The Aquarium

by Mariana Dávila Moreno

I come back to Veracruz to visit the aquarium. It’s been ten years since the last time I was here. The highway looks the same as I remember it from my childhood: pronounced curves, similar to those of a roller coaster, mountains covered with birches, and a mist that seems to exist only to cover up the buses that take the last exit towards Jalapa.

When I was seven years old, we took the trip by train: my mom, my aunt Caro, my grandpa and me. We departed at night and it took us more than ten hours to get to our destination. I rarely think about those trains anymore; extinct beasts leaving behind fossilized tracks. My grandpa used to wake me at dawn to see the sunshine through the window of the moving wagon. I remember the field was full of cows and flowers–small doses of yellow and purple to begin the morning.

The taxi leaves me a block away from the aquarium. As I walk a few meters to the entrance I can feel my clothes glued to my skin. In Veracruz, spring days are like mollusks: slobbery and damp, they drag on slowly until sunset. I pay for my ticket and make my way inside. I go first to see the jellyfish. The first time I saw them, I thought they were fluorescent umbrellas. I liked to touch the glass to see if their gelatinous glow would spread out to meet my fingertips. My grandpa always used to laugh when I did this. I remember the sound of his laughter, or what my memory recollects as the sound of his laughter.

When my grandpa turned eighty, my aunt Caro and my mom organized a big party. All of his friends were present: the neighbors with whom he played futbol en la cuadra, close and distant relatives, his friends from school, and long time work colleagues from his only job. He was happy to see every one of them. Everything went smoothly until my mom took out the cake to sing him happy birthday. When she placed it in front of my grandpa to light up the candles, she realized his pants were wet. He had peed himself, although he couldn’t remember exactly how it happened. Embarrassed, he excused himself to get a new pair of jeans. The guests who realized what had happened pretended that, at his age, this accident was perfectly normal.  I took it as a one-time misfortune but deep down I knew something was wrong. And it was, as we would learn a few weeks later.  This was just the first of many unpleasant episodes that would follow, recurrently, during the final year of my grandfather’s life.

The next time we realized that something was wrong was a couple of weeks later, when his neighbor, Eusebio, ran into him in the supermarket. My grandpa, always well dressed and clean-cut, was in his pajamas and seemed disoriented. Eusebio took him back home, called my uncle, Juan, and then waited in the house until he arrived. My mother was the first person my uncle called to inform her about the situation; I was the one who answered the phone.

“Hi Dani, is your mom around?”

“She went to the bank. I don’t think she will be long.”

“Okay, well as soon as she comes back please tell her to call me. It’s urgent.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Dad had another weird episode. He went to the supermarket in pajamas. He is here now, resting. Eusebio took him home. I’m worried.”

“I’ll go to the bank right away and mom and I will head over.”

“Thanks, Dani. I’ll see you guys soon.”

At the aquarium, next to the restrooms, I see a poster that announces, “The best show of killer whales in the world.” I take a flyer and slide it inside my purse. I think about Phytoplankton. It was my grandpa who taught me the meaning of the word. And I never again used it in a sentence related to the sea; instead I gave that name to my cat. People used to ask me about the name and I just shrugged and told them I had picked it up from a National Geographic magazine. Truth be told, it was my grandpa who suggested the name. I agreed instantly. I don’t know why I decided to withhold the true origin of the name from the people who asked me about it. I guess that I just wanted it to remain a secret only the two of us shared.

“It’s dementia. The doctor confirmed the prognosis this afternoon.” It was my uncle Juan who broke the news. My mom, my aunt Caro, and I were sitting in the living room of my house. It was the very same place where I had shared long and joyful afternoons with my grandpa in the past: coloring books, doing puzzles, and reading stories. I don’t remember much of what was said that evening–the possibilities for his care, or the alternatives suggested–but if I close my eyes I can still see my aunt Caro tracing circles with her finger on Phytoplankton’s belly while her tears make a trail of small circles on his fur.

Beginning at seven years old, and until I turned eleven, I visited the aquarium of Veracruz ten times. During those journeys my grandpa taught me that rockfish were like chameleons and that octopuses were extremely smart. He would say: “Chata, I know they look deformed and alien-like, but they can decipher mazes, fool their prey, and even kill gigantic sharks.”

He also taught me that dolphins use echolocation to determine their surroundings and that some rays have the ability to jump out of the water, like whales.

At twelve, I announced to my family that I was going to become a marine biologist. I excelled on the topic of crustaceans and tried to instruct my parents on the longevity of turtles (on more than one occasion). I stopped eating seafood on principle. One Halloween I even dressed up as a squid.

At sixteen, I forgot all about the ocean and traded the fish for the boys, the coral reefs for parties full of cheap alcohol and neon lights. I traded the Gulf of Veracruz for Acapulco’s Pacific. Despite this change, my grandpa still gave me a beautiful volume about sea life one Christmas. For the rest of my teenage years I rarely looked at it. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I began to read small fragments some nights, not to remember the ocean, but to remember the voice of my grandpa as he walked me through the wonders of salt waters.

The first name my grandpa forgot was Phytoplankton. Next came my cousin Paulina’s name, and some months later, mine. It took him longer to forget my mom’s. At the end, the only family member he was able to recognize from time to time was my uncle Juan. Even though he had no recollection of us, we visited him every day. On bad days he questioned who we were and what we were doing there. On average ones he just looked at us with indifference, shrugged his shoulders and accepted our presence with resignation.

Little by little—and in no particular order—he forgot about the trains of my childhood and the flavor of sweet bread dipped in the café lechero. He lost all memories of Veracruz’s pier during sunset—where the merchants begin to descend with their stands at the first hint of night. He forgot his office on the street of Yacatas, where he worked as an accountant for most of his life. He also stopped recalling his favorite quotes from Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and my grandma’s favorite movie, Casablanca.

In the weeks prior to his death, I began to talk to him about the sea. Some mornings on his good days, I would relay curious data about the blue sharks. On the evenings I was assigned to stay on guard at the hospital, I talked to him about legends from the Dead Sea and the harshness of its salt. If the nurse came into the room to change his catheter, I would steer the conversation to theory about fishes that swim counter-current. I knew he didn’t understand a word of what I was saying. I wasn’t even sure if he listened. I don’t know why I needed to keep talking. I wasn’t sure if I did that for him or for myself. Maybe it was my last failed attempt to give back a scrap of all the knowledge he had shared with me. Perhaps it was just the homage I paid to nostalgia.

The last time I touched his hand, his skin was rough and full of ulcers, like fish scales. The tubes coming out of his chest reminded me of tentacles without suckers. I cried because this wasn’t my grandpa. No, I cried because this was my grandpa but not the one I wanted to remember. I leaned in and pressed my forehead against his cheek. I have no idea how long I spent lying in that position or how many tears I swallowed. I just remember that my aunt Caro put her hand on my shoulder to bring me back to the present. I wiped my snot as quietly as I could and said goodbye to my grandpa in silence, with my eyes.

Three years after his death, a franchise of Veracruz’s diner, La parroquia, opened in Mexico City. I went there to have breakfast with my mom. We ordered buttered bread and café lechero. But nothing tasted like it did in Veracruz. The coffee was bland. The jars in which it was served were made of glass and not metal. The corn patties filled with beans weren’t soft enough. We didn’t complain, we didn’t talk much either. It wasn’t until the check arrived that I realized that she was crying. When she saw me looking at her she quickly wiped her tears and said: “It’s okay. It’s nothing. I just had forgotten the taste of the coast.”

The layout of the aquarium remains the same. It’s weird, the sensation of realizing how some things never change but in reality everything has. I walk through the hall of manatees and make a right turn to go inside the Shark Tank. I can almost hear my grandpa’s excited voice telling me: “Are you thrilled, Chata? We’re heading towards the best part!”

I access the nineteen-foot-wide tunnel and let myself be swallowed by the blue sharks and the shoals of gobies and pompanos. I sit crossed-legged on the tiled floor to enjoy the view. Colors. Movement. Life. In here, time doesn’t exist. In here, I’m once again seven years old. I smile and reply to my grandpa: “You were right, Papal, now comes the best part.”