Aquarium by David Vann Page B

sweat freezes.
    I’m sorry, I said.
    Well that’s a start.
    But I’m not doing anything wrong.
    That’s maybe not as good an apology. I didn’t think this was going to happen for another year, until your teens, but I guess it might as well start now. Why have another year of peace when we could fight right away?
    You’re the one who’s making it a fight.
    Yeah, my mother said. Yeah. This is the beginning. I did this to my mother, too, until she started dying. Then I wanted to cut out my nasty little tongue for everything I’d said. So what can I do to short-circuit you? Maybe tell you about your father. Would you like to hear about your father?
    Yes.
    I bet you would. So let’s save that for a time when you’re playing nice.
    You’ve never told me anything.
    That’s right.
    My mother flicked on the heater, the engine warm enough now, and we sat in our own small desert, blown by hot wind at our feet and in our faces while the snow fell outside. Like rain in the headlights but white and slower, suspended then caught in a rush as we collided. The lights of the city muted and blurred.
    It was a long time before we reached East Yesler Way, driving up the hill into what no longer felt like a city. Gatzert waiting lit and lonely by the side of the road.
    What time? I asked.
    I don’t know. Maybe four thirty, maybe five thirty.
    She was gone then. She would be outside all day in the cold, and next winter would be the same, and the winter after that, all the years until I was her age and she would still be working, another twenty years, and another ten years after that, three more of my lifetimes, an eternity. I think that morning was the first time I understood. It was too awful to be true. My own mother trapped, a slave just as she had said.
    The old janitor let me in and disappeared into his cage somewhere, and I sat under the soulless fluorescent lights and waited. This was the beginning of my mother’s life, waiting and doing nothing. The cold, and we keep breathing, and that’s it.
    I hadn’t done any homework, but I couldn’t pull out the books now, and Mr. Gustafson wouldn’t be checking anyway. I remembered then that he had said not to even bring the books. So I just sat and waited for an hour and a half until everyone was yelling and running and laughing and finally Shalini appeared, sleepy and soft, and she had her arms around me for about two minutes and then we had to go to class.
    Mr. Gustafson had stopped trying. We wouldn’t be ready for the Christmas parade—there would be unpainted parts of the dragon and sleigh, bits of wire showing in the legs and antlers of the reindeer, Lakshmi Rudolph with almost no legs at all, a formless Santa, a dreidel that would never spin—and he was tired. Every other year had probably been a failure too, and he had no plan B.
    I remember being angry at Mr. Gustafson, but Shalini never was bothered. She didn’t mind chaos, and she found the ridiculous funny.
    Look at his tongue, she said. His tongue is out. And it was true. As he looked at his book of cars, his mouth had opened and his fat tongue was bulging out over his lower lip.
    Yuck, I said.
    Come over here, she said, and I knelt behind our Rudolph. I love your hair, she said. So light. It weighs nothing. She lifted my hair and kissed all along my neck and my skin tightened everywhere, goose bumps and chills. I was shivering, even though I wasn’t cold. She kissed my ear and all along my jaw until she reached my lips. I wanted to breathe her in, to hold her inside, and I wanted everyone else to disappear, to just go away.
    My mother won’t let me see my grandpa.
    Shalini kept kissing me. Don’t talk, she said.
    I’m worried she never will.
    Shalini stopped then and opened her eyes. You saw him yesterday, didn’t you? You went running off.
    Yeah.
    And you can see him again today?
    Yeah.
    Well then. Everything is okay.
    But I don’t want to hide and have secrets.
    Caitlin, she said. Look at what we’re doing