A PRAYER FOR THE FISH IN THE TUB by Zoë Rose
With just enough water in the tub to sluice through its gills as it thumps its caudal fin and arches its spine the carp could stay there for far longer than it will take to prepare the vegetables for the stock which the carp’s head and bones and skin and any parts not reserved will be joining the next morning. Its jelly eye fixes on the water stained ceiling which it doesn’t see as anything but part of what is above because the carp has never seen water stain or been even wet before the tub. When its head seizes up it catches the silver of the drain the carp knows as the moon because the moon controls the tides of the river where it lived as the drain controls the water into the tub. A ring of reddish soap scum circles the drain and if the carp could turn a bit it would see the same ring lining the upper third of the tub but the carp has never been on its side or front or back or anything because until the tub it wasn’t even but in the tub it is now the carp in the tub. All of this the carp tells the boy in the plaid pajama set. In his bed under the itchy wool blanket layered over the duvet over the kicked down flat sheet the boy thinks he is awake because he can hear the carp’s ceaseless thumping. He is awake because the carp is in the tub and would be awake even if the tub was far away like Hackensack or Ontario. Cocooned in the itchy wool blanket he creeps to the bathroom. It is dark except for the moon silvering everything inside. The carp thumps.Water slaps against the sides of the tub and beads across its scales.The boy places a finger on its side, retreating at the feel of its twitch. The carp thumps, unregistering.He places his finger again, stroking its dorsal fin. It is smooth against the pad of his index. He moves to put his palm on its abdomen, feeling the flex and roll of its muscles. Thump. Thump. Thump.Tomorrow they will use a rolling pin. Slit its gills to bleed and become water. The boy in the plaid pajama set feels the itchy wool blanket start to slip off his shoulders. One of his hands is white knuckled on the edge of the tub. The other wet on the carp. The blanket puddles on the ground.The carp’s thumping up and down a prayer to the tub and the water and the moon and the hands that plucked it from the water and the hands that placed it and the hands that will kill it. He presses, feels its bones. He will have to help pick them out of the meat tomorrow before they grind it.The carp has not known pressure like this. And it won’t. Because to know it it has to exist on the other side of it and the carp won’t. The pressure is now and so is the carp and when the pressure is gone the carp will not feel absence. The carp is where it is and takes no meaning from it. It is drowning and it is tight but as soon as it is not it won’t be.The edge of the tub is cold on his cheek. He wants to sleep but he is crying now.He doesn’t think the carp is sad. Or scared. But it is thumping in the tub because of him. In five years he will become a Bar-Mitzvah and with every step towards the Bimah he will think, Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the Universe may the fire alarm go off before I get to the Torah. Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the Universe may the ceiling fall before I get to the Torah. Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the Universe may Aunt Harriet have a heart attack before I get to the Torah. But God will let him get up on the Bimah and let his voice crack during his parshah and so he will learn lesson one: God is a bullshit artist.