Aquarium

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My mother in the morning shy and awkward, and this was something new, something that would go on for years and never quite end, the loss of her confidence as she tried to come to terms with her anger. Rage was what had held her together for so long.

But she put out bowls for our cereal, brought spoons and milk, and tried even from that first morning, though she couldn’t look us in the eye and we wouldn’t have wanted it anyway. Her hair unbrushed and not pulled back, and she hid within it.

I don’t know why I couldn’t just forgive her completely and immediately. Or later, when I would find out no one knew about her mother’s death for two years. Completely alone for that time. But something had hardened in me, some animal and instant response when I saw her disgust, how she looked at me when she first knew who I was, and some response also to being hit. A change in those moments, some switch turned off forever, the end of trust or safety or love, and how do we ever find the switch again?

So I admire that she could love her father, because I think that is what happened, and they lived here together even after I left for college. They lived in peace, and Steve remained, also, the three of them sharing a roof, and when my grandfather died, he was loved and forgiven. I’m grateful to her for that, and I hope eventually to be able to offer the same to her.

That morning, he took us to school, and he had become more like a parent. Your mother’s going to be okay, I remember he said. I see now that he had learned not to run and was even discovering he was stronger than he had thought. I’ll take you both to the aquarium today, he said. I’ll call your mother, Shalini, and let her know.

Thank you, Mr. Thompson, she said, and she squeezed my hand.

You won’t believe the fish, I said.

The whole world is in those tanks, my grandfather said. Everything.

We weren’t driving on East Marginal Way. We were on residential streets, going slowly. And so much later in the morning, only a few minutes before class, the sky already white-gray, as bright as it would become.

All the cars out front, and it was my first time not entering alone, and we had only a half week before vacation. Mr. Gustafson had given up completely. The classroom was mayhem. As he gazed at his book of old cars, slouched over his desk in his Santa hat, with his tongue just protruding, the Chinese New Year dragon was winding around the chairs, weaving in and out and pulling the sleigh. Shalini and I trotted our reindeer behind with the others, and somehow there were always strips and balls of newspaper in the air and other things thrown, balloons and glue. I was hopping as we trotted Lakshmi Rudolph, and Shalini was laughing, and I wanted to kiss her, so I tried, but she ducked away. Not with people looking, she yelled, still smiling.

What would have happened if I had just kissed her anyway, right then, and kept doing that every day and never stopped until it was normal for everyone to see, even her family? But you can’t go back, and I don’t regret anything with Shalini. There’s no point to regret.

By the time my grandfather picked us up after school, our faces were painted and there was glue on our clothes and our hair wild and we were flushed and exhausted.

Wow, my grandfather said. School is nothing like I remember it.

It’s not like India, Shalini said.

Mr. Gustafson is a bad teacher, I said.

You get some like that, my grandfather said. But don’t let them slow you down. Make sure you get good grades so you can go to college.

I wanted to ask my grandfather whether they had found help for my mother today, but I was afraid to ask. My cheek was bruised and sore but hidden by face paint which I would leave on for the next two days until vacation. I was afraid Evelyn would see and come around to destroy everything just as it was getting better.

We drove the route I had always walked, toward the low dark water of the sound, and we arrived so quickly.

I was holding Shalini’s hand as we entered. You have to see the splendid mandarins, I said. They look like your mother’s scarves.

My grandfather bought tickets for himself and Shalini, and then we ran to the first saltwater aquariums, where the most common fish lived, the ones you see in dentists’ offices. Coral and anemones and these fish that looked made of silk.

They look like hummingbird frogs, Shalini said.

Everything here looks like something else, my grandfather said. These to me look like burglars, with masks on so we won’t recognize them.

They’re so sweet, Shalini said.

They always have that same pattern on their backs, I said. It can be a turquoise background with orange squiggles or an orange background with blue squiggles, but always the same squiggles.

My grandfather was looking around at the other mandarins now, his face so close he was almost touching the glass. You’re right, he said. It’s almost the same pattern. It looks so random, but they all have two circles on their backs, one forward and a bigger one farther back. Each one a little bit different but following some blueprint somewhere. As if each of us might have a blueprint. As if somewhere there’s the shape of my life, and I had the chance to choose a few variations, but not far from the pattern.

I remember he said that, because I’ve thought of it ever since, the idea that we don’t stray far, that what feels like discovery is only the revealing of what was hidden but there, waiting. I remember because I think this might be a path to forgiveness, to realize that no matter how violent, how frightening my mother was, it was not random but at least partly inescapable, that who she was had been set in motion long before and she had to suffer that person as much as I did. And the moment she looked at me in disgust, as if I were a monster, was something she was powerless to hide, because she was overwhelmed. When I think back on all that happened that day, I try to remember she was at a breaking point, try to remember back to before my grandfather appeared, before she was put under such pressure, when we’d arrive home and she’d collapse on her bed and let me collapse on top of her and I clung to her like a frogfish, my hands and feet tucked under, the soft strong mountain of her beneath me, and it felt like we were all the world.