by Xequina
“What do you think about coming inside to live with me? We could regulate the temperature of the water and you would be more comfortable.”
“What’s an ‘aquarium’?” Mermary asked.
“It’s a place full of water where fish and plants live. The water will be much cleaner, and you’ll be able to see where I live.”
“I would like to see the aquarium where you live,” Mermary said.
I laughed. “I don’t live in an aquarium.” So then I explained about humans living differently from mer-people.
“Can we go now?”
“No, the aquarium isn’t ready yet. I have to get some supplies and stuff before I introduce you to a new environment.”
“What’s an environment?” Mermary asked.
“It’s a place where an animal or person lives. Different animals need a particular kind of place to live, like you need water, and I need air and a dry place.”
I had to answer a lot more questions Mermary had. I didn’t mind, I just hoped Mermary would like her new home and would want to stay there.
Chapter 12
A New Home for Mermary
That week my mom brought home a pump, a filter, sand, and other aquarium supplies.
“The water needs to be prepared ahead of time so it can be conditioned before the fish are introduced,” she said. “If we set it up today, we can get your fish this weekend. Have you thought about where the aquarium should be?”
I had, of course. “My room.”
So she carried the aquarium upstairs for me and put it on my desk, which was in a bay window. A bay is a part of a house with windows that projects out so the room gets extra light.
My mom explained each item and why fish needed it.
“The air pump circulates water so it doesn’t get stagnant. The filter helps to clean the water of old food and waste produced by the fish, but you’ll also have to clean the water frequently.”
Next she showed me how to clean the sand with an aquarium vacuum and aerate it with my hand to take out any air pockets.
“Bacteria that are harmful to the fish can grow in air pockets,” she told me.
I went to bed that night with the pump running. I was so excited I could barely sleep. Mermary was coming inside to live with me!
Finally the weekend came and we went to a pet store. I looked at the fish in all the different tanks and finally decided to start with two guppies. I chose the most beautiful ones the store had: one was blue and orange with spots and had a large, wavy tail and top fin. The other was blue and green with a yellow zebra tail. Of course, they cost twice as much as the other, plainer guppies. I also got a lot of plants and two different kinds of food.
“That’s a lot of greenery, honey,” my mom said. “You’re going to have an underwater jungle. Plus they’ll grow. And why buy so much food? Why don’t you get more fish instead?”
I shook my head. “I want the guppies to feel like they’re in a real pond.”
Of course, I had another very important reason for wanting all the plants. I knew my mother would be checking on how I was taking care of the fish. All the greenery was so Mermary would have a place to hide.
At home I had to float the plastic bag with guppies in the tank until the temperature in the bag and the aquarium were the same. My mother told me that’s called entropy. It’s so the fish don’t get shocked and die. While I did that, I arranged the plants in the sand at the bottom of the tank. I also put an abalone shell in the bottom of the tank for Mermary’s bed. After about half an hour my mother said I could set the guppies free.
I watched, but they took their time swimming out of the bag. Finally one swam out and the other followed after a minute. I was impatient to bring Mermary in, but I still had to wait. I couldn’t let my mom see me bringing a mermaid into the house. I knew she was going to run some errands, but she was taking her time about leaving, cleaning the drawers in the kitchen, straightening the items in them, throwing things out. I helped because it gave me something to do while I waited for her to go.
Finally all the drawers were tidy. She went to change her blouse and get her purse and keys. I went to the front room and when she came in, I was sitting with a book open on my lap.
“Would you like to go to Kmart with me?” she asked.
“No, I have to read this book for school.”
“Okay. Is there anything you want while I’m out?”
I shook my head.
“What would you like for dinner?”
I thought I was going to start crying if she didn’t go. I couldn’t think about food right then. I forced myself to be patient and said, “How about popcorn?”
“You silly,” my mother said. “How about if I make hamburgers?”
Hamburgers was one of my favorite meals, so I acted happy, otherwise she was going to know something was strange and never leave. After I watched her car go down the street and turn the corner, I got the plastic bag and ran outside.
“The aquarium is ready,” I told Mermary. “You can come inside now!”
Mermary did a somersault in the water and then did something I hadn’t seen before. She leapt high out of the water and did a dive from midair.
“That was beautiful Mermary!” I said.
“Thank you!”
I put the plastic bag in the water and after it filled, Mermary swam right in. I put a knot at the end and headed into the house. Mermary swam around the bag, touching the plastic and putting her face up close to the side to look at everything.
I opened the top of the aquarium and floated the bag at the top of the water, but Mermary swam around impatiently, pushing her face into the side of bag and punching it.
“Let me out of here,” she demanded.
“I think we need to wait until the water in the bag is the same as the water in the tank,” I told her.
“Let me out,” Mermary yelled and hammered at the plastic.
So I opened the bag and she swam out at once. The different temperatures didn’t seem to bother her at all.
“I couldn’t breathe in that bag,” she told me. “I didn’t like it.”
Then she dove and swam straight to the bottom, then from one end of the aquarium to the other with her arms out in front of her, weaving in and out of the plants, touching them, and once, taking a nip. She swam up to each guppy and stared at them. The fish, who were afraid of me, had no fear of the mermaid. Mermary reached out one webbed hand and stroked one of the fish, then she chased it, making me laugh.
I got the fish food and sprinkled a little in. The guppies ate, but after snacking on a few, Mermary went back to investigating her new home. She sampled a couple more plants as she swam through them, leaving tiny nicks in the sides. Before I put the lid back on the tank, Mermary did another leap in the air.
“I love my new home,” she said. “The water is so fresh and clear, plus I have room to dive! And there’s a beautiful forest and fish!”
“I’m glad you like it,” I said. “But I have to warn you about something.”
“What is it?”
“No one else can know about you. I put all those plants in there so you would have a place to hide if someone other than me comes in here. Will you do that?”
“That’s what I did when I first saw you,” Mermary said. “Remember? I did it automatically.” “Automatically” was a word I had taught her.
“In this case, you did it instinctively. That means something deep down inside told you I might be dangerous, so you hid. That’s what you should do if anybody other than me comes near the tank,” I said.
She promised she would.
Now Mermary would be close to me whenever I was in my room. Best of all, I could talk to her whenever I wanted.
Chapter 13
Living with a Mermaid
I learned even more about Mermary when I spent the whole day with her. For example, she always knew when I was coming, because she could tell my footsteps from my mother and father’s. Also, she could he
ar me perfectly well through the water and glass of her tank. I learned that sometimes she didn’t want to interrupt her swimming to talk. She would swim from one end of the tank to the other and back again, sometimes making a detour to the bottom or top. Other times she’d get quiet and sit in the abalone shell at the bottom. I figured out it was a form of napping for her, although she did it with her eyes open. Actually, they weren’t exactly open. She covered them with a clear membrane that went over her eyes. It’s called a nictitating membrane, like in the corner of cats’ eyes when they’re sleepy. They protect her eyes in the water, and because they’re clear, she could still see perfectly well.
She was also was very active at night and wanted the curtains open so she could look at the night sky and out at the ocean. My mother had told me to keep them closed during the day because the sun would cause algae to grow faster, but Mermary scrubbed the algae off the glass and ate it, so it wasn’t a problem.
She told me that the moon affected water.
“The water changes at different times of the month.”
“How?”
“Well, sometimes it’s heavy, or thick, and harder to swim through. Other times it’s thin, and I can swim faster. Sometimes there’s a sort of cloudiness, like the water has something in it.”
All this was information I added to my mermaid diary.
I was always thinking about Mermary and what she might like. For example, at the hardware store I found an end piece of new pine board about five inches by seven. I wondered if Mermary could use it as a raft, and brought it home. Mermary sniffed it all over. The only time I ever saw her sniff anything was when I brought food for her. Then she got up on it and after that, dove from it all the time. Sometimes she’d stretch out her top half under the light with her tail trailing in the water, lifting it out occasionally and using it to sprinkle or splash herself with water.
One day I was with my mom running an errand on the street nearest the beach. She gave me permission to go down by the beach as long as I stayed away from the waves. I looked in the sand until I found rocks worn smooth by the ocean. One had different layers in it and holes. I also found some clam shells and even a couple of little cone shells. Mermary loved the new additions. She swam around and around them and through the holes in the rock, then surfaced.
“Did those shells and rocks come from the ocean?”
“Well, they came from the beach, but before that they were in the ocean. How did you know?”
“They smell like it, only stronger.”
Of course, even I could smell the ocean from where we lived, a block from the ocean. The aquarium was looking more like a mermaid’s home.
Mermary asked a lot of questions about the sea, like how big it was, how deep, what lived there. I tried to find answers for the questions I didn’t know. When I found pictures in National Geographic, I would open the magazine and prop it up against the side of the aquarium so Mermary could look at them. Once I found a wonderful picture of underground water with someone swimming in it. Mermary stared at it for a long time.
“Can you take me to the ocean?” she asked.
I told her I would someday, when she was bigger. I wanted to be sure she’d be able to survive by herself in the ocean. I had seen documentaries of baby turtles breaking out of their eggs and climbing up, out of the sand, then being eaten immediately by birds and other predators. I hated thinking about little mermaids being eaten the same way.
One day I brought out all my dolls. I told Mermary they were called toys, and human children played with them. I showed her my vintage Madam Alexander doll with long orange hair, a green dress, and straw hat.
“This one used to be my mother’s. Her name is Holly.” I picked up another one with thick, long black hair. “This one is a Latina Bratz doll. Her name is Isabel. And this one,” I showed her my Barbie doll, “is Barbie-Ann.”
I had a couple of tiny plastic dolls, and I put them on Mermary’s raft. She took them into the water one at a time and swam around with them, showing them the different things she had in the tank. One of them sank to the bottom when she let go of it, but the other floated on its back or stomach. She finally finished playing with them, and put them back on the raft and lay down next to them. It was amazing to watch a mermaid play with dolls.
After that we made up games and played dolls together a lot. Before I started playing dolls with Mermary I didn’t play with my dolls much anymore. But it was so much fun to play dolls with a mermaid, that we played practically every day!
Chapter 14
The Moon and Dreams
After Mermary came inside, I started having lots of dreams. They were so clear, sometimes they seemed real. I often dreamed about swimming in the ocean, and sometimes I was a mermaid too, swimming with Mermary. I dreamed of other mermaids too. They were always Mermary’s friends. They were all different, sometimes beautiful colors, sometimes dark colors, like mud. There were male mermaids too.
There would be strange fish in my dreams sometimes, like once I dreamed of a sea serpent-fish, and he guarded the mermaids in my dream. Another time I dreamed of a school of beautiful fish that looked like they were made out of glass, withturquoise eyes. Another time I dreamed of a funny fish that had legs and arms like a human and talked out of his fish mouth. Having Mermary near me was making me dream more.
I started getting up really early so we would have time to talk and tell each other what we dreamed. Sometimes she dreamed of me or the guppies, but more often she was swimming with lots of fish, in water that had no end to it, which of course was the ocean. She’d dream of other mermaids too, and having adventures with them. What was best of all was when we both had the same dream, or really similar. We called our dreams about the ocean “sea-dreaming.”
One night Mermary and I were sitting in the dark, looking out at the full moon over the ocean. Mermary was sitting on her little raft, leaning against the side. She was in a quiet, dreamy mood. I was too, although in my case I was getting sleepy.
“I think dreams must come from the moon,” Mermary said. “Because my dreams are different when the moon is full.”
“Really? How?”
“They become more magical. Like I have wings and I’m flying over the ocean, or I’m growing legs and walking on land. Or I dream of you being able to breathe underwater, or turning into a mermaid. I feel different too, excited, like I can do anything. Remember that dream I had, where I was holding up a sword that glowed, and I was leading an invisible army of sea creatures? I felt brave and strong in that dream.”
I wrote our dreams down in my mermaid journal. I also wrote down our ideas about them, and that all my dreams of Mermary seemed magical.
She loved the moon and sometimes sang to it. I loved hearing her tiny voice with no words. It was small enough that I didn’t worry my parents would hear, and anyway if they did, I could say it was the radio.
I read that mermaids were connected to the moon. It made sense, since the moon controls the ocean tides. People knew so much about mermaids that I was sure, once upon a time, mermaids must have lived everywhere. Now the only information about them was in stories and art.
Another night Mermary said, “The moon is so beautiful. Sometimes I think the goddess of mermaids is a giant mermaid who lives at the bottom of the ocean. But other times, I think the mermaid goddess lives in the seas on the moon.”
“The seas on the moon are dry,” I told her.
“The moon seas must have once had water, but they dried up. Why else would they call them seas?” I didn’t know how to answer that. “I think there’s probably ghost water that mermaid spirits swim in. I think mermaids go to the moon to be with the Mermaid Goddess of the Moon after we die.”
I thought that sounded beautiful, but I didn’t want to think about mermaids dying, especially Mermary. “What made you think about all those things?” I asked.
“I think about lots of things when I watch the moon at night, after you go to sleep. You’ve read me mermaid
stories, and told me that mythology is the story of gods and where we came from. So that’s what I think about.”
The Catholic religion taught that there was one God who made everything. I hadn’t thought about mermaids having their own god or goddess, but it made sense since most of the people on earth had their own religion, and their own kind of God.
I wrote in my log, “mermaids have wonderful imaginations,” and “mermaids are spiritual.”
Chapter 15
School Lets Out
School got out for the summer. The past two summers I had a babysitter during the day. That year I was old enough to stay by myself, I just had to call and get permission before I went anywhere. I was glad. The one last year was nosy, and would have found out about Mermary for sure. The one the year before that just surfed the Internet most of the time and I was bored.
Part of the reason why I didn’t have to have a sitter was because I was enrolled in summer school. It didn’t start for a couple of weeks after regular school finished. I got lots of books from the library and convinced my mother to let me stay home and read them. I also promised I wouldn’t watch TV unless I got her permission. But I had something much more fun to do than spend my time watching television.
I read to Mermary and told her stories, and put on the radio so we could dance—I didn’t really know how to dance so they were actually exercises I’d seen on TV and Mermary would copy most of what I did. I brought my lunch up on a tray to share with her and the guppies, and we played dolls a lot. Every day I put Mermary in a glass pitcher that’s sort of like the one on Kool-Aid packages and carried her around the house so she could get a better look at where I lived. She also watched a special program with me on the National Geographic channel that my mother said I could see every day.
My mom asked me if I was bored during the day while she was away.
“No way!” I said.
Chapter 16
Summer School