the big adventure

AMANDA CHIADO

“why don’t you take a picture it’ll last longer”
-pee wee herman

“It is Hard to Tell When a Fish is Crying”

The fish was the size of a fingernail when we won her at the fair. We dropped her golden scaly body into a pink bowl with blue rocks. The bowl was the size of a grapefruit. Her scales grew shinier the more that we fed her. She liked the carnival sounds of our home, muffled through the water where she floated dreamily. There was comfort in the vibrations. Next thing we knew, she was the size of a mandarin, and we needed a cantaloupe sized bowl, and she slid into it easily, and we decorated it with bright waving plants that were dark-green alive. She weaved in and out of them, and puckered her lips like she was speaking. She quickly outgrew the cantaloupe of glass and onward we moved toward a watermelon sized habitat. She liked the pirate ship, then she didn’t, she liked the bubbles, then she didn’t, and it wasn’t long until she was looking longingly at us from the glass corners, with no space left. It is hard to tell when a fish is crying. She had the longing look of a teenager in love for the very first time. Onward, we moved her into the largest aquarium we could finance. It had the bells and whistles of a quinceañera, and what I felt now was a sense of a new drowning or buoyancy. What more could I do? I cried gallons of tears to fill the tank, so she could swim in my love. It didn’t last long; the beauty of her tail did though, the way it was another sense of wind; how it moved her among the algae. And when again, she outgrew us, I mean the tank, we decided to dig, in all its forms, into the earth in the backyard where the hummingbirds dressed in bliss. We made a great space where she could grow into a whale, and enjoy true sunlight, but still, we could keep her, all to ourselves. We were the new glass that would be outgrown. We carried her together, wet and dense and dropped her in her new home in the backyard. Her joy was real, and gracious, but as the summer drew to a close, her vibrancy waned. We too had once dreamed of the possibilities of the sea. She loved us, but we couldn’t be the sea. We couldn’t hold the world as a projection for her, neither could we be all the love of an entire world. The last time I saw her was at the beach, where miraculously, she could thrive in sea water. Her adaptability, my god! I cried, and my husband and I argued for days about the genetics of beauty, growth, and desire. Then, to dream of her we made our way to the carnival and watched all the small fish in their tiny bowls, laughed about how long her tail must be now, and prayed on the Ferris wheel because we were close to light and close to god.

“Bad Mothering Starts with Sugar and Ends with Salt”

Don’t get therapy so you can be a carnival of repeated mistakes. Keep winning the goldfish that will die in a week and don’t teach the children about prayer or proper burial. Grow yourself a cinderblock fence around your heart, the kind that encircled your house on the westside where your mother lived between the ink blotches in books, afraid of who would break in this time. Bad mothering begins with sugar and ends with salt, and don’t forget the food so fast the children are transported angrily into adolescence. Provide the right malnutrition. Famish them. Tell them rich lies for dinner. You should be drunk too- on whatever makes you blind. Don’t ever listen, not to their heartbeats or tears, or wonderings and god forbid you keep the lie of magic alive. Get them walking quickly, send them out the door into the wastelands. Deadbolt their dreams. Talk about orphans and war, and how many monsters the darkness holds. Remind them how much beasts drool. Never, never let them sleep in your bed because they sleep like sweet-smelling starfish, like big cracker crumbs. Leave a packed bag for them by the door so they never have peace.

“Peace be with you, Pee Wee Herman”

I put it in reverse and become a cartoon. I can be smashed and exploded and spring back to life anew. It was a hoot, but then, the cops arrested me for stealing, which I’d only stole my own body. It was mine after all, but they gave me a felony, and I had to be housed with a clown who cried nonstop because his mother never brought the cake make-up she’d promised. I read to find a way home and I regret to say the Bible didn’t get me there. I wanted it, the liberation. Please don’t jump on your white horse and hang me. We are all acting our way toward wholeness. I found the neck tattoos had repaired me well to move through the gates, and I could again be propelled from oven to table. In Peewee Herman’s Big Holiday, they asked him at dinner to say a word, and he said, Encyclopedia, Pimple and Hairball. Pray for the holy ability to find your own cherry red convertible to draw you toward your supreme sherbet-colored sunset.

Amanda Chiado is the author of Vitiligod: The Ascension of Michael Jackson (Dancing Girl Press). Her poetry and short fiction has most recently appeared in Rhino, The Pinch Journal, and Barren Magazine. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart & Best of the Net. She is the Director of Arts Education at the San Benito County Arts Council, is a California Poet in the Schools, and edits for Jersey Devil Press.  www.amandachiado.com

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