by Kelsey Liu.
For my ninth birthday, my mother and father got me a school of koi fish.
They hired a team of Mexicans to dig a hole in the back corner of their walled backyard, behind the little plot of palm trees they had gotten me for my eighth birthday.
In front of the little plot of palm trees—eight of them, actually; my father had thought it was mathematically poetic—was a little stable for a pony. The pony itself, golden and soft-nosed and chafing under a blue leather saddle, had been my seventh birthday present. I named him Biscuit. I didn’t know where he was anymore. Biscuit disappeared two months after he appeared.
Sometimes I thought that my mother and father were magicians. I thought they wove and swung my life around like one of those metal sheets you found behind the curtain of local magic shows. You shook one, and it sounded like thunder in the theater, like something incredible, but really it was just an old crummy sheet of wobbly metal. I was. They took me out for guests and special occasions and bi-annual elementary school talent competitions.
For my sixth birthday they had added a row of expensive roses to the backyard, under a line of the windows. For my fifth birthday, they had given me money, and for my fourth they had given me themselves: I was adopted—rescued—saved—delivered—born again—on my fourth birthday.
The Mexicans finished building the koi pond in two weeks. They were nice and they always smiled at me when I sneaked them cups of lemonade. Then the Mexicans gently introduced the school of koi fish into their new home, and I wondered if this time the unfortunate animals would last at least three months.
There was a black one almost two feet long, a dappled red and gold one, a white one with black spots, a white one, just pure moonlight white, and some just red ones. There were six fish, and they were beautiful and smooth and moved through the water like they belonged there. I guess they did. But after all, they couldn’t see the palm trees.
The day after the koi were placed in their pond, I went to visit, to welcome them to the estate and to say hi and welcome.
“We’re fish,” they replied, and swirled and bubbled like real magic. “We’re fish!” they shrilled happily.
“You’re a whole school of fish,” I informed them, because that seemed like it would make them even happier.
The black one said, “We’re not a school of fish. We’re more class-sized, to be honest.”
“I have class too,” I told them, “I have French class tomorrow at two. The tutor is coming.”
“What does the tutor look like?” the black koi asked.
“He has a little French moustache and he wears a little French beret. It’s weird. I think he’s actually Japanese.”
“Are you Japanese?”
“Yeah, I am.”
“Why isn’t your Japanese tutor teaching you Japanese, then?”
“All Japanese people can speak Japanese,” I explained, “I need to learn French so my parents can use me as their metal thunder sheet.”
“What?” asked the black koi.
“What?” “What?” “What?” The red fish jumped in.
I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter,” I said.
“Okay,” the black koi readily agreed. “Well, you speak koi pretty well. You could come learn with us.”
“Have class?” I asked, grinning.
“Yes,” the black koi said, “class with a class of fish. You’re a natural, I’m pretty sure. You have a knack for languages, don’t you? I have a feeling for this kind of thing. I can see them, the words. They cling to your calves.”
I was flattered. My French tutor was exceptional at French. I wasn’t, but it was nice someone thought so.
“I will,” I decided, “right after French.”
“See you then,” said the black koi. The other fish chorused: “Bye!” “Bye!” “Bye!”
The next day I went back and they told me to get in the water.
“But I can’t get wet!” I protested, “These clothes aren’t even machine washable!”
And the fish all shrilled at me and swam in dizzying circles, as if they were distraught, and said, but that’s where the classroom is!
“Okay,” I said, “good point.”
I got in the water and sat down cross-legged in the middle of the pond. It had a smooth tiled floor, slippery already from natural water scum, and white. It was four in the afternoon and the sun shone off the bottom and shimmered around the water—it was blinding, and I squinted. I didn’t try to stop myself like I usually did; my mother and father always told me to open your eyes a little more, look at the guests, sweetheart, be courteous.
Earlier on, I did not understand why they wanted me to look like them when I clearly did not, or why they wanted me to speak French when they had chosen me precisely because I was Japanese.
But that was before I figured out I was meant to be their magical metal thunder sheet: shaken at will, for effect.
The water in the pond came up directly across my chest, my prepubescent breasts. I felt uncomfortable and curved my back in, slouching down so the water hit protectively across my ribs just under my collarbones.
“What’s lesson number one?” I asked, a giant lump of mud among these free, graceful souls.
“Sit still!” they shrieked, and rubbed against me, cold and strong and there then gone, there then gone, there then gone. ”Don’t move!” they screeched.
Over the next months, they taught me the language of koi fish, and they were right, I was a natural.
I learned that what I initially interpreted as stupid screams of “We’re fish!” really meant “We become the fish always”; they were really spirits, transformed into koi. And “Bye!” “Bye!” “Bye!” meant “I hope you find your way home, so you may find us again.” You had to say it three times, preferably with three different voices. The koi spoke beautifully, in full circles and lines that always connected. There was no end to their words, their swimming, their joy. That made it hard to believe they would ever leave.
Until they did. It took five months, though, not three. Five months of sitting in the pond, laying in the pond, leaning in the pond; five months of classes; five months that were just enough to transform me from a lump of mud or a sheet of metal into something that was as round and lithe as a human girl could be. They had coated me with their words and smoothed out my rough edges.
Five months. Even though I know it can’t be true, I still cling to the hope they only left class to rejoin their school.
I hope they are happy there.
I, almost, just there, enough, am.