Eulogy to Goldfish Number 4: Notes Before His Passing
I'll never forget the day (yesterday) I brought you home,
us both worried that your thin plastic might burst;
us both pretending to be something we were not—
you, so clearly orange, a goldfish,
me, so clearly a fish killer, a good mom.
I told you then that it was what all good moms do
when their five-year-old daughter's fish dies:
they replace it under guard of night, or at 7 PM bedtime,
after explaining that Harry—goldfish number 3—
had temporarily left to vacation in the Bahamas, as he is oft to do.
Yet before we had even left the store, you derided my tactics,
giving me side-eye from your bag at the checkout counter
as Tom the pet store guy (who I was seeing more than my husband
for our weekly fish-exchange ritual),
once again ran his finger down the laminated, clipart-illustrated rules of
How to Care for Your New Fish,
written in the chipper, third-grade language
that becomes, honestly, derogatory past a certain age.
"Is this really necessary, Tom?"
As is his typical look, Tom's eyebrows tugged together,
sewn by an invisible string of unabashed amazement
that yet another Harry had gone tail up.
"You've got the 20-gallon tank?"
Uh-huh.
"The filter?"
Yup.
"Aeration device? Heater? Thermometer? Water conditioner? Pebbles—"
Yeah.
"—sorted so he won't choke?"
Sure.
"Do you have a cat?"
I told him I'd see him next week, which felt akin
to saying "I love you" when hanging up the phone with my boss.
In the minivan, your water bubble slumped against the seat
like you already knew what was to come—
Were you, then, already resigned to your death?
Had you no faith in me? Hadn't I cupped the underbelly of your bag
as we left? Hadn't I lifted you gracefully into the air
when I tripped across the shop's threshold, risking
a tear at my delicate meniscus and even more delicate,
not-clearance chicos?
"No, better moms do not keep the original Harry alive,"
I argued as we turned onto the highway
"You're playing into unrealistic standards of motherhood,
stop watching mommy bloggers on TikTok, your eyes are bulging."
But I knew what you were thinking; you might as well have
spat out the words in morse code bubbles:
But how hard can it be to keep a goldfish alive?
You've somehow managed to keep a human alive for 5 years.
Mentally, I gave you the patronizing voice of Tom, the pet store guy.
Well, barely.
Soon even your husband will see you for the serial fish assassin you are.
It was true that my husband was beginning to question the weekly fish rapture.
"Again, Alice?" He'd said before I left the house.
"Maybe it's time we just sit our daughter down and
talk to her about death? It's only natural."
Need I remind him of Little Pete the pound pup
(with no discernable twin in all the tri-state area)
whose unfortunate run-in with the neighbor's back wheel
left us straddling the begonias with a shovel at midnight? Or that
our girl refused to eat until she talked to Little Pete
via a cardboard Ouija board pulled from the Halloween decorations,
the planchette being Little Pete's beloved hotdog squeaker.
I can only throw my bark so many times.
Yet my husband still urged the morbid sit-down. "Wouldn't that be...
easier?"
Wouldn't that be easier, Alice? you echoed, psycho little fish-freak.
Did I, then, consider chucking your fragile bag out the window?
Did I allow my mind to briefly dip its toe into the fantasy
of your temporary transport bursting open as it hit the asphalt
in dramatic, slow motion, amid a soundtrack
of Benedictine nuns chanting "Salve Regina"?
Maybe. But did I actually do it?
"So I forgot to feed your predecessors a few times," I cried,
"That YouTube video said you all could go weeks without food!
Besides, you were just swimming in circles in that pet store aquarium.
I've given you purpose!" Now I can swim in smaller circles
in the bowl you're about to dump me in. Gee.
Thanks. "And let me tell you something about motherhood
The entire goal is that nobody dies!"
If you keep this up, she's going to think goldfish live 10 years.
"Goldfish are supposed to live 10 years!"
Silence, as the statement stagnated in the air.
Goldfish are supposed to live for 10 years...
What was I doing wrong?
The mirage of my little girl's face appeared
at my mental front door, the image of my own at her age.
In thirty years, would she be pulling a minivan
into her own driveway, bringing Harry back from his
trip to the Bahamas in a grandiose act of death avoidance?
For now, anyway, she was still asleep in her bedroom with not a care,
not a whim, not a known misstep of my secret, nightly exchanges.
Thus, as my dopamine-trained brain has learned in matters of personal survival,
before any of the innumerable answers to the question of
What Was I Doing Wrong?
were allowed to sink into the pit of my stomach and ferment
alongside other worries (like was that past-expiration tilapia going to haunt my bowels tonight?)
—I reached for the radio's knob.
Oh yes, Bob Marley and his sweet, distraction of a voice.
Everything was going to be alright.
Everything was just fine. Harry was on his way home from vacation
and my sweet little angel was none-the-wiser.
Maybe, your snide voice cut in, start with the lack of feeding?
I turned the radio up to drown you out.
Or the cat? Are you not feeding the cat, either?
I turned the radio up louder. "I don't have a cat!"
The only viable conclusion, then, you yelled above the song,
is it must be some moral karma of past misdeeds for which you
and your offspring will inevitably pay, until the end of—
The music: earsplitting. Everything. Was. Going. To. Be. Alright.
—time, and you will be the single ancestor for which they have to blame,
that is, if they survive in this wicked world long enough to lay eggs of their own.
Wow, your house is nice.
"It is, isn't it?" We had, by then, made it as far as the driveway.
I had always loved the house's horseshoe drive, and how its
environmentally unfriendly white-cement curled up against the front porch
like a cat's arched back. And the porch light,
a welcoming, yellow orb that my husband, ceaselessly,
left on if I was out on a goldfish-run. "By the way,
humans don't lay eggs."
Then what—
"Look," I lamented before lifting your bag from the passenger seat
which would, most likely, deliver many more Harrys in its next 100k miles,
"the last fish hardly had such a mouth on him."
Well Alice, you had replied, at this point
I'm just looking forward to my trip to the Bahamas.
Yeah, Harry. Me too.
Please enjoy this YouTube video of the author reading her poem:
