Birthday Fish

by Sydney Haas

This year, Cristina is less sure of the power of rituals for the dead. She is contemplating whether or not to buy a fish, again, for her mother’s birthday, again. Last year was the first time Cristina found herself faced with the task of celebrating her mother’s birthday without a mother to wish a happy birthday to. She decided to buy a fish because a fish was the first pet her mother bought when Cristina was a child. But the mother’s birthday fish died shortly thereafter, on account of being overfed, and Cristina had to scoop its bloated, slimy body out of the small tank of water and plastic plants and flush it down the toilet, just like she did with the goldfish back in the second grade. As she ushered that first birthday fish to its burial, she thought of the girl she used to nanny, Hannah, and how one morning Hannah brought her into the kitchen and opened the freezer drawer to reveal a small tetra fish, dead and frozen in a Ziploc bag, and how they spent the rest of the day searching for the perfect funeral hymn in Hannah’s choir songbook.

Back home, the people who loved her mother are eating angel food cake and speaking to her with their eyes closed like they did last year and like they will do every year on her birthday until they are too old to keep track of the days. But Cristina is not back home, and she is also faithless. She considers flowers instead, but they, too, will die and she will be left with more life-rot water to pour down the kitchen sink. She could light a candle, but would that not also be a reminder of impermanence, the wax shrinking each minute until dark?

When Cristina gets to the checkout line at the pet store, a child is crying. She first assumes this must be related to the death of a pet, or its sickness. Instead, the child is crying because he wants a small plush chickadee that chirps when you squeeze its belly, but his mother is telling him they can’t afford anything they don’t need. A leash sits on the conveyor belt. Cristina wonders what qualifies as a need.

This is the whole thing, isn’t it: Even the smallest sadnesses are so wanting of a breakdown. Maybe they are even more wanting of a breakdown than the bigger sadnesses, because they are not perceived to be gut-wrenching despite the fact that they are. Cristina wants so badly to throw a tantrum next time she can’t get what she wants. To repossess her childlike heartbreak, its rawness. To cry when the bakery sells out of croissants before her arrival, or when they get her order wrong at the fruit stand, which they always do, which she always pretends not to notice.

She thinks of her grandmother in that nursing home, dialing the number for an infomercial that would sell her a cookbook and reciting the number of her credit card over the phone. Requesting blackberry ice cream from her grandchildren as they left for the ice cream parlor. And she thinks of her own mother in her own hospital bed, pouting at the way the sunlight wouldn’t let her fall asleep all day long. Wanting scallops for dinner when all they had on the hospital menu was lasagna. Crying at the thought that she may never have spicy food again. She thinks of the way she told her “maybe not never again,” and how her mother responded with “that’s true, I shouldn’t say never,” and how they both knew this was a lie.

The crying child and his mother exit the store now, leash in hand. The plush chickadee hangs on a rack, still chirping. Cristina places the veiltail betta fish on the conveyor belt. It moves its cobalt, petal-like fins like a carefully choreographed ballet. She buys a fish, again, for her mother’s birthday, again, and it will die, again, and this time, she will cry while she relocates its lifeless corpse from one body of water to another.

Published February 24th, 2024