Aquarium

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I burrowed under my blankets and curled into a ball, like a lungfish waiting for rain. Hibernation, but called estivation, since it’s for the hot summer instead of cold winter. When everything is unbearable and exposure too much, the air too hot to breathe. My mother the best person in this world, the most generous, the strongest, but this was her dry season, when she was more like a storm than a person, wind-blown dust, accelerating from somewhere sourceless and vast, and I knew to hide.

Lungfish can slow to one-sixtieth their normal metabolic rate, but this slows time, also. One night becomes sixty nights. This is the price for hiding. Just hold your breath for one minute and find out what a minute becomes.

In the morning, I tried to remain invisible. I looked down at my cereal and never looked up. My chewing took forever. We ate again with only the small light from over the sink, which made night shadows of everything, large and distorted.

He has nothing to lose, my mother said. This whole game costs him nothing. I pay, but he doesn’t pay. Same as it’s always been.

I knew not to say anything. Anything I said would be an attack. I looked up only in quick glances, my mother’s face in shadow, hidden, the light behind her.

And what you don’t know is that things can be lost quickly. I can lose Steve, and it only takes a few nights like last night. Only a few, and it won’t matter everything we did together before. All of that can be erased. All you have to do is hold out a little longer and you’ll take him away from me. Do you want that? No more Steve?

I’m not trying to do anything.

You can cut that crap, too. You know what you’re doing. You haven’t listened to anything I’ve said about the past. You don’t care what he did to me. And don’t start crying. I’m sick of that whole self-pity thing. Your life is easy. We have to go now anyway or we’ll be late. And do you know why we have to go so early?

I wasn’t looking at her. I looked at my bowl of cereal and tried not to hear.

We’re going because your mother gets to be a slave all her life, so that the little princess can have a better life. This is what parents do.

Parent, I said. One parent.

Oh, that’s beautiful. So you really do want to fight.

I tried to do better than the lungfish. I tried to burrow down and turn to stone. No hole of dried mud to emerge from at the first rains, but my body turned to rock.

You’re not going to say anything more? Just that little gem and that’s it?

I thought my mother would hit me, but she didn’t. She stalked away and grabbed her stuff and opened the door. We’re going now.

I was tempted to stay. What would happen if I just didn’t move? But I was afraid of her, so I stood up, grabbed my backpack and coat, and slid past her out the door.

Cold, snowing, cones of yellow flakes in the streetlights pressing downward and come from nowhere, only black above. I held the handrail in case of ice. I could feel the air in my nose and throat.

It’s gonna be great at work, my mother said. What a pleasure to be outside in nature, with all the steel beams and slush and oil and hydraulic fluid and grime and salt sprayed everywhere, and great to know this is still the beginning, that it’ll be about four more months of the same. More rain than snow, but still cold. What a great pleasure. What an honor.

My door was frozen shut, so I had to yank to break it free. My mother was scraping ice off the windshield. No one else around at this hour, the cars and apartments dark. The ground cracking beneath us. I slid in to the bench seat, my legs instantly cold through my jeans. I sat on my gloved hands and hunched over to conserve warmth. If we just sat here for a few hours and did nothing, we could die.

My mother cranked the engine, and it was slow to start. She revved it, smooth fans of power, no sound of pins. And then we drove slowly down our street onto East Marginal Way South going north, taillights of other cars ahead now and lights of the city beyond.

My favorite part, my mother said, is when I get all sweaty and then we have to wait awhile, just standing around, and the sweat freezes.

I’m sorry, I said.

Well that’s a start.

But I’m not doing anything wrong.

That’s maybe not as good an apology. I didn’t think this was going to happen for another year, until your teens, but I guess it might as well start now. Why have another year of peace when we could fight right away?

You’re the one who’s making it a fight.

Yeah, my mother said. Yeah. This is the beginning. I did this to my mother, too, until she started dying. Then I wanted to cut out my nasty little tongue for everything I’d said. So what can I do to short-circuit you? Maybe tell you about your father. Would you like to hear about your father?

Yes.

I bet you would. So let’s save that for a time when you’re playing nice.

You’ve never told me anything.

That’s right.

My mother flicked on the heater, the engine warm enough now, and we sat in our own small desert, blown by hot wind at our feet and in our faces while the snow fell outside. Like rain in the headlights but white and slower, suspended then caught in a rush as we collided. The lights of the city muted and blurred.

It was a long time before we reached East Yesler Way, driving up the hill into what no longer felt like a city. Gatzert waiting lit and lonely by the side of the road.

What time? I asked.

I don’t know. Maybe four thirty, maybe five thirty.

She was gone then. She would be outside all day in the cold, and next winter would be the same, and the winter after that, all the years until I was her age and she would still be working, another twenty years, and another ten years after that, three more of my lifetimes, an eternity. I think that morning was the first time I understood. It was too awful to be true. My own mother trapped, a slave just as she had said.

The old janitor let me in and disappeared into his cage somewhere, and I sat under the soulless fluorescent lights and waited. This was the beginning of my mother’s life, waiting and doing nothing. The cold, and we keep breathing, and that’s it.

I hadn’t done any homework, but I couldn’t pull out the books now, and Mr. Gustafson wouldn’t be checking anyway. I remembered then that he had said not to even bring the books. So I just sat and waited for an hour and a half until everyone was yelling and running and laughing and finally Shalini appeared, sleepy and soft, and she had her arms around me for about two minutes and then we had to go to class.

Mr. Gustafson had stopped trying. We wouldn’t be ready for the Christmas parade — there would be unpainted parts of the dragon and sleigh, bits of wire showing in the legs and antlers of the reindeer, Lakshmi Rudolph with almost no legs at all, a formless Santa, a dreidel that would never spin — and he was tired. Every other year had probably been a failure too, and he had no plan B.

I remember being angry at Mr. Gustafson, but Shalini never was bothered. She didn’t mind chaos, and she found the ridiculous funny.

Look at his tongue, she said. His tongue is out. And it was true. As he looked at his book of cars, his mouth had opened and his fat tongue was bulging out over his lower lip.

Yuck, I said.

Come over here, she said, and I knelt behind our Rudolph. I love your hair, she said. So light. It weighs nothing. She lifted my hair and kissed all along my neck and my skin tightened everywhere, goose bumps and chills. I was shivering, even though I wasn’t cold. She kissed my ear and all along my jaw until she reached my lips. I wanted to breathe her in, to hold her inside, and I wanted everyone else to disappear, to just go away.

My mother won’t let me see my grandpa.

Shalini kept kissing me. Don’t talk, she said.

I’m worried she never will.

Shalini stopped then and opened her eyes. You saw him yesterday, didn’t you? You went running off.

Yeah.

And you can see him again today?

Yeah.

Well then. Everything is okay.

But I don’t want to hide and have secrets.

Caitlin, she said. Look at what we’re doing now. You are going to have secrets.