Originally published in The Flintlock Issue 2023. Link to their website here: https://www.nwuflintlock.com/
I Hate Fish
I
I remember, as you told me again about your older brother taking you to that pond on the outskirts of your hometown to go fishing, how much I wished fish never existed. Your lips moved like waves on the shifting sea of your face, and within the ripples, I could see the fucking fish you were describing bobbing in and out of your pupils.
Catfish, you said. You smiled, because they’re your two favorite animals, and I knew that already, but your eye does this thing when you smile while talking so I said nothing.
You talked about when he’d catch one. How he would “noodle,” you say, by shoving his hand into the catfish’s burrough, and would hold it in his older-brother-grip until it went limp.
Do you know how hard it is to hold a fish? you said.
I can imagine, I said. In truth, I actually can’t, because if I tried to think about fish scales on my skin I would vomit all over you and you would surely ask me to leave and never return. But, I didn’t tell you any of this because I wanted to stay.
Nick tried to teach me how to do it once. How to hold one. But I let it go. And I liked watching him do it so much more, you said.
Your head turned slowly like the dial of a clock. You squinted your eyes and focused on a leaf of the monstera plant in the far left corner. You make that face when you’re thinking very hard. So, I asked,
What are you thinking about?
I want to try again. I’ll ask him next time he’s in town, you said.
I wanted to ask why not call? but you furrowed your eyebrows. You had made up your mind and offering any opinion was futile. I thought about asking it anyway, though, for a moment. I knew you hated talking on the phone, but this seemed important. But, you gave me a gummy smile, and suddenly I couldn’t say anything at all.
II
When you got the call from your mom that Nick passed away, you didn’t scream or cry or run or collapse. Instead, you asked,
How?
A bike crash, your mom said. He was hit by a car while riding his bike to work. I could hear her heaving and stuttering over the phone, but still, you were static. I remember watching you stand there, in the middle of your living room with your phone to your ear and your hair stuck to your neck. You had just gotten back from a jog around the neighborhood park before your mom called you, and your skin glistened under the light of your massive club lamp. After your mom hung up, you didn’t move.
Did you hear that? you asked.
Yeah, I said.
I awkwardly got up from the couch, but didn’t get close to you. I was waiting for you to scream or cry or run or collapse. But you didn’t, you didn’t even clench your fist. Instead, your eyes were wide and unmoving. You do that when you’re disoriented, I think, you don’t make that face very often.
Will you go with me tomorrow? you asked.
The sound of your voice seemed to shatter all of the glass in the room, but when I looked away from you, all of the windows were in tact.
To the pond? you said.
You didn’t have to clarify. For some reason, I knew that was what you were talking about. But I have work tomorrow. You know that, too. I send you my work schedule every week. Most of all, I don’t have the strength to confront those fish from your childhood. What if they looked at me? What if they could taste my loathing for them in the water as soon as I plunged my hand inside? What if they told you, with their horrifying cardiform-filled mouths, that I hated them, and then you looked at me, betrayed?
Please, you said.
You were looking at me. Your eyes were still wide, but there was something moving in them now. It looked slippery and I couldn’t bear it.
Yeah. Yeah. I can. I will, I said.
III
When I offered to drive us that morning, you had refused. When I offered to turn on GPS and give directions, you plainly said you didn’t need them. When I offered to hold your hand on the way there, you said I don’t want to right now. You noticed the strained grip of my hands on my knees (I do that when I’m nervous) and patted my knuckles. Maybe later, you said.
I could tell how much the memory of the pond meant to you by how strange your route to get there was. You took quick turns, gravel paths, drove through sinks of mud that I still don’t think you were actually allowed to drive on. But you were chewing on the skin of your cheek. You were too focused for me break our silence.
The pond looked, at once, otherworldly and perfectly ordinary. I had heard of it so much in the past tense. I knew so many stories of you as a child, wading into the water up to your stomach, that to see it only go up to your knees puzzled me. I wanted to go to it, shake its hand, ask it are you really the pond? and hear it answer yes, I am the pond.
Hey, you said.
Your voice devastated my befuddlement and I suddenly realized you were in the water, your ankles directly next to the burroughs of those freakish fat-mouthed fucking fish. I resisted, with immense and commendable strength, if I might say, the urge to run to you and rip you into my arms and take you far away.
I see one, you said.
You pointed directly toward your foot. You looked at me with your eyebrows raised, which meant you wanted me to get closer. I felt like a magnet drawn between the two most powerful forces to ever exist: the catfish-infested waters of that pond, and your face.
I’m gonna get it, you said.
You didn’t wait for me to trudge to you. You simply turned away from me and jabbed your hand directly into the gorge of the beast. My immense and commendable strength crumbled like sand and I bounded to you. I had never felt fear like that before in my life. It was as if you were reaching out for the hand of death.
Fuck! you said.
When my feet (with my sandals still on; I had forgotten to take them off in my desperate pursuit to reach you) touched the water, I saw the vile creature that had slipped from your grasp. It was wobbling around to get back to its burrow, and you were watching it. You were biting your lip. That meant you were trying not to cry.
For a brief, unimaginable moment, I called upon something higher. I begged them for godlike courage, for impeccable vigor, and for my gag reflex to go away. Before the demonic fish could descend back into the black dirt, I grabbed it by its tail. In the few seconds that I was holding it, I don’t remember much. My eyes were closed. I could feel the thick shaft of its body drift further and further down my grip as I lost friction. It flailed like a writhing baby. Its scales were as slick as ice. Once, its head knocked into my hip and, with that vigor I had asked for, I successfully didn’t pass out.
But, that was only for a few seconds. It slipped from my palms and quivered its way back to hell. I made no move to go after it; I was still so stunned that God or whoever listened actually heeded my wish about my gag reflex. In fact, as I pressed my fingers to my throat, I looked over to you. You weren’t going after it, either. In fact, you were looking at me intimately. You didn’t look disappointed that I had let it go, like Nick wouldn’t have done. In fact, your eyes were wide, but not in the disoriented way; it was like you had witnessed a miracle.
I’m sorry, I said. I didn’t mean to let it go, I said.
You held it for so long, you said. You held it longer than I was ever able to, you said.
I’ll never be as elegant at it as Nick, I said. I’m sorry, I said.
I thought you hated fish, you said.
Breath got caught like rocks in my lungs. You were still looking at me with those bright wide eyes. I could do nothing but stare back at you. What to say: I’m sorry again, No, I don’t, Yes, I do I hate them I hate them I hate them so much and I only listen to you talk about them because it’s you and you make that face every time you get to that one part that I hate and you love.
I said nothing, though, because you started to laugh. It was a soft one, not the loud one you do as if a laugh has been shocked into you. It was quiet, yet it rumbled throughout the very core of the pond we stood in. Your smile was faint, but wide enough to show your gums and a peek of your single dimple on the right side of your face. For a second, I remembered you had uncovered my deepest, darkest secret, and that I had to think of something to say. But, your gummy smile didn’t fade, not even when you grabbed my filthy, revolting fish-hand, so I didn’t say anything at all.
