Decomposing
Published in Mslexia 15, 2002
The kids’ pet fish hang like Christmas tree decorations from the vegetation in the aquarium. I stand and watch their dead eyes bulging. It’s like looking in a mirror.
Paul says I’m losing it. I’m going crazy. He says it’s just as well I’m not having another baby.
In the eight minutes a day he wants to spend with me he stares as if I’m a fish out of water. I dream I’m a fish, with pond weed all around me. It sucked my sister into the river and trapped her, back in 1980. We found out we weren’t Waterbabies then. It makes it hard to think, sometimes, the sound of the water.
When Paul comes home from work, dog tired, he picks up his computer magazine and presses ‘Escape’. He deletes us.
I stare at him. He takes up space in my living room, as if he belongs here. He doesn’t hear the children tell him what they did today. “Dad. DAD!” (“Forget it, pet, just forget.”) He only hears them when they’re noisy, at the six o’clock news.
Another fish died today. I had to take it out while the children were at school, retching at the smell of the fetid water.
What am I doing wrong?
I catch sight of my reflection in the fish tank. This white summer skirt just hangs on me now. White blouse. Always white attracts me. Paul says, “Why don’t you buy something with a bit of colour?” And these heavy black shoes that weigh me down. I used to be a fairy, when I was a little girl, after years of being told not to disturb my father. We were light and ethereal as a fish’s fin, my sister Alice and I. We were Daddy’s little fairies.
I worshipped my father. Would do anything not to disturb him. He watched the six o’clock news. But sometimes he’d walk to the Bluebell Woods.
Those woods are long gone. Things change in twenty years. The field beyond, by the Red Rocks and their skipping water. Then the poppies: scarlet, scarlet, in a field of green. And already the sense of guilt to see the petals fall. Daddy, what did I do wrong?
But sorrow didn’t last then, on a Sunday, when Dad put on his summer sandals. He’d put a newspaper in his pocket, and Alice and I would run after him, our fishing nets in our hands.
I saw Alice step on the log that day but Dad was reading. I didn’t want to disturb him. So I picked poppies instead, red on the white of my skirt.
The face reflected in the aquarium isn’t really me. Just as a photo doesn’t steal your soul. It’s obvious. The real me doesn’t stare out to infinity, eyes bulging like a dead fish.
Who is it then?
The children’s fish are trapped in their plastic vegetation. Neons with still fins and bulging eyes, poisoned by their environment. I saw Alice’s face, and screamed and screamed for Daddy.
Bodies hang like Christmas tree baubles in my dreams now. And the smell! Like the disgust of first being a woman. That first Christmas without Alice - the sanitary pad, and the fairy’s white gauze dress, just for me.
And the slime of decomposing: the fish begin to disintegrate in a day. I lift them out with tweezers. Plop on white tissue, dead creatures, pretty mermaids. Daddy cried, “What did I do wrong?”, but Paul didn’t cry when our baby died.
I’m not really crazy. I just need a little time to think of nothing. I focus on this long line out the window. Past the shops without seeing. Close my ears to the children arguing. Paul and his powers of concentration. He even looked up miscarriage on the Internet.
I pick up a knife and turn on the water. Listen to the bright stream fall on the Red Rocks. Daddy’s put his sandals on. Reach up and take his big warm hand, ’cause we’re going for a walk now.
© Carol McKay
Incunabulum Notebooks
You can read an extract from my story Incunabulum Notebooks which was shortlisted in the Daily Telegraph Novel in a Year competition in 2007 and features on their website here.