The fish curse is strong within me. I had forgotten about this until my niece, Janine, came asking for a favor. Would I keep her fish for a while?
My immediate response was to oblige her since my son had been given a fish tank by his grandmother. She'd been telling us for months that he needed a tank, our response to which was to smile agreeably and nod, then completely dismiss the idea out of hand. Eventually, Grandma not being a stupid person, became wise to our clever little game and that Christmas put a tank for our son under the tree.
If you imagine her cackling, head thrown back and her hand slapping her knee when we unwrapped that gift, you'd hold a fairly accurate picture in your mind of what happened that fine Christmas morning.
So, we had this tank but had been avoiding setting it up for various rational and irrational reasons such as my husband thinking it would make the floors of our very old house separate from the walls. Or the thought of my three year old son being able to resist the siren's call of five gallons of water sitting around unguarded in his room. I know for a fact this is a problem for little boys.
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One morning in the summer of 1960 my mother woke up to find the family goldfish bobbing headless in their tank. My brother, asserting his independence, showed remarkable survival skills by getting his own breakfast. Up to the tank he pulled a chair, then climbed aboard. He reached into the tank neatly plucking out one fish after another then biting off their heads before returning the bodies back to the tank.
-- .*. --
So, after hastily agreeing to keep Janine's fish I did add a warning caveat that our family has a history of fish killing.
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Once in college someone asked me if I would house sit while she had her galbladder removed. She had a great place and all I had to do was water her plants and feed her fish.
What I didn't understand until later is that one of her fish, named Oscar, was a crazy Hannibal Lecter kind of piscean who, while I was out, would set to gobbling up the fins of his tank mates. Day after day I watched in horror as the fish evolved from happy bright-eyed swimmers to listless amputees whose fishy souls looked like they were about to evacuate their bodies.
Each day that I came home to a new horror I wished Oscar would meet some horrible fate of his own. It's natural for us to root for the underdog and hope that The Hand of Fate will reach in to teach the bully some poignant lesson about life. Or at least open a big can of whoop-ass on him.
Little did I realize that The Hand of Fate would use me as its agent and that it would be my loving care and supreme diligence that would be Oscar's undoing.
The tank slowly began to turn green. I knew nothing about tank ecology so I watched helplessly as the fish began to disappear in the murk. I couldn't stand it anymore so I thought perhaps changing out the water might help, which did for everyone except the cannabalistic Oscar who I ended up trapping under a piece of tank equipment where he subsequently drowned. This fact I didn't figure out until later after several days of wondering where he could possibly be. I attributed it to some aquatic version of the Rapture until I finally figured out the truth.
I've tried killing fish on purpose, in the form of fishing, but have been relatively unsuccessful at it. It seems as if I can only manage to kill fish accidentally and at random. I had caught my line on a log so I yanked it, very angry and agitated. And 'lo -- here comes a big fat bass flying out of the water. I had hooked him from the outside of his mouth as he swam by. That had to be one of the world's most unfortunate fish.
-- .*. --
Two days after Janine asked me about keeping the fish, they all arrived at my door. She set the tank up and as I watched had this pleasant, warm feeling that I'd turned the corner on my dark fish past.
Every day my son and I would feed the fish. About a week into our fish sitting I noticed one of the fish was changing color. He was getting darker, splotchy. He had funny bumps on him the next day. His fins were turning red. Occasionally he'd lean slightly to one side then right himself.
Thus began the death watch, the daily torturous trek to the tank to see if the fish would be floating belly up. But daily he struggled on far longer than I ever expected.
Then one day after leaving my son home with another little boy under the supervision of the cleaning lady, my son excitedly described to me how he and Zack had held the fish in their hands and it jumped out and landed on the carpet. I could tell by the way he told the story that it was one of his prouder moments.
I raced to the tank and the fish was still there, still swimming! Being a glass-half-full kind of girl I praised the resilience of God's tiny creatures and proceeded to ground my son and give him a stern lecture on the merits of kindness and compassion all of which he completely ignored, being three and all.
The next day the fish was lying at the bottom of the tank, one lifeless eye pressed against the glass staring at me full of blame and accusation.
My husband retrieved him from the tank with a plastic slotted spoon and gave him a burial at sea by way of the toilet, only when I went in there later he was still there -- lying silent and staring at the bottom of the bowl.
