Water Play

Mary Sharry
Sun contributor
The goldfish I bought from the dime store never lived very long. In two or three weeks, a month at the most, after I had them home they would develop red scales. Their gills looked painfully raw. First one fish and then the other, they finally looked like carrot strips afloat inside the small glass aquarium.
“Flush them down the toilet,” my mother instructed.

A swirling goldfish is not a pretty sight, not at that point anyway. I’d hope for the best. Resurrection. Perhaps my fish weren’t really dead. Maybe they would find their way from the sewer and into the Detroit River to become mighty carp.
My mother and I would take the bus downtown on Saturday mornings, mostly to window shop along Detroit’s Woodward Avenue. Sometimes she might buy herself a new pair of white gloves, or for me some cotton underwear or socks. We’d stop for a bite to eat at Sanders lunch counter. I’d order a tuna sandwich, she a hot fudge cream puff along with two spoons, so we could share.
A single parent at a time when the word divorce seemed scandalous, at least to her upbringing, my mother would evade a direct answer when people inquired about her husband, my father.
“He’s out of town,” came her stock response or mine, if asked, and we’d quickly change the subject.
She helped out at a nursery school. Given her slim salary, our Saturday excursions were a splurge. After lunch we might stop at the dime store, and if my goldfish had recently died, she’d let me buy two new ones. Two, to keep each other company.
At the back of the store where caged canaries sang and parakeets squawked and gave kisses to their own reflections in little mirrors, amidst the smell of fresh cedar shavings where mice and hamsters ran on squeaky wheels, there the beautiful orange fish swam amidst tiny bubbles, gurgles and the drone of a mechanized pump. I loved to watch their motion in the water, the graceful sway of their tails, and tried to imagine what they thought of me as we stared at each other.
My mother asked the clerk in charge if she knew what might be causing the sudden death of my fish. A fish net protruded from the front pocket of the clerk’s rubber apron. She squinted at me and asked if I was the one who cleaned their aquarium. She wanted to know how I cleaned it. I told her that I scooped the fish into another container.
“Do you use a net to catch them?”
“No,” I said, “just my bare hands.”
“Well, that’s the problem.”
She said something about the oil residues on human skin. That was why my fish had been dying.
So, along with the two fish I chose, my mother bought me a net. Now when it was time for a water change I could scoop the fish safely into their holding tank, the cake-mixing bowl. They would like their new home, especially after the bus ride in the paper carton, the same sort of container that cottage cheese from the dairy came in or chop suey from the China Clipper.
These fish did live a long time. By the time I was 10 years old they had been with me for almost a year, far longer than any other fish I’d ever owned. Their longevity must have been related to my use of the net.
I’d had an earache, so my mother told me I should stay home from school that day. While she was away at work I had our upstairs flat to myself. Even though my ear felt as if a needle were stuck inside, I enjoyed the time alone. In my nightgown I could dawdle about and read, draw, listen to records or the radio. I could clean the aquarium and run the faucet for as long as I pleased.
On the counter beside the kitchen sink the fish darted back and forth in their holding tank, the ceramic mixing bowl. Their glass aquarium, a rather small two-gallon tank, sat in the sink basin. I let the faucet water flow over the container and into the sink. I scoured around the sides of the glass, rinsing and refilling.
Under the jet of water, the bubbles were beautiful to see. My hands danced, and when I held them still my fingers, like starfish, seemed to undulate beneath the surface. Water was my element. I enjoyed this chore as much as I liked to swim my hands amongst socks and underwear in the blue rinse water of my mother’s laundry tub.
Even washing dishes in a pan full of foamy suds was a delight. The creamy texture of the dish soap reminded me of my aunt’s ivory satin wedding gown. Sometimes I’d get out the hand-cranked eggbeater and make mounds of suds. With measuring cups I’d pour water back and forth from cup to cup all the while singing with the radio the songs of unrequited love, their words and meaning beyond my understanding.
Gossamer-like rainbows of froth would climb over my wrists to the crook of my elbows. My forearms glistened with bubbles and I’d dance and wave my hands in loops and arcs like fish in a great body of water, and dapple the kitchen with foam. Sometimes I’d swash about at the sink for so long that the water would cool and I’d have to empty the dishpan and start all over again.
So cleaning the aquarium was water play, too; and if it sparkled algae free, my mother would carry it to the living room. There she placed it upon the coffee table in the center of the doily, a bloom of stiff ruffles surrounding the world of my fish. Otherwise, if I neglected them for too long, the fish were relegated to swim in their scummy tank on the laundry room shelf.
At last I’d had enough of the cleaning chore. I netted up the fish and transferred them into their fresh quarters. The glass aquarium brimmed and was really too heavy for me, but I managed to lift it out of the sink and steadied toward the living room. In measured steps my bare feet protruded beneath the eyelet edging of my pink flannel nightgown. The startled fish zipped back and forth, their water sloshed and slopped, and then my foot slipped and a torrent of water spilled onto the floor along with the two fish and the aquarium.
Amidst broken glass I scooped an orange fish from the wet linoleum, and deposited it back into the mixing bowl. Red rivulets filmed into the water. At first I thought the fish was bleeding until I saw the slice of flesh angling from my middle finger and glimpsed a dazzle of bone through the crimson cut.
Mrs. Klein, our landlady who lived downstairs, must have heard the commotion. She appeared at the kitchen doorway, hands clutched to her face.
“Get into the bathroom. Quick.”
“But the fish…”
The other one flopped on the pale linoleum floor, which now glistened water and blood. I scooped its sleek body into my hand and hobbled to the mixing bowl. Even though I felt no pain, blood oozed between my toes. Mrs. Klein wrapped a dishtowel around my right foot. I leaned into her and she whisked me into the bathroom and plunked me onto the seat of the toilet.
She unwound the towel and bound first my foot and then my finger in a thickness of gauze. I felt weak. Mrs. Klein carried me past the blood spattered walls and floor of the kitchen, into the living room, and laid me on the couch. She rolled up a blanket and propped that beneath my bandaged foot.
“Lie still while I wipe up the kitchen before your mother gets home. She’d faint if she saw it now.”
“How are the fish?” I sobbed.
“Your fish are fine. For heaven’s sake!”
I fell asleep and when I awoke my mother was standing over me. She stroked my forehead.
“What a scare,” she said.
“How are the fish?”
“They’re okay, and so are you.”
The bleeding had stopped.
My grandparents came by that evening and the three women, my mother, Grandma, and Mrs. Klein changed the bandages. My finger and foot throbbed. While the women worked on me, Grandpa told about the time when he was a boy on the farm and how working at the woodpile he had almost chopped off his big toe. He described the slash in his leather boot, the blood, and then the dangling toe and how his mother sewed it back in place.
Thinking back today, I suppose I should have been taken to a doctor for stitches, but at that time, as long as the bleeding had stopped, a costly visit was probably considered unnecessary and certainly unaffordable.
My mother brought the mixing bowl to the coffee table. I lay on the couch lifting my head now and then to watch the fish. A few days later their scales reddened, and finally they floated, like carrot strips.
I tilted the mixing bowl. With a flush of the handle, for one brief moment the gossamer fins undulated and quivered as if filled with life, and then the orange bodies swirled and slipped away through the vortex.