The Fish Whisperer's Daughter

THE FISH WHISPERER'S DAUGHTER

by Karla Tiffany

(Content warnings: reference to corporal punishment, parental separation)

“The trick to gettin’ the stains out is rinsin’ the scales off first,” Mama began as she wrapped her pruney fingers around the tilapia’s tail and cradled it while she walked over to the sink. Our sink wasn’t nothing much—the faucet creaked each time we used it and no matter how hard Mama made me scrub, I couldn’t get the stains out. But let the fish tell it, and you’d think it was one of those stainless steel resorts boasting water that gets hot on a dime and a separate bowl just for body scrubs. At least, that’s how they saw it when Mama worked her magic. 

“See,” Mama smiled, “you run your hands down its body like this.” The tilapia’s scales popped up row by row behind her palm like clockwork as the water weaved around and between them, forming tiny canals. 

“Ooooh,” the fish cooed and purred, as it writhed gently in Mama’s hands. 

“There you go now,” Mama whispered. Its bones cricked and cracked until the pressure melted away like butter. “That’s how you do it. Just like Big Mama taught me. God rest her soul.” Mama closed her eyes. Placing a hand on her chest, Mama took a breath so deep you’d think she was trying to swallow Big Mama whole, as if she could trap the woman in her lungs. 

But she could never hold her long. That’s just how Big Mama was. Auntie Junie called her a rolling stone. 

Mama was different. She gave everybody her time. People, pets, fish—they were all the same to her. After Big Mama’s funeral, Auntie Junie said Mama had finally found inner peace, which basically meant Mama stopped yelling at Daddy for being out late, and laughing at my knock-knock jokes, and drowning her pillow in tears as I tip-toed to the kitchen for a late-night snack. 

“Just forget it,” I said. “I’ll never get it right!” 

“See, now that’s what I’m talkin’ ’bout.” Mama’s fishy hands clasped my bony shoulders and spun me round. The salty odour wafted up to my eyes, blurring them as they swam upstream against the wrinkles in her sleeves and floated through the folds in her mahogany neck, coming back into focus just in time to drown in the dark bogs she called pupils. “Girl, you got too much sense to let that foolishness fill up your head.” 

She rapped on the side of my skull and the echo vibrated deep down in my bones as she lumbered out the kitchen. Whenever I knocked on a tree like that, all I’d hear is the solid clunk of wood beneath my fist. It was the same with Mama. She never made an echo—she was too grounded for that. Nothing could uproot her. As for me? The wind bent me any which way it pleased like a reed. But Mama kept propping me up and fertilizing me all the same. 

Every Sunday, as far back as I could remember, Mama plopped me in front of that rickety old sink and taught me how to get the stains out of fish. She had the lesson down to a science. The pep talk, the demonstration, the soothing tone—she never deviated from the steps of her ritual, never raised her voice, never gave up on me. 

If repetition were key, I’d be fish whispering with the best of them, but I wasn’t like Mama.

•••

 I’d seen the best of her—the part she kept hidden—with my own eyes when I was just eight years old. Back then, the boogeyman still kicked and growled from under my bed, sending my feet scurrying across the knotted floor to my parents’ door. Only one night they weren’t there. All that remained was an open window and the ghost of the wind.

As I crept back down the hall dodging the cracks in the floor, a low rumble washed over the walls and I could hear the pitter-patter of water skating off rocks and plip-plopping into a flowing stream. Its sandy banks led me straight to the kitchen and that’s when I saw her. Hunched over the sink like a new mother safeguarding her only child, Mama was humming a sweet lullaby as she caressed a fish I’d never seen before. And when the moonlight shone through the window just right, its scales gleamed a dazzling shade of blue from a sky long ago. 

Like most Mamas on our block, my Mama worked two jobs to keep a roof over our head. But unlike the other Mamas, my Mama—aching bones, red eyes, and all—gave each fish the time it deserved. I watched as she probed the fish’s body with the balls of her fingertips, searching for knots, orbs of tension from years of evading nets and little boys and their jagged rocks and the six-pack rings that snoozing men forgot to cut up and the sharks—oh, the sharks—and the oil spills that pushed the fish further and further from her partner until she forgot her way home. 

Mama worked slowly, taking it all in, kneading the fish’s hurting places, wiping the tears from the fish’s eyes as she squeezed out all the bad—oozing, burbling black globs of anxiety and pain—until the fish let out a final heavy sigh and there was nothing left— 

—but the magic of Mama. 

A ball of iridescent blue light rose from the sink and exploded into tiny streams that swirled and whirled all over the room. A wayward streak ricocheted off Mama’s hanging cast-iron skillet and would’ve hit me square in the eye had I not stumbled and hit the floor—with a thud! Not that it mattered. Mama couldn’t hear nothing anyhow with all that light whirring round her ears, enveloping her body and causing her hair to stand on end from headwrap to weary slippers. The light disappeared as quickly as it started, sopped up by her skin like runaway gravy. Mama stumbled over to the nearest chair and fell back with a splash. 

As she sat there gazing up, fatigue hooked itself into the corners of her mouth, deflating her lips until they hung so low they formed a sunken smile. Gasping for air, water weeped from her pores, pooling on the ground beneath her and covering the tiled floor. Before I knew it, I was in the kitchen. But my hurried steps did more than wet my feet; they sent a wave of ripples hurtling toward Mama, and like a drowning, possessed woman she let out a deep gurgle from the pit of her throat that sent me gliding back to the far more comforting arms of the boogeyman under my bed. Safe in my makeshift shelter, I cursed that fish with every word Mama said I was too young to know, convinced that when I woke up there would be nothing left of Mama but a puddle on the floor. 

•••

Mama worked that mystery fish so good that as soon as its flesh kissed the oil, the smell not only drew me out from under the bed, it also conjured a wind that sent all the neighbours racing to beat Daddy’s hat to our doorstep, tupperware and foil in hand, hoping to get a taste of what Mama was cooking. And somehow that little fish fed the whole neighborhood. Even those rowdy, rotten tree-climbing boys who eat they Mamas out of house and home fell into itis-induced comas on their hand-me-down sofas. 

Daddy’s hat couldn’t evade its charms either. Instead of sprouting legs and dashing out the door, Daddy’s hat stayed put on that hook right on through the next morning and well into the evening.

With Mama out the kitchen, I decided to try my hand at whipping up a little magic myself. I grabbed a red snapper from Daddy’s old cooler and heaved it into the sink. I ran my puny fingers across its body like a piano. The fish snickered and snorted and sneered at me as if I was some cheap clown hired off the street. 

“You ain’t Celine,” he said with a twang.

I cut the water on to drown him out, but he just got louder.

“I say that ain’t how ya do it,” he said. 

“I got it,” I said. “Just have a little faith.” I kneaded his body, looking for bumps, lumps, scratches, anything that I could fix. I prodded and combed and squeezed—too tightly—and didn’t find a thing except a yelp I was sure would rouse Daddy. I waited. Held my breath until my cheeks burned. 

But he never came, so I kept on. 

That fish was right. My hands were nothing like Mama’s with their bulging veins and sandpaper palms. Despite their roughness, none of the fish she tended to ever got so much as a nick as she ran her hands over them. They worked more like an exfoliant, helping the fish shed their dead scales right along with their troubles. 

My palms were smooth, supple, soft in a way I thought fish would love. But they were also clumsy. I slid my palm over the fish’s body, but the scales didn’t pop up in uniform rows like when Mama did it. Instead I ended up plucking the fish’s scales one-by-one as he winced in pain. 

“Please,” the fish cried, “I’m beggin’ ya. Call Celine.”  

“Just set still,” I said, struggling to hold on as he tried to wriggle free.  

“No, no, no. This ain’t the way I’m ’post to go.”

Like a shockwave, every muscle in his body tensed up and released all at once, sending him flying like a harpoon and leaving my palms cut up by his scales. I barely got a whimper out before he slammed headfirst into the wall. 

And still Daddy didn’t come. 

I snatched the fish up and placed him back in the sink water. 

“C’mon, you little vermin,” I said. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this, remember?”

I smacked his face—once, twice. Shook him as hard as I could, but he didn’t flinch. He just laid there, marinating in a whirlpool of blood and tears. 

•••

When a fish dies before finding inner peace, you can taste it. It seeps into the oil, blacks the onion, rots the garlic, rusts the pan—even the side dishes aren’t safe. I cooked up that fish the best I could, tried to mask the foul flavor with salt and lemon and too many shakes of hot sauce and even though Mama ate it anyway, I could tell by the way her smile creaked up and down like the hands of a broken clock that it wasn’t enough. 

And even though I set Daddy a special place at the table with a little jar full of dandelions to wish on and a napkin folded into the sail of a boat, his hat decided that it had better things to do and caught the next gust of wind into the night without so much as a word or a bite, bits of dandelion trailing close behind. 

That night, Mama could see it in my eyes—the dying embers in my heart. So, she took my hands in hers and rubbed them until they sparked, and from then on, she took it upon herself  to stoke the flame, to temper it, to keep our little Sunday tradition alive. 

Ballet, piano, little league—she could excuse giving those up, but not this. Mentoring me didn’t cost her a dime, but the way she treated it, you’d think she’d worked triple overtime just to get me the right shoes.  

But the shoes didn’t fit. 

No matter how kind, how patient Mama was I couldn’t help but slip, slide and trip across the kitchen until my shoes flew off altogether. It hurt, stumbling like that, but I kept trying. Kept listening to Mama’s lectures. Kept setting a special place for Daddy on the sturdy side of the table. Kept looking for a red Caddy with a missing hubcap around lunchtime. Kept dusting the empty hook by the door. 

Kept watching his plate grow cold. 

•••

The night before my twelfth birthday, I felt a tickle beneath my nose. When I opened my eyes an ephemeral blue light twirled in circles near the door, coaxing me to follow its trail. It led me from my bed to the kitchen, where a dark, crooked figure sat bow-backed at the table in the place that Daddy always sat, breathing the way that Daddy always did after a long night of laying with brandy, as Mama put it. 

“Daddy,” I whispered, as I followed the fading trail into the kitchen. “Daddy, I’ll fix you up something real nice.”

He didn’t really respond. Just let out a guttural call from deep within his throat. 

“You’ll see,” I said, “The whole neighbourhood’s gonna come running!”

All that remained of my little trail was a tiny ball that danced round Daddy’s head like a pixie and popped, lighting up his face long enough for me to see that Daddy’s hat hadn’t flown home after all. 

I was face to face with Mama. 

“It’s always you,” I said, as I took a step toward Mama.

Mama the teacher. Mama the soother. Mama the cook. Mama the listener. Mama the wife. Mama the lover. And when she whipped up her soul and set it on a plate, Mama the hat holder. 

“You keep saying I’ll get better. That it takes time. That I’ve got your gift.”

“Y-you do,” Mama said through crimped lips, her voice distant and eyes wandering, as if she were getting swept away by a current. “I know it’s in you.”

“Then how come Daddy only ever comes for you?”

“For me?” Mama clutched her chest tight and fixed her gaze on me, like I’d wounded her. “You hear this child?” Mama looked over her shoulder, half expecting Big Mama to be there. Her burbled laughter fell from her lips and formed blubbering pools at her feet.

“No, no, no.” Mama shook her head, rocking back and forth. “It ain’t for me. Nothing I make will ever root that man. Nothing.” Mama placed a hand over her belly button and caressed it, her eyes gazing through me. “I took it all in. Carried it with me, so it wouldn’t fall to you. But look at you. You still hurtin’. I failed you, baby girl.”

And for a second I thought I saw myself, eight years old again, sitting where Mama was, crying the tears that Mama cried, waiting for that old hat to drift back home. And all I wanted to do was wrap my arms around her and tell her she’d done enough, that she didn’t need that hook by the door anymore, that she wasn’t a failure, but it was too late. 

Mama sat there, chest heaving with the intensity of a bike pump with a puncture wound. Gasping for air, arms flailing about, water bursting from her pores. I tried to plug them with my fingers, to scoop the water up and pour it back into her mouth, but it slipped through my hands and back down to the floor. I grabbed her shoulder to try to steady her, but she seized even harder, letting loose full body jerks that sent that old wooden chair rocking.

I needed to call for help. Maybe Daddy or Auntie Junie or—

Mama clasped her hand on mine. It sucked my hand in, held it firm as if her hand had grown tentacles. The harder I pulled, the deeper my fingers dug into her skin. Deeper and deeper until my fingertips grazed a tight knot and I felt a break in the waves surging through Mama. 

Taking cues from her body, I held Mama still to ferment the storm, summoning a swell that crashed against that rock of a knot so forcefully it jerked Mama forward and back again and set my hand free. I turned her round, and bunched up my knuckles, pressing down as hard as I could on her shoulders. She cooed and purred as I massaged her neck and kneaded my way down her doughy back. I took my time tending to all her hurting places, each one a silent story that I took into myself. 

Poor Mama carried Big Mama in her neck and shoulders. That woman did a number on Mama, twisting and pinching and stretching her nerves over and under and round and round. Mama always said that the crick in her neck came from sleeping crooked, but really it was because Big Mama would snatch her by the cane and black her ears with the memories she dug up while Mama slept.

“Big Mama was here, sis. She took a good look at the baby, nose to nose, and stormed out before you woke up.”

“Only thing worse than a fool is the woman who invites him in. Ain’t a woman on Earth who can shackle the wind.”

“That girl of yours ain’t right. Look at her eyes. They ain’t black like yours and mines. “You and Junie—y’all got my gift. But that girl of yours was born from a fifth of gin. It ain’t in her. Never will be.” 

“Sis, it’s about Big Mama. . .”

Now Daddy, Daddy radiated down her spine, knotting it up as he went. Her back wept for his touch, ached for the way he’d stroke her skin as she lost herself in his arms. Back before he took a liking to dissipating into the night and wafting back in whenever he pleased, a wayward puff of smoke that weighed her lungs down with rain and washed out her smile. 

Crisscrossing through her nooks and crannies, my tiny fingers plunked and plodded and sloshed clumsily across the muddy marsh Daddy left behind, stirring up the murky water and forming it into clay. I gathered the clay in my hands and squeezed it tight, hoping to reduce it to nothing, to rid Mama of her pain. But instead she winced and her body tensed up quick as a marlin. 

And I realized what Mama needed wasn’t strength, but softness. 

I wiped the sweat from my brow and started again. Running my palms lightly over the mounds of clay, I took my time wearing them down, allowing the clay to shape itself as much as I shaped it, lulling it to sleep beneath my pillowy palms. And instead of sending Mama harpooning into a wall, I got the tension in her muscles to melt away like butter beneath the warmth of my touch.

As I worked on the last tender point in the small of her back, I noticed a faint blue glow beneath her sleeves and Mama’s baffling groans became near-coherent words. 

“The sea,” she mumbled. “Near the sea.”

That faint blue light moved up Mama’s arms, slid down her spine, and plunged into my palms. A warmth came over me and I could feel tiny tingles, like pin drops skipping up and down my arms. 

“I-I belong,” Mama stammered, “to the s-sea.”

Mama closed her eyes and when she exhaled, a swell of energy caused the hairs on my arms to stand at attention. When I looked down, I saw iridescent blue scales popping up, row by row, from my wrists up to my shoulders. I felt Mama shrink in my hands as I grew and grew, my toes digging, reaching, until they rooted themselves beneath the sand near the stream in my house. Only when I looked around, the house was gone, replaced by a cluster of pastel trees in the distance and sandy shores and jagged crystalline rocks and croaking six-legged frogs and mosquitoes that cup their hands to buzz in people’s ears, spreading rumours and weather reports like TV anchors. 

They warned of high winds. 

A sudden gust toppled Mama over. I tried to pick her up, but she scurried away on her hands and knees as quick as a sand beetle, tearing holes in her jeans and scratching up her palms as she made her way along the stream toward the sea, finally collapsing at the water’s edge. 

By the time I reached her, she was already half fish. Her legs fused together to form a tail fin and her teeny afro dreaded into a dorsal fauxhawk. All Mama had left were her arms. She did her best to drag herself to the water with her arms alone, but she was transforming too fast. She fell flat on her face, sand clinging to her lips, and that’s when I saw them—the cracks and fissures spreading from her mouth to her cheeks and down her neck. 

Mama was drying out. 

I ran as fast as legs can go on sand without getting gobbled up and scooped her up by the waist just as the fissures reached her shoulders.  

“You gotta rinse ’em first,” I whispered, as I dragged her into the water.

Using my free hand, I dribbled water over her head and shoulders, let it weave down her back and form tiny canals that ran over and through her writhing body, washing away the stains she picked up along the way until her skin was so slick that she slipped from my grasp and out of my sight. 

I lost my Mama. 

My eyes darted across the shore, searching for a sign, anything, even a hat on the wind. And when the wind betrayed me, I took it out on the water, batting it with my fists, trying to pry it apart with my hands. 

But it was no use. Mama was gone.

And suddenly the water was rumbling, circling, rising around me to form a geyser fortress. I tried to make a break for it, but the water wall sealed itself shut before I could reach the opening and all I could think was, this isn’t how it’s supposed to end. 

Then out of the corner of my eye, I spied a streak so blue it had to be from long ago—as blue as the sky above. It flipped and leapt in circles around me, weaving between my legs and tickling my toes until we finally locked eyes and I realized the dark bogs returning my gaze belonged to Mama. And as she did tricks in the water she seemed to paint the walls of my prison with memories of us. Memories I’d long forgotten. 

Like the day we first met in the hospital. When she snuggled my nose and blanketed me with kisses and smiles before tucking me into the warmth of her breasts. Or the nights when she would stand over my bassinet, watching my chest rise and fall for hours. Afraid that if she didn’t, the Sandman would hand me over to Death for less than a nickel. There were the recitals, the last-minute costume repairs, the homemade birthday cakes and the nasally way she laughed when Daddy smashed my face in them. And her smile, front and center in every image.

I could hear the wind howling nearby, growing louder and stronger until it burst through the wall, shattering it into tiny beads of water. Mama leapt into my arms and as we fled, the water acted as our guide, using the sun to illuminate our way back to shore. The moment I set foot on the sand, Mama changed back all at once, as if a spell had been broken.

But the wind was still blowing, and it snapped her over backward like a reed. I propped Mama up and tied her to a sapling in the ground so the wind couldn’t have its way with her. 

“There you go now,” I whispered as I fertilized her feet, hoping it would strengthen her withered roots, and by the time I had finished, the stream and the sand were gone. 

The water plink-plopped out the kitchen faucet. The sound echoed, bounced off the walls and between us, eroding the sediment we’d built up. 

Mama turned to me and rolled up her sleeves, allowing her scales to shimmer in the moonlight as they faded away, row by row, from her arm, her neck, and up through her face where they were replaced by a smile sturdy enough to hold the tears gathering on her once-captive cheeks. 

“I told you,” she said, looking up at me. “It took some time, but you finally got it.”

I squeezed her hand in mine and laid it across my heart. As I ran my fingers over the veins in her hands—each one a different tale, a different path back to me—the wind stopped. Never to return again.