Free Goldfish
By Joy Nicholas
@jumbledupjoy
She jumped off the bright yellow school bus that day, two feet at a time from the top step with a radiant grin on her face, and shouted, "GUESS WHAT?"
"I have no idea!" I answered, the contagion of her excitement spreading to me and breaking my face into a huge smile too. Skyler was in kindergarten that year, fond of wearing her thick honey-colored waves in two ponytails that swung on either side of her pink, lightly-freckled cheeks. She looked up at me with her huge cerulean eyes, hopping up and down as she waited to tell me. "What?" I asked.
"Mrs. Arseneau said that every day, if I don't get my color moved from green, she'll put my name in a box and at the end of the month, she’ll draw two names and they will get to take home the class goldfish. FOR KEEPS!!! AND FOR FREE!!!"
She thrust a paper into my hand—a letter that outlined the deal in "grown-up" terms. As an incentive for good behavior, the teacher put the names of the kids who stayed on "green" (versus yellow or the ultimate touché, red) all day into a box, and then she'd draw a name. The more "green" days you had, the more likely you were to win.
Skyler was a shoe-in.
At the bottom of the page were two boxes to choose from, one saying you agreed to the plan and the other saying you’d rather not, with a line for the signature. "Will you sign it?" She asked. "Please please please please PLEEEEEEEEEASE!"
I signed even though I knew as I dotted the "i" on my last name, that I was agreeing to having a goldfish.
The thing is, Skyler never got her color moved. Well, I take that back. She did get it moved once, when (she claims) she was telling a certain ornery little boy to stop talking to her, and the teacher thought she was just talking. It had been one of the gravest injustices of kindergarten. And it had never been repeated. Every day she jumped off the bus with the announcement, "I didn't get my color moved!"
Sure enough, a few weeks later, Skyler practically flew off the bus yelling, "I got it! I won the goldfish!" We—myself, Skyler, and her two sisters—headed back to the school promptly that afternoon to pick up "Cheeky" (the class had already named it). The teacher scooped him into a ziplock bag, and carrying it ever-so-carefully, we headed to the local pet store to buy a real home for a goldfish.
And that’s where they get you.
I was fond of the bowl idea. It was cheap and simple, and we could throw some colorful marbles at the bottom. But then Jayna, my oldest daughter, said, "What about me? I always have good behavior, too. I never got to have a goldfish." And would you believe, the goldfish cost only a quarter each? I mean, that's practically free! Besides, Cheeky had been living with the afternoon kindergarten's goldfish, Cookie, all this time. He would be lonely, suffering from abandonment issues, and heaven knows we could not abide a lonely goldfish.
Once we decided to have two goldfish, the kids felt that a simple bowl would absolutely not do. It would be totally crowded—cramped, even. We had to have a real tank. And that came with tank cleaner, plus a water filter and pump. We definitely needed pretty rocks for the bottom. And plants! Plants would make our fish so happy! What about a little sculpture? After all, no one appreciates fine art like a goldfish. We threw in a net for when we needed to clean the tank and fish food and water cleaning drops. That was just being a good citizen-fish-mom.
At check-out, the total came to over fifty dollars. For a free goldfish.
I wish I were kidding.
But I looked down at my two oldest daughters. They happy-danced through the parking lot and chattered all the way home, barely taking a moment to breathe. I whispered a silent prayer of thanks that Lilly, my youngest, was still a baby and couldn’t yet ask for goldfish.
We got home and set up the tank for Cheeky and Inspector, Jayna's fish. Following the directions for transferring to a T, we ever-so-carefully deposited the fish into their new abode. They swam about happily. All was well. We were great fish people.
And then that night, just before going to bed, Jayna peered into the tank and said, "Inspector's swimming funny. I think there's something wrong with his fin." I looked closer. She was right. Compared to Cheeky, it looked like a chunk was missing from his dorsal fin. He was swimming erratically. I remembered the employee as he scooped Inspector into the net. There had been something very harsh and abrupt, and he'd kind of pinned the fish to the side of the tank in the process.
"Well ..." my voice trailed off, and I frowned. "He'll probably be okay." And if not, his replacement would only be 25 cents.
But what I didn't expect was that less than 48 hours later, Inspector lay face down at the bottom of the tank, in those beautiful rocks we'd bought for him.
"MOOOOOOOM!!!! He's DEEEEAAAAD!!!!" Jayna wailed. It was one of those moments when you look around for the responsible adult who will take care of the problem, then realize with a sinking heart that person is you. I retrieved the net, hoping that as I reached into the tank with it, Inspector would suddenly spring back into action.
He didn't.
It was gross. I don't deal particularly well with dead animals anyway (it's one of the reasons I'm a vegetarian), and I gagged as I scooped him into the net. I raced to the downstairs toilet and plopped him into the water as Jayna wailed behind me.
"Goodbye, Inspector, rest in peace,” I said grimly before very unceremoniously pushing the handle to flush him. In a swirl of tumbling water, he was gone.
I sat with my arm around Jayna’s shaking shoulders as she sat on the couch and sobbed. When she finally quieted down, I said, "Do you want to go to the pet store now and get another one? Or would you rather wait a little while?"
Jayna sat up straight, drew in a shaky breath and declared, "I NEVER want ANOTHER goldfish AGAIN!"
Wow. Was I ever so glad we'd spent all that money on the tank.
The good news is that Cheeky was much hardier and, to everyone’s astonishment, actually seemed quite happy swimming around the tank alone. Somehow, if he was mourning, he hid it very well. You might even be led to think that he'd never cared about having a tank mate or not. The ambivalence was shocking, really.
But our fish-killing game is strong. Despite our best efforts to keep him alive, he survived a mere six weeks before he, too, joined Inspector in eternal swimming in the heavenly fish tank. There was more screaming, more tears, and more declarations of "no goldfish EVER AGAIN!"
I cleaned the tank with bleach, put the rocks carefully into a bag with the sculpture and tucked it into the tank, and put it on a shelf in the garage, where it remained another nine months until we moved from that house.
"What should I do with this?" my husband Matt asked, holding up the tank as we sorted our belongings prior to our move.
"I don't know ... I guess donate it?"
And that is where a free goldfish got us.
If I did a strict cost-benefit analysis, motherhood would be in the red. I’ve lost about a million hours of sleep, give or take, and my abdominal walls and bladder will never be the same. After eight total years breastfeeding five babies, I require padded bras because my chewed-on, stretched-out nipples leave me always looking like I’m caught in a stiff, cold breeze. And let’s not even talk about the money, okay? There’s been so much more than that fish tank.
Sometimes I catch myself wondering if I have done it all wrong. Did I pour too much of myself into being a mom? What will happen when all five of my kids are grown up and have moved on? What is left of me underneath all of this? After all of this? Do my kids have any idea how much I love them? Do they get what I have done for them?
Bottom line: was it worth it?
But as simple and silly as it may sound, I remember Jayna and Skyler peering into the fish tank for hours that first day that we brought Cheeky and Inspector home, then racing over to me with big hugs around my waist, saying, “I love you!” Though it doesn’t make sense in any kind of logical, mathematical terms, I can say for sure that yes, it was and is all worth it.
From the thousands of miles away where she now attends college, Jayna texts me, “I love you, Mom. I miss you.” And at the end of a hard day, Skyler, a high school senior, kisses me on the cheek and says she loves me. Lilly squeezes me so hard it takes my breath away before running off to her parkour class. My youngest two leave sticky finger prints on my clothes and wipe their noses on my shirt. But my ears and my heart fill with their words, “I love you, Mom. I love you. I love you.”
And I know for sure that if I had the chance I would do it all again in a heartbeat, pouring just as much of myself and my heart into it, knowing full well the cost.
Who knows? I might even say yes to another “free” goldfish.