He told her, “Take this bus to Richmond Road, and then transfer to the number eight line going north. It will take you right there.”
She sat down at the front of the bus. “Everything will be all right when I get to the aquarium,” she thought. When the driver told her that Richmond Road was the next stop, she reached up and pulled the cord above her. That was her favorite part about riding the bus.
She got on the number eight heading north and sat by herself toward the middle of the bus. It was practically empty. She opened Mrs. Hardlick’s note and read it for the first time.
Dear Mrs. Persopolis,
Despite my best efforts, Angeline has been unable to adjust to the intellectual and emotional level of the sixth grade. She does not cooperate well with the other children and has stubbornly refused all special assistance I have offered her. She has been a troublemaker all year, but due to her age I have tried to be tolerant and understanding. However, today she did something which I cannot condone. While the rest of the class was out having recess, Angeline remained inside, where she proceeded to throw a temper tantrum, knocking over furniture and destroying other children’s property.
Now, I don’t know how she behaves at home, but here at school I cannot tolerate such counterproductive and antisocial behavior. I trust you’ll see that she is properly disciplined so that this kind of thing does not happen again.
Sincerely,
Margaret P. Hardlick
Her eyes burned from reading the letter. Her hand shook as she held the note in front of her, wondering what to do. But really, she didn’t have any choice. She tore the note into little strips of paper and stuck them under the bus seat. If her father saw that letter, it would kill him.
“When I get to the aquarium,” she thought, “somehow everything will be all right.”
The bus wheezed to a stop and let off a passenger. It started up again, turned right, and passed a garbage truck going in the opposite direction.
Abel flicked on the radio and tried to find a good station.
“Donna’s sister, Lisa, is in town,” said Gus. “How about the four of us having dinner tonight?”
“No, I’m worried about Angeline,” Abel replied.
“You worry about her too much,” said Gus. “You never have any fun. You owe it to yourself.”
“Yeah, well, yesterday I was worried because I never talked to her, so I talked to her like you said, and now I’m even more worried.”
“Why? What did you talk about?”
Abel shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “Okay, for one thing, do you want to know what she does at school? She collects the garbage. She’s school garbage collector.”
Gus laughed. “She wants to be like you,” he said.
“I don’t want her to be like me,” said Abel. “Someday she could be somebody special.”
“She already is somebody special,” said Gus. “And so are you. It is time you started treating yourself that way.”
“All right, what do you think of this?” asked Abel. “She has an imaginary friend named Mr. Bone. Mr. Bone is a lady.”
“Well, I’m not a psychiatrist,” said Gus, “but after all, you’ve been both a father and mother to her for all these years. She needs a real mother.”
“Oh, so now I’m supposed to marry Donna’s sister,” said Abel.
“All I’m saying is that you should start going out with women again, both for your sake and for Angeline. Have a good time.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t let her drink so much salt water,” said Abel.
Angeline reached up and pulled the cord. The bus stopped in front of the aquarium. She got off and stared at the large building where, once inside, everything would be all right.
She walked up to the front door. It cost a dollar for adults and fifty cents for children. She didn’t have enough. She only had enough for the bus ride home.
Sadly she leaned against a cold, black, marble statue of a seal. What was she doing there anyway? she wondered. What did she expect? It wasn’t as if the aquarium would magically make everything all right.
A group of kids about her age ran toward her, laughing and screaming. They were followed by two women walking quickly after them. The women shouted at the kids to be quiet and to get into two lines. Angeline recognized it as a field trip. One of the women was a teacher and one was a kid’s mother.
As the class entered the aquarium, Angeline darted to the end of one of the two lines and walked in with them. Once inside, she went off by herself.
She walked down a long hallway lined with fish tanks. The hallway was dark but the fish tanks were lighted. She saw fish of all shapes and sizes, some almost as big as she was, others smaller than her fingernails. There seemed to be every possible combination of colors. And as she walked down the corridor, somehow everything was all right.
There were tigerfish, dogfish, goosefish, fox-face rabbitfish, monkeyface blenny, and the beautiful but deadly turkey fish, the most poisonous fish on Earth. And as she looked at all the wondrous fishes, she was amazed by each one. Yet, at the same time, she seemed to recognize them too, as if she knew them from before she was born. She saw clown fish, convict fish, moonfish, some bumphead hogfish, and as she stopped in front of each fish tank she seemed to say, “Oh, yes, I remember you.”
There were four-eyed butterfly fish, who swam right at the very top of the water so that their eyes were half-in and half-out of water. They were able to look both above and below the water at the same time. She saw fairy basslets, who are girl fish when they’re born, but are men fish by the time they die. There were Caribbean grammas, who live and swim upside down, and marbled headstanders, who do just that. She saw stonefish, who just lie on the sand at the bottom of the ocean, pretending that they are rocks, but if you step on one, you’re dead.
Octopuses, sea horses, barracudas. “Yes,” said Angeline very softly to herself, “I remember you.” And as she looked at each fish, peacefully swimming along or lying flat on the sand, she didn’t once think about Mrs. Hardlick or the note for her father or anything, and everything was somehow all right.
She passed a “Garden of Eels.” These eels were long and thin, like rubber pencils. They lived in the sand under the ocean, and only their heads, about three inches long, stuck up into the water. They looked like a meadow of tall grass, gently swaying in a breeze.
Past the fish known as the fat innkeeper, and the one appropriately called elephant lip, and the squirrel fish, toadfish, and long-snouted hawkfish, Angeline walked up a spiral staircase and emerged in the middle of a large round room. There was one, big, circular fish tank all around her. It was more like it was she who was in the tank while the fish were on the outside. There were hundreds of them swimming in a ring around her. They were all big fish and all went in the same direction, like skaters at a skating rink. Leopard sharks, giant sea bass, yellowtail, red snapper, bat rays, they all had droopy eyes and sad faces—but that was just the way they looked.
Angeline sat on the floor. She opened her paper sack that Christy had gotten for her. Christy was nice, she thought. She was glad she was president. She bit into her sandwich. This was her favorite place in the aquarium so far. It was like she was at the bottom of the ocean. She licked her lips. Lemon jello was her favorite.
A group of kids thundered up the staircase and piled into the room. It was that class on the field trip, with which Angeline had sneaked in.
“Ooh, look at this one.”
“Sharks!”
“How come they all look so sad?”
They spread around the room, blocking Angeline’s view in every direction. They put their faces up against the tank and knocked on the glass to try to attract the fishes’ attention. But the fish paid no attention as they sadly swam in circles.
“Don’t touch the glass,” ordered one of the women. “You’ll break it.”
Angeline laughed as she imagined the glass breaking and all the fish and water pouring out. If the glass brok
e every time some kid pounded on it…
“You can’t eat here,” a woman told Angeline. She must have been the mother of one of the kids.
“I’m not in the class,” Angeline informed her.
“Are you sure?”
Angeline nodded.
“Oh. Well, in that case,” said the woman, “eat.”
Angeline took another bite out of her sandwich. She watched a boy walk around in circles along with the fish. He seemed to be staying with one fish in particular, a giant sea bass. “Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me,” he said as he pushed past everybody in order to stay with his fish.
A couple of the other kids saw him and thought he had a good idea. So they picked out their own fish, too, and started walking around with them. Pretty soon everybody in the class was doing it, walking in a big circle around the room, right along with the fish. Most of the kids were laughing but some tried to frown, just like the fish.
Angeline descended the spiral staircase and continued on through the aquarium.
The Pacific hagfish slithers inside the mouths of its victims and eats them from the inside. The blind cavefish lives in caves at the lower depths of the ocean that are so dark that it doesn’t know what its eyes are supposed to be used for. The African lungfish can live in mudballs, out of water. Angeline loved them all.
She saw an albino walking catfish and remembered a joke Gary had told her about a man who had a pet fish. One day the man accidentally knocked over the fishbowl and the fish fell out onto the floor. He tried to pick it up but it kept slipping through his fingers. Finally, after at least five minutes he was able to scoop up the fish with both hands and drop it back in the bowl. Luckily, it was still alive. The next day when the man came home from work he found the fish lying outside the bowl again. He quickly put it back in. This kept happening, day after day, until finally the man decided to leave the fish out for a while and see what happened. First he left it out for thirty minutes, then an hour, then two hours, then three, four, until finally he just emptied the bowl altogether and kept the fish in his desk drawer, except when he’d take it out for a walk. One day, while he was walking his fish in the park, they came to a pond. The poor fish got too close to the edge, slipped in, and drowned.
Angeline laughed. She thought it was the funniest joke Gary ever told her. She wished Gary was with her now. She thought he’d have lots of good jokes about all the different fish. She saw a chocolate catfish. She bet that Gary would have a good joke about that one.
There were glass catfish, about the size of her pinky. She could see right through them, except for their bones. And somehow, everything remained all right.
She came to a giant fish tank filled with dolphins, porpoises, sea lions, and seals, all swimming and playing together. “Yes, I remember you,” she said sadly, as if before she was born, she once was a dolphin too.
Next to that one was one with an Amazon manatee in it. Back in Columbus’s day, sailors used to think manatees were mermaids. These sailors had gone a long time without seeing women. A manatee looks like a shapely walrus, with hips.
A giant salamander seven feet long, little scissors-tail fish, whose tails open and close like scissors as they swim, and everything was all right at the aquarium. Puff-fish, alligator gars, zebra eels, but soon she would have to leave. Wolf fish, pipefish, a fish called snakehead and one called feather-back, school would be getting out soon. There were crabs, lobsters, anchovies, and sturgeon with their long noses and mustaches.
Sawfish with noses shaped like saws and paddlefish with noses shaped like paddles, she could have stayed there forever. There were brightly colored electric fish, so bright that their tank wasn’t lit like the rest of the tanks, and flashlight fish, who emitted their own light so that they could see where they were going.
She left the aquarium. She felt fine. Everything was still all right.
The Earth spins around at 1,037 miles per hour, she knew that before she was born, and Angeline spun around too, right along with it.
Thirteen
No Going Back
“Lay down ye weapon, sailor, or off she goes!” The sailor looked at the lovely lady with her hands tied behind her, standing at the edge of the plank. He only had to see her eyes to know that she too was in love with him. He glared defiantly at the one-eyed pirate, then slowly lowered his sword.
Angeline put her thumb in her mouth; then, catching herself, she immediately bit it. “If only I didn’t suck my thumb,” she thought. She examined it for teeth marks. From now on, she decided, anytime she caught herself sucking her thumb, she would bite it hard. The more it hurt, the better. “Then, maybe I’ll learn.”
It had been a week since Mrs. Hardlick had sent her home. She hadn’t been back to school since. Instead, every day she took the number eight to the aquarium, to the bumphead hogfish, the Garden of Eels, and the circular room with all the big frowning fish. She wondered why she liked the frowning fish so much. She thought it must have been kind of like the clowns at the circus. The ones with the frowns were always funnier than those with the big smiles.
“Don’t hug me until I take a shower,” said Abel as he came home.
She wanted to tell him about the aquarium and about what happened in Mrs. Hardlick’s class and why she couldn’t ever go back there. She had been wanting to tell him about it all week, but how could she? He expected so much from her.
“Now you can hug me,” said Abel as he emerged in his pajamas and robe.
Angeline hugged and kissed her father, then sneezed. The odor of his shampoo irritated her nose.
Abel always washed his hair in the shower. He had to wash all the banana peels out of his hair. Every day, all day, he felt like he had banana peels in his hair. He would look in the rearview mirror to try to assure himself that they weren’t really there but he was never totally satisfied until he took his shower and washed his hair.
Angeline knew she had to tell him about school. She knew he would find out about it, anyway, someday.
“Is something wrong?” he asked her.
She stared at him for a moment, but couldn’t tell him. “Oh, I hurt my thumb,” she said instead.
“What happened?” he asked her.
“I bit it,” she told him.
“I’m sorry. Does it hurt?”
“A little,” she replied. “Not enough.”
“Okay, fine,” said Abel. He walked into the kitchen shaking his head. “Do you want salt water with your dinner?” he called.
“Yes, please,” Angeline answered.
The phone rang. “It’s for you,” Abel called.
She ran into the living room and took the phone from her father. “Hello,” she said.
“Hi,” said the voice on the other end, “this is Goon.” Gary laughed awkwardly.
“Hi, Gary.”
“Hi,” Gary said again. He sounded nervous. “Where have you been the last few days?” he asked. “How come you haven’t been in school?”
Angeline looked at her father cooking dinner. She couldn’t talk with him there. “My socks are green,” she said.
“So?” asked Gary. “You can go to school with green socks.”
Angeline looked at her father again. She wished he’d leave. “My father is right here,” she said. “He’s not wearing any socks. He’s wearing slippers.”
Abel turned and looked peculiarly at Angeline.
“Oh, I get it!” said Gary. “You can’t talk because your father is right there, right?”
“Yes,” said Angeline.
“He doesn’t know you haven’t been in school?” Gary asked.
“No,” said Angeline.
“Wow,” said Gary, “that’s really something. Well, maybe I’ll see you at school tomorrow and then you can tell me.”
“I doubt it,” said Angeline.
“There’ll be Smalayoo,” said Gary.
“What’s Smalayoo?” Angeline asked.
“Nothin’s Smala me,” laughed Gary. “What’s Sma
la you?”
Angeline laughed. She thought it was the funniest joke she’d ever heard over a phone.
“Well, good-bye, I guess,” said Gary.
“Bye.”
They hung up.
Abel couldn’t stand it any longer. “Why did he want to know what color socks you were wearing?” he asked.
Angeline had to think fast. “Well, see, he lost his socks, except his were blue.” She quickly walked out to the living room and picked up her book.
“Did he think I took his socks?” Abel asked out loud, but not loud enough for Angeline to hear him.
The next day Gary walked aimlessly across the school yard, hoping that Angeline would show up. “Will you get outta the way, Goon!” someone said as he walked through their hopscotch game. “Hey! Get off the field, Goon!” as he walked across the baseball diamond. “Come on, Goon, walk around!” He went back to his classroom.
“Hello, Gary,” said Miss Turbone.
“Hi, Mr. Bone,” muttered Gary. “Have you seen Angeline?”
“No, I’m afraid not.”
He took off his shoe, then put it back on.
“What did you do that for?” Miss Turbone asked him.
“Do what?”
“Take your shoe off, then put it back on?”
“Did I do that again?” Gary asked.
Miss Turbone smiled and put her arm around Gary. “Angeline will be back,” she assured him.
“You never know,” said Gary. He looked into the saltwater fish tank. He peered into it like he was gazing into a crystal ball, hoping that it would somehow tell him what happened to Angeline. But all he saw was a fish, and he didn’t think that that told him anything.
“Maybe she’s sick,” said Miss Turbone. “Why don’t you go see her after school? I bet she’d like that.”
Gary knew she wasn’t sick. If she was sick she could have told her father. No, she wasn’t sick. It was something bigger. But he could still go over to her house after school, like Mr. Bone said.