Fish in the Sky (5 page)

“Well, I mean obviously,” says Mom’s faint voice on the phone. “Sure. Sure.”

My schoolbooks lie untouched on the desk, and when I open them and go over the homework I was supposed to do, I get pins and needles in my forehead. I suddenly feel sleepy. I yawn and stare into a blissful void that no thoughts can penetrate. Mom keeps yakking on the phone in the hall, and her voice carries up the stairs into my room. “Sure,” she says, “sure.” The sun shines through the window until it is veiled by a cloud. Two little flies have woken up too early. One of them is dead already and lies on its back with its legs in the air. The other is still plodding away at trying to break through the glass. He clambers up, falls, and starts all over again. Again and again, and maybe he’s thinking,
It’s bound to give in sooner or later.

What’s the point of flies? Some of them are born to nothing but a life on a windowsill, spend their entire lives walking up and falling off the same pane of glass, and then die on that same windowsill. Could it be that God created a special type of fly for windowsills? Were these tiny, subtle creatures really solely designed for the purpose of soiling human windowsills? Imagine: a whole species, a whole branch of the insect family, does nothing else in its lifetime. And no individual is of any importance because it’s immediately replaced by another. So even though one of them falls and wriggles its legs, it makes absolutely no difference. Another will take its place. Are men maybe flies on God’s windowsill? Does he sit like I am now, watching human flies scrambling up his window? And if so, can he see me? Am I of any importance? And why am I here, at this desk, in this house, in this country? Why am I the one who is here? And who am I actually? A boy from the west side of town? Why not an Indian, a Frenchman, or an Australian Aboriginal boy? Or a girl?

My mom’s hand touches my shoulder, and the flood of thoughts in my head grind to a sudden halt. I turn to her, and she looks at me with a probing air.

“What?” I ask, brushing the hair off my forehead.

“Is everything OK?”

“Yeah.”

“We need to talk,” she says, sitting on my bed, scanning the room for dirt and dust. She stands up again to pick some dirty socks off the floor, sits on the bed once more, and begins to talk, glancing up at the curtains behind me as if she is trying to make up her mind whether the time has come for them to be washed again or not.

“Well, I was talking to Ben — you know, my brother? Now, it’s such a long time since you’ve seen him, of course; you were so small. Anyway, he’s sending his daughter to stay with us, Gertrude. You should remember her — you played together when we went up north that year; her mother’s been institutionalized — ah, it’s a sad story, the things that woman’s been through. Anyway, Gertrude is coming south and is going to live with us at least until the spring. She won’t be at your school; she’s three years above you — no, four — no, three. Can’t remember now. Anyway, she’ll be staying with us.”

She folds the dirty socks together and then unfolds them again, stands up and walks away, chucks them into the dirty laundry, reappears with crossed arms, and leans against the door frame.

“Won’t that be great?” she asks.

I obviously have no say in the matter. All the decisions have already been made, and I’m expected to give them the stamp of approval with a smile on my lips.

“And where’s she going to sleep?” I ask.

“In the little room here,” says Mom, pointing at the door to the room we use as a storeroom, inside my room.

“In there? Why?”

“Well, the girl has got to have some privacy,” says Mom, pretending not to understand the full meaning of my question.

“How old is she?” I ask.

“Seventeen — no, sixteen — no, seventeen, I think,” she says distractedly.

I swing on the chair and fix my gaze on the dead fly on the windowsill.

“Why does she have to live with us?” I rasp out, and start fiddling with my eraser so that the lines on it twist and bend.

“Josh, honey, don’t give me that whiny tone. Gertrude is your cousin.”

“So what?”

“Josh Stephenson, what’s gotten into you?” she snaps, which only angers me even more.

“Is she going to have to barge through my bedroom, then?” I ask in a rage, hoping Mom will understand that this is no small matter.

“Don’t be so childish. You can’t expect her to sleep in the living room. And it’s not as if she’s a total stranger; you’re first cousins.”

“I don’t even know her.”

“Maybe the time has come for you to get to know each other, then,” she says, vanishing from the doorway. The case is closed as far as she’s concerned. I break my eraser in two, glare at the dead fly, and hurl a piece of rubber at it. Racking my brain, I have a vague memory of a freckled brat with braces and a pigtail that she was always twirling with her finger. It was as if she was using finger language to let people know there was a screw missing in her head, which there obviously was and is. And now this freak is about to move into the room inside my room, walking in and out of my space day after day, some hillbilly girl from the middle of nowhere. And then where am I supposed to undress at night? Or get dressed in the morning? In the bathroom or something?

I’m too furious to scream, and it’s probably just as well, because then Mom would say that I was just like Dad. Whenever I misbehave or am out of line, I’m told it’s my father’s genes that are to blame. So what, then, do I get from my mother? Is it the ability to swallow just about any crap and never dare to open my mouth when I am being treated unfairly? It must be. Mom never says no to anyone, never to that brother of hers, nor his family. She never says no to those extra shifts they lay on her at work or no to the people who ask her to sew. Always yes with a smile on her lips. Then she can sit and moan about it to Auntie Carol, but apart from that, she never says anything out loud to anyone. The nos in my genes must be from my father’s side, and therefore they’re bad.

Dad is no.

Mom is yes.

Maybe that’s why they couldn’t work as a couple anymore. I draw the blinds, close the door, and throw myself facedown on the bed.

I was seven years old when he left, six years ago. We were renting another apartment somewhere else back then. They had frequent, long arguments, always at night, sometimes until dawn. I’d just started school, and they forgot to buy the things I was supposed to have with me, a pencil case and notebook. They forgot it for a whole week. One day Dad came home with some empty cardboard boxes and started filling them with books off the shelves and stuff from the cupboards. Then he stuffed clothes from the closet into big black plastic bags. Then some friend of his came in and carried his armchair to a small van outside. During all this, Mom sat in the kitchen, chain-smoking and crying.

“Are you moving somewhere?” I asked Dad.

He stopped packing the boxes and gave me a long stare. Then he took me into his arms and ruffled my hair.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “Your mom and I can’t be together anymore. You know how it’s been — you’ve heard the racket we always make. It can’t go on, you understand? People who are always disagreeing on everything can’t live together.”

Then he kissed me on the ear and led me into the kitchen to Mom and closed the door while he finished moving his stuff. When the van drove past the window, I saw that Dad’s pal was at the wheel, and Dad was sitting beside him holding a green beer bottle, which he was struggling to open with a key. Then the van vanished around the corner.

People who are always disagreeing on everything can’t live together. And as I lie facedown on my bed, six years later, it occurs to me that this is probably why she always says yes, and never no, to everyone: she doesn’t dare to disagree — people might stop talking to her. And maybe I’ve got so much of my mother’s genes in me that the yes comes out faster than the no; it squeezes itself out of my mouth in the form of a smile and lights up like a giant blinking sign on my face. The feeble no crawls into a corner, having lost the race against the yes yet again. It throws itself into the sulking pile of all the other nos that were never said. One day these nos will have to find a way out and will all try to come out at once. Maybe I’ll stand up to my mom’s genes one day and will have to yell for a whole two or three days until I’ve puked all the nos out of me. Maybe that’s what has to happen one day to make someone take notice of me, at least enough to make my mother ask me for my opinion before she starts filling the apartment with brats from the middle of nowhere.

I am like a lizard: changing color every day.

One morning I wake up before Mom. I am already dressed and eating breakfast when she appears in the kitchen. I’ve finished my homework (math, the little I can), written an essay, and completed my grammar exercises. Then I run to school.

The next day, Mom has to drag me out of bed because I cannot wake up. I yawn into my cereal bowl and am late for school, annoyed and frowning, with none of my homework finished.

But whether my days start this way or that, one thing stays the same. Each time I sit down next to Peter and glance over my shoulder to look at Clara’s face, I feel the burning on my cheek. I’m like a piece of bread in a toaster; no matter which way I turn, all around me are the glowing iron threads that heat me up until I start to burn around the edges. It also feels as if my nose has grown all over my face and my arms and legs are constantly bumping into things; it’s like they’ve grown too long and I can’t control them anymore. My knees ache every morning and every night, so that I can hardly stand up straight. After school I pop out of the toaster and sneak home. I feel like every movement gives me away. If I happen to swallow in the middle of a writing exercise when silence fills the classroom, it’s so loud I’m afraid everybody can hear it. And not only that, but that everybody can hear by the way I swallow that I am in love with Clara. The tiniest movement in my face can blow my cover. I have to work hard to hide those all-too-obvious signs of my love, the little things that will expose me if I’m not careful.

“You’re not getting the flu, are you?” Peter asks.

“Why do you say that?”

“You just always seem to be moping lately.”

“Oh. No, I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

Then we don’t discuss it anymore. But on the inside I am one huge emotion. Or like a cage full of singing birds, and sometimes I can’t fall asleep because of the noise they’re making. Then I get out of bed and sit at my desk in my pajamas and throw my feelings out in a poem, under the protective wings of Christian the Ninth.

I see her face reflected in the dark glass of the window, surrounded by moonlight that seems to weave into her long black hair. In her large shining eyes, under those curved brows, the stars are dancing, her mouth half open in a tiny smile, as if she knows my feelings and wants to tell me she feels the same. Then she puts her delicate finger up to her lips to indicate that we must keep this a secret; our love is in hiding, and it is only in moments like these that we can meet and show our true feelings for each other. Our love is tragic and happy at the same time, hidden away from the prying eyes of the emotionless mob around us. Only on the wings of a starry night, in the freedom of a dream, can we meet and walk hand in hand.

The first song of the morning is the Beatles — the radio blares out, telling me to hide my love away. I crunch my cereal with sleep still heavy in my eyes. Mom butters bread. She hums the tune but doesn’t sing the lyrics; maybe she has forgotten them. She doesn’t sing any words, just “dah dah dah” or “bah bah bah,” and harmonizes with the chorus. It’s only in church on Sunday that she knows all the words and sings her heart out. She sings louder than everyone else, and I just wish she wouldn’t force me to go with her every time.

She’s been manically slaving for two days, arranging the little room. I was adamant I wouldn’t help her. But then she didn’t even ask for my help and ignored me while I lay in bed reading.

Mom found a cardboard box full of books my father had left behind. There were novels, poetry books, biographies of old ships’ captains, crime stories, and pulp-fiction paperbacks. I took the box into my room and started to read a book about a wife who hires a drunk private investigator to spy on her husband, but then she falls in love with the investigator and tries to save him from the bottle and wants to start a new life with him. I find at least two really hot descriptions of copulation, which I don’t entirely understand because my knowledge of words regarding this act are as limited to me as knowledge of the act itself.

The morning outside the window is gray, wet, and windy, the splashing raindrops lit up by the yellow streetlights. Sometimes I take a long detour into the neighborhood where Clara lives in the hope of catching a glimpse of her. Maybe I’ll follow her or appear suddenly from around a corner, quite coincidentally and talk to her for a while, although I have no idea whether I would be able to say anything — or what to say, for that matter. But I never see her. In my mind, I act out our conversations where I talk eagerly about this or that. She is full of admiration and a little shy and timid; I am bursting with self-confidence and manhood. Little by little I turn the conversation toward my feelings for her; I place my hands on her shoulders, look deeply into her elfin eyes, and confess my love to her. She blushes, searches for my hands, and squeezes them, and finally she is in my arms, giving me the most honey-sweet of kisses.