What If a Fish

by Anika Fajardo

  I shove my phone into my pocket, and we watch the cars pass. The traffic backs up and the air fills with the smog of car fumes. Then a chugging, sputtering motorcycle comes to a stop in front of us.

  Big Eddie greets the rider, who stands next to the motorcycle holding a black helmet in his hands. The two of them laugh and spit Spanish words everywhere.

  “Eduardito,” Big Eddie calls. “This is my friend Arturo.”

  “Mucho gusto,” the man says, and holds out his hand.

  We shake, and Arturo says, “¿Qué hubo?”

  I don’t know what that means, but I nod like Big Eddie does when we pass people in the street. Cool.

  My brother examines Arturo’s motorcycle and then grabs his toolbox from the porch. He shuffles over to the motorcycle and kneels beside it. He and Arturo talk and point, and Big Eddie is doing something that’s making his hands as black as his friend’s helmet.

  “See, the distributor just needs to be adjusted,” my brother explains to me. “Usually it’s the cylinders that are misfiring.” I don’t understand his English words any more than I understood Arturo’s Spanish. It’s all foreign.

  “Can you fix it?” I ask.

  Big Eddie keeps twisting and shifting parts. “I fix lots of things.”

  Arturo sits next to me on the curb, and we watch my brother. It’s like a dance, his hands moving, the fingers flicking, almost like there’s music in his head as he tinkers with one part and then another. Arturo takes his phone out and starts typing. I don’t know how he can look away from the performance. Big Eddie hums a tune that sounds sort of familiar. “Volverte a ver,” he sings. Then he pauses to tap one hand on his thigh in a rhythm that seems to match his jangling energy.

  At last he stops humming, grunts with effort, and says, “¡Eso!” as the pieces snap into place. He stands up and admires his work. “This is a Kawasaki KLR, Eduardito. Nice piece of machinery. Classic. Look at how it all fits together.”

  Arturo thanks Big Eddie, and Big Eddie laughs and says, “No hay problema.” They punch each other’s shoulders and laugh, and they remind me of me and Liam when we’re just fooling around. I take a picture of the Kawasaki and send it to Liam.

  Then Big Eddie switches to English and asks me, “Would you like to ride his bike?”

  My eyes bug out. Ride? The motorcycle? What would Mama say? I watch as Arturo passes his helmet to Big Eddie. My brother straps it onto my head with a little leather buckle.

  “Bye!” Arturo says, and sits back down on the curb.

  “Do you know how to drive this?” I ask my brother.

  “Of course!”

  The motorcycle leaps to life. I back up from the cloud of exhaust, but Big Eddie is tilting forward, almost as if he wants to drink in the smell of the engine. Straddling the bike, he looks happier than he has since Abuela started having more trouble breathing.

  “Get on.”

  I climb on behind Big Eddie and hold on to his waist as tightly as I can. We take off, and over the roar of the motorcycle, he cries, “¡Epa!”

  I am not yelling with joy like him—at least not at first. As we lean into the first corner, the concrete of the road seems to come closer than I’d want. Then we straighten out and head onto Avenida Santander. The smell of seawater mixes with the fumes of gasoline. The wind whips at my arms, and I hold on tighter. I’m scared but brave. A smile stretches its way across my face. I feel like the spinner when it swerved and spun through the night air of the plaza.

  Even after we return Arturo’s motorbike and he chugs away, I still feel like we’re zooming around. Big Eddie looks like he just rode the biggest roller coaster at the Valleyfair amusement park. I feel like I just faced death and survived. Luckily, Abuela is awake and sitting on the sofa when we come into the house, because the two of us can’t stop laughing and whooping.

  “¡Hola, mi abuelita!” Big Eddie says, leaning down to kiss her cheek. “¿Cómo te sientes?” She nods and smiles. She’s always refreshed after her siesta. “¿Quieres música?” he asks.

  “Claro, mijo,” she says. “Music!”

  “Listen to this, hermanito.” Big Eddie taps his phone, and a song blasts out. He starts to sing the same tune he was humming in the street.

  “I’ve heard that song before,” I say as he moves his hips to the beat.

  “It was Papa’s favorite song. It’s called ‘Volverte a ver.’ That means…” Big Eddie pauses. “It means ‘to see you again.’ ” He sings a little.

  And as he sings, even though I can’t understand the words, I hear Papa’s scratchy voice singing the same song, and I picture him dancing in the living room of our apartment. It’s my own memory of him. I reach into my pocket and clutch Papa’s medal.

  “It’s by the Colombian singer Juanes,” Big Eddie says. “Do you like it?”

  I laugh as he grabs me by the arms and swings me in a big circle. “It’s a good song,” I say when he releases me.

  “Ahh,” Big Eddie cries. “You’re a true Colombiano. And now, we dance la cumbia!”

  “What’s ‘cumbia’?” I ask.

  He clicks to a different song, and a fast, pulsing beat comes bouncing out of the little speakers.

  “¡La cumbia! It’s Colombia’s dance. Así.” He begins to step in and out, making little turns in the middle of the living room, and I see Papa all over again. The music is Big Eddie’s on-off switch, and I picture Papa dancing like this in my bedroom when I was supposed to be going to sleep. Another memory.

  Now Abuela claps and laughs too. “¡Anda!” she cries.

  My brother dances in circles around me. It’s sort of embarrassing. I have no idea what I’m doing, but I laugh and try a little anyway. Big Eddie stands in front of Abuela and holds out his hand, bowing. She takes it, and he pulls her up gently. They move to the music, Big Eddie holding his grandmother as her tiny slippered feet follow the beat.

  And then something terrible happens.

  “¡Abuela!” Big Eddie cries out. There’s a strangled sound in his voice.

  I don’t know how, but suddenly Abuela is on the floor. Her face is white like the tiles. Big Eddie’s is green. She leans on him as he helps her into her bedroom. Is she hurt? Is she in pain like I was when I got stung by the aguamala? If only we could fix her with a little vinegar.

  I hover outside her room. “What happened?” I whisper, trying not to be a burden.

  Big Eddie glances at me. “Not now,” he says.

  I go out to the patio, where I won’t be in the way. The kids next door are quiet. A breeze that smells like salt water blows. Life is something. One moment we’re dancing the cumbia in the living room. And the next? The next moment, everything can change.

  * * *

  Big Eddie comes into the courtyard and stands beside me. Somewhere a television blares, and even though the words are in Spanish, I can tell by the loud music and excited talking that it’s a commercial.

  “I called the doctor,” Big Eddie says, his voice rough and bruised. “He’ll come in the morning.”

  I nod.

  Big Eddie squeezes my shoulder and then goes back inside.

  Ping. I look at my phone. I hope it’s Liam.

  It’s not.

  We had a cold snap here. Fifty-five degrees yesterday—in July! Are you having nice warm weather?

  I realize that Mama doesn’t know. It makes Minnesota feel very far away. I reply.

  Abuela fell this afternoon. She’s ok but the doctor is coming tomorrow. I’m trying not to be a burden.

  The phone pings again. Mama replies, Oh no, and includes a crying face.

  I tell her it’s sad here.

  Do you need anything? Is she ok? Does Big Eddie want you to leave? I’ll call him.

  I start typing a reply, but I don’t know what to say. Will he want me to leave? My cheeks are wet when I put my phone back into my pocket. It must be the humidity here in Cartagena.

  A doctor comes to check on Abuela the next morning, and the whole time he’s h
ere, I stand outside her door like one of the soldiers on the wall protecting Cartagena. The doctor has a mustache like Papa’s, and he wears a white coat and carries a black bag like he’s in a TV show. He sets up a machine that has tubes going into Abuela’s nose. After he leaves, Big Eddie explains what’s happening. The doctor said that Abuela’s cancer is making her very sick, that she needs help breathing, that she doesn’t have long. She doesn’t want the medicine that will make her cancer go way, because it won’t make the cancer go away forever, and first it will make her feel worse.

  “Chemo?” I ask. I read in my encyclopedia that chemotherapy is a medicine that’s used to treat cancer. “Can’t you make her take it?”

  Big Eddie doesn’t answer.

  “When you say she doesn’t have long, do you mean she’s going to…” I can’t quite ask what I want to ask.

  Big Eddie just shakes his head.

  16

  WHEN MAMA and I lived in the apartment, our front door opened into a stinky corridor with flickering fluorescent lights and dirty carpeting. My favorite thing about the new duplex is that our door opens to the outside, where I can sit on the step. Now I sit on Abuela’s front step, watching the traffic in front of the house, which is more interesting than anything I see in Minneapolis. Neighbors walk by pushing carts from the market and leading lazy dogs that pee in the shrub across the street. I watch the cars: the ones that drive fast, their black-tinted windows tightly shut, and the ones that go slowly, trailing music behind them. All different kinds of people ride noisy motorbikes—young men, old ladies, small children with pink backpacks. I don’t spot a Kawasaki KLR. A donkey pulls a rickety cart. Three teenage girls in matching pleated skirts walk past. None of them have purple hair.

  I go back into the house, shutting the heavy front door behind me. Big Eddie went to the bank, something to do with hospital bills, and Nita is washing clothes. It’s just me and Abuela.

  “Ven acá, Tito,” she calls weakly as I walk past her room. Ever since she fell, she’s been spending all her time in her room, where the oxygen machine makes a constant and pulsing whooshing sound. Her skin is even grayer, and her phlegmy cough seems endless. She’s been calling me “Eduardito” since I arrived, but now she calls me “Tito,” a nickname in Spanish. Tito. Not “Little,” not “Big.” Tito. A name all my own.

  “Hola,” I say to Abuela in a soft voice. I know I don’t sound like a Colombian. But Abuela’s face always brightens at my Spanish. The machine that helps her breathe thrums. I sit in the chair next to her. Now that she’s stuck in bed, she wants someone to be near her at all times. It may sound kind of sad to stay by a sick old lady, but it’s nice. Calming. Cozy.

  “Hello,” she says with an emphasis on the H as if it’s going to escape if she doesn’t grab it. She coughs, and her whole body shakes, the bed vibrating. My face makes a frowning shape even though I try not to let it. I hand her the little glass of water from next to the bed. Abuela smiles and pats my arm. “No te preocupes. Do not worry,” she says.

  And more things. She lies back on the pillows and talks and moves her hands and coughs. The plastic tubes going into her nose don’t slow down her talking. I’m not sure what she’s saying, but it feels like the most important thing in the world to listen to her.

  Abuela takes my hand. “Tito,” she says, “you are a good boy.”

  Her fingers are cold but so soft, the knuckles creased. She squeezes my hand. I never knew that old people could be so soft. They look so wrinkled and crusty.

  In Minneapolis there’s an old man who sits on a bench by the dock at Lake Madeline. He’s there all the time watching the fishermen. Maybe he lives there. He’s always on the same bench, his hands folded around a cane propped between his knees. He wears a flat newsboy hat, and his head shakes like a bobble-head. He never smiles, never talks to anyone. Kids at school say he’ll hit you with his stick if you get too close. His face is red and peely. When you walk by, you can smell something worse than dead fish.

  Abuela never smells bad, and her wrinkles make her look like a little doll.

  “Tito,” she says again, and I decide to show her something.

  “Abuela,” I say. “Look.” I pull the metal disc out of my pocket. I toss it into the air. Toss, catch. It’s like a coin. Heads or tails. “This was my dad’s.”

  She sits up straighter. I place the fake-bronze medal in her hand.

  “¿Qué dice? What does it say?”

  “ ‘Second Annual Arne Hopkins Dock Fishing Tournament.’ ” I flip it over. “ ‘Eduardo Aguado León.’ Third place for fishing.”

  “Tu papá.” She smiles when she says “your father.” I hope Mama will smile just like that when I win my own medal. “¿Eduardo lo ganó?” she asks. “He won it?”

  “Yep. And I’m going to win this same contest when I get back to Minnesota. I’m trying for first place, but third place is pretty cool too.”

  She studies the picture of the fish with the rod, and a laugh belts out of her. “Fish is fishing?”

  I laugh too. “It’s funny, isn’t it?”

  She points at the dresser.

  “Do you need something?”

  “You get it for me, Tito.”

  I open the top drawer. She shakes her head vigorously, and I shut it, but not before I see lace and silky cloth and neatly folded squares of white cotton. Old lady underwear—yikes. This time, instead of opening, I point. “This one?”

  She shakes her head again. When I point to the bottom drawer of the dresser, she says, “Sí. Yes.” I pull the drawer open. It’s heavy, packed with worn notebooks and loose pictures and more photo albums. A library of memories, like the boxes in the garage at home. I pull out the albums one by one and pile them on the floor next to the bed.

  When I stack a deep red album on top of the others, she gets excited and says, “Yes, yes, Tito.” She holds out her arms to me. “Dámelo, mijo.”

  I put the album on her lap. It’s so thick, I’m afraid it’ll crush her skinny little legs. Each plastic page makes a crinkly sound as she turns it. I catch glimpses of yellowed photographs of blurry, smiling faces.

  While she’s turning pages, my phone pings.

  Have you gone fishing yet? Alyssa and I went to fireworks last night. Super cool.

  Fireworks? I check the date on my phone. July fifth. That means I missed the Fourth of July. And that there’s just a few weeks until the tournament. While Abuela turns pages, I text Cameron back.

  Sorry you had to spend 4th of July with the Schmidt kids.

  I add a tongue-sticking-out face. Almost immediately, my phone pings again.

  It was fun.

  Cameron and Alyssa? I stuff my phone back into my pocket without texting back.

  Abuela is turning the pages faster and faster. She’s looking for something. Then she pulls apart the plastic sheet with a ripping noise, peels off a photograph, and hands it to me: the same picture I found in the garage. A man, a boy, a fish. The biggest fish. This copy is less worn, its corners smooth and flat. I hold it closer and stare at the smile lines in my dad’s cheeks. The pattern in my brother’s striped shirt. The blank stare of the fish’s eyes.

  “Tito,” she says. And coughs. Her cough sputters like the Kawasaki. “Tu padre, Eduardo Aguado León. Brother. Eduardo,” Abuela says hoarsely, stabbing the photo with her knobby index finger. “Fish,” she says, only it sounds like “fiss.”

  She tucks the photo between two pages of the album before turning to another picture. This one is of a beach. Three adults and one baby crowd onto a plaid blanket. A striped umbrella shades the baby boy, who is clearly Big Eddie.

  Before he was big.

  “La playa.” Abuela holds the photo. “We used to take Eduardito to la playa when he was a baby. Every Sunday. Picnics on the sand. All you need in the world is tu familia. And some pan de bono, fresh juice, chicken.” She titters. “You eat lots of sand with your chicken at a picnic, no?”

  I smile in response.

 
; “Every Sunday, always. Me, Ana María, Eduardo, and your brother. We would have taken you too, Tito. A la playa.”

  Even though I know what that means, she adds, “Beach.” Only, the word that comes out of her mouth sounds like a swear word. I swallow a little giggle. She doesn’t know why I’m laughing, but she joins in, and then her laughter turns to coughing. At last her lungs seem to calm down, and she says, “We go.”

  I nod, even though I’m not sure where she thinks we’re going.

  “We go to la playa, Tito.” She looks from me to the photograph of her family on a picnic. “Yes, you take me to la playa, mijo.”

  Wait. She wants to go to the beach? I listen to the machine helping her breathe, I study her pale face and thin body. She doesn’t look like someone who’s going to the beach. I begin to shake my head.

  “¿Cuándo?” Her eyes are sparkly like that star she pointed out to me at the plaza. “When do we go?”

  I don’t know when or how, but I decide right then that I am going to get Abuela to the beach.

  “Soon, Abuela,” I say. If Abuela can give me my own name, I can give her a trip to the beach. No matter how many jellyfish are out there, I will bring her. I know I’ll need Big Eddie’s help, and I’m not sure he’ll like the idea. He reminds me of Mama, so overprotective. Abuela coughs again. I know she’s sick, but that’s why I’m going to take her to the beach. When you’re eleven, you never get to do what you want, but when you’re old like her, you should be able to.

  She takes my hand as if she needs to hold on to something. Her cough ripples through to my own chest. And I realize two things: Even though she’s not my abuela, she’s the closest thing I’ll ever have to a grandmother.

  And she’s dying.