My first post is a short story I wrote in high school that won the McLean and Eakin fiction contest in 2007. In this narrative I explore themes of memory, guilt and renewal.

Blue Reunion

Beluga whale in the Georgia Aquarium, photo copyright 2007 by Mirsasha

Flooded with visitors, the aquarium seemed like a masterpiece straight out of Picasso’s blue period, awash in luminous shapes and shades of blue. My consciousness, meanwhile, resembled one of his earliest Cubist paintings, all sharp angles and jarring juxtapositions. Which may explain my reaction to the aquarium employee in the bilious yellow and green fish costume who approached me with camera in hand.

“I DON’T WANT MY DAMN PICTURE TAKEN WITH….”

I trail off as I look down, straight into the eyes of an angry redhead in a wheelchair.

“Sorry… I didn’t see you come in...”  

Without replying, my sister wheels over to Deepo, the deep-sea dwelling mascot with the camera, and gives the creature her most venomously sarcastic pose.

* * * * *

It was the first Monday in April. I had flown in from Seattle the day before on a delayed and overcrowded flight. Wailing babies stole my sleep, an overweight grandmother laid siege to my seat space and privacy. I arrived too late to stay with my sister, and the  Ramada Inn I chose on Expedia featured 24-hour traffic noise, free of charge. My yawn-filled instructions to the cab driver the next morning came out sounding like a cross between Martian greetings and an Orcish growl.

From the grey clouds outside the cab windows arose a bleak memory from a haunted Christmas eve two years earlier--the last time I had seen my sister. After two and a half years of college, she often treated me more like her wayward son than a brother, and her superior tones always drove me to the boiling point. That night, she lectured me relentlessly on how to set the dinner table—“JOHN, THE SPOON ALWAYS GOES ON THE RIGHT SIDE, NEVER THE LEFT!”—and as so often happened I rose to the bait, snapping at her with increasing anger. Before the argument was over, I had hurled the word for female dog in her face so many times I half-expected her to be down on all fours in a matter of seconds, cavorting with our golden retriever.

But it didn’t end there. I backed her out of the dining room with my size and my threats, and toward the stairway to the ground floor of my townhouse. I thrust toward her once too often, and she tumbled down the stairs accompanied by a sickening series of groans and thuds.  

It seemed to take half my young life for the ambulance to arrive.

* * * * *

Once past the clownfish greeter, we headed straight for the belugas.

Together we gazed at the five massive whales gliding through the bluest of blue water.  Each of them possessed an indescribable grace, even in captivity. I spotted the largest of the five, the disfigured one, and read the nearby sign: Gaspar was brought to Atlanta from Mexico, where he was kept in a small tank under a Ferris wheel.  His lesions were healing far slower than aquarium officials had hoped.

The tears rolled down my sister’s face as Gaspar glided by.

“I’m sorry.” I lay my hand on my sister’s shoulder.  She takes my hand in hers.

“I know.”  She says, “I know.”