When my father returned, he had a bag of goldfish in his hand. The fish wavered in size as they swam between the corners of the bag. Unlike the fat gold balls that perished in our tiny bedroom tanks, these were thin and frantic. And many. There were sold by the dozen. I knew that the saltwater tank had been more of a financial commitment than my parents had bargained for, but fish-by-the-yard seemed like a far cry from a miniature shark.
“They’re feeder fish,” my father said.
This seemed wrong. Surely this was an unfortunate nickname, but they had real names, like our other fish. If I were a tiger fish, I would tease a fish called “feeder” mercilessly. Although if I were a clown fish, I’d probably keep my mouth shut.
“For what?”
“For him.” My father stepped aside. The pet store owner appeared with a portable tank. Inside was a gray stingray, pushing himself back and forth from the edges like a broken Frisbee.
Herb. Herb was the worst stingray ever.
Herb hung out unviciously at the bottom of the tank, making the sea horses look caffeinated. He was a depressive, colored a bit like a black-and-white cookie, with about the same capacity for free will. And he shed. Little gray bits of him became trapped in the sea anemones. We’d have been better off with a dress-eating giraffe. Herb was just biding his time until that great journey to the surface. If he had any inclination toward appearing majestic or graceful, he kept it to himself. His only activity was to eat, which he did rarely. Though it was a sight to behold if you happened to be in the room for it.
In the wild, stingrays will corner their prey against a piece of coral or a slab of rock. But Herb insisted on trapping the feeder fish against the glass of the tank and slurping them up through the hole in his belly while two dumbstruck little girls stood agape in their pajamas, watching nature unfold. Otherwise, he played dead at an Oscar-worthy level. One day his performance was so convincing, I thought he had willed himself to die just by staying still for too long. I went running to get my sister so that she could confirm rigor-ray-tis. Of course by then she had grown bored of Herb and, by association, me. She spent more and more time away from the house, off in some cavernous movie theater or food court with her friends. Or with her pet-less wonder of a boyfriend. I grabbed a thin gold necklace from her room and lowered it into the tank in an attempt to rouse the patient. More than waking him, I wanted him to become the graceful ribbon of the sea that was his destiny. My sister had let me stay up to watch The Abyss the last time she babysat. I knew how this thing was supposed to move.
I dangled the necklace into the deep, probing for life. This expedition continued for a good four seconds before I dropped it. The chain landed on a piece of salmon coral. The mineral balance of saltwater tanks is fragile. This is the reason the tank is not to be found in my parents’ home right now. After a few years, they would tire of cleaning it, of checking the thermometers, and especially of forgetting to check the thermometers. They would figure out cheaper ways for their two girls to bond. Like television. And that eventually, we’d bond ourselves with the lending of the driver’s licenses for the buying of the beer and the not telling on of the older one when she lit the garage on fire trying to smoke weed out of a Coke can.
But this was before that. The saltwater tank was pretty much it. So I scurried out of the family room to the kitchen, where I found salad tongs long enough to retrieve the necklace. But by the time I got back, the necklace had vanished. I scanned for it, tongs frozen above the surface, ready to act. It wasn’t in the coral or the gravel or the corner of the glass. It wasn’t one of my sister’s favorites, but I worried she might notice it missing from her collection. I combed through the gravel with the tongs. I could sense Herb staring at me, judging me through his invisible eyes, located somewhere above his turgid tummy. He was dead by midnight.
THE HAMSTER AND THE TURTLE
The hamster rarely acts alone. Similar-caliber animals tend to be present in a house if there’s a hamster upstairs. Our hamster, for instance, was accompanied by a turtle. My parents liked the idea of these two animals, so disparate in texture and temperament but tallied on the same receipt. Kind of like their children. Or the tortoise and the hare.
My sister named her turtle Fred. Because I’d use any means possible to get closer to her, I named my hamster Ginger. Plus, it worked with her coloring. Fred and Ginger were impulse pets, twin symbols of our parents’ good intentions gone wrong. They were acquired during one of those record-skipping moments in which people who have two children still manage to mix up their spawn. Upon meeting us, you would know that I am the turtle person and my sister is the hamster person. You would not be required to give birth to us to gain this insight. My sister is not especially hyper, and I am not especially slothful, although, truth be told, we’re a little of both those things. However, if there were such a thing as the Sign of the Hamster, I would not be born under it.
I used Ginger to gain access to my sister’s room, because Ginger was a hell of a lot more interesting to her than Fred was. My sister bonded with that tailless rat. I would put the plump beast in Barbie’s Corvette and have her “drive” the car down the carpeted highway and into my sister’s room. Hamster feet are quite thin, like miniature chicken feet. They’re hairless and flexible, so that if you force one to grab a plastic steering wheel at ten and two, it looks freakishly realistic. If you are ever presented with the opportunity, I suggest you take it.
But caring for Ginger wasn’t worth the price of admission to my sister’s room. I was the one who had to live with Ginger, but I was far from her ideal keeper. The wheel in her cage squeaked in circles all night long. When she gave that a rest, she’d start in on the metal ball of her water feeder. Once I sneaked down to the liquor cabinet and put a couple of drops of vodka in her water in an ineffective attempt to sedate her. More than once I covered her soiled wood chips with a layer of fresh ones.
Meanwhile, I kept a watchful eye out for Fred, inquiring about the frequency of his feedings and the clarity of his water.
“Do you think you should change it?”
“It’s supposed to get a little disgusting,” my sister would say, rescuing Ginger from the driver’s seat.
And she was right. But when the muck is so clouded you mistake a rock for your pet, you’re abusing the system. I don’t know why we didn’t switch pets. Maybe we didn’t want to hurt our parents’ feelings. Maybe we didn’t understand our parents. It was probably because of a deference I had toward my sister. Some animals have a maturity stamp, and I believe she felt it was wrong for her to own a hamster at her age. Playing with a hamster was like playing with a plastic recorder or a little sister. I didn’t see why she would feel this way. Ginger was the only one of us to drink and get behind the wheel of a vehicle.
Fred and Ginger died on the exact same day. Caught in star-crossed pet affection, my sister found Ginger, and I found Fred. Sad as I was for Fred, I will say that a dead turtle is easier on the eyes than a dead hamster. Their joint deaths enabled us to mourn at the dinner table under the guise of the other pet’s passing. We could air our grief out in the open as neither of their habitats had been aired out when they were alive. When we dragged ourselves upstairs after dinner, my sister cried. Then I cried. Then she kicked me out of her room.
THE DOG
During my formative teen years, my father’s favorite thing in the world was to joke around with visitors and guests about our blind dog. He’d claim that after the guest left, he was going to rearrange the furniture just to see what happened. Turn the ottoman a few degrees and see how she fared. The dog panted on the edge of the sofa, her coffee eyes clouded white, as if someone had dropped a dollop of cream in each and forgotten to stir. A purebred bichon frise, the dog had sudden-onset cataracts at three months. As if her being inbred wasn’t enough to put a dent in my affections, I cursed her for her genetic distance from a normal-sized canine. I lamented our inability to “get a real dog.” I had seen scrapbook pictures of a lovable golde
n retriever and a standard poodle towering over me as an infant. What happened to their ilk? Bichon frises are dogs for cat people. They won’t fit in a purse, but they will fit in a beach bag, which is philosophically the same thing.
In the winter, we’d let her play in the snow. We made this mistake every year. And every year she blended in so perfectly, we lost track of her just as she’d lost track of us.
How many preteen girls in America hate their dogs? It was unnatural. Should I also be pouring salt on slugs and tearing the wings off moths? I did not want to grow up to become a sociopath. So I tried to love the dog as best I could. When that failed, I could always fall back on the fact that she was never supposed to be mine.
“A puppy” had been my sister’s request. Yet the feeding and walking of this thing fell to me. Did this make it okay when I ignored her whimpers for foul-scented soft food and gave her dry instead? Did it make it okay for me to let her off the leash to go play in the street before school each morning? Did it make it okay when I’d forget to open the screen door, causing her to jump straight into it like a bird? Probably not.
“It’s not her fault,” my mother would say, slyly gesturing at the dog’s eyes, as if she could see through them.
“I don’t hate her because she’s blind,” I’d argue. “I hate her because of who she is.”
“You said a mouthful there, kiddo,” said my dad, handing me the pooper-scooper.
The bichon was a long-standing wish of my sister’s, granted just in time for her to leave for college, as was the habit with my parents. By the time you’d sufficiently hinted at something (a minimum of two years was generally required for an inanimate object, four for a living one), you had outgrown it. This led to several instances of my father providing a scavenger hunt of clues around the house, culminating in the formerly desired gifts. My mother must have feared she’d raised two rather stupid children, as the clues would have been obvious were they better timed. Instead, I’d open a note that said something like “You’re the most stable person I know!” hinting at the My Little Pony dream house I’d begged for when I was eight. Or my sister would tear open the wrapping around a can of tennis balls, indicating the purchase of tickets to a sporting event in which she had shown no recent interest. She’d crack the can open, searching for a more tailored clue, only to recoil at the scent. Then she’d hand the balls to me—my parents’ actual tennis-playing child. Ever the mastermind behind this process, my father would grin with anticipation. And we were compelled to reciprocate the expression as a placeholder while we scoured our brains for the answer, eyes as glazed over and useless as the dog’s.
THE BIRDS
You wouldn’t think it would be so hard to keep tabs on the birds, their living in a cage as they did. But they came and went so quickly, and for so many years. When I’d uncover them to let the light in each morning, I’d often forget who it was I was waking up. My father went through bird phases: parakeets and canaries, then cockatiels and lovebirds. He bought two lovebirds, though apparently they’re quite egotistical by nature. One lovebird + one mirror = a happy bird experience. Meanwhile, rainbow finches filled the time and space between. They were all incredibly fragile creatures. I came to look on their expected life spans as I would later look on home maintenance products like hair dye and waxing kits. “Up to eight weeks” really means “two and a half weeks if you’re lucky.”
After my sister left for college, I became depressed on behalf of the birds. I was convinced they lived such short lives because they were forbidden to fly. Just like me, a teenager who felt she would surely die like this, trapped alone with these people in this house. I had decided that everything about my life was tepid, so naturally my vote for our next bird was a giant cockatoo or a parrot or something you could keep on a wooden pole and eccentrically bequeath. I wanted one of these birds despite being petrified of their beaks. Is it such a good idea to purchase an animal whose face is the basis for can openers? It didn’t matter, anyway. Giant cockatoos were too expensive, especially given our track record of killing the cheaper models. Plus, they talked back. I wondered what language a cockatoo would regurgitate if it lived in our house. Can a bird imitate the sound of a bedroom door slamming?
My sister had driven home after her freshman year just in time to see the final finches go.
“What’s happening to them?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” I said. “They’re dying of boredom.”
In truth, it hadn’t occurred to me that their deaths could be related. If there was a problem, surely it lay with us and not the birds. She scooped up their lifeless bodies with dish-towels and put them in a shoe box.
“Grab the cage,” she instructed. College girl, problem solver.
A man in a Bird World vest (Bird World: because a lot is riding on your talons!) accepted our shoe box without opening it and looked suspiciously at the cage. He got out a Q-tip and ran the cotton head along the wires. Apparently, the cage was covered in a poisonous, scentless, invisible mold. The birds weren’t fragile or suicidal; we had been escorting them to their deaths. It was all our fault after all.
“We’re bird Nazis,” I said as I got back into the car, buried my head in my hands, and started to cry.
“They’re like pigeons,” said my sister. “It’s not like we’re murdering African grays. Honestly, you were going to outgrow them soon, anyway.”
“I know! But...” I continued to bawl.
“Hey.” She put her arm around me and rubbed my shoulder. “Why don’t you come visit me at school?”
“Okay”—I sniffed—“maybe I will.”
THE SQUIRREL
There was an albino squirrel that lived on our property. We’d toss him the pistachio nuts we couldn’t open. One evening my father spotted this pouffy flash of white violently tearing the bark off a hickory tree. He picked up a rock, thinking he’d throw it into the branches and scare the animal away. The squirrel turned around, caught the rock in its mouth, slammed its little head against the tree, fell down, and died.
FINALLY, THE CATS
Pick a number between 1 and 10.
That’s how many cats we had. Though not all at once. There was the Siamese that meowed like a baby. The tortoiseshell that had worms. The prissy Persian that ran from impending feet. I always felt sorry for the Persian and its overly aligned features. To have a face that flat, to have no profile to speak of, is to never be able to send your nose into a situation ahead of you. There is no preliminary exploration of a stranger’s hand or a new pair of sneakers. You just have to go for it, get your whole head in there at once. Our prissy Persian was, to my mind, excessively judicious in these matters. So much unlike our fourth cat, who had no reservations about smelling anything ever.
A fearless black brute, Bucky led a pack of raccoons. We’d see him traipsing through the backyard at night with an honest-to-God pack of raccoons in V formation behind him. Like geese. My father built Bucky a cat-sized wooden shed outside, and for fifteen years he and the raccoons would change shifts at dawn. It was a point of pride for my father that our cat selflessly recognized the raccoons’ need for shelter. Cats are dilettantes of the nocturnal world, compared to raccoons. Although my sister and I were taught not to go near the shed during the day, since it was essentially Nap Time for Rabies.
Bucky was something else. My mother had dozed off one summer afternoon and my sister and I woke her, telling her that the cat—who left modest presents of dead mice on the doorstep—had really outdone himself.
“Mommy.” My sister shook my mother’s shoulder.
“Bucky killed an eagle.”
“It’s a pigeon.” My mother spoke to the interior of the bed. “Dad will take care of it later.”
“Mommy!” My sister shook again. “Bucky killed an eagle!”
I nodded. I had seen the eagle in question.
Finally roused, my mother allowed herself to be escorted downstairs by two small hands that flanked her like training wheels. When she opened
the front door, there it was. Bucky had not, in fact, killed an eagle. What he had done was tear the heart out of an adult hawk with a wingspan that exceeded the width of our doormat. We had a family meeting. Rather than put the ASPCA on speed-dial, we put a small bell on the cat’s collar. Which had no effect whatsoever. He just stalked more methodically.
Two days before he died, Bucky cornered a tiny stray kitten on our porch, and we took it in. Now, my parents are not big believers in God. Or, rather, they believe in him partially. Which is tricky. It’s like being kind of pregnant or only mostly dead. You’re either in or you’re out. The only time they evoked God with any certainty was when speaking of how Bucky knew he was dying and didn’t want us to be lonely. So Bucky and God put their heads together and placed this precious kitten in the right place at the right time. At the vet’s suggestion, my parents filled latex gloves with kitten formula and let her drink from the fingers. My father watched over the new kitten as if she were the Virgin Mary in a potato chip.
This zealous logic lasted about a week. They were only delaying the inevitable. They were in mourning for our beloved cat and couldn’t be bothered reconstructing their affections with a new kitten. God or no God. My father tore down the shed and retired the bell. The stars are not wanted now: put out every one; /Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. My parents scratched the kitten’s ears out of habit. If it’s possible to play with yarn in a sullen fashion, they did it. When she performed some amusing kitten antic, they cooed the way Hollywood producers laugh—by saying “That’s funny” instead of actually laughing. This defeatist attitude reached its nadir with the naming of the kitten.
“We’re calling her Kitty Kitty,” said my mother, in a totally monotone I-don’t-give-a-shit-about-this-animal voice.
“You can’t do that,” my sister and I protested.
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