Aquarium

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I lay awake that night thinking of my mother, this other life, a shadow of my own. Terrible weight of a debt unpayable. What do we owe for what has come before us, the previous generations? I had no words for this at twelve, only the weight. And I think of it still. That sense of my own life held in arrest until my mother and her mother can be compensated. I don’t know if it’s just, only that it is.

The problem is that we can never enter this shadow world in order to make payment. We can’t get there or even believe it. My grandmother lying in her bed dying. And what of her life before her dying? Who was she then? I’d have to know that time, too, in order to know what has to be restored.

I lay awake and tried to see her, but I could see only my mother’s face. I couldn’t make my grandmother anything except the same. And so my own mother seemed already to have died and been there as nurse at her own dying and now lived again. And was I any different or only this same woman’s future?

The dead reaching for us, needing us, but this isn’t true. There’s only us reaching for them, trying to find ourselves.

In the morning, we rose in darkness, my mother looking destroyed. She poured cereal and some went on the counter and she seemed not to notice. We ate at the table with only the small light from over the sink. Darkness and shadow, teeth chewing and nothing else moving, the way I imagined all the tanks after the aquarium closed. I’d seen the light go out in one of the small tanks for freshwater fish, the green plants gone black and the fish the same, water clear as air unseen and only a brief moment of reflection, scales caught in light, then turned and vanished again. A world erased.

We drove toward the great lights, pulled north, all shapes lit only along their edges, outlined in silver, railcars and overhead wires and bridges not yet fully made. Returning to a normal day but with no sense anymore of what that was. Would I see the old man at the aquarium after school?

We slid up to Gatzert, the curb empty, no one else in sight, no movement. I’ll pick you up right here, my mother said. I don’t know what time. Maybe five, maybe later. I have to make up for yesterday.

I want to go to the aquarium.

No. You’ll meet me right here.

She was gone then, and I was left alone under a sky still black and without stars. The air cold and wet even without rain. I wondered if I could walk to the aquarium after school, see my grandfather, and get back in time for my mother not to know.

I knocked on the glass doors, and the janitor let me in. An old man who didn’t speak English. A kind of ghost. Blue coveralls and a face hidden away. After opening the door, he walked somehow without sound down a hallway and disappeared into a room. What was his life? Awake all night alone in these hallways, sleeping during the day. What was left? Sometimes adult life seemed unbearably sad. My mother’s work that meant nothing and would lead nowhere and took most her time, my grandfather on his own pulled away by police, my grandmother dying. I wanted all of the sadness to stop and everyone to just come together.

I sat on my bench and waited, tried to look at my homework but was so exhausted I lay down and fell asleep. Heaviest of sleeps, but I woke to the bell that signaled ten minutes until class. Shalini not here yet. Drool on my backpack. Kids everywhere, shouting and laughing that somehow hadn’t pulled me awake earlier. I sleepwalked to the bathroom to pee and then was back in the hallway and finally she arrived, smiling and throwing her arms around me, most delicious of feelings, smell of her and heat of her and softness and this thumping in my chest and I could have remained like that for hours but a teacher pushed us along toward our room and we had to sit apart.

Mr. Gustafson was calling us people. Listen, people, we’re in the second week of December. We have only the rest of this week, which is passing fast, and a couple days next week and that’s it. Everything has to be finished. Do you understand? We’re not going to have time for math or English or anything else, unfortunately, so you can leave your books at home. Now let’s get to work.

Lakshmi Rudolph still needed legs, but we were working on her belly. Long strips curving, and we stood over her with our foreheads pressed together, arms reaching below. Shalini’s hands over mine, our fingers slick with paste and sliding. I closed my eyes and just kept running my hands along the curves. Sound of her breathing.

What the hell is this? Mr. Gustafson asked. I can’t even say what that looks like.

So don’t look, Shalini said.

We’re going to have a talk with your parents, Shalini. You’re developing an attitude problem.

I’m sorry I’m not excited enough about Christmas. I’m sure my parents will want to remedy that.

Jesus Christ. You’re only eleven or twelve.

Twelve.

I shouldn’t have to be dealing with this shit yet. You’re going to be a nightmare in junior high.

I’d rather do math than make a paper-mache reindeer. That’s a bad attitude. You’re right.

Fine. Do your own Jello pool thing and ignore the rest of the world.

Thank you, Baba Gustafson. Shalini bowed to him and smiled as he left. In India, my teachers were tougher. America is too easy.

I have a grandfather.

What?

The old man at the aquarium is my grandfather.

No.

Yes.

Shalini gave me a hug, both of us pressed in close to Lakshmi Rudolph, getting paste on our shirts. You have a family now, she said.

At snack break, we went out behind the baseball backstop and lay down in the gravel. I was on my back, Shalini on top of me. Her tongue fluttering around mine, the sky white above her, as if she were some giant descended to pin me down to the earth. Pulse of her, and our breath ragged. Her lips so soft.

I could not pull her close enough, and the break was so short, instantly over. We had to run to class.

The sleigh had grown, puffy and misshapen, a children’s playhouse on skids. Near it, an enormous dreidel with a point made from wire hangers. It would never spin. Along the back wall, the long skin of a dragon and its spiky head with a large red tongue. Most of its brown canvas still showing, all needing to be painted. Two other reindeer, with wire horns and knobby legs, two elves with green slippers, and a Santa. Our Rudolph was the only piece of Diwali. No elephants, no goddesses with many arms. Hundreds of Hindu gods, all represented by Rudolph.

This is ridiculous, I said.

Come here, Shalini said. She pulled me behind Rudolph and kissed me. We were in the back of the room, and if we crouched down and hid behind his belly, no one could see us. Mr. Gustafson was looking at his book of classic cars, which was what he did when he felt overwhelmed.

Shalini held my head in both hands and pulled me in closer and closer, but I was afraid, so I backed away and stood up.

You don’t have to worry, she said. Everyone is in a panic. Look at them.

It was true. The room was total chaos, so loud I could hardly hear her.

Shalini scrunched her nose and snorted, and she raised her eyebrows, eyes wide.

I laughed. Mr. Gustafson’s eyebrows were always raised as he looked down at his book, the classic cars continually amazing, and his nose did seem almost to quiver, snuffling for something tasty.