What If a Fish

by Anika Fajardo

17

  PAPA HAD A scratchy chin and a round belly. He used to give me rides on his shoulders, and the whole world looked different from up there. Whenever I saw his large brown work boots next to the front door, I knew he was home, and I would listen for his response when Mama called “Eduardo!” from across the old apartment, a smile in her voice.

  And then there was the hospital bed, the white sheets. Did Papa make a sound when he died? I wasn’t there. Was he afraid? Was he in pain? Who is in more pain—the person who dies, or the people they leave behind?

  I’m sitting next to Abuela’s bed holding her hand again while I ponder these things, and also how to get her to the beach.

  Over the last week we’ve been taking turns sitting with Abuela. We listen to the coughs, the breathing machine, and the traffic outside her window. Me, Big Eddie, even Nita. When it’s Nita’s turn, Big Eddie takes me somewhere close by. We went to the market, where I saw huge stacks of mangoes and pineapples and drank fresh coconut lemonade. We picked up fried chicken at Kokoriko, a fast-food restaurant that gives you disposable plastic gloves for eating your wings and drumsticks. Big Eddie says “kokoriko” is what a rooster says in Spanish. He smiled when I repeated it. It was nice to see him smile, so I said it three more times. I haven’t asked Big Eddie about taking Abuela to the beach, but he took me twice. He sat on the sand and watched me jump in the waves. Every time I laughed, I felt bad, like I shouldn’t be having fun.

  Neighbors and old friends also come to sit with Doña Ana María, as they call her. She takes their hands when they bend down to kiss her cheek. While visitors are there, my brother stands outside her bedroom door like a bodyguard, his face pinched with sadness. It reminds me of Mama and her sadness that I never really understood but wished I did.

  Mama used to sit on the edge of my bed when I was in kindergarten and say, “I’m sad, Little Eddie-boy. I miss your papa.” I felt sad too. But not because I missed him.

  Because, except for those work boots and a couple of songs he liked, I hardly remembered him. I hardly knew him. I only had four years with him, and those years when you’re little don’t really count. But maybe by competing in the Fourteenth Annual Arne Hopkins Dock Fishing Tournament, I’ll learn something I didn’t know about Papa. About me.

  And now, I wish I could know Abuela better. Even though she’s still alive, I feel sad because there’s so much I don’t know about her. I wish I could know how she feels, what her life was like, what will happen to her next. I wish I could know everything.

  At the sound of the front door opening, I slide my hand out of Abuela’s limp grasp and sneak out of the bedroom.

  “She’s sleeping,” I whisper to my brother, who’s carrying groceries.

  Big Eddie peers around the doorway at his grandmother. “Thanks for sitting with her, Little Eddie,” he whispers back.

  I follow him into the kitchen, where he dumps plastic grocery bags onto the counter. “I bought ingredients for coconut rice.” Nita begins unpacking the food. “Nita uses my mother’s recipe.” Big Eddie and Nita speak in rapid Spanish as she fills a pan with water. “You have to try coconut rice before you go back to Minnesota,” he says.

  My flight home is in eight days. Mama keeps texting Big Eddie, asking if I should come back early or if she should come here or if she should ask the university for another deferment. He doesn’t seem to know what he wants. I don’t know what will happen. No one does.

  I look at the coconut and the huge bag of rice. I take a deep breath. “We have to take her to the beach.”

  “Abuela?” he asks, as if I might be talking about Nita wanting to go. “She can’t. Besides, she’s too sick to know what she wants, Little Eddie.” Even with a short laugh and a smile, his despair shows through.

  “She does. She wants to go to the beach. And I want to be called Tito.”

  “You need to leave this to me. ¿Vale?”

  It’s not okay. “But she should go if she wants to. Like you did when you were little? On a picnic?”

  He closes the refrigerator door. “It’s too risky.”

  “Only to the beach and back?”

  “No.” Big Eddie’s big voice is at odds with the quiet house. He slams the door to the patio and stands in the shadow of the lemon tree. A match flares and he lights a cigarette. I watch it move from his mouth and back again. Gross. I didn’t know my brother smoked. So many things I don’t know.

  “Big Eddie?” I open the patio door and stand not quite outside, not quite inside. I feel small. Little, like my name.

  Big Eddie doesn’t turn around.

  “Just let me think.” His words are as sour as the lemons in the tree. “I can’t think.” He sounds mad the way Mama gets mad sometimes. Mad and sad go together.

  I leave him and sit on the front step. I pick up my phone. Still nothing new from Liam, but there is a message from Cameron:

  Alyssa told me about the salad bar in middle school. Did you know that the eighth graders spit in the lettuce?

  Now I feel mad and sad too. Who cares about salad bars or eighth graders or Alyssa? I answer Cameron:

  Are you best friends with Alyssa now?

  She doesn’t reply. Silence from her and Liam and Big Eddie.

  * * *

  “Little Eddie.” A scratchy whisper. “Eddie!”

  I pull the pillow over my head to block out the noise.

  “Little Eddie! Ed! Eduardito! Tito!”

  At the sound of my new name, I snatch the pillow away and open my eyes. It’s dark, but I can see Big Eddie standing over me. He stayed silent all through Nita’s meal of coconut rice, a thick dish with blackened bits of sweet coconut milk. It looked as strange as some of the foods Mama makes, but when I tasted it, I discovered that coconut rice is better than anything from Mama’s kitchen. I ended up eating my whole serving and asking for seconds.

  “Wake up. I need your help.” He’s wearing shorts, a T-shirt, and his big sneakers.

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s four.”

  “In the morning?”

  “I need your help. Get dressed.”

  “What’s the matter? Is it Abuela?”

  “She’s okay, Little Eddie. But I decided something. I need your help.”

  I get dressed and slip my feet into flip-flops. In the living room Abuela is on the sofa, wrapped in the striped rainbow blanket. She smiles and waves for me to come nearer.

  Should I say good morning? I’m not sure if four a.m. counts as morning. “¿Buenos días?” I say, more like a question than a greeting.

  Big Eddie is in the kitchen filling a grocery bag with bread, three cups, and another blanket. Beside the bag is a plastic pitcher of juice.

  “What’s going on?” I sit next to Abuela and pat her leg. “What’s the matter with Abuela?”

  “We’re taking her to the beach,” Big Eddie says firmly.

  “Now?”

  She smiles, but her breathing is loud and crackly. Her face, even in the dim light coming through the glass door, is so pale, it’s almost blue. She takes my hand, and her fingers are ice.

  “La playa,” she says, and grins wide.

  18

  I HAVE NO IDEA where my brother found a wheelchair, but there it is on the sidewalk, in the dark.

  “You changed your mind?” I ask him. “Where did you get the wheelchair? Why are we going in the middle of the night?”

  “Sometimes you have to do things right when you want to do them. There isn’t always time to think about it.”

  “But you said no yesterday.”

  Big Eddie looks at Abuela, who is supporting herself in the doorframe as we get the wheelchair ready. “You were right, Little Eddie. She wants to go to the beach. She should go to the beach.”

  Abuela holds on to my arm as we come down the front step. She hobbles, one foot in front of the other, and then pauses to rest. Big Eddie lowers his grandmother into the chair. The sound of techno music pulses in the distance, and I wonder who is still up
dancing at four in the morning.

  “Vámonos,” Big Eddie says, and hands me the sack of food and the pitcher.

  Abuela says something, and we both lean down to hear her better. “Beach,” she says again, her voice crackling. It still sounds more like a curse word. Big Eddie and I look at each other and giggle. It feels good to laugh with Big Eddie the way we used to when he came to visit—when he would tickle me and take me to the park. Now Abuela laughs with us until her laughter turns to coughing.

  When we arrive at the beach, the sand is dark in the moonlight. The umbrellas the beachgoers usually rent have been folded up, leaving the shore empty. In between coughs, Abuela’s face spreads into a wide smile.

  “Can you help?” Big Eddie struggles with the skinny rims of the wheelchair in the sand. The two of us push, but the wheels sink farther like it’s quicksand instead of regular sand. “I’ll carry it.” Big Eddie lifts the front of the chair while I push from behind.

  Abuela rasps. He sets down the wheelchair and kneels in front of his grandmother, who is trying to say something. “It’s worth trying,” he whispers, and stands up. I already know he would do anything for Abuela, so I’m not surprised by how determined he is. And if he is, I am too.

  “Let’s try it without the chair,” Big Eddie says. “We can do it, don’t you think?”

  I like the way he says “we.”

  Abuela weighs almost nothing, but she’s as difficult to grab a hold of as a slippery fish. She clings to my elbow, and we half carry and half drag her along.

  We make it to the edge of the water, where our shadows in the moonlight hang in front of us like they can’t wait to get to the ocean. Ahead, the sea is a blank canvas, as black as the night sky. Nothing. It’s like looking at nothing. I wonder if the fish know it’s night. Do fish really sleep with their eyes open? I wish I had my encyclopedia, but the D-E-F volume is far away, stacked on my desk in my room in Minnesota.

  Big Eddie lays the blanket down at the water’s edge, and we lower Abuela onto it. He pours cups of juice from what’s left in the pitcher after all the sloshing. Every time a car drives past on the road behind us, I can’t help turning around. It feels like we’re doing something illegal.

  “A nadar,” says Abuela. She speaks around her breaths like a tiger moving through trees in a jungle.

  Big Eddie laughs and squeezes her hand.

  “What does she want?”

  “To swim.”

  “Okay,” I say. If Abuela wants to swim, she should swim.

  “But— Oh, okay.” Big Eddie gently pulls off Abuela’s pink slippers, and she smiles as her feet touch the sand.

  “Arena,” she says, grinning at me.

  “What?”

  “Arena,” she repeats.

  “ ‘Arena’ means ‘sand,’ ” Big Eddie interprets.

  “Ah-rain-ah,” I repeat. Sand. I rub my palm across it, still warm from the day.

  We try to help Abuela stand, but she says something and bats away our hands. “Agua, mijos.”

  “She says it’s okay,” Big Eddie says. “She just wants you to bring her some seawater. For her feet.”

  I dump out the last of the juice. It makes a river in the sand heading toward the ocean. At the water’s edge, I try to fill the pitcher without stepping into the black water. The ocean seems different at night, creepier, scarier. I don’t want to meet any aguamalas in the dark. Or leeches. I check the pitcher—no water. I look back at the little shape on the sand: Abuela waiting for seawater. I have to get Abuela what she wants. I splash in, and the waves coat my legs. After filling the pitcher, I run back.

  Big Eddie’s arm is around Abuela. She looks cold even though the night is almost as hot as the day. Each inhale and exhale she takes is like the water lapping at the shoreline—barely touching, then pulling back.

  I pour water onto her bare feet. The sand darkens. She wiggles her toes in the puddle. “More. Más.”

  I pour the rest of the water onto her feet.

  She smiles at me. “Más,” she says.

  “Más,” I repeat. Another word for my collection.

  I fill the pitcher again. I’m not thinking about aguamalas or leeches. I just know I have to get water to Abuela. Each time I pour it onto her feet, she sighs with something between pain and pleasure. It’s exactly how I feel.

  * * *

  Later, after we bring Abuela home and tuck her into bed, I dream about a boat. In the dream I’m balancing on the railing like on a tightrope. On one side is black water like the sea at night. On the other, the floor of the boat is piled with slimy, dead jellyfish. I’m about to fall—I’m not sure which way—when I jerk awake. It’s daytime. Big Eddie’s bed is a tangle of sheets. A box of tissues is mixed up in them like a sailboat on ocean waves.

  I climb out of bed and pull on my shorts, checking the pocket for Papa’s medal. When I get to the kitchen, the bright midday sun blinds me. I squint. Something feels different, but I can’t tell what it is. A plate of fruit waits on the counter, probably for me. The clock on the bookshelf ticks as usual. I hear Nita doing laundry in the little room out back. But there is a silence, an emptiness. I bring the plate of papaya into the courtyard and sit on the warm bricks. I’m used to the heat now. Maybe that’s my Colombian side. The Paredes kids next door shout, but no soccer ball comes flying.

  “There you are.” Big Eddie appears in the courtyard. His eyes are rimmed in red, and his chin is black with an unshaved beard. My throat clenches.

  And I know what’s wrong. But I don’t want to know.

  “That was fun last night,” I say. Loud. Louder than I need to be. “The beach at night was so… and the way Abuela says ‘beach,’ it’s pretty funny—”

  “I have to tell you something, Little Eddie.” He sits in the plastic patio chair. Abuela’s chair.

  If he doesn’t tell me, then it can’t be true.

  “I’ve never been to the beach at night. It was so cool. Don’t call me ‘Little Eddie,’ ” I say, because I don’t want him to tell me anything. “I’m Tito now.”

  “Little Eddie, please listen.”

  “I’m going to send Mama a message and tell her about the beach. The way Abuela wiggled her—” I’m crying, and Big Eddie is too. “She’s gone, isn’t she?”

  Big Eddie only nods. When he stands up, the plastic chair tips over backward, making a quiet thud on the bricks. He doesn’t pick it up. He puts his large hand on my head, and I never want him to move it. The weight hurts my neck, and the hurt feels good.

  “After you went to bed.” He sits down next to me on the bricks, and the top of my head still feels warm from where his hand was. “She was smiling. Coughing. And then… Mi abuelita.”

  The sound Big Eddie makes is so terrible, I want to run. I want to run and hide under the hot blankets. Big Eddie needs me. And so, just like I do with Mama when she’s sad, I put my hand on his arm and listen to him sob. Nothing, I think, will ever be right ever again.

  19

  THAT NIGHT, Big Eddie and I fall into our beds in the room across the hall from Abuela’s closed door. Our sadness fills every crack and crevice of the house and it seeps into the patio. My brother is exhausted from planning the funeral, and I’m worn out from not being able to help him. He falls asleep almost instantly, and then I’m asleep too.

  In the middle of the night, I wake.

  What was that sound? Was it breaking glass from the bottles Big Eddie lines up at the door? A thief  ? I can barely see my feet as I swing them out of bed. I feel creaky and sore from all the crying yesterday. I make out the shape of my brother sleeping across from me. Maybe the sound I heard was just Big Eddie’s snores filling the darkness. Not a burglar.

  I’m glad he’s sleeping. After he made phone calls and arrangements for the funeral, Big Eddie wandered around the house. He didn’t cry much, but he kept sitting down and then standing back up. I called Mama, and she wanted to talk to him. I sat on my bed while he was on the phone and listened to them d
iscussing the university. At first Big Eddie argued, his accent becoming stronger as he listed excuses. Then he was quiet, finally nodding into the phone and saying, “Yes, Liz. You’re right, Liz.” They decided he’s going to start in the fall semester as planned, so he’ll fly back to Minnesota with me. I won’t be an unaccompanied minor this time.

  I tiptoe over yesterday’s clothes and the balled-up tissues on the floor and quietly creep into the hall. I do not look at Abuela’s closed bedroom door.

  In the kitchen I don’t have to turn on the lights because the moon shines through the windows. I pour water from the jug in the refrigerator and hold the glass against my sweating forehead.

  I’m wide awake now, so I pull open the doors to the courtyard. Being outside in the middle of the night reminds me of our picnic with Abuela, and I have to swallow hard.

  Then there’s the sharp sound again. Is it a rooster’s crow? I look up. The black sky glitters with stars. Above me a lemon hangs from a branch of the tree, as round as the moon. I reach up. I want to bring one home in my suitcase. The leaves rustle as I tug on the fruit.

  And there, sitting in the crook of a tree limb, is a figure.

  I blink. I’m tired. Upset. I must be imagining things.

  The figure shimmers. Is there a person up there? In the middle of the night? I remember Big Eddie’s glass bottles lined up at the door. Did someone get around them or climb over the wall? Would a burglar sit in a tree? I shut my eyes, squeeze them closed. I hear a noise, different from the first, and this time I know it’s not a rooster crowing.

  I open my eyes and there it is. Not it. Her. Still in the branches. The ghostlike figure is a woman. A woman with long black hair, almost to her waist, and a smile that makes me want to smile back even though I’m pretty sure I should be afraid right now, but I’m not. Because the woman has eyes exactly like Abuela’s. She’s wearing a long skirt and a blouse that’s white and shimmery, with fluttery sleeves. Her eyes sparkle in the same way Big Eddie’s do, especially when he’s about to play a trick on me.