you want something not on ice or wrapped in plastic.
Steve laughed. He was the nicest man she had ever brought home. Looking back, I can see he was delighted by her right from the beginning, genuinely delighted.
Okay. We lived in a shitty place. A shack on the highway, water dripping through the ceiling. I’m not going to say more. But next door, sharing the same dirt, we had a family from Japan. Asians are supposed to be rich, but these ones weren’t. I don’t know what went wrong. But the man dug a pit, and we thought he was going to roast a pig. We thought he might be Hawaiian. But he lined it with plastic and rocks and some plants and made a pond, and had four koi carps in there.
That sounds nice, Steve said.
A pearl in a toilet, my mother said. One of the koi was orange and white, the colors swirled together, and I named her Angel. And the man put an old wooden chair beside the pond so that I could sit. He never used it. He always stood. But he left this chair for me. I never even spoke to him, or thanked him. I feel so bad about it now. We were really racist back then. This was the early seventies, when I was about your age. But he gave me a place to escape to. I’d always sit out there, usually in the rain, and watch Angel gliding around her tiny pond as if she owned the palace ponds. And I liked that the rain never touched her. I could see the drops on the surface. She’d tilt up to grab food, but otherwise she was hovering just below, safe and removed from everything.
Steve and I didn’t say anything. We all sat in silence, my mother looking down at the table, lost in another time, and I remember thinking she was just like me, as if I had lived already, more than twenty years earlier.
S
teve spent the night. I could hear their breathing, and small cries from my mother as if she were hurt, but I knew to stay in my room and keep quiet. My mother had explained many times that some parts of her life were hers. I had my three pillows, my pillow palace, a kind of nest or cave, and I sank away there.
In the morning, Steve made cinnamon toast, which was something new. Butter and then sugar and cinnamon. He put one piece faceup on my plate and then cut another piece on its diagonals to make four triangles, and with these he made a pyramid.
Egyptian toast, he said. With cinnamon from the Nile.
What fish are in the Nile?
The Pharaoh Fish, Steve said, and raised his eyebrows. He leaned in close and whispered so my mother wouldn’t hear. They have scales of red marble, very heavy, and fins of gold.
There are no fish like that.
Have you been to the Nile?
No.
Well I used to live there, at the bottom of the river. Don’t tell your mother. The Pharaoh Fish gathered all along the bottom as if they were a garden of gold. They had big lips but never opened their mouths. They were very quiet. But they were keeping all the gold for the next pharaoh.
How come I haven’t heard about the Pharaoh Fish?
Well you have now, and you have to keep it a secret because of the gold. Five thousand years ago, someone told, and the biggest fish had to leave the river and burrow through sand and try to hide. The Great Pyramids are their fins sticking up out of the sand. They were the biggest Pharaoh Fish.
I laughed and punched his arm the way my mother did. No fish are that big, I said. The largest fish is the whale shark.
Now, he said. But not back then.
I was distracted all morning at school thinking about the Pharaoh Fish. I knew Steve was making them up, but I loved the idea of their golden fins and red marble scales, and I could see them all waiting at the bottom of the river, their bellies on sand.
Shalini, I said. We have to make a Pharaoh Fish.
We had just begun art period, and Shalini already had strips of newspaper ready for Lakshmi Rudolph’s legs.
What is a Pharaoh Fish?
They have red scales and golden fins.
I’ve seen golden fish. But I think they’re Buddhist.
Where have you seen them?
On tiles on walls in India, I think. And you can buy plastic ones, or as balloons.
Do people pray to them?
I guess so.
That’s my religion then. I’m Buddhist.
Shalini laughed. You can’t just be a new religion.
There were two ways to make shapes for paper-mache, using wire or balloons, and we had some long skinny balloons, so I blew up one of these and began wrapping it in Shalini’s strips. I imagined great temples with fish altars, and I would become a priestess. I would wear red makeup, with golden lips and eyebrows.
What’s this, Caitlin? Mr. Gustafson asked. He looked out of breath from running around the room. His nostrils working hard.
A golden fish. It will have red scales and golden fins.
Let’s keep focused on task. We want Rudolph to have legs, right, so he can lead the sleigh?
But the golden fish is for my religion. I’m Buddhist.
You’re Buddhist?
Yes.
Caitlin.
I am.
What will your mother have to say about that?
She’ll say I’m Buddhist. I’m a vegetarian, and I pray to the golden fish, and I may become a priestess.
Caitlin. You eat the school lunch. I know you’re not Buddhist. And don’t we already have enough religions? We need a few people to still be Christian.
I pray to the golden fish. This is my god.