Christy Stillwell
Guppies
This was back when my brother had his guppy tank on the desk behind his bed. He had a new bedroom set, wooden corner desk with a matching hutch. The bubbling sound of the tank’s water pump filled the upstairs landing during the going-to-bed routine. He loved his new furniture and fish tank. I could feel his excitement as a soft pit in my center, inhaling me, turning me inside out.
Mother was putting him to bed. I followed him around calling him Benedict Arnold. “Give it a rest,” my mother said. I felt very smart calling him by this traitor’s name. He was five, maybe six years old and had no idea who Benedict Arnold was. I explained that Benedict Arnold had switched sides during the revolution. This meant nothing to him. His indifference enraged me. I was jealous of his corner desk and fish tank. He was happy and I was not.
I took my revenge by hiding in his closet. I would wait until he was nearly asleep and then jump out and terrify him. In my vision he would scream and cry and run from the room. His closet was jammed full luggage and the overflow of mother’s clothing and shoe boxes. While he was brushing his teeth I slid the door open and wedged myself between the wall and one of those hanging cubbies made of quilted plastic. I crouched through story time listening to mother read Ten Apples Up on Top. She read like she sang, her voice bright and clear, over-pronouncing the consonants and drawing out the vowels. She was enjoying herself, squeezing and kissing him. She left his bedside light on because he was afraid of the dark.
His sheets rustled. I imagined him trying to quiet his mind and still his body for sleep, clutching his shredded baby blanket to his cheek. I made my move. There was too much stuff. I did not burst from the closet, I half fell, sweating. My brother, sitting up, said, “Oh.”
“Benedict Arnold!” I cried.
He didn’t scream. He was not hysterical. He had no idea what I was talking about. The truth is, neither do I. He must have tattled or changed sides in an argument. The detail that matters most to this story is beyond my memory. If I could go back, I would turn towards that soft pit in me and open my mouth. In one gulp I would swallow my brother’s nighttime fears, his new furniture, even the guppies.
How small he was sitting up like that. Mother did not come running. He watched me go and I somehow knew that this was how it would be between us for a long time. I would try to be of consequence to him the way my sister was. Or Mother. Even our father, who only wanted to get some sleep.
Safety Check
At set intervals, the pool was cleared for a safety check, a span of fifteen minutes when Mark, the tanned, shirtless lifeguard, blew his whistle and either he or Marcie, his girlfriend, would get in and check the pool water with various tubes and chemicals. We went to our mothers, who were draped on their chairs glistening with oil, folded magazines in their laps. We wanted to order from the grill. Our mother’s answer was always the same—something to drink, nothing to eat. If we ate, we’d have to stay out of the pool for two hours to allow for digestion, otherwise we could get cramps and drown. An obvious ploy. We were overweight, soft and jiggly in our suits. Unlike Shari, who was always allowed to order food. She never had to wait two hours.
We sat sipping our cokes watching quietly as the waitress set down a plate piled high with french fries. Shari would pour ketchup all over them, sprinkle them with salt, and eat them, slowly, one by one. Those pulled from the center of the pile were as thick as a finger. Globs of ketchup dropped onto the plate.
Nobody talked as she ate. The silence grew fierce and tight. My sister and I had the dignity to gaze into the distance but my little brother leaned over the table, staring hopefully. “Can I have one?” he’d ask. “One,” Shari would say. “You can have one.” But when it was gone, he’d ask for another. Again and again until she was irritated, her blue eyes shimmering under her Brooke Shields eyebrows, something cold in them, entirely without shame.
To this day I enter a diner or a gas station or any seaside shack and my stomach grinds in pain. I salivate and my chest tightens. We waited for safety check to be over, wanting those fries and trying so hard to act like we didn’t. Shari herself in her little bikini, her tanned skin, her flat stomach. My brother leaning as close as he could get to the plate. The sound of a lawn mower on the golf course, the heavy drone of yellow jackets attracted to our cokes, buzzing our glasses.
Christy Stillwell's first novel, The Wolf Tone, won the 2017 Elixir Press Fiction Prize. Stillwell holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College. Her work is forthcoming online at BrilliantFlashFiction and Pithead Chapel. Past work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Literary Mama, Hypertext, TheRumpus, HerStory, Salon, and Subtropics. She has received a residency at Vermont Studio Center and Chateau Orquevaux. She lives in Montana.
