The way spit was flying off his lips, I could tell she wasn’t going to take it much longer. I took off to the kitchen, grabbed a butcher knife, and ran at him screaming.
His black mustache crinkled up like he couldn’t believe I’d do such a thing. He dropped my mom, who slid to the floor and wrapped her arms around me. I held on to my knife and kept it aimed at Kenny. He started backing up, blubbering about loving me like his own blood, patting behind him on the door until he found the handle. Once he got the door open, he stepped through it and didn’t come back to say goodbye.
I sat on the couch watching Mom cry while she packed up boxes and trash bags full of our stuff. Little Blinky swam on the table next to the TV, watching. We were going across town to Granny and Lula’s, the only place we should have ever been as far as I was concerned. I knew Lula didn’t like animals in the house, so I asked one more time to set Blinky free. Mom said, “Reney, do what you want with your fucking fish.” Then she threw a roll of duct tape across the room. I was out the door before she could gather herself to say sorry.
For a while, we stopped by the apartments to say hi to Miss Bee and Bones, the old couple who ran the place and lived in an apartment behind the office. Mom called Miss Bee more wisp than a woman. She had to pull around an oxygen tank, but her voice carried all the way across the parking lot to our apartment when she wanted it to. Bones towered above her, worrying over every little step she took. He had a dagger tattoo on his forearm that all us kids were sure meant he’d killed somebody in prison. Not that he gave us any reason to think that. They’d always kept an eye on us when we waited for the bus and sometimes even watched out for me after I got off the bus.
When we came back, I always went straight to the pond and plopped down on my belly to look for Blinky. Sometimes I got so close that the tip of my nose dipped in the water and a goldfish came up and took a nibble. Every now and then, Blinky would come up to the top of the water and take a piece of bread from my fingers.
Miss Bee would shuffle outside, dragging her tank. She’d stand there and smoke above me, talking about how I’d grown and complaining about the parties people were throwing. After catching up on the apartment gossip, Mom would disappear to have it out with Kenny. Miss Bee would hand over a big plastic jar of fish food she kept in her desk drawer and gripe about all the fish that got dumped when people up and moved. Sometimes while my mom was gone, I felt bad for what I’d done to Kenny or what I’d done to Kenny and her.
There were more goldfish in the little pond each time we stopped, until I wasn’t so sure that we’d set Blinky free at all. The fish stayed on the surface looking for handouts and took on a sick yellow color. Miss Bee got wheezier and wheezier, and Bones stopped coming out to pass me butterscotch and tell me jokes. Mom stopped staying gone so long and coming back with red, been-crying eyes. Blinky stopped coming to the top. He got bigger and bigger until I wasn’t even sure which fish he was. Then Miss Bee died, and my mom said Bones got so sad he started drinking again and lost the place.
A boy on the bus said the new apartment manager yelled at some kids for throwing candy in the pond and said he was going to fill that stinking mosquito trap in with concrete. The boy said he guessed it was true because the pond was marked off with construction tape by evening and had a bunch of sacks of Quikrete stacked around it. I had to keep wiping my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt the rest of the ride home. I couldn’t stop thinking about Blinky and all those little apartment fish flopping around on the sidewalk suffocating.
Mom’s old Pinto and a couple of other cars were sitting out front when the bus dropped me off at Granny and Lula’s. I ran into the house and slung my backpack in a chair without catching the screen door behind me.
Mom jumped. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table staring, rubbing the scar on her hand. She shushed me, thumped me hard on the arm, and whispered, “Lula’s been having spells. Saints have been in there with Granny praying.”
“Is she going to be okay?” I asked.
“She’s stubborn,” Mom said, and her eyes started filling with tears. “Been resting for a while now.”
“We have to go get Blinky,” I said, and she looked at me like I was crazy. I told her that the new apartment manager was going to fill in the pond and all those fish were going to die.
She looked at the clock and chewed her pinkie nail. Instead of saying no, she said, “You don’t have your bowl anymore.”
“It ain’t big enough anyway,” I said. “We have to take them to the lake. All of them. We have to set them free.”
For some reason, that was all it took. Mom stuffed some trash bags in her purse and rummaged beneath the kitchen sink for a metal bucket. Then we were out the door. It took us an hour to scoop up all those fish with the mop bucket. The manager kept trying to talk Mom into going on a date with him but stayed out of our way. We splashed around in that mossy little pond with our pants rolled up, bumping heads and knocking elbows and butts. We didn’t stop until we got the last fish caught. Mom didn’t even complain when I splashed her, so I splashed her some more. Once we got all the fish in the trash bag, Mom tied it off and lugged it into the back of the car. She spun gravel taking off for Lake Tenkiller.
Some of the fish were small, and some of them must have weighed two or three pounds. I got to thinking on the car ride that I wasn’t sure I’d seen Blinky at all.
“What’s up, Bean?” Mom asked.
“I don’t even know if Blinky was still in there,” I said.
“Think I saw him,” she said. “Pretty sure I did.”
I leaned my head against the window, watching the trees go by, and smiled.
We pulled up to a public boat ramp and wrestled the big green trash bag onto the dock. We could only carry it a couple of steps before setting it down to rest. When we got to the end of the dock, Mom pulled at the knot in the bag with her teeth and helped me pour the water and fish into Tenkiller.
Those fish shot off in every direction like fireworks. A few did great, leaping belly flops. A couple stayed close by the dock, coming to the top every few seconds. Mom and I sat there tossing them cracker crumbs, dangling our feet off the dock, and watching the sun gathering itself for bed.
When we got back to Granny and Lula’s, the house was quiet. Granny stuck her head out the door to make sure we were okay and tell us Lula was finally sleeping. Me and Mom ate bologna sandwiches on the porch swing. Then we shared the sink while I got ready for bed and she got ready for work. I couldn’t sleep with Granny when Lula was sick, so before my mom left, she tucked me into her bed and checked my alarm clock.
“You’re too tenderhearted, Reney Bean,” she said. Then she kissed my forehead and whispered, “Wish I was more like you,” before she turned off the light.
That night I dreamed me and Mom were splashing around the banks of Tenkiller calling for Blinky. Granny and Lula were there. They were watching us from two lawn chairs they had sitting just in the edge of the water, and there was a glowing lantern between them. We waded all over the lake but couldn’t find Blinky anywhere. I wanted to swim deeper, but Mom grabbed hold of me and wouldn’t let go. She kept saying that the water was full of cottonmouths. And then I realized that it was, and I started crying. That’s when Blinky appeared, and all the snakes scattered. Me and Mom started hugging and laughing at the sight of him. That fish was golden as the evening sky and big as a blue whale.
He nudged me onto his back, and I put out my hand for Mom. We waved goodbye to Granny and Lula. Then I hung on to his top fin, and Mom held on to me. Blinky dove all the way to
