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     Denizens of the Deep   

     


by Judith Beck

 
                                
                        

 
 




     

     

 

 

           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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