SOOT'S ORIGINAL SIN WAS BEING GORGEOUS. He was jet black, tapering toward his edges into translucence. His eye was like a grommet on a goth belt. And it took up his entire face, right in the middle, like God had designed him after seeing a fish keychain but not a real fish. His fins were nothing but delicate wisps. It was a tragedy when one of the others bit a chunk out of his left as part of the expository scuffle to establish a pecking order. But after that, they never caught him again. My little speed-racer. Soot was in constant evade, terror threaded through the adrenaline flicks of his body. By gorgeous, of course, I mean that I loved him.
I had read online, in fish forums and aquarium website comments and r/fishkeeping, that a community tank of Platyfish would form a violent social hierarchy. I was prepared for a certain level of conflict. There is no way of knowing the untold trauma that befell at Petco. All I know is that I took them home in a plastic bag on the green line of the metro train and they were so stunned by this situation that they did not confront each other at all. I proceeded to dunk their bag in the tank for an allotted fifteen minutes while they acclimated to the water temperature. And still they behaved! They had a common enemy, which was the bag, and all of them rammed their heads against the edge to get out. Then, of course, I opened the bag, and hell broke loose in six separate bodies.
They slammed into the aquarium walls. They formed teams and chased each other around stingy plants. They revealed jaws I didn't know they had. They moved so quickly that the water thrashed over the edges of the tank. One of them almost fled into the filter.
I panicked. I got every Tupperware in my kitchen and filled it with water. I planned to separate them so that they couldn’t kill each other. But I couldn’t get them out of the tank. If they hated each other, they hated me more. The only time they stopped fighting is when I dunked my net into the tank, pinning their fins down and flying to the opposite direction in naval formation.
“You need to let nature sort itself out,” My secret boyfriend, Nathan, said. I had forced him to come to the pet store with me because I thought it would be cute. Unfortunately, I was so stressed about the fish that it wasn’t very cute, and actually, I was worried I was giving him the idea that I’d be a frantic mother if we ever had kids.
“You’re right,” I said, even though fish reddit had told me that the first few hours of aquarium acclimation were crucial for the survival of the tank. “We should name them.”
Nathan took an unusually long time coming up with a name. I couldn’t tell if it’s because he was really trying to think of a good one or if he just didn’t really care and thought that I’d eventually forget. But I needed to tell people “Nathan named that one” so that they would ask, “wait, are you guys dating?”
In the end, he said, “Maybe Sporcle. Or Asterisk.” I un-named one of mine so that I could use both of his. It was at this moment that Queen Elizabeth III bit off one of Soot’s fins. I screamed.
Nathan wrapped his arms around me. “Hey, shhh. It’s just fish.”
I buried my face into his neck. I had this beautiful vision: I didn't want one boring guppy with plastic plants. I wanted driftwood and moss. I wanted live plants. I wanted a snail. I wanted schools of fish. I wanted a self-sustaining ecosystem of that kept itself alive on a sort of bonsai carbon cycle. I wanted to build the perfect world. It wasn't too late. I still could.
It's just fish. He was right, of course. A lot of people got fish at the county fair and let them die in vases on the counter. I don't know why I looked into Soot's grommet eye and felt as though I owed him everything. Maybe I'd spent too long on aquarium forums. Maybe I saw it as a challenge. Maybe my edges were translucent too.
*
Three times Soot tried to kill himself, the way a fish does, thinking all the air he hasn’t tasted might be better water. I heard a splash the first time. I worried that it was The Big One, taking Soot's remaining fin. I searched the aquarium plants for a full minute before I looked down and saw his slim body beside my bare toe. No bigger than a curl of ink. His movements recalled those cellophane miracle fish, curling and flattening at such intervals that I recognized it as both gospel and gimmick. He was still wet, so I could still save him.
I read online that touching a fish with your fingers removes the protective sheen from their scales, so I scooped him up with the plastic container from the pet store. His body spasmed when touched. He had a fighting instinct to live; he was begging me to die. I placed him in a Tupperware container of water so that he would not have to interact with the other fish. Upon entry, he drifted to the bottom. He twitched once, then hovered, moved by nothing but the surface water’s gentle tug from the nearby air conditioning. I made a small construction paper sign that read Fish Hospital. My handwriting looked like a child’s.
He tried his trick when I wasn’t home, once, which is to say that it worked. I made Nathan pick up his body. It made sort of a crisp sound, crusted to the floor. So many times I had forced Soot to live again. I imagined death for him as a vaudeville show. And there was me with my long thin cane, perpetually yanking him offstage. Maybe that’s a sin too.
After that, I ordered a bunch of new tanks and lids so that nobody could die anymore. Until they arrived, I used pieces of cardboard with masking tape. I’d replace them each morning, soaking wet from the condensation, warm to the touch.
*
After Soot's death, I started having Fish Dreams. I would be typing on the computer only to turn over my hands and find one fish each crushed into the palms. I would be a mermaid and they would swim into my mouth. I would be on a date with Nathan and a fish would be flopping around at our feet, enlarged to the size of a shoe, choking up water all over.
These dreams gnawed at me through the entire day. Often I would be midway through a task and feel a pang of shame. Or there would be a pause in conversation with friends and a sadness would settle within me. I would realize I was feeling residual guilt from my fish dream. After the fifth or sixth time it happened, I complained to Nathan about it.
"I wasn't going to say anything," he said, "but I think you're too obsessed with those fish."
[...]
When I came home the next morning, all of my fish were dead.
The Goodyear Blimp had exploded. He was suspended, upside down in the water. His innards had leaked out and were floating on the surface, connected by a cord of intestines to the rest of his body, bloated and hollow, like a chandelier. The rest of the fish were all belly-up. In cartoons, fish die and float to the surface. But mysteriously, half of them were on the top of the water and half of them were on the bottom, coating the rocks in a layer of bodies. Truth be told, I had no clue there had been so many. They had never been still enough for me to count them. But now there was a full unbroken layer of fish bodies on the water’s edges. And then the large one, in the middle. This symmetrical disaster.
I was too shocked to cry. I opened my phone to text Nathan, but then I thought about last night, and I didn’t. I set down my things and approached the tank.
I don’t know how long it took, to remove the filter and heater, wiping the sludge of algae from each side, placing them in a box to dry. To find a cup from the kitchen I didn’t care too much about. To stuff one trash bag inside of another. To scoop the dead bodies out, layer by layer. The big bloated one and all the rest. To siphon the water into buckets, stirring clouds of residue with each movement. To realize that they were gone, that I had finally lost my chance to build a perfect world. It had exploded.
I laced my arms beneath the tank. I had never picked it up with water inside, even half-emptied. It must have weighed one hundred pounds. The minute I held it over the hardwood floor, I thought I would drop it and it would shatter over the white carpet of my 700-square foot apartment and there would forever be dead bodies flaking off the door jambs and book spines and I would deserve it. But through some Herculean strength that I haven’t possessed before or since, I carried it all the way to the kitchen sink. I tilted it over the edge, then dumped everything in. All the dirty water. Some spare dead bodies. All of the dead plants. All of the rocks. Thank god nobody had to live in this place but me.
Afterwards, I stripped out of my clothes, tendrils of algae tangled in the fibers, and threw them directly in the trash. I brushed my teeth, my tongue, and the whole inner lining of my mouth. I bleached the sink. I stood under the shower head for ten hot minutes. I scrubbed my fingernails across a bar of soap until they were white crescents. I left with my skin was cross-hatched in red.
It must be a relief, Nathan said later, when I finally told him. I suppose it was. Something can be sad and a relief at the same time.
*
An indeterminate time later, Nathan and I went to dinner. By this point, we had stopped kissing. I was worried that it was my fault. I was afraid that the fish death had affected me, psychologically, and I wasn’t as bright as I used to be. If I could only act like I had been acting when we started dating, I would deserve all the love that we used to have. But I didn’t know how to get there. All evening, I did my best to smile and laugh whenever the server came to the table. I dictated a text to my phone, so that Nathan would hear it, about how I’d have to respond later because I was on a date. I posted a dimly-lit Instagram story and drew a little heart. I guess I just wanted somebody, somewhere, to see the world I had been trying to build, while they still could.
We got home from the date and I said it: “I don’t think it’s supposed to be this hard.”
Nathan said, “I think dating you is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life.”
“Okay, then. We’re breaking up.”
Nathan stared at the ground for forty-five minutes. I debated getting up to go into the bathroom and throw up. I thought about how it would shatter the moment. It was so quiet that he would hear the retching, the dead noise between gags. I imagined the vomit like the dead fish, equal halves sinking and floating. I told myself; I’ll get up in five minutes and throw up. Then five minutes would pass and I would think, I’ll get up in five more. In the end, Nathan rose first. I never threw up. He went to my shelf and plucked his five books from their separate locations. He went to my bathroom and bundled the contents of his drawer into his arms. He rolled everything into his shorts so that it was easier to carry. He went into my kitchen and took his Tupperware.
“Did you wash this?” He asked.
“No,” I said. “I can’t use my sink right now. It’s full of aquarium rocks.”
“Right.”
“It’s clean though.” I said. I had only ever used it sparingly. I had never even put a fish in there.
I gave him a plastic bag for his items and he left.
*
That night, I got too drunk at someone else’s birthday party. I don’t remember coming home. I woke up with strange crust around my eyes and centripetal force in my skull. I had forgotten how quiet the apartment could be when the aquarium filter wasn’t running. The electricity made noise in the walls.
I wouldn’t have been able to get to my feet if I hadn’t had to use the bathroom, but then I was up and I was moving. There was a mountain of dishes beside the sink and a mountain of rocks within it.
I shoved my bare hand into the garbage disposal. I should have gotten cut. I didn’t. I watched a YouTube tutorial where a plumber said who the hell would put aquarium rocks down their sink. They didn’t know what I’d been through. They didn’t know what it was like to kill a whole world. Or maybe they did! Who is to say. I got down on my hands and knees and inserted an Allen wrench into the bottom of the disposal into this little hole I never knew was there. And then I cranked through each rock by hand. I told myself: I’m the stupidest person on plumbing YouTube. I can’t keep a fish alive. I’m stronger than rocks. Four hours later I pulled my head out from the cabinets, stringy hair was plastered to my forehead and neck. My shirt was soaked through. My sweat carried notes of alcohol. My back and the arches of my feet screamed from the way I had been crouched. My palms were fever-red and blistered, cracked and bleeding from a ditch in the middle. And rising to my feet, shaky with my ears ringing, I flicked the switch next to the sink to hear the defeated roar of the disposal, the blades dulled to nubs, quietly churning the air, the dust of everything now somewhere within the pipes beneath the city. I could break anything and I could fix anything.
That night, of all things, I had another one of those fish dreams.
In this one I launched myself beyond the glass. Maybe it was the arc of the leap, or maybe I was just lucky, or maybe the world rearranged its solids and liquids to hold me. The plot was somewhat nebulous. But I was in the air for a long time, waiting for the ground. I imagined how this act would strip the protective sheen on my scales. How other people might gasp upon seeing me crusted to the floor. How they’d try to throw me back in; how I’d flounder and fail. How everyone would say that I should have just stayed. I waited for so long that I didn’t even notice, until I felt the water pressing against me, that I was pressing back. The rips in my fins had congealed into ribbons of blue scar tissue. When had it happened? I don’t know. Such is the logic of dreams. All I know is that, in the seconds before I woke up, I had found the better water. And I was swimming.