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Winter
in Philadelphia: sunlight is glittering off small whitecaps on the half-frozen
river. Mother is hurrying along the pavement to the Waterworks, beautiful
buildings that now hold the shabby municipal aquarium. She’s holding
her collar closed against the wind.
I’m scurrying
along behind her, clutching tight to her long brown coat. Ice slicks
could be hiding in the shadows; the fear of slipping in my leather-soled
Buster Brown hand-me-downs has overwhelmed me. My legs are so stiff
with fright they ache, but lagging behind gets a quick smack to legs
or bottom.
A steep
flight of stairs leads from the door to the huge rooms that held the
Waterworks machinery. Brother likes to tell me about the machines, but
each time he tries to pull me up on his knees I wriggle from his grasp.
I want a pony; he’s the one who loves engines. In fact, I don’t like
machines at all—no cars, trucks, trains, or even airplanes with noisy
propellers you can hear from the ground. My father says airplanes are
for rich people.
Four steps
down I take a quick look up at Mother. I can’t see her eyes; her glasses
have fogged up like the windows over our clanking, hissing radiators.
Her cheeks don’t turn red with the cold or give her away with a blush;
her coloring is like Brother’s, so different from mine we could be strangers.
Their olive skin is secret, like the teakettle on a little fire: no
whistle, no glow, but burning when you forget and touch. Watch out,
child!
“I wouldn’t
have to waste the morning here if you were brave. I can’t abide a timid
child!”
I feel
bad when she says that. I know I’ve become afraid of everything, but
I don’t know why. I’m afraid of roaches and bullies and going into the
basement where our cat crunches on mouse bones. Right now, I’m especially
afraid of hurrying down into this building.
An aquarium
has fish. I hate the taste of fish. My father makes rhymes to get me
to eat fishy on my dishy. What could fishies have to do with being brave?
Step-step,
step-step.
I grab
tighter at the scratchy wool as it is pulled away.
“Here!”
She thrusts a gloved hand at me.
Dark cream
paint peels on the stairway wall; a helpful little girl could pick it
off flake by flake. I would stay all day and be good and make it smooth
if we stopped here. That’s what I would like to do. Her hand tightens.
Step-step,
step-step.
Down below,
the air isn’t wintery or summery, just aquarium-wet.
A tall
man at the bottom of the stairs is leaning against the wall, not standing
up straight! Picking at his nails. Should get his hand slapped for that!
He’s wearing gray with an easy word on his shirt. “Bill”.
He looks
at Mother in a funny way, bottom to top: shoes first, stockings with
crooked seam, brown coat. Spends the longest time on her big bosoms.
I don’t want him to look at me, no bosoms yet, so I slide behind her.
“This is
for your own good,” she says as she pushes me away, then a nice hello
to Bill.
Bill touches
my head. I squirm out of his reach.
“We go
to Ocean Gate every summer and now she won’t go in the water anymore.”
That explains it.
I look
up at her to see what Bill sees. All I can see are big nostril-holes
over red, red lips.
“For your
own good” is the worst thing she can say.
I pat the
swing coat that Grandma bought for my fifth birthday because Brother’s
old one had holes where the moths chewed. Shameful. My new coat has
a fuzzy pony on the one big pocket. The pony is yellow and cheerful
even in this underground room.
The shadows
on the concrete floor give the impression of swimming with my eyes wide
open—wavy, blue and green, beautiful and scary, like looking through
the curtains at fancy-schmancy Aunt Mitzi’s house.
The two
of us go hand in hand, Mother loves you, down the short hallway. Past
pretty toy-fish, striped bright white and yellowy-orange, long sea snakes
like ribbons, crabs with big claws and little feet, and silvery flashes
that race away as we approach, to a room with big floor to ceiling window-glass.
The big tanks.
If fish
tried to breathe in our air, they’d suffocate and die. Just like you’d
drown in water. They’re denizens of the deep. Brother likes to show
he knows more because he’s two years older. When he says this, it’s
like diving under water; feeling it part as my face goes in, closing
overhead as bubbles holding onto my blonde curls escape and go back
to the real world of air.
I hold
my breath in the room, look up at the high, high ceiling with the turned
off light bulb, almost glad my mother is with me when I look at the
tank. The water is cloudy, murky with swirling dirt.
But Mother
does not seem glad that she is with me. In a sad very-disappointed-in-you
voice, she says, “Now you stand here without moving, or you’ll get What
For.”
I was wrong,
“For your own good” isn’t the worst. “What For” is.
She bends
over, takes my shoulders and pushes me, heels skidding on the concrete,
until I’m nearly touching the glass. The air is chilly here, colder
than in middle of the room. All the light in the room comes down through
the tank, open above to the far-away sun.
The water
makes funny reflections and shadows. Bill, moving down the hall, appears
to swim slow and lazy. Mother follows him, floats out of sight towards
another room where I saw some benches.
My father
is at work. He won’t come, even if I wish it. That’s something I know.
I look
down at the Buster Browns, scuffy boy-shoes, not pretty suede Mary-Janes.
I don’t hate them now even if they belonged to my brother. They’re something
from home, which is more familiar, and therefore less scary than here.
With the strap of my close-fitting cap digging into my under-chin, I
try to remember how I got the biggest scrapes on the toes.
A shadow
appears above me, lots bigger than I am, about Mother’s size. It drifts
down, slow as a feather, barely rippling the water-light that laps like
the in-coming tide over my shoes.
Just like
at recess, when someone in the dodge-ball ring is about to throw from
behind, I can tell eyes are on me now. Sooner or later, I’ll have to
look up; I can feel my gaze being tugged from my shoes. I can’t stare
at them forever. The something is now waiting on the bottom of the tank,
lazy-like. Whatever it is, it’s taking its time, not like me, such an
impatient child. I look over, slow and careful. One eye, cocked out
the end of the gray hammer-shaped head stares back.
My head
spins as if I’m going to fall. I remember last summer: Don’t go to
the pier; that’s where they haul them up. Their teeth are white and
sharp like saws. I’m warning you.
At the
shore, still alive, twisting bodies hung glistening in the sun, snapping
their jaws. Squishing seaweed through my bare toes, I watched from afar.
Brother
didn’t want me there with his friends. He told me, You’ll make a
tasty snack. A Tastee-Cake. A Butterscotch Krimpet. A Chocolate Cuppie
Cake. They’ll eat you up if you don’t run home.
I have
learned a lot about monsters. I can tell the monster in the tank is
thinking the same thing as me: only the aquarium glass keeps us apart,
each in our own world.
Sharks
have to keep moving or they die. They’re denizens of the deep. Brother’s
said that many times, but still the hammerhead lies motionless right
next to me. The eye never blinks.
Tears in
my eyes make the room even more watery than before and my nose starts
to run. I don’t dare move my arm, even quiet as a mouse, to wipe my
upper lip with my pink sleeve. Like our cat, the shark might jump at
any movement.
My breath
feels as tight as if someone is squeezing me to them. Fear nuzzles my
body like Kimmel when she wants food. I’m too afraid to run, even if
my mother calls me.
Suddenly,
there’s a slight noise, almost too small to hear: a far-away groan.
It sounds as if the missing waterworks are shifting back into gear.
Does Mother hear it in the other room? Will she come running in?
I wish
I had listened better when Brother told me, Before the aquarium was
there, the Waterworks had great big machines to bring water to the city.
No one knows where the machines went. I wish I had asked him, Do
machines leave ghosts? Are ghosts worse than sharks? Do they have big
teeth?
The next
noise is a glassy ping, a tiny soap bubble-bursting sound. A crack must
have started near the top of the glass, weeping seawater onto the floor
in front of my feet. The floor seems shinier, wetter.
I think
again about great white zigzag teeth and remember trips to the butcher-shop
with Mother: saws across soft bloody flesh, aiming down to the bone.
If my hands
were up over my face, I could peer out from between two fingers. I could
play the game I spy; I spy with my little eye.
Gradually
the crack widens, and spreads along a line that leads to where I stand.
In minutes the glass will burst, the water gush out into the room, sweeping
the shark into my world and me into its.
I wait.
Nothing happens, so I risk a look up. The crack must have healed or
never been. Perhaps Mother’s right, I imagine too much. Near the far
away surface of the water another huge shadow swims by and disappears.
A quick look down—my hammerhead has moved slightly closer. I think the
eye is pressed against the glass.
I stare
back at the floor, rub my foot slightly on it. The grating noise echoes
but doesn’t cover the slight ping of the crack beginning again, the
roar in my ears, like water rushing.
You
know your mother loves you and your brother loves you, too, my father
says late in the evenings when he comes home from work and sees me crying.
The shark
shadow on the floor moves, swims into the room. With nothing to lose,
I risk wiping my nose on the back my sleeve.
My hand
is slapped away from my face. Silently Mother has drifted beside me.
Perhaps I didn’t notice because the shark didn’t swim away at her approach.
Maybe it thinks the glass will protect it.
“It’s time
for lunch, time to leave the fish behind. We don’t have all day to spend
here, you know.” Mother jiggles change for the trolley in the closed
fist of her velvet glove. “We’re going to the shore again this summer,
so I just hope this cured you of being such a scaredy-cat.”
I look
up at her in her elegant coat. The wavy blue-green light distorts her
face. Alien to me now, a Denizen of the Deep.
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