Death by Goldfish Julia Wangler

Death by Goldfish

By Julia Wangler

An empty void is eating me alive. My mother tells me that it will merely be temporary, that I should easily be able to move onwards with my life. She says this just to cover up her own feelings about the situation. She has already had to mourn over my father suddenly leaving us, and now my brother who departed before hair could grace his pure chin. I cannot blame her for wanting all of her sadness to float away like a balloon from last year’s county fair, but I am not ready yet.

“Sweetie, wanna go to the bakery? We can play a game and eat some cookies. Ooo, and drink some tea! You’ve been sitting inside all day now, come on, please.” This is but one of her many calls to steal my melancholy. Going places seems far too ignorant though. He just left us two months ago. I will stay in the comfort of the bare, auburn-walled home we call our own, wasting my hours away.

Rather than accompany my mother on her pointless ventures, I sneak away to my brother’s closed-off room. I am not allowed to enter, but when my mother goes out, any obstacle in my way vanishes. His room is painted a sky-blue color that makes me feel as though I am stepping into a warm summer’s day. That warmth is the complete opposite of the truth. His scattered books and his beautiful, shimmering paintings are still laid out on the carpeted floor. His large windows with our initials sketched on the windowsills surround me. His butterfly hand will never again fly across a canvas or etch my name in his window. He is gone.

His goldfish, however, is not gone. His goldfish was only supposed to survive a week after the county fair last year, but it is still alive. It swims around in its fishbowl, a neon orange reflecting back at me. Its eyes dart around its bowl frantically, constantly moving. Its energy balances out my own.

I take the fish into my room. It will always have to be hidden from my mother’s view, but I must keep this living link to my brother close. The goldfish stops swimming when I place my hands on the clear fishbowl, adding to the collection of mess at the bottom. It is terrified. Terrified, just like I was.

Once I set it down on my bathroom counter, the fish is able to calm down and resume its usual energetic swimming. I peer down at the fish. It brings me the most joy I have felt in two months to see the fish somehow

still alive. My brother’s beautiful smile when he first laid eyes on this goldfish is rushing back to me, making me beam for once.

Someone must be feeding it. I notice a few fingerprints lining the rim of the bowl, too large and fresh to have been my brother’s. My mother appears to have been breaking her own rules.

“Honey, I’m back! I’ve gotta run to the grocery store though. Would you like to come? You can get a smoothie,” my mother announces as she bursts through the front door. I am still in my bathroom. I can stay here and ignore her as I have been doing for many weeks, but a bit of inspiration to leave this house seems to sneak up on me.

“Sure.”

With this word, my mother’s face blossoms into the sun. Her brown hair whips against my body as she gives me a warm embrace. She grabs her keys, despite having set them down only a minute ago, and drags me out of the house. I am nearly blinded by the beautiful brightness of the outside world. The sun is busy bouncing off of the trembling leaves on all the glistening trees. Everything appears to be reflecting the sun’s rays onto my skin.

We get in the junky old pickup truck that my father left behind in place of my mother’s scarlet sports car. He took his wife’s car to impress his new girlfriend, what a man. The scent of the truck is quite musty and the seats exude filth. My mother sits down and slides the keys into the ignition as dust billows out of the seat cushions. The world blurs past me, distorted and confusing, mirroring my recent life.

It only takes us a few minutes to reach the grocery store. I go get my smoothie with the five dollars my mother gave me while she strolls into the main part of the store. The smoothie shop has colors dancing about on a bright, bold menu, teasing people’s taste buds. There are about ten people in front of me, all anxiously waiting to get their hands on a smoothie to tackle the summer. Standing in lines is surprisingly pleasant. I am like all of the people in front of me, simply waiting for the pleasure of a drink, forgetting the world around us to focus on remembering our orders. Once I get to the woman making the smoothies, her smile illuminates my face. I make sure to return it.

Within thirty minutes, my mother and I meet up at the truck. I used the spare time to snatch up a few items of my own liking from the huge grocery store towering over the smoothie shack. The sun is refreshing, the sweet summer scents are spinning in the air, taking my mind off of my mourning. Memories of him emerge out of every sight I see, but they are starting to seem delightful here for a change.

“How’s your smoothie? What flavor is it, strawberry?”

I nod. My mother knows me so well, but she has yet to understand how close I was to my brother. As soon as my skin meets the ridges of the truck seats, he comes flooding back. How my mother lives and thrives on these foolish outings is wild to me. We do not deserve lifted spirits in the time of his passing. I refuse to escape my ferocious feelings of loss. He deserves to be mourned head-on.

The keys go into the ignition again. The world begins to fade and haze around me in the short ride home.

Once we arrive at our house, she starts to ramble on about how lovely the grocery store was. The two-month long dream of seeing my face kissed by the sun came true. Her hopes of getting me out of the house more are interrupted as she gazes down at her watch.

“It’s almost lunchtime… Want to get some Thai food? It was so nice to have your company at the grocery store.”

I inform her of my tiredness and she unlocks the door with a disappointed sigh. I exit the truck and let her prance off onto yet another journey. The dirty white truck spews smog into my lungs as I enter our house.

I walk into my room, feeling empty even with its piles of clutter. My world is on the floor. Cluttered, disorganized, the precise thing that would have driven me to insanity a year ago, but has recently not even made me shudder. I suddenly feel bothered by the mess though, but that feeling has been hidden for so long that I quickly push it away.

Then there is the fish. My brother’s goldfish is peeking at me through my bathroom door. I make my way over to give it some food that I secretly stole from the store. The fish is beautiful with its immaculately proportioned scales. Its fins are still, yet moving with the quivering water. Its sunken eyes look as though they are venturing into another universe. Its shocking orange seems to be dimmed. The fish is stuck in the mold of its slumbering body.

My unwilling mind begins to understand the quiet nature of the fish. It is dead. Dead. I shake and shake the glass bowl, but the fish remains upside down at the surface of the water. Tears crawl down my cheek as the last bit of my brother’s heart is terminated. I felt connected to the fish, it was like my brother was next to me, but in a new form. I was actually able to feel joy filling my limbs for a moment as I danced in his magnificent memories.

My vision is blurry through my teary trembling, but I still catch a glimpse of two children prancing down our street through my bathroom window. They have large red balloons tied around their wrists and cotton candy hanging out of their mouths. They must be making their way home after a delightful summer day at the county fair. The fair is likely closed by now, but I feel an aching to see the place where the girls gathered all their blissfulness from again. It has been a year since the aromas of the fairgrounds have swirled around me, since I have stepped on the soft blades of the fairgrounds’ grass. I used to be one of those girls skipping home from the fair, perhaps I could be again. Maybe my memories will provide me relief there, maybe our lovely times there will make me smile again. I am beginning to crave the feeling of a grin.

I clasp the bowl close to my chest and guide it outside. As I begin the walk to the fair, its memories slowly scamper back. The goldfish has not seen the sun since the fair where my brother’s fingers showed off their talent in a checkered tent. He tossed a ping pong ball into a plastic cup floating on the surface of a river and was given a goldfish in return. I was standing at his side, my hand in his, balancing him.