Becoming Mermaids Page 6

  With her luck, the gem would probably get filed away in some drawer and she’d be stuck with the tail. The thought was so horrifying, it was thrilling. She unwrapped the sheet as far as it would go to get a look at her altered body. “This is me,” she said to try to convince herself. “This is what I am forever,” lingering on the “forever.” She buckled at the hip and curled her tail.

  Both front doors of the van opened at the same time. Coquette and Andy were arguing.

  “That’s what I’m saying—” Andy said, “he doesn’t recognize me now, but now long until I run into him again? He got a good look at me. What if he sees me when I’m mopping or something? I’m going to have to quit my job now. Because of you.”

  “Hey, Sam quit her job. You can run away together!”

  He slammed the steering wheel with both hands.

  Coquette noticed Sam in the back. “Cover up, honey. Someone’ll see you.”

  Andy put the van in gear and sullenly pulled out of the parking lot. He didn’t say a word all the way back to Sam’s apartment.

  “I have to go out tomorrow.” Coquette said, breaking the silence. She checked the time. “Tonight, actually. Tonight and tomorrow. Soon as we get back.”

  “Again?” Sam protested. “How long? What about the tail?”

  “You can give it to Andy.” Andy glanced at her, sidelong, while driving. “I don’t know— go have a wild sex spree or something. I’ve got some things I have to do.”

  “I thought we were taking turns.”

  “We had a fun time swimming. Now I have business.”

  Sam pouted and crossed her arms, glaring at the fish bits she was stuck with for another day. “At least leave me the necklace.”

  “Sure, but don’t lose it! Seriously, Sam, you scared us all back there.”

  She sulked for the rest of the ride.

  * * *

  Coquette was out the door as soon as they got Sam up the stairs. She still wouldn’t say what she had to do that required legs, just left Sam plopped in the middle of the room with Andrew catching his breath in the corner. Sam wished there was a way to use the stone backward— if Coquette stayed out too long, she’d pull a switcheroo and burden Coquette with the tail, wherever she was, whatever she was in the middle of.

  Instead, she entrusted it to Andy and took a quick shower to get the chlorine off, which was starting to get itchy under her scales. Andy held the gemstone like kryptonite and was unwilling to let it touch him for long. He put it in one of Sam’s shoes for safe-keeping.

  Sam’s shower was anything but quick. She knew she needed the cold, clean water to detox. The heat and the chlorine had subtly poisoned her— she was starting to feel the chemicals gathering in her belly. She reasoned that her tail must absorb whatever she swims in. After all, that’s how fish drink, right? They’re not just in the water, they’re of the water. It goes right through them.

  Andy was asleep by the time she got out— a few hours before sunrise. She snuggled up to him and woke him with the shock of cold. “Hey,” she whispered. He recoiled. “Wanna make love?”

  “You’re freezing!”

  “Then warm me up.”

  “You know what they say about cold fish, don’t you?”

  She scowled and turned away from him. “Fine,” she said, and pulled up the covers. She shivered.

  For a long time, she lay with her back to him, thinking about swimming. Swimming without walls, without echoes, just on and on, farther, faster, forever. Her tail moved silently under the sheets.

  Andy’s touch was so subtle, she hardly noticed it, and then only as a tingle. Hundreds of goosebumps ran ahead of his fingers. Her scales were especially sensitive to small points of contact. So were her side-fins, which he grazed as he traversed the length of her hip.

  She slowly turned, letting him trace the shape of her upper body, from bellybutton to shoulder, neck, and clavicle. She didn’t say a word— it would have broken the spell. She hoped, in the darkness, he could see her smile.

  A new sensation welled up in her gut. She thought at first he was mounting her— the pressure was heavy like his body— but she soon realized it was coming from within. She winced. It felt a bit like cramps. And then it felt a lot like cramps. Something gushed from her loins and wet the sheets.

  “Gah! What’s that?” Andrew jumped back and fiddled with the light plug. Suddenly, it was as bright as a hospital room. The covers were off and Samantha was doubled over, spouting bubbles of jelly. “What is that?” Andrew’s voice was tight, almost squeaking.

  “I don’t know,” Sam cried, trying to push the glop back in with her fingers. “I don’t know!”

  “Is that some fish thing?” He curled his lip.

  “I— I—” It felt like a period, but she wasn’t due. And then she understood. “I’m spawning.”

  He had no words, though if he’d found his voice to speak, it probably wouldn’t have been anything that would make Sam feel better.

  The spawning continued for several minutes, and since Sam now recognized them as her own eggs, she was exceedingly careful not to roll on any of them. She gathered them into a pile and was careful not to lose a single one. She checked under every bedcover.

  When the last contraction was over, she said, “Get me a... bowl or something.”

  “What are you going to do with them?” Andy was still on the verge of screaming. He was way on the other side of the bed.

  “I don’t know! But we can’t just leave them here!”

  He broke his gaze and stepped around the room, far from Sam, to the kitchenette. There, he found a large bowl that they sometimes used to make popcorn.

  “Help me get them all,” she said, setting them gently in layers at the bottom of the bowl. They were soft and slick and wet Jell-O. Andy didn’t lift a finger. “Well?” The tone of her voice was so demanding that he started to help immediately.

  “What do you want them for?” he asked, once they were all heaped in the bowl like a gelatin casserole.

  Sam thought it was obvious, but the words sounded like a stranger’s coming out of her mouth. “Because they might be our kids.”

  ”No,” he said, shaking his head, “no, no, no, no, no. Not happening. Not like this.”

  ”We might not have a choice.” The thought horrified her, too, but the ickiness of it all was subsumed under a fierce protectiveness. What if they’re minnows? They couldn’t be normal babies, that’s for sure.

  ”All of them?”

  ”Look, just shut up and let me think!” Clearly, she was going to need Coquette’s help.

  * * *

  Coquette arrived late in the afternoon. She was delirious with sleepiness, but seemed in a good mood otherwise. When she saw Sam guarding the bowl of mermaid eggs, drooping with fatigue, she burst out laughing. “Trout roe for breakfast?”

  Hatred spewed from Sam’s dark eyes.

  “Whatd’ya get the eggs for?”

  She could barely form the words. “Because... they’re my... they’re...”

  “What, did swordfish steaks cum on them?”

  Sam shook her head.

  “Then have them with toast.”

  In retrospect, Sam knew that. That’s how fish did things. She learned it a long time ago, elementary school, probably. But why it had never popped into her head during her fierce vigil, twelve hours straight, she hadn’t a clue. “Oh fuck,” is all she said before dropping on her side and falling asleep.

  Chapter 11: Shadows Fall So Blue

  Sam flitted in and out of sleep, woken by strange dreams. She was falling, or resting peacefully in the air, her tail curled under her in a circular arc. Monsters with fearsome teeth and dead eyes wanted to eat her babies, but she herself was already eating them. Darkness was closing in on her, and she was one with the darkness.

  Every time she woke, her mind had to scramble to separate dream from reality. No monsters, chec
k. Fishtail sprouting from my hips, check. She wondered why Coquette hadn’t taken the tail back, but it was 2 a.m. and Coquette was out. Whenever Coquette was in, it was late morning or early afternoon, and she passed out right away, smelling of tequila.

  It struck Sam that she had passed some sort of threshold— being a mermaid in her dreams as well as awake— like when you’re learning a foreign language and start dreaming in that language. She had hoped to get that far with Spanish— really tried, for years— but always got awkward stares whenever she tried to converse with the hombres on the bus. Eventually, she got too embarrassed to try.

  One day, she woke to the sounds of Spanish. It was Coquette in the bathroom, on the telephone.

  But perhaps that was a dream, too, because just as she was about to drag herself to the bathroom door and ask Coquette who she was talking to, her own phone buzzed, waking her. It was mid-morning. The phone buzzed again and again, an angry hornet.

  She picked it up. It was Jamie, her teenage boss. “You’re late,” he said in his best boss-voice.

  “Late for what?” she asked, surprised to hear how groggy she was.

  “Your shift started hours ago! What’s the matter with you lately?”

  She looked at the clock. Indeed, she would have been late if she still had a job. “Um, didn’t I quit?”

  Silence.

  “I thought when I walked out that day, that was it. You mean I’m still on the timesheet?”

  Jamie thought long and hard, then reoriented himself, starting with the tone of his voice. “Look kid, I’ll give you another chance. You can keep your job if you get here within the hour.”

  Sam glanced down at the tail where her legs should have been. “I don’t think that’ll be possible.”

  “Look— I’m warning you—”

  “Bye, Jamie.” She hung up.

  She felt for the gemstone, but it wasn’t around her neck. Springing up on two wrists, she walrused around the room, searching. Andy hadn’t told her it was in her shoe.

  Hours of searching ended in despair. She wanted to fling herself on the bed, weeping, but no matter how hard she tried, no tears came out of her eyes. She took a shower.

  She took a lot of showers. Once, Coquette came in, slept, and left while the water was still running. Never even asked what Sam was doing in there. The answer, if Sam had the courage to give it, was that she was losing her faith.

  She wasn’t losing her childhood belief in angels and miracles— that happened long before she ever moved to California. What she was beginning to doubt was the existence of her own self: threads of her personality were unraveling, leaving nothing behind. She used to believe her consciousness was some indivisible unit, an atom of soul that could make decisions and feel coherent emotions. But what she found instead, as the water of the shower streamed over her human flesh and fish alike, was that she was more of a mob of discordant voices. Sometimes one faction would have their sway, sometimes another. She couldn’t personally identify with any of these voices, and there was nothing else there to call her self. No part of her that could say, “I am Sam. Sam I am.”

  Without a coherent being to take responsibility for its decisions, there was no one to be praised when she acted kindly, and no one to blame for failures. She couldn’t even be sure which voices made a decision and which went along with it, or whether there was some sort of vote. She watched her sense of morality slip down the shower drain— didn’t see how anything could ever be good or bad again. Not simply an invitation to immorality— tipping the scales of justice out of a sense of entitlement or covetousness while still expecting some standard of measure— she couldn’t see how any one action could ever be better than another.

  She was losing faith in more than she even knew possible. Although she had long disagreed with her parents that God is a person you can talk to, she’d assumed without question that the universe would be fundamentally friendly to her. That if you’re a nice person and try hard enough, things would eventually go your way— karma lite. But how could good things happen to the good-willed if there wasn’t even good and bad?

  In a sense, she was becoming more like Coquette, but without the fun. Coquette was delightfully inconsiderate; Sam was dead inside. On one of Coquette’s rare visits, she quoted a favorite poem of hers— poetry wasn’t as popular as it had been in her day, and song lyrics didn’t fill the gap as far as she was concerned. Sam was coiled in Coquette’s lap. Coquette smoothed Sam’s side and fins like a cat, reciting,

  “A mermaid found a swimming lad

  Picked him for her own,

  Pressed her body to his body,

  Laughed; and plunging down

  Forgot in cruel happiness

  That even lovers drown.”

  “What’s that?” Samantha said, drowsily. All she cared about at that moment were the waves of pleasure following each stroke of Coquette’s hand.

  “Yeats, I think.”

  “It’s pretty.”

  Spending so much time alone, Sam craved human touch. Her own fingers drew less pleasure from the new orifices as they became familiar to her, and it was ultimately frustrating. She couldn’t get the satisfaction of finality, tensing up and settling down, without help. Once, Sam took Coquette’s hand and put it where she wanted it, but Coquette laughed. “You little bulldagger!”

  Coquette obliged, of course, but evidently just to tease.

  Hours later, Sam called Andy on the phone. “Hey, stranger.”

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What’s the matter?” She’d hoped he’d be more excited.

  “Nothing. What do you want?”

  It wasn’t a romantic sentiment, and Samantha realized that she was going to have to build the mood herself. “I think you know what I want.” She feigned a giggle, hoping that would be enough.

  The pause on the other end took way too long. “Hey, um... Are you still...”

  Sam curled her tail over her head and straightened a brush of her fin. “Am I what?”

  “You know. Fishy?”

  She slapped the tail down, remembering her panic about not being able to find the stone. “Oh, Andy, I don’t know where it went! I mean, I’ve searched and searched...”

  “It’s in your shoe. Jeez, Sam, didn’t you know that?”

  She held the phone to her chest and wiped her eyes. Of course. It was perfectly logical: what would she not need while she was a mermaid? She breathed deeply and put the phone to her ear again. “Thank God. I couldn’t tell Coquette I’d lost it. I was so worried!”

  “So you’re still a fish?”

  She thought for a moment how to turn this conversation around. “Come on over and we’ll try some things. Wanna trade places?”

  “Are you kidding?” he blurted, then added, “No. No, I don’t like that.”

  “Well— then— just me then. I’ll be your siren, sailor boy.”

  “Look, Sam, don’t you think this has gone on long enough? Don’t you think it’s a little... creepy?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “I mean, it’s like banging an animal. I think that’s illegal in some states.”

  Sam’s fist was now in her mouth, working hard to keep him from hearing the shudder in her breathing. He was right. She felt gross.

  The silence on the line was so long she didn’t know if he was still there. She couldn’t hold back the choking in her throat forever— it turned into a long, mournful cry of a seabird, a wail of utter desolation. On the inbreath, it took another pitch, and then another, and then became a song. No words, just the sound of pain. A lament.

  On the other end of the line, Andrew couldn’t stop crying. He didn’t know what was happening to him, but he had to be there. “I’ll come right over,” he said, and hung up. He hesitated in his van in the driveway, asking himself, “What am I doing?” with no clear answer.

  When he arrived, Sam’s whole apartment was full of that sorrowful, irresistible melody. He undressed and slid into bed with her, and th
e two of them fucked for hours, tears streaming.

  * * *

  “I’ve made up my mind,” Sam said the next morning. Coquette graced them with the rare honor of her presence for breakfast. Andy sat by her, obedient as a lap-dog. It was nearly noon.

  “Mmmmh?” Coquette said over coffee.

  “I’m going swimming,” she said. “But not in a pool.”

  Coquette sparked to life. “In the ocean? That’s great!”

  “No, the open water still scares me. I was thinking the Birch Aquarium.”

  Coquette just about dropped her toast. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

  “They’re got a huge tank full of local fish,” Andy gushed. “When I was little, I used to love that place.”

  Coquette was, by now, pale white. “You want to live... in a fishtank?”

  “Not to live there! At night, obviously! The same way we snuck into that pool. It’s probably just one picked lock and that’s it.”

  “You don’t think they have security cameras on everything?”

  “It’s a little place,” said Andy.

  Sam added, “What do you know? You’re from the twenties.”

  “I know about security cameras.”

  “Can you help us?” Andy asked. Sam would have been more direct. She’d been carrying the tail for over a week now, and felt that Coquette owed her.

  Coquette was exasperated. At a loss for words. Then, “I... can’t. I’ve got a thing tonight.”

  “What?” challenged Sam. “What could be so important? After I’ve been cooped up here all day and all night?”

  She sighed. “If you have to know... I wanted it to be a surprise. I’m getting my driver’s license tonight.”

  Sam and Andy were both dumbfounded. Finally, Sam squeaked, “You’ve been learning to drive?”

  “I’ve been meeting the right people. Getting my life back. You know I—” she stopped herself: too much information. “You think I’ve been partying all night? I’m getting a birth certificate and a green card, too. Would you believe I’m from Sweden?”