Aquarium

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I didn’t sleep that night. Lost in darkness, aircraft overhead above the surface. Sound of them like missiles coming closer. Faint liquid light on the ceiling, underside of waves. An ocean empty, cold and without texture, unable even to mute sound. All smaller lights gone, bioluminescence a memory only, no constellations.

My grandfather. We weren’t alone. What if there were other family out there too? My father, an aunt or an uncle, cousins, all hidden away by my mother, kept from me. She was still sobbing. I listened all night, and her grief came in tides. I’d think she had fallen away into sleep and then she’d begin again. She said things, small cries in anger and pain, but I never understood. I was too young for any of it. What I remember most is the fear. Everything too much. My blanket a thin covering, no protection at all.

Slow morning, gray and watery light, sound of rain. We rose only to use the bathroom, and she called in sick to work. Otherwise we remained in our separate beds. No school. No Shalini. No aquarium. My stomach growling and knees sore from shifting onto my side. I somehow finally fell asleep and woke late in the afternoon.

Mom? I called out. I had this panic that she was gone.

But she came in and lay down next to me, facing each other like sea horses. Her eyes red and cheeks and lips puffy, hair tangled.

I love you, sweet pea, she said.

I know.

And we’re going to be okay.

Do I call him Grandpa?

We don’t call him anything, sweet pea. He left long ago, so he doesn’t get to come back.

I was too tired to fight my mother. She had an arm over me, and I just watched her eyes and mouth.

You know I don’t talk about the past, my mother said. But I’m going to tell you. You need to know. My mother was dying. His wife. And he left. Just disappeared and we never heard from him. He ran away. This was when I was just starting high school, only a couple years older than you. I took care of my mother, so I didn’t finish school. I had to drop out. I never went to college, never got to have my life. He took that away. And now I have the worst jobs a person can have, with no money and no future. We’ll be okay, and you don’t need to worry, but I won’t be able to become anything. Do you understand?

I nodded.

You don’t really understand, she said. You have to be older. But you can study fish. That can be your life, your job. If you do all your homework, you can be a scientist or anything else. You can decide.

Grandpa said I could be an ichthyologist.

My mother squeezed my arm then, too hard, and shook it.

You’re hurting me, I said.

He doesn’t get to do this. He doesn’t get to see you or tell you anything.

Stop it! You’re hurting me.

My mother let go. She got up fast from the bed and walked out, slapping the wall hard with her open hand then disappearing.

I had never seen this violent side of my mother before. It was terrifying, as if someone else had been living inside her all along, some darker self. I didn’t feel safe.

She fixed lunch by destroying things. Slamming the pan onto the stovetop. Chopping vegetables with what sounded like an axe, attacking the wooden cutting board. I didn’t dare go out and look. I stayed in my bed and flinched when she banged pots and pans.

The worst part of childhood is not knowing that bad things pass, that time passes. A terrible moment in childhood hovers with a kind of eternity, unbearable. My mother’s anger extending infinitely, a rage we’d never escape. She had always been my safety, the two of us piled together on the bed whenever we arrived home, rolling over to crush me but only in play, the same as two clown loaches stacked on top of each other, looking out from their cave. To have this place become unsafe left nowhere else.

I always fix the lunch or dinner or whatever it is, my mother yelled out. Since I was fourteen. Fourteen years old. That’s when I became responsible for everything. Cooking, cleaning, shopping, nursing, trying to make enough money. A shack by the road. That’s what he left us in. No car. No health insurance. No job. No money. The hospital would take her when she was bad enough but not all the other times. All the other times were my special treat, my little fuck you from the world, drowning in blood and shit and piss and vomit. And then he shows up to be grandpapa. How cute.

I couldn’t touch this other time, couldn’t reach back to make my grandmother real. No more than a story. My mother’s anger had no source I could believe.

Why don’t we just start with the day he left? my mother yelled. We’ll count from there, all the days he was gone, and then you can see him after that. You’ll be about thirty, and you can go get an ice cream cone together. Or maybe he’ll be dead, hopefully, and you can visit his grave. I’ll let you know where it is, and I’ll be taking a shit on it every night.

I folded my pillow over my ears, pressing in.

There’s probably another family. Half brothers and half sisters of mine, right here in Seattle, or in Mexico, or on the moon. We can make enchiladas out of moon cheese. What the hell is he thinking? That we’ll all go on a picnic?

I hid as long as I could, but finally she called me out for lunch or dinner or whatever it was. Sitting at the table but staring up at the ceiling, her arms folded.

My mother looked old. Dark moons under her eyes, hair wild, dirty creases in her skin. Mouth hung downward.

Our food was a kind of omelet with things chopped up in it. Zucchini, celery, apple, lunchmeat. It wasn’t normal food.

Eat, she said. A family meal.

I could see eggshells, shards of white.

Want some ketchup? she asked in a bright voice.

I nodded.

She went to the fridge and brought back the squeeze bottle. She held it out with one arm about three feet over my omelet and squeezed. Most of it landed on my plate, some on the table.

Oops, she said. Maybe Grandpa will clean that up for us. We can always count on good old Grandpa.

I was trying not to cry.

Oh, is little Boopsie upset? My mother put her face in close to mine. Welcome to my life. You have nothing to cry about. Let me tell you a little story. Your mother is the star.

My mother grabbed both my arms, hard, her smile savage, looking like another person, some stranger I’d never met.

Your mother is older, probably sixteen now, and her mother is close to the end of this long dying that goes on forever. This is the story of the blood egg.

I don’t want to hear.

But you’re going to hear.

You’re hurting me.

That’s right. So you’ll pay some attention. So your mother has just washed her mother, given her a nice bath, all clean and good and there’s even a smile from her mother. It’s late at night, but finally all is good, and your mother can rest. She’s so tired. She’s not going to school anymore, but just taking care of her mother is exhausting like you wouldn’t believe. So she lays her in bed, with clean sheets, which is rare. It’s a special moment. And that’s when the blood egg happens. It’s just there suddenly, between her mother’s legs, on the white sheet, dark red and thick, almost black, and soaking so quickly into the white sheet and the mattress, this lighter red spreading. And your mother doesn’t know where the egg has come from or if it has to be put back. It’s just too confusing. It can’t be real, and yet there it is.

Please stop, I said, but she wouldn’t let me go.

So your mother scoops up the blood egg in her hands, so it won’t keep soaking into the bed. She’s afraid the entire bed will be taken over, all turned to blood. She can see that. In her life, that kind of thing is possible. The entire house could be swallowed. There are no limits. And her mother is lying there peacefully. She doesn’t even know the blood egg has happened. And how can that be? How can that come from her and she not know?

My mother looked away from me, her face softening, remembering. Her grip on my arms not so hard.

It was so large, it filled both my hands, and so thick it could have been a heart, and I just didn’t know what to do with it. I didn’t want it to be there, but it kept being there, and finally I walked outside and laid it carefully on the dirt under a small tree. I still don’t know what it was. But this is when we needed my father. Can you understand? I needed to have another parent, an adult, but there was no one. He left.