E Ce Miller
Elvin’s Mother Dreams of Koi
I had a little baby once who rose from the quaked earth of my body, comma-ed over gloved hands like a peeled-pink shrimp, webbed with red, good enough to nibble; nibble sometimes I did, brushing the front of my teeth against the tender skin of his cheeks, sucking in air, mimicking consumption. All nom-nom.
For a while I kept the baby in a laundry basket in the center of my bed—rectangular, padded down with bath towels—until he started to roll and scoot, inched the basket closer and closer to tipping over the edge, to spilling the baby and the towels all over the floor like so much washing. So I moved the basket to the floor, but still the little baby grew until he was quite a large baby, arms and legs reaching through the slats like a belly-shelled turtle.
The wash had really begun to pile up in the corner outside the bathroom, where the basket used to sit, so I finally took the baby and the towels out of the basket and dumped all the dirty laundry in. By the time I turned to reach for the baby on the floor, he was gone, and the side door that didn’t latch well was open and swinging in the wind.
I ran out the door and across the yard and down the street, looking in all directions, when a Koinobori came yawning out of the sky, blue-black scales flying, tail waving umbilically behind it. I hadn’t realized it was the season for carp streamers, being occupied with the baby and all, but the sun on my skin said spring and I hadn’t hung one—marveled, for a moment, at how much bad luck I’d inadvertently invited into my little baby’s life. It suddenly felt like an eternity since I’d last seen him and I thought maybe if I caught the streamer and hung it, he’d see it and come back.
Wind-inflated, paper teeth flicking, riding a wave of air. I pursued that carp as people in the street looked on, neighbors I hardly recognized muttering to themselves, pointing at the madwoman flailing arms overhead, screaming after a carp streamer, though not one of them would think twice about a mother running behind a running child instead of a flying one.
Finally—ahh—I caught it: chased it into a treetop, untangled the fish free from branches, clutched its ribboned rainbow cord in my fist and drew it to my chest, rocked back and forth, cradled its windsock snout in my palm. Eventually, night came, chilled the air, so I tucked my carp into my shirt and descended, curling into a nook of exposed roots, too tired for anything but sleep. By morning, my clothes were damp and smelled of fish and I shivered and hugged myself all the way home, where the side door was still blown open. Inside, I removed my sopping shirt and out fell a carp, golden and long as my arms spread wide. I didn’t have anywhere to store such a large fish, so I dumped all the laundry out of the basket and put the carp in, curling it around itself, apologizing for smashing it a bit in the process. Then I gathered the laundry in my arms, carried it to the roof, hung it all unwashed on the line, where it flapped and fought against the breeze.
I returned indoors to find the carp a carp streamer again and there inside the carp inside the basket was my little baby all swaddled up in polyester scales, rows of washi paper teeth circling his neck like a ruffle.
E Ce Miller's writing has been performed in the Liars' League reading series in London and is published or forthcoming in Bustle, Heavy Feather Review, Pacifica Literary Review, and elsewhere. Originally from the American Midwest, now living in South Korea, she is writing a collection of speculative short fiction and a novel.
