BIG BOY AND LITTLE GIRL

Photo by Brenda Helen on Unsplash

Speaking of Aquariums

A young friend of mine got married, and her husband came with a big fish tank. The water was dirty because these fish liked to hide. I don’t know what kind of fish they were, but my friend told me they were bright red gold, and I can just see them appearing and disappearing in the murk, like those thoughts you can’t quite bring to consciousness.

There had been a bunch of fish to begin with, but there were only two fish left, Big Boy and Little Girl. Little Girl had had thousands of babies in her lifetime. I don’t know what happened to them all. Little Girl now spent all her time hidden in the cave my friend’s husband had built for her in a corner of the aquarium. One day my friend noticed a commotion in the tank. Big Boy had somehow lured Little Girl out of the cave and was pounding the life out of her.

The male has a hump on his head, which made Big Boy a superior fighter. My friend called for her husband, who came and lifted the little fish out of the aquarium and into a pail of water he put in the laundry room. Then he went out to mow the lawn. My friend called after him, “But you can’t just leave her alone here to die,” but he was already gone. So my friend sat down on the floor of the laundry room and kept Little Girl company. She told me that as Little Girl died, she got grayer and grayer until finally she floated on top of the water.

The end.

I tell this story here because I wrote it all down in my diary. There is nowhere else to put it. I tell this story because it made me love my friend even more. And sometimes writing is a way to offer the reader someone to love.