Blue Moon

Today is Neeny’s birthday. In honor of that, I’m posting a thing I wrote a while ago about one of my favorite memories with her.

 

The Friday before I started my freshman year at Incarnate Word High School, I attended freshman orientation with one thought on my mind.

Fish.

A few days earlier, at Final Registration, some teacher had given us a rundown of the all-day orientation event that culminated in a picnic with our Big Sisters—the seniors who’d been assigned to help us acclimate to life at our all-girls Catholic high school. The teacher mentioned that freshman were sometimes referred to as “fish” and that the Big Sisters liked to give us fish-themed presents at the picnic. Some freshmen even received actual, living fish from their Big Sisters.

At home, I had a family dog, a family cat, and much to my mother’s dismay, two hamsters of my own whose cages I constantly “forgot” to clean. But I’d never had a fish before, and my brain did a tiny mental happy dance at the thought of getting a new pet.

I knew the chances of receiving a live fish in my freshman gift basket were pretty slim, but I still hoped. Throughout the whole orientation, as I listened to teachers explain our class schedules and watched student council members demonstrate dress code violations, the thought of fish niggled at the back of my brain. By the time we gathered outside the gym for our picnic lunch, I could hardly stand the suspense.

Ten at a time, the teachers let us into the gym to find our Big Sisters. Our assigned seniors held up homemade posters with our names on them, like cab drivers at the airport, and I quickly identified mine—a tall girl named Jennifer with dark blonde hair and a big smile. We greeted each other, and she led me toward our picnic spot near the back of the gym, carefully picking her way through the colorful blankets spread with food, presents, and students. When we got there, I stopped dead, hardly daring to believe what I saw sitting in the middle of Jennifer’s blanket.

A fish. A real, live fish.

It was a beta fish, mostly dark blue but with some deep red near his underbelly, scales shining in the light of the powerful fluorescent bulbs overhead. Jennifer had put him in a clear, blue-tinted baby bottle with the top removed, and he sat next to the biggest gift basket I’d ever seen in my life.

I could barely contain my paroxysms of joy. I grinned and thanked Jennifer for the gift, and we spent the next hour talking and eating the sandwiches and crackers she’d brought. At the close of the picnic, I staggered out of the gym, laden with leftover food, my basket of goodies, and of course my new fish. As I made my way back to my advisory classroom, I was already trying to think of what I would name my new pet—when suddenly I realized that I’d neglected to consider one rather significant detail.

Earlier that morning, when Mom was driving me to the school, I’d told her all about the freshman fish thing and how some Big Sisters took it quite literally.

“I hope my Big Sister gets me a fish!” I’d said.

Mom raised her eyebrows at me and said, “You already have two hamsters and fish smell. Besides, the cat would try to eat it.”

“Piper wouldn’t eat my fish,” I told her. “I’d keep it out of his reach. And fish don’t smell!”

But Mom shook her head. “No fish. No more pets, period.”

Now, as I waited for Mom to pick me up, I replayed that conversation in my head and decided that the best approach was a firm one. I’d show Mom my new fish and tell her how happy I was, and if that didn’t work, well…I’d just have to talk some sense into her.

Minutes later, Mom pulled up in the driveway outside the school. I approached her car, holding my fish front and center, and grinned the biggest grin I could muster.

“Look, Mom!” I said, holding the blue baby bottle up to the open passenger side window. “I actually got one! I got a fish!”

My mother did not return my smile. “Well, I guess we’ll have to take him to the botanical gardens and release him in one of their ponds.”

I stopped, hand frozen above the car door handle. “What?” I said. “Release him? He’s a domesticated animal! He’d die!”

“We’ll take him to the pet store this weekend, then,” Mom said. “I told you, we’re not having any more pets.”

Glowering, I removed my hand from the car door and took a step back. “I’m not getting in the car if you don’t let me keep my fish.”

Mom frowned right back. “Rebecca, I was supposed to be at St. Luke’s to pick up your brother ten minutes ago. You can either get in the car now or you can stay here until you change your mind.”

Thirty seconds later, I watched my mom’s taillights grow smaller and smaller as she pulled onto the street and drove away. Then I stalked into the school and back to my empty advisory classroom, fuming about the injustice I’d been done. Release my poor pet fish into a pond?! Over my dead body! Give him away to some spoiled six-year-old at the pet store? No way in hell!

I stewed for a few minutes in the privacy of the classroom, listening to the voices of other newly minted freshmen chattering out in the hall, until someone appeared in the open classroom doorway.

“Oh, hey.” Ashley, one of my new advisory-mates, walked in, carrying an armload of textbooks. She walked over to one of the lockers at the back of the room, opened it, and shoved the books in. “Is that a fish inside that bottle?”

“Yeah. My Big Sister gave him to me, but . . . ” I trailed off, my eyes fixed on the little beta as he swam in a tight circle around the little baby bottle. Then I looked up at Ashley. “Do you like fish?”

“Sure,” she said. “I used to have one when I was little.”

My face lit up with a hopeful smile. “Do you think you could take him home? Just for the weekend? And bring him back on Monday morning?”

* * *

I spent the next two days plotting. After Mom had returned to school to pick me up, I told her I’d found someone to take the fish in, but I neglected to mention that the arrangement was only temporary. Holed up in my room, I considered all my options. Maybe a sob story about how Ashley had given my fish back because her little brother tried to eat him, like in Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing? No, Mom wouldn’t buy that for half a second. Okay . . . what if I cleared out a space in my closet and kept the fish hidden in there? But no, Mom would take a look in that closet eventually to see if I was keeping it tidy. There really wasn’t a single place inside this house to hide something where it wouldn’t eventually be discovered.

What I needed was a hiding spot outside of the house.

Later, I ran across my front yard to the house next door, where my grandmother lived. “Mom wanted to take him back to the pet store,” I said from the overstuffed chair in Neeny’s study, where I related my horror story. “And before that, she said I’d have to release him into a pond! He would have died!”

Sitting on her little white couch opposite me, Neeny shook her head slightly and said, “Oh, Becca. I’m sure she wouldn’t have put him anywhere without making sure it was safe first.”

She was right, but I still frowned at the floor. “I just really want my fish,” I said. “What if you kept him for me?”

She paused. “I don’t know, Beckles. Your mama might be unhappy.”

“Well . . . we don’t have to tell her.”
“You’ll have to tell her when you get in the car with him on Monday.”

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

* * *

On Monday morning, I got to school extra early and waited for Ashley. She showed up just before the bell, holding the fish in his baby bottle and a small plastic aquarium full of tiny blue rocks.

“I brought you my old tank,” she said. “He probably needs something bigger than this.” She indicated the baby bottle and I took it from her, thanking her profusely before walking to the lockers at the back of the room. Hastily, I pulled out a bunch of my brand new textbooks and school supplies, dumping them on the floor to make room for the fish and checking over my shoulder to make sure our teacher hadn’t arrived yet. (I didn’t want to get in trouble on my first day for housing live animals in my locker.) Once the fish and his little tank were safely hidden, I slipped as many books back into my locker as I could and shoved the rest into my backpack.

Throughout the day, I stopped frequently at my locker, opening it just a crack and peering in to make sure that my little fish was still okay. He flitted up and down in his baby bottle, scales shimmering through the water, and I smiled at him.

At 3:20 p.m., the final tone sounded, releasing us from our first day of high school. I waited until the rest of my advisory had left the room and then opened my locker wide, removing every last thing from it, including my fish and his little tank, and setting it out on the desk.

The first thing to do was take the fish out of that baby bottle. It was open at the top, and I didn’t want to risk it falling over in the car. The only thing worse than no fish at all was a fish dead by my own careless hand.

I filled Ashley’s tank with water in the bathroom across the hall, then walked skittishly back to the classroom, eyes peeled for any teachers who might question what I was doing. Once I was safely out of sight again, I poured the contents of the baby bottle into the tank and clamped the perforated lid on tightly.

Carefully, I set the little aquarium inside a plastic grocery bag. It barely fit, but just enough room remained in the bag for me to stuff in some papers and folders and notebooks on all sides to conceal the contents. I topped it off with a thick Spanish workbook and stood back to admire my work.

On the desk in front of me was a bag full of school supplies. Nothing more.

When Mom arrived, I marched outside with the bag and slid into the backseat, gently setting it down beside me and nestling my backpack against it to keep it in place.

“What’s in the bag?” Mom asked.

“Just had some extra stuff that didn’t fit in my locker,” I told her. “So what’s for dinner?”

Mom drove home without further question.

Upon arrival, I sidled into the house with my backpack and my plastic bag of contraband, waited ten minutes for Mom to disappear into the kitchen, and slipped out the sun-porch door with the fish still concealed. No one noticed my departure, and I hightailed it up Neeny’s back stairs, barely breathing until I pushed through the unlocked back door.

In the kitchen, Neeny met me, watching with a mixture of worry and amazement as I produced the aquarium from inside the plastic bag.

“And Lizzie had no idea you had a fish in there?” Neeny asked.

I giggled and shook my head. “Nope!”

Neeny said, “Well, I guess you’d better bring him back to the bathroom. She doesn’t go back there, so maybe she never has to know.”

I carried the tank down the hall, through the bedroom, and into the bathroom, setting it carefully on Neeny’s pink tile counter.

“What are you going to call him?” she asked, following me in.

We studied the fish as he swam around his tank, poking his nose into corners and biting at passing air bubbles.

“I think you should name him,” I said. “Technically, he’s your fish now.”

Neeny laughed.

“All right,” she said. “I’ll think of a good name for him.”

A few days later, Neeny told me that she named the fish Blue Moon. She went to the pet store and bought him aquarium plants and a pretty glass fish bowl, which she cleaned religiously once a week. Blue Moon lived for about eighteen months after I brought him home to Neeny. I visited him frequently, whenever I came over to Neeny’s for a snack or to hang out. My grandmother was careful to dissuade any other family members from using her pink bathroom, lest Blue Moon’s existence be discovered. It wasn’t until a few years later, at Neeny’s eightieth birthday party, that we finally told Mom what really became of my freshman fish. We all had a good laugh about it.