The Fish and the Not Fish (5 page)

It was dawn when the blue of the sky blew its cool breath on my face to tell me it was time to wake up.

I woke up.

I woke up to a blue that had Bird wrapped up in it.

The sky, Bird sang, is blue by day.

At night the sky turns black.

This is how Bird took flight.

Bird flew up to see the sun.

The sun in the sky held Bird up trapped in its light.

Bird, I said, to bring Bird back.

Bird. Bird. Bird.

I sang this word with the hole of my mouth to see if Bird might sing a song back.

The sun, it shined bright back.

And the sky made a sound like the sea might make when a stone is dropped down in it.

When an egg is pushed from its nest, when the egg breaks in half, a bird lifts up its head.

It opens its eyes, its beak.

To see. To sing. Its song.

First there is the boy and then there is the not boy. The not boy has eyes that are blue and hair that is long and not black. The boy's eyes are not blue and his hair that is brown like dirt is cut so close to the top of his head that it is stiff when you run your hand on the top of it to feel it. You can't see or feel the ears of the not boy. The ears of the not boy are there, trust us on this, but they are ears that are hid by the hair that hangs down, half the way down, the back that is the not boy's. The boy, not like the not boy, has ears that stick out like shrunk up hands that are cupped up and out from the sides of his boy head so that he can hear what gets said in a room where this boy is not in it when a man and a not man are back in this room with the door shut tight but not too tight and there are words in this room and there are not words in this room that move back and forth from the not man's mouth and from the man's mouth and these words bang and shake back and forth from the ears of the man to the not seen ears that are the not man's. This house with this room that is in it with the door closed shut tight like it is on nights like this, it is not a house where the doors of these rooms do not get kicked at and slammed at and hit at with clenched up fists, where the floors do not get stomped on by the boots of the man or by the socked feet that are the not man's. The black boots that are the man's have dried up mud caked up hard up on the backs of their heels. When the man walks in through the back door of this house and walks in through the house with mud caked hard to a crust up and on the back heels and up too on the toes of his boots, the not man tells the man to stop, then the not man turns back to face the sound that the man makes when he walks in the house and then with this the not man twists and shakes a not man fist: take off those mud caked boots is what the not man shouts. The man who walks in like this in through this house like this has ears not hid by dark man hair but he keeps on with this walk in through this house as if he does not hear the not man sounds that the not man makes when the not man shakes and twists her fist like this to get this man to stop. The not man makes a not man hand take the shape of a balled up fist and shakes it mad and mad twice more like a not man can be made to be mad at a man who walks in through the house with mud caked dry on his boots, but here the man just looks and looks right through these not man sounds and it does not look like the man sees what it is that the not man wants him to do or see or hear. What the man sees when he looks as if he does not hear what it is that the not man wants him to do or to see or to hear, he turns and he looks out through the square of glass in this room that looks out on the sky and the no leaf trees that make this house feel too small for the two of them or for the four of them to all of them live here in it. When the man like this feels small, he can't help but think back to those days back when he, like the boy that is his and who he gave to this boy his name (which, like his, is Jim), the boy that this Jim man used to be used to spend his back then Jim days in a boy world that did not need a not boy to be with him in it. But the boy here who is like this man Jim (this boy who is a Jim too) and the not boy who has the same first name as the not man whose not boy name is Jane, the boy and the not boy live in a world that is theirs, Jim's and Jane's, to share and to live in this house with the man and the not man here in it. This boy Jim and this not boy Jane share a room in this house and a bed that is meant to hold not two, not a boy and a not boy, but just a boy or just a not boy, just the one and not the two, just a Jim or a Jane but not the both, or at least not both at the same time. The boy and the not boy share too the same last name that makes it known to all that they meet that they come from the same man and from the same not man and that they all live in the same small house and they, too, like two birds in a nest, once shared a room in the house made by the not man for all the days when the boy and the not boy were not yet born to be in this world. All this time, days and days and nights and nights, the not man did not know that there were two of what was in her for the man and the not man to have to name. The not man did not know that there were two till the day not one, not just a boy, not just a not boy, but both a boy and a not boy came out of the room that for all of those months was a room that the not man held and kept the door closed tight on those nights in the dark when the man came home in the dark with a voice that made sounds out of words that did not make sense when the man did what he could do to make the not man make room for both the man and the not man there in the warmth of that bed. Those were nights when the man breathed his bad man breath in the not man's face and made the not man cough and choke and pinch tight her not man face and shake back and forth her not man hands in front of the man's dark face as if the man was not a man made out of bone and flesh but was a cloud made out of black smoke. Oh no you don't, who do you think you are, these were the kinds of words that the not man liked to say to keep this man and his bad man breath out of her not man bed and face. And once the not man made out of these sounds a door to keep the man and his breath out from where it came from, and once the man could see that his bad man breath could not break down this door to let him come in from out of the smoke and from out of the cold that the man had brought in with him when he walked in through the back door of the house, it did not take long for the man to give up with his breath that he breathed in the not man's face and to give up his breath to sleep in that place on the floor where the floor did not creak when he'd lay down on it. And once the man fell to sleep in this place where the floor did not creak when he lay down on it, the not man in her bed would hold the boy and the not boy close up to her, and there, cupped in the hard palms of her not man hands, she would rub to warmth the skinned walls of her house, and when the not man closed her eyes to see the face of what she could not see, what she saw was a lone tree with a hole in its trunk and with a bird up there in it that cried out to her by name.

On blue bikes the two boys rode. At night. Down the street. In the dark. Side by side. Like this these boys made sounds with their mouths that birds like to make at the break of each day. Caw. Caw. Who. Who. It was their song. They sang as they biked, side by side, in the dark, down the street, to go see what they'd sneaked out to see.

See the boys go.

Hear their tune.

Here they come now.

They don't slow down. Not till they get to that place where they've come to go to.

A house.

A girl.

Two boys.

Jane, they call out, in the dark, up to this house. This house is red and made out of brick. Its roof is black. One light burns and shines out at the dark that is the June night.

It is Jane. She stands where she is, in the door, where she looks out through the dark at two boys whose names to her are You and Him.

You and Him live in a blue house with a mom and a dad who call both boys by name.

Jim, they say. John.

Jim and John are twin boys but they don't look the same.

Jim has blue eyes.

John's eyes are brown like the dirt.

There is more to how these boys don't look the same, but for now this is all that you need to see.

Two boys.

Two bikes.

Blue eyes and brown.

A house.

Night.

A girl.

Jane.

Jane lives with an aunt who calls her Sis when she wakes her up to say that it's time for Jane to wake up.

Jane would like to sleep by day.

By the light of day there is too much for Jane to have to look at.

In the dark of night Jane can look at what she wants her own eyes to see.

Jane, like Jim, has eyes that are blue.

Blue as the blue sky is blue. Blue as the sky's blue is blue. It is blue too.

That's how blue Jane's eyes are blue when Him and You look at them in the blue light of the day.

At night Jane waits for You and Him to ride by her red house on blue bikes that make the dark turn on and off like a blue light.

I'm here, Jane says, though she does not have to say it out loud with these words.

When Jane steps out in the dark, there is a light from her face that this light it shines right out.

It lights its light on these two boys who Jane calls Him and You.

These two boys stand up on their bikes.

Jim and John.

You and Him.

Jane steps up and hops up on the seat of one blue bike.

This night it is Jim's.

You, Jane says, to Jim.

Jim does not say a word back.

Jim nods.

But Him says with his mouth, First one to the creek gets a kiss.

With this, both boys ride on, and the wheels on both bikes hiss and hum like lips pressed tight in the night.

This night, Him gets to the creek first.

Kiss me, Him says, to Jane, and he stands up from his bike.

Jane jumps off of You's bike. She runs down to the creek. She jumps in the creek's dark.

The creek's dark is made out of dirt.

Dirt like the eyes that are John's.

There is no creek for Jane to get her feet wet with.

Jane drops down on her hands and knees and Jane takes up in her girl hand a hand full of dirt that she makes like it is creek that she lets splash in and on her girl face.

The boys watch Jane, the girl that she is, play like this in the dirt.

In the dark, dirt rains down on Jane's look up at the sky girl face.

The moon in the sky makes all of this lit up so that the boys can see it when they look.

They look.

They watch Jane look up.

Kiss me, Jane says, to the boys, to the dirt, to eyes that are both like the dirt of the creek and like the sky that you see by day.

Him jumps in with Jane first. He got to the creek first. What's fair is fair is a thing that You and Him both know.

Him makes his lips like a fish. Waits for the kiss. Shuts his eyes to the dark.

In the dark Him sees Jane come in close.

She is like a fish on two legs, born from some place on this earth where the sea used to be but now there is just plain dirt.

When they kiss, Him hears a sound in his ear like the sound a shell likes to make when it's washed up on some shore.

Hmmm, Him thinks, and he makes this word with his mouth, so loud that You too, with his back backed up to some tree, You too can hear it.

We got to go, You calls out. He kicks at the dirt. Kicks at the tree. Looks at the look on Him's face.

He has seen this look more than once in his life and he wants it back on his own face.

Go where? is what Him wants to know. Him knows he has the look on his face.

To the bridge, You says, and he gets back on his bike. You Know Who said she might be there.

You Know Who is a girl that Him and You know from the time they biked out to the road that runs out of town to the town that is next to the town that is theirs and then it dead ends where there are train tracks that run through this town that is next to the town that Him and You and Jane say this town is ours though these are tracks, more rust than they are steel, that have not seen trains run on them in all the years since Him and You and Jane were born to be two boys and a girl here in this town.

There is in this town a bridge that runs on top of where the creek is and it is here that Him and You and the girl named Jane go to go see if the girl named You Know Who might be there.

You Know Who has a real name and that real name of hers is Sam.

Sam is not short for a name that is more like a girl's name. It's the name that Sam's dad gave her and called her by from the day that he learned that he was soon to be a dad.

Sam's dad, whose name is Sam too, thought that what was in that girl who was not yet his wife was a boy who would take his name and make him proud to be a Sam.

Sam, Sam's dad said, and he laid his hand where he thought Sam was, there in that spot where when Sam's mom laid down in her bed she used to lay flat as a thin sheet of wood.

When Sam was born a girl and not as a boy, Sam's dad did what most dads do not.

He turned.

He ran.

He did not come back.

All he left Sam was her name.

You Know Who is Sam's new name in the eyes and mouth of You and Him.

When Sam first told Him and You what her name was, that day when they first saw her out on the road that runs out of town, Him and You, or Jim and John, what they said to Sam was that Sam did not look like what they thought a Sam should look like, and so they said they'd give her a new name to be known by, but they did not know what new name to call her yet, so they have since called her by the name You Know Who. When Him and You say You Know Who, they both know who they mean. The girl who used to be Sam but is now that girl You Know Who.

You Know Who is not where You and Him thought she might be. When they get to the bridge where they thought that You Know Who might be there, all they see is a bridge with no You Know Who by it. So they go. They go on their bikes to a bridge on the cross side of town where You Know Who lives with a mom and a man named Bob who is not You Know Who's dad.