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Silvery fish on each breast. A trail of green turtles around the waist. He blinks and looks again as Aunt Emilia turns towards the door. A fin quivers.
"Hello . . ." she says with a mournful lilt in the "o".
A cold draught tails the big man. She shivers. A fish grows fat with a nipple.
"Emmy, Emmy. . . ." he kind of croons in a big man's way.
She hesitates at first before shutting the door behind him. A flipper makes a tiny backstroke, just above her tummy. Secretly, of course.
From under the table, Bobby stares at these goings-on. He's nearly nine and extremely curious.
An arm circles her waist. The turtles are hidden and the fishes press close to his chest. Watch it, mister, oh, you'll hurt them, you'll squeeze them dead!
Bobby can hardly breathe, imagining the damage to the little swimmers on her dress, her sea-dress, he calls it. An iridescent blue, green, and even pink sometimes? Bobby thinks it's trying to confuse him, playing tricks under the sun or lamp, and even the glare from TV just now. But while he can't decide on the exact hue, he's quite certain that the little prints come to life occasionally and glow. Two fishes and eight turtles. He counted the latter several times, right after she arrived, just to make sure.
"Come home. . ." The big man's arm makes it ripple.
Bobby fidgets. He's trying to get a better look at how the arm does it, make the cloth move like that.
His favourite frock, but Aunt Emilia doesn't know this, of course. He hasn't told her, well, can't really, because his most beautiful Aunt always locks herself up in her room or in the bath — she takes very long baths. For the fishes and turtles, of course, Bobby reckons. He imagines she steps into the bath fully clothed, so the creatures can have a dip with her in water that always smells of lavender.
"No, Rodney, please . . ."
Bobby likes to eavesdrop on this event. He hears a wee splash every now and then. A fish diving from her breast, no, a turtle taking off from her waist, surely. Leaning against the bathroom door, he memorises the sound- shifts of her body, a leg curling up to give the turtles more room, perhaps, an arm stretched like driftwood for a fish to blow bubbles to.
"It will be okay now, after. . ."
Then he bathes after her, so he can check that no fish or turtle has gone down the drain. She tries not to look at him when she comes out, all moist and sniffly, always sniffly and red in the eyes as though she were catching a cold. He wants to ask about the creatures, but his mother
warns him not to bother poor Auntie, because she isn't well so we have to be very nice to her for the few days when she's here and so on and so on. His mother always has a string of worries.
"I didn't go."
"You didn't . . . ?"
"No." Her voice is low and flat.
He holds her too tightly. "But Emmy. . ."
"YOU MUSN'T CRUSH THEM, MISTER — !" She jumps out of the embrace — "Bobby again, Bobby everywhere."
The boy crawls out of his secret den.
"Eavesdropping will burn your ears, if you don't take care." She walks towards the culprit.
Her skirt is so close, blue this time, underwater blue. The hem nearly brushes his face as he stands. He is a tiny boy with a perpetually quizzical expression.
"Hello, Bobby," the man says.
He ignores the proffered big hand. "They'll die if you don't take care, with him."
Silence. She stares at the boy, looking perplexed for a moment, then forgets him. "Die, die . . . ," she mumbles to the wall. "Whatever can die, Rodney?"
"Emmy . . ."
"Your two fishes and eight turtles, of course." Bobby is in earnest.
She can't stop giggling, the fishes and turtles are shaking, they all think he's being funny, except the man. The frock moves away, it's blue but turning green as you stare at it longer, like now, with flashes of pink if you close then suddenly open your eyes. On her hips, sometimes on her back, or on her tummy. It never stays in one place, no, never, this pink.
"You said you'd do it. . ." Suddenly, the man looks very unhappy.
Aunt Emilia keeps studying the wall, hugging her arms around the two fishes, as if they were cold.
The turtles are hidden by the table. Bobby is almost tempted to peek under it to see what they're up to this time. He fiddles with the lace tablecloth, raring to lift it and then go under. He is oblivious to their conversation; it's a little slow and strained. His mother is working hard to make it gallop along, but with little success.
"Emilia should stay with us for a while, until you two can sort it out before — before the wedding? Have you chosen a church? I suggest you —"
"Sister, oh dear sister Edna, we can't sort it out, because I didn't go, did I?" Aunt Emilia's giggles are multiplying with each glass of wine. "Did I, Rodney?" Her black curls look strange, like a dark halo gone wild.
"Go?" Edna turns to Rodney who turns away. He doesn't know where to put his big arms.
The fishes echo her giggles. Was that a flick of the fin or the tail? And where they swim, the water is incandescent, blue-green-pink with candlelight flickers. Bobby is hopelessly enamoured. The creatures have never looked so alive.
She catches him staring. "My strange nephew likes my fish." She passes a thumb over her breast, making a little circle around a blue tail.
Bobby feels warm all over, he doesn't know why. "You're drunk, Emilia," his mother sighs, checking her nape for hair which might have strayed from a perfect chignon. She always does this when she's worried.
"But Rodney likes my fish even better, don't you,
Rodney — but only the fish."
"I don't know what's your problem, Emmy, you never tell me anything, really, you arrived here in a huff, on another rare, emotional visit, and I took you in and didn't ask questions, but you wouldn't. . . you said you got engaged . . ." She sounds impatient, she can't find any stray hair.
"My fishes got very much engaged." She cups her breasts. The fins sway slightly and the water ripples. "You love them so much, don't you, Rodney?" She winks at Bobby.
"Hush, Emilia!" His mother taps her chignon, as though censuring it.
"Fishes, yes, but other little creatures, no. Not when they get in the way to happiness — well, here's to happi¬ness then." She drains her glass. Her neck is so white against the blue.
"Sorry, Edna, she shouldn't have bothered you. . ." "My sister hasn't changed at all, Rodney."
"Not a bit. I love an audience, don't I?"
"Let's just go home, Emmy. We'll drive back tonight." "And we'll be oh-okay?"
"Yes, of course, sweetie . . ." He puts an arm around her.
Bobby sits up, anticipating another lethal hug.
"You don't like Uncle Rodney, do you, kid?" Aunt Emilia leans towards him. The fishes seem to blink, eager for a reply.
"Stop teasing, Emmy." Edna sighs again. She has been given to sighing ever since her sister arrived. "We'll leave you two alone . . ."
"To sort it out." Aunt Emilia's giggle gets caught in her throat.
When Bobby creeps back to the dining room and under the table, all is hushed, the edgy atmosphere now softened and a bit warm, no, moist. He's damp around the collar and he is frantic. He cannot see the turtles. They seem to have run away. A big hand slides up and down the frock. In the darkness, it's almost black, a muddied blue-green. The hand disappears under it, perhaps searching for the turtles like him.
Aunt Emilia is breathing strangely, as if she were dying.
She's not having her nightly bath. She's just locked in her room. He's in there, too. Bobby hears them, her soft weeping, his sighing, then their sighing.
Bobby can't sleep. He imagines that, in the next room, a big hand is catching a fish by the tail or crushing a turtle's shell. And all the creatures are trying to swim out of the frock, because the big hand is all over it. But there's nowhere to go. They're all confused. They even swim towards the big hand.
A soft laugh between a sigh and — they're tickling him, they're making friends, so he won't hurt them.
Suddenly, it's very moist in Bobby's room. His pyjamas feel clammy. She knows he likes her fishes — and her turtles, too, he should have said.
When they went into her room, his mother said he shouldn't disturb them. They're making up. And don't you get naughty now, she added. She didn't like the fish-talk at dinner.
It's a cool spring night, but Bobby feels warm, too warm. It's late, but he wants to have a bath, even if she didn't have one, even if the tub won't smell of lavender.
He tiptoes to the bathroom, stopping awhile outside her door. So quiet —
The bath is dry, very dry, but she's wet on the face. She's hugging the creatures to her, lest they stray where there is no water. Under the overbright fluorescent, her sea-dress is only blue and crumpled.
"Auntie . . . ?"
"You're a strange kid," she says without looking at him. She just sits in the bath, rocking the creatures as if sending them to sleep.
"You okay, Auntie. .. ?"
"Auntie's good now, you know. She'll get rid of what gets in the way, so it could be okay again, you under-stand?"
"The fishes and turtles . . ."
She half-laughs. "All creatures nice and small, yes . . . away with them . . ."
He kneels beside the bath. He wants to tell her not to cry so, to ask why she doesn't turn on the tap.
"You almost understand. . . don't you, Bobby?" She hugs him tightly, her tears hot on his shoulders.
He's drowning in her sea-dress. His throat is dry. Between his legs, there is a strange tightening. He needs to run to the toilet, he doesn't know why, but can't find the strength to leave this big embrace. He wants her to hug him tighter against her fishes and turtles, so they could swim to him, too, and trail this tickle up and down his inner thighs.