Little Fish by Sarah Kuntz Jones

It was that summer wherein Galya Sokoloff learned of parents’ arguments, auntie’s comforting lullabies, and endless days in the water. It was that summer that structured the beliefs of her childhood. It was that hot season that made her strong and durable like the boulders lining the shore, standing against the wind.

That summer Galya was five and she learned to swim off the rocky beach behind the family’s cottage on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain. She wore her Barbie swimming suit every day from first light until bedtime. As often as her family could stand to keep an eye on her, she was in and out of the lake. In the chill of the water, her lips blued in a matter of minutes, but that didn’t stop her from imagining she was just another fish in that expanse as mysterious as green amber.

One mid-summer’s afternoon, there was a peaceful quiet in the cottage. Galya’s parents had gone to the market leaving Galya with her Aunt Vera, her tyotyenka, who had come for the summer from Yaroslavl. That particular day, like the others before it, Vera sang lullabies from her bed across the small room they shared in attempts to settle Galya for an afternoon nap.

“Sing about the fish,” Galya said.

“The Akvarium song?”

Galya nodded, and Vera sang, “Kakaia ryba v okeane plavaet bystree vsekh?” What kind of fish swims faster than the others? Galya didn’t know the answer, but she wanted to be that fish. If only she had gills, scales, and fins, there would be no stopping her, she was sure of it.

She let herself be distracted from her dreams to admire the mother-of-pearl combs that swept the hair from her auntie’s face. The longer tresses dangled in light brown braids that Galya loved best at night, when the braids were unplaited and lay like shimmering waves down her auntie’s back.

The singing trailed off, and her auntie’s breaths elongated and stuttered into great snores, and that was Galya’s signal to swing her legs over the side of her twin bed, careful that the old springs squeaked only a little, and certainly not enough to disturb her auntie. She tiptoed through the cottage, eased open the screen door, and pulled her towel from the deck railing.

She intended to swim for only a little while and then to lie in the sun to dry out before her parents returned from town with groceries. Since her father had to go back home to Burlington the next morning, the neighbors were coming over. The adults would talk, play cards, and not do anything fun the rest of the night. This was Galya’s chance.

As fast as her feet would carry her, she ran across the lawn to the steep, weathered steps that led to the narrow shale beach. She had been warned many times by her parents not to climb down there without one of the adults. But the temptation of the water proved to be more than she could stand. Holding on to the rail, she moved first one foot then the other onto each tread. Her progress was as quick as she could make it—her tongue stuck out in concentration. At the bottom she jumped off, nearly landing in the lapping water with the shale crunching under her. On the balls of her feet, she stepped back

“That was a close one!” she said, forgetting that she needed to be quiet. After folding her towel in a floppy, uneven rectangle, she placed it on the bottom plank. The water splish-splished against the rocks, throwing droplets on the tops of her feet and ankles. The sunshine warmed her skin until she could no longer stand not to be in the lake. She eased into it, sucking in a breath with each step until the bottom dropped out and she tread water. When she submerged her head, her scalp tingled from the cold and joy bubbled in her stomach floating her to the surface where she bobbed on her back like a leaf.

The boat was moving so fast that Galya only just heard it as it flew by, smacking its way through the soft waves. The impact of the boat against the surface of the water threw up white-capped swells that charged towards Galya. Her eyes grew wide, and she flipped to her stomach and slashed the water with her inexperienced stroke. Be faster, faster! she told herself. But then the first wave tugged her ankles back and pushed her down, and then again, and the water swirled over her head. Her chest burned and the urge to cough scratched at her throat while she tried to pull herself up through the water. Her arms tired, and she only kicked half as much as before. With her eyes open in the translucent green, she sank lower and lower until something caught and lifted her. When her head came up through the surface, her Aunt Vera had her by the arm and pulled her into the shallow water.
“Galochka!” she said, as she carried her onto the shore. “Are you trying to scare me to death?”

She coughed and wiped her eyes. “Tyotyenka, did you see it?”

“They have no business going that fast!”

“No, not the boat.” Her auntie lowered her to the beach. “In the water something saved me. It pushed me.”

“I caught you.” Her auntie’s white shift was soaked through and smudged with green algae. “What would have happened if I hadn’t woken up and seen you swimming out here?”

Galya looked down at her feet. Bits of grey pebbles stuck to her wet skin.

“That might have been the end of my rybochka,” her auntie said as she put her arms around Galya. Galya began to relax—she couldn’t be in too much trouble, if her auntie still called her by her nickname, little fish. “You absolutely cannot do that again. Understand?”

“Yes, tyotyenka.” Galya’s lower lip stuck out in a pout.

“You were so lucky.” She turned Galya’s shoulders towards the steps and pointed up to the house. “If you promise that you’ll never come down here by yourself again, I’ll let this be our little secret.”

“I promise.”

Galya kept her word with no difficulty. In fact, she was overly cautious. She didn’t even go for a morning swim with her father before he headed back to work. Her parents thought she was coming down with something. “What’s wrong, little fish?” they asked, putting hands on her stomach and her forehead. Her mother shook her head at her father and uttered angry Russian susurrations.

“Enough,” her father said, and he made his way down the steps for one last swim so that her mother had to yell.

“Can’t you see you’re upsetting her?” her mother said, grabbing Galya’s arm and pulling her close.

Galya ignored their quarrelling and peered at the lake for shapes moving beneath the water, for some sign of what had pushed her back, but only saw the early sunlight dancing over the surface around her father’s long strokes. Within a few days, her awe of what the lake might hold eased, and once again she swam in the cool water all day long.

In five days, her father had returned for the weekend, and like they did all that summer, her parents argued. They argued and Vera sang to Galya to distract her. But Galya still heard them—her mother accusing, her father denying, then her mother threatening, and her father calling her bluff.

“You still love her,” her mother had said.

“I married you.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It should be.”

Galya wouldn’t remember how Vera winced through these arguments until years later. What did come to mind was how Vera would take her outside and down to the water, and then the lake would carry her troubles away for the moment.

These fights always came right before her father returned to Burlington. The day after he left, her mother would stay in her bedroom all day. Vera would take food into her and try to talk to her, but her mother would only call out for Galya, making her come into the dark, still room to keep her company. “You’re the only one I can trust, Galochka. You’ll never break my heart, will you?”

“You have tyotyenka.”

“I have you.” She would clasp Galya to her.

“Yes, mama.” Galya would try not to squirm, but she would break into a sweat pressed against her mother’s warm skin. “Can’t I go swimming now?”

“You want to leave me?”

“I just want to swim.”

“Fine, leave me be, then.”

Galya would always leave the house filled with the effervescent glee of escape. She and Vera would swim, have lunch, and swim some more. By mid-week, all was forgiven between the sisters and life was good again. And so went the summer until Vera had to return to Yaroslavl, where she taught school.

Galya cried to have her auntie leave her. “When will you come back?”

“I don’t know, rybochka,” her auntie said. She stared at the water that was gold and green. “Be good. Your mama and papa will be better after I am gone. No more yelling, I promise.”

Galya was doubtful about this, but didn’t want to hurt Vera’s feelings, so she nodded and hugged her auntie.

Vera then held her face a few inches from Galya’s. “I know you’ll be the fastest, rybochka.”
This Galya wanted to believe, but she was startled to find out her auntie was right about both things. Back in Burlington, relations between her parents settled down. At first the silences were stony, but then they grew comfortable. Her mother no longer languished in bed, but bustled and fussed over making everything just right. She shuttled Galya to and from swim practices and meets. And when Galya started winning heat after heat, her mother arranged the display of awards and cut out the mentions in the paper. All the while her father worked at the business machines plant, coming home to fresh-cooked meals and a clean house. Galya was never sure if her parents were happy, but they were quiet and polite, and supported her together.

#

A green cloisonné urn sat upon the piano in the Sokoloffs’ living room, but it was out of place with the backdrop of Galya’s swimming trophies and medals in the built-in wall display of shiny golds and bold-colored ribbons. Galya sat on the sofa opposite, holding a tumbler half-full of vodka. In a black skirt, black blouse, and kitten heels, Galya could easily have been on the wait staff at one of Burlington’s fine-dining restaurants except for her Aunt Vera’s scarf tied over her dark braids. The scarf looked like the aftermath of an exploded garish tapestry, but since the funeral that morning, Galya didn’t feel like uncovering her hair, even when mourners voices kept trailing off when they told her she looked like Vera. Before. That’s what they wanted to say. Galya looked like her auntie before the cancer.

Galya’s mother had mandated that the urn should remain on the piano. She said that Vera ashes should resonate with the hammer strikes since her playing had brought so much joy to all who heard her. Galya had no recollection of her auntie playing the piano, but her mother insisted. She suspected that all the years her mother had colored her Lady Di hair an implausible shade of mahogany had finally taken its toll. The funeral had been held at the Orthodox Church almost an hour away, although her auntie had been a non-believer. The only concession to her auntie’s wishes was her cremation. Galya’s father had insisted on that. Galya had been surprised; her father’s attitude was typically one that suggested it was easier to let her mother have her way.

“Say hello to the people who have come to pay their respects,” her mother said, as she perched on the edge of the sofa next to Galya. Her face was smooth and white like a china doll. “Your auntie’s at peace now. You mustn’t be so sad.”

Galya’s mother was relieved that her sister had passed. For the preceding year, her auntie had battled cervical cancer, growing every week a little less bright, less cheerful, less enthusiastic—a poor copy of herself. Every morning when Galya got home from swimming practice, she would plait her auntie’s hair and slide her combs into place. Even after she had quit the team, Galya would wake up to do this one thing. Vera’s hair always looked like the sunlight on water, brown and silver. Then in the last months, no matter how badly she was feeling, Vera would disappear from the house and show up along the shores of Lake Champlain. Galya or her parents would find her auntie soaked to the bone walking along Lake Street, saying she just need to feel the water around her.

Galya untied the scarf and touched the combs now in her hair. She surveyed the room, but didn’t see anyone she could bear to speak with. But that didn’t stop them from speaking to her. Neighbors, friends of the family, even remote acquaintances all had the same question for her once they had gotten the condolences out of the way, “When will you go back to the university swim team, now that…” Their voices all trailed off, every one of them.
“I don’t have any plans yet,” Galya would answer and bow out of the conversation, forgetting to thank them for coming.

From the kitchen, she heard her father’s watery voice speaking in hushed tones to his friends, all fellow engineers from the factory, between raised glasses of vodka. Her father hadn’t been able to speak to her all day. He had given her shoulders a squeeze that morning before they left the house. She felt a little relieved by his distance. Galya couldn’t bear to see her father so unlike himself. In his grief everything seemed to droop: his ears, his jowly cheeks, his shoulders, even his hair seemed to hang in sadness. Her father had known Vera longer than he knew his wife, and they often had lively conversations about who was a greater novelist, Tolstoy or Dostoevsky, or what the greatest Russian poem of all time was. Surely, it was one of Pushkin’s, her father would insist, while her auntie was a fan of Akhmatova. Even now, she could hear him muttering Lermontov’s poem about Pushkin’s death.

Where Vera and her father talked and argued, Galya’s mother and auntie were silent with each other much of the time. And it made Galya angry. She thought of Vera’s flinching through the arguments all those years ago, of her attempts at placating her sister when she would wallow, and her wordless pain for want of connection with her sister with whom she had once been close. Looking around the Sokoloff house and considering all the ways her mother was disregarding her auntie’s spirit, Galya could take it no longer and escaped outside.

The sunlight was bright and sticky, but she wanted to walk anyway. Her heels clicked along the cement, and the black of her clothing was heating up like tar, clinging to her skin, dragging across what remained of her swimmer’s build. Everything was suffocating. Anger filled her chest and throat, barely allowing air to get past. It was typical of her mother to gloss over the past, forget that which was unpleasant or unseemly, while Galya’s anger grew sharper and more unforgiving.

It wasn’t long before Galya found herself walking along the lake, thinking of that last summer at the cottage. “I know you’ll be the fastest, rybochka,” Vera had said, and Galya had taken it to heart. Galya’s swimming career provided her with an education, but when her auntie came back fourteen years after that last summer with a body worn thin by disease, Galya quit the swim team. It no longer felt necessary to get into the pool everyday.

It was not a comfortable situation, being a “quitter,” as her mother saw it. She found she had little to speak to her parents about when there were no new challenges to face in the water. And she felt like she had broken her mother’s heart by discarding the things her mother’s hopes were pinned on. But now as Galya looked at the water splashing against the bouldered shore, an in itch sprung up in her throat and limbs. She shivered, but the itch was still there. The water was calling to her with its every lap at the rocks. Spinning around, she knew what she must do.

By the time she reached her house, her clothes clung to her and pulled and tugged at her skin with every movement, and her braids were damp at the roots and hung heavily down her back. She went to the piano and took the urn into her hands. Surprised by how little it weighed, she nearly dropped it. The enameled surface was cool to the touch as she ran her fingers over the leafy motif.

A hush had fallen over the room, and her mother’s porcelain complexion peaked. At the front door, Galya took her mother’s keys from their hook. She passed through the door with the urn, leaving the mourners stunned and silent. In her mother’s Lexus, she pulled out of the driveway, as her parents and a half dozen others spilled out onto the lawn. Galya glanced at them with a hand on the urn in the passenger seat as she accelerated down the street.

She drove north on the Theodore Roosevelt Highway towards the islands of Lake Champlain, and refused to think about the blast radius of the fit her mother was throwing by now.

With each mile she tallied, the itch in her extremities pulsated and she scratched at her arms. After a half-hour of driving, she crossed the bridge. Galya straightened up in her seat, rubbed her face with one hand, and looked around trying to get her bearings. “I know we want to take the first right,” she said, hardly registering that she was talking to an urn.

As she drove down the west side of the island on the coastal road, Galya’s gaze was fixed on the wooded shoreline, trying to see the cottages and houses hidden in the trees. “From the road they all look the same,” she said, biting her lip.

It had been a red cabin, but it was so long ago it could have been re-painted purple for all she knew. Just as she was feeling hopeless, a stand of trees struck her as familiar. She decelerated, and there was a glimmer of red through the foliage.

Turning into the empty dirt driveway, an old volleyball net set up in the patch of grass between the cottage and the road greeted her. Only tree-filtered light reached that part of the yard this late in the day, and it felt like a blanket dampening the air. Her chest tightened.

She got out of the car with her auntie’s urn and walked around to the back of the house. Galya took in the bright, cartoon character-emblazoned towels hanging over the deck railing where hers used to drape. There was no need to touch the terry cloth to know it was cool with the dampness of an afternoon swim. Her mind flooded with the memories of days that seemed to have no end and the intertwined smells of marine plant life and lake air.

At the top of the wooden steps, the lake sprawled out before her, gilded by the late day sun. Her heels clonked as they struck the silvered wood of the top tread and in the next step, one of them found a knothole. She fell back, sitting with a thud, but the urn popped out of her hands. It bounced end-over-end down the steps, then rolled over the short swath of beach into the water. It floated out like a buoy, but then one of the little waves overtook it and sucked it under.

“No!” Galya cried, kicking off her shoes and flying down after it. In the water her feet slid over algaed rocks, and she stumbled and banged her shins while her eyes searched the water for a glimmer of gold or a shimmer of enamel. But every frantic step only stirred up more and more flotsam.

She dove underwater and opened her eyes to nothing but a green blur. For a moment, she was at peace. The lake welcomed her, wrapping her in its satin cool embrace. The itching insistence in her arms and legs was gone, like the dust of fifteen years had been washed away. Then, there was a glimmer of gold a few feet in front of her, and she pushed her way to it, stretched her fingers and her lungs to their limit. The tips of her fingers brushed the urn, but then it disappeared as though it had been yanked. She pushed a little farther down, but she was running out of breath. Spluttering for air, she popped through the surface. Her lower lip quivered, and she turned back to the shore, moving slowly against the weight of the water and her sodden clothes.

On the beach, she made a guess of where she was when she touched the urn; that’s where she would start looking when the water settled a little. A shank of hair fell into her face that she pushed behind her ear. It took her a moment to realize one of her auntie’s combs was gone. She cried out, and stood at the edge of the water looking for any sign of it, but the water was still too cloudy and her eyes blurred with fresh tears. She sat on the bottom step and picked the strands of algae from her skirt, while she waited for the debris to settle.

Somewhere above her a car door shut. She crouched by the steps, wanting to take a peek, but at the same time terrified of being caught. What could she say to explain her presence?

“Galya Petrovna Sokoloff!” Her mother stood over her from the yard.

“How’d you find me?” Galya asked.

“I do know a few things about you. For one, you’re impulsive.” Her mother came down the steps. “For another, you’re sentimental.” She didn’t look angry although her make-up was smudged—a trail of tears had been carved through the veneer of powder.

Standing on the beach, facing her mother, Galya shivered in her wet clothes. She hoped to be left alone, so she said nothing.

“Where is the urn?”

When Galya pointed at the lake, her mother clucked.

“I dropped it. I was waiting for the water to clear up to see if I can find it.” Galya’s voice quieted. “And I lost a comb.”

“Oy, Galochka,” her mother said, before she sat down on the bottom step with a heavy sigh. “Well, we’ll wait then.”

They sat in silence. Galya scooped up handfuls of the beach’s rocky sediment and let it fall. “This is different,” she said, her jaw tight. The sound of the fragments sounding slighter than it did in her childhood. “It used to be just shale, but now it’s covered in zebra mussel shells.”

“Everything changes,” her mother said, gazing out across the water to New York and the mudgy blue Adirondacks. After a moment of silence, she sighed. “Galochka, I know you miss Vera, but anger will not make things better.”

Galya’s jaw clenched. “Please, Mom, I am not an idiot. You have been angry with Vera my entire life.”

“Not angry.” She tossed back her feathered hair and gazed into the calming water. “I have been jealous. I thought he still loved your Aunt Vera.”

“Who did?”

“Your father. In Yaroslavl, Vera and your father were together when I was in Moscow studying. I had yet to meet him.” She glanced at Galya with a rueful smile. “He was in love, he wanted to marry her. And he wanted to leave Russia. She did not love him enough to give up her life there, so she broke it off.

“A year later, I came back to Yaroslavl and met your father. I fell for him instantly. Vera could see this and encouraged him to take me out. He eventually loved me back, and here we are.

“But that summer when Vera came here, I was having a difficult time. I imagined that your father wasn’t happy. And perhaps he wasn’t, but I thought it was because he regretted marrying me. I didn’t blame Vera—how could I? But I was ashamed of myself. If I hadn’t been so selfish, I would have seen how I hurt them both.”

Galya swallowed back tears. Then, something caught her eye twenty feet out from the shore; Galya got up and walked into the water.

“Did you see something?” her mother asked.

She nodded, as she eased towards the glimmer, the water enveloping her restrained movements. Her head dipped under the surface so that she could feel along the bottom until her hands found what she had been looking for. Galya turned towards her mother and waved the comb in the air.

“Anything else?” her mother asked after she gave a shout of congratulations.

“Not yet.” Galya was already casting her eyes like nets around her, but they were coming up empty. Not far beyond her the water grew darker and shadowy, forbidding her from going farther.

Her mother stripped down to her undergarments and swam out to Galya. They both searched under waves for as long as they could, careful not to touch the bottom and muddy the water. As the sun fell lower and lower, the more shadowed the water became. Finally, they had to give up. They swam back to the beach and sat cross-legged next to each other.

“Well, you were going to scatter her ashes anyway,” her mother said, wiping the water from her pale, freckled skin.

“Are you mad at me?” Galya ran her thumb back and forth over the curve of the comb.
“No. She would have wanted this. No one loved the water as much as your tyotyenka. Except perhaps you.”

They were quiet for a moment, as the evening wind gathered strength and the water’s splishing turned to splashing, drying their skin and hair.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you swim again,” her mother said, as she dressed again in her blouse and slacks.

“I didn’t know if I would see me swim again either,” she said, as she took the other comb from her hair and unplaited her braids.

Her mother opened and closed her mouth again. Galya began to re-braid her hair, but her mother said, “Let me.” Galya knelt in front of her mother to let her tightly weave together the sections of her hair. “I try so hard to make everything perfect for you, my loves, but I am afraid that I have made it difficult for you, too.” Her mother’s hand brushed Galya’s face. “You are so like Vera.”

Galya bit back tears, but she was no longer sure whom they were for.

“Your father and I will support you in whatever you decide to do. I just want you to be happy.”

When the combs were back in place, Galya shaded her eyes against the setting sun. The water now looked like black glass. “We should go.”

“Do you hear me, Galochka? I just want you to be happy,” her mother said.

“I heard you, mama.” Standing shoulder to shoulder, they took in the lake once more. “I’m sorry we couldn’t find the urn.”

“Don’t apologize, rybochka. Everything is as it should be.”

Galya peered into the water as she did all those years ago attempting to glimpse what was underneath the surface. At length, she turned to her mother whose hair hung in her eyes over her bare, freckled skin. Her mother and Vera were so different, and Galya could never see how they could be sisters. But now, it was there around the eyes, a wistfulness. Because she couldn’t tell her mother yet that she would get up the next morning to start training again, to be the fastest once more, she embraced her, her still-damp clothes leaving dark splotches on her mother’s black satin blouse.

They returned to their cars across the shade-bald lawn when the slivered sun glinted over the mountains, echoing the urn’s glimmer in the water. For one last moment, Galya leaned against the warm metal of the car door and wrapped her arms over her chest and closed her eyes as the wind blew in from the lake and sighed over her shoulders, over the boulders lining the shore, and over the quieting island, soft and slow.