Tank

Issue 50 • Fall 2024 • Fiction

I stole the lobster from H-Mart a week after Kristen’s funeral. The tank bubbled, crammed with red shells and rubber-banded pinchers and eyes like watermelon seeds. My clothes were stenched with days-old sweat, teeth furred in grime. It was 6am on a Monday with heavy, impatient rain, so no one noticed as I plucked him from the top of the heap. I stowed the lobster in my purse. Hid him in the shopping cart under kimchi and single-serve ramen and red bean sweet buns. I read somewhere that lobsters were cannibals. They fucked naked and squishy and shell-less. They could grow forever, as big as the environment allowed.

Kristen and I had lived together four months. “We’ll never survive here,” she told me once under a fort of quilts in the bedroom at my parent’s house. Facing each other, I held her hands in my lap. “I don’t want to just let our lives happen to us,” she said. We left on her birthday after stuffing my rusted bug with clothing and stolen silverware and Ziplocs of toothpaste and Avon hand creams. She kissed her sobbing mother’s forehead like you would a sleeping child’s before we drove away.

I took the lobster to our apartment. We rented a clustered studio on a busy street lined with off-brand hotels and dive bars. It was four hours away from our hometown and right in the center of Phoenix. Our dishwasher was always broken, we walked forty minutes in the heat to do laundry, and sometimes roaches scuttled over our feet. The apartment was empty but also full, everything unimportant and unmatching—fold out chairs circled around a too-large wood table, expired coupons bloating every kitchen drawer, a poster from some concert we didn’t attend taped to the wall, lamp with no bulb. Sitting on our living room’s air mattress, I held the lobster in the air with both hands. Stared at him, his twitching antennas, his slick belly. Blue dusted his carapace and, looking into his eyes, I felt that we were both what the other needed.

“Welcome home,” I told him. The fear and loneliness swarming my body since she died drifted away like sea foam.

I prepared the bathtub. Garish, multicolored rocks, plastic palm trees, a rock carved into a skull, miniature tiki heads. The water was cold and salt-smelling. A single strand of black hair curled and stuck to the porcelain. I wondered if it came from her head or mine. Was it there when she died, blued and open-eyed? Limbs stiff with her feet crossed under the faucet. I found her body amidst the midnight whirlpool of a party. People Kristen had met at the grocery store or the library or in her morning Zumba class all drifting around our home, lips smacking on cheese puffs and cheap vodka and weed. The coroner said something about the drugs swimming in her system with a taut, judging tone. At her funeral: me, her mother, our high school English teacher, one bouquet of violets.

I snipped the lobsters rubber bands off before sinking him into the tub. With one claw, he reached lazily, playfully, trying to snap at me. I watched him for hours. He’d hobble around, rest for a minute, two. I was glad he felt comfortable like that. Safe.

#               #               #

We both grew up tangled. Kristen’s mother worked at a Chinese buffet and a CVS Pharmacy and sold her own jewelry made from polymer clay. When she wasn’t working, she sat zombified in front of the small square TV in the kitchen. Ordered products from infomercials—ShamWows, Shake Weights, Moon Shoes—and did her makeup over and over again in the tiny pop-up mirror of a bright pink caboodle. Kristen never knew her father, but had five older siblings who all lived at home, drinking all day and paying for poorly-drawn tattoos at dusty backyard bonfire parties. She shared a bedroom with her sister, Kayla, who gave her black eyes and took money from the box under her bed. Sometimes, Kristen stole Slim Jims or Doritos from gas stations and slashed people’s tires in parking lots. Sometimes, she brushed her teeth with baking soda and borrowed my underwear. Sometimes, she’d cry about nothing at all. Her house always sloshed with noise and movement, while mine was empty, silent. Parents gone to the casino or the alley behind the movie theater where people sold things they shouldn’t. Most nights, Kristen would show up at my house to spend the night. We’d swirl together on my twin bed, eat box mac and cheese for dinner while watching American Idol, kiss each other goodnight, whisper about what jobs we would want, what plastic surgery we would get, what cities we would hide in. I was always scared before her. Always alone.

#               #               #

The lobster ate three times what he was supposed to, he tried to climb up the sides of the tub, banged his claws against the rocks like a petulant child. Still, I loved him. Work called me every day, but I didn’t answer. Our routine: the alarm went off at 5:00 a.m., I made instant coffee and sat with the lobster in the dark cold of the bathroom, petted his shell, dangled him by his tail and let him amble along the rug. After lunch, I told him stories about Kristen or high school in Kingman or road trips I hadn’t actually been on. Ordered more aquarium decor from Amazon. Fed him and fed him, again. Watched him devour the pellets one by one.

On the third day, after laying across the bathroom floor for hours, I wandered to the living room. I had closed all of Kristen’s things into a single cardboard box. The day after she died, I couldn’t stand to look at any of it; I slipped around the place like a ghost and snipped the items one-by-one. Now, the box sat in a chair and watched my every move. I held it at night sometimes. Made it dinner and watched reality shows from the glow of my phone. Now that I had my lobster, it felt like an intruder. I was already opening it before I had time to think about what I was doing. Already reaching for a kitchen knife to shred away the duct tape. Already tipping it over and watching it all pool around me. Matching t-shirts from our middle school choir bake sale. A battered copy of Frankenstein with notes choking the margins. Photos of us or me or people I didn’t know. Leather jacket. Lipstick. DVDs she’d lost the case for. A stuffed bear. I lay down on the floor and covered myself in all of it. Until it was like a shell around me.

I stayed still. Smelling her scent. Feeling her presence. When I finally got up, the floor had caked my back in crumbs and dust. I let the filth stay there.

#               #               #

About two weeks after me and Kristen moved, the apartment got robbed. They took nearly everything: the old, boxy TV I’d had since I was nine, $200 we kept in Kristen’s pillow case, pots and pans, a blender from Goodwill, my faux gold necklace with an amethyst pendant. I couldn’t sleep for days after it happened. I would lay next to Kristen and watch her sleep. Count the freckles on her face. Trace my finger from her darky silky hairline to her chin. Stare at the ceiling fan while holding her hand. Sometimes, she woke up with me.

“I’m worried,” I said, one night. “It feels like we’re on the edge of something. We could fall over at any time. What if it had been worse? What if we were here when they came?”

I often imagined the different ways Kristen could die, even before we lived here. It was a constant fear of mine. It almost made her actual death more palatable. In my head, I’d seen her blood dye oceans red. Gunshots litter her stomach. I’d seen the bones underneath her fat and muscle. I’d seen her in hospital beds, at bottoms of cliffs, underneath cars. Seeing her in the bathtub, for a singular moment, I felt something like relief.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” she said, pulling me tighter against her. She had gone to bed in makeup, and mascara smudged her eyes. “I promise I’ll add more locks to the door. We can put bars on the windows too.”

I didn’t respond. The thick silence made my skin prickle. In the time we’d been here, Kristen had already acclimated. I hardly ever saw her. She took ceramics and astronomy classes at the community college. Would come home with painted bowls and facts about Mars. She worked at a grocery store and ate kumquats and rambutans and other produce we’d never seen before. She had friends she flocked to at the gym. I’d watch them all twirl and swish in sync like a school of fish. My life: work, home, sleep, Kristen.

Kristen sighed and pressed her lips to my forehead. “I know you are still feeling lost. But I know this was the right move. I can feel it. You’re just finding your footing still. You’ll learn to love it. I know you will.”

Kristen spoke like a car salesman when she wanted to be right about something. All tonal shifts and deliberate pauses and eye contact with slow nods. She always knew what to say. I usually loved this about her, but now I wanted to scream. The blanket wrapped around us was itchy. My arm was asleep and buzzing under her neck. I wanted to pull her hair out. Push her away.  Ask why we ever moved. Ask why she was the way she was. Instead, I buried myself deeper into her, so close I could feel the slight dampness of sweat under her clothes. Could feel her body heat drifting over me. Could feel that we were both still flesh and warmth. That we were both still alive. I kept moving. Closer and closer. So her limbs were my limbs, my hair was her hair, her skin was my skin, my breath was her breath.

#               #               #

I watched more videos about lobsters. Not all of them are cannibals. The ones in the wild protect each other. Will walk across lagoon floors in armies to attack predators for each other during migration. The ones in captivity, though, are dangerous. They change. With no natural enemies, they only have themselves to fear.

#               #               #

The lobster crawled out of the tub. I found him breathless and weary near my refrigerator. The moment I saw him, claws wavering, searching for something that wasn’t there, I panicked for a moment. I sprinted to the bathroom, cradling him in my palms. I fed him extra pellets. Added more salt to the water. Brushed the top of his shell with my thumb. Cried at the foot of the tub. Prayed to God for the first time. After an hour, I convinced myself the lobster was fine. He was still with me.

Once, Kristen nearly left me. She came home from work buzzing, with noise trailing behind her: door slam, key chains rattling, backpack dropped to the floor, soda can crinkling. I curled on the air mattress waiting for her arrival. I’d made us both bowls of ramen hours ago, but the steam had drifted away. The light glowed yellow and dim. I hoped that I looked upset. Hoped that she would do something about it.

“Work was great today,” she said, sitting on the mattress with me. “They’re opening another store in San Diego. They asked if I wanted to go help with it for a while. It looks beautiful.” She paused, looking at the blank wall, like she could picture her life there already. Her whole being seemed to glow with the thought. “I have never been anywhere but here.”

I didn’t say anything.

“It’s a three-month transfer. I could go to the beach and drive up to Big Sur and go hiking in the Redwoods,” she said. I’ve been silent and motionless the whole time. I’m sweating. “What do you think?” She asked.

“So you’re just going to leave?” I responded, the words immediate. I imagined them snapping at her like a wave crashing onto shore. She placed her hand on my leg. Rubbed my skin with her thumb.

“It isn’t for that long. We’d talk every day.”

“I don’t want you to go,” I said, panicked. I could feel my skin splotching red. “We moved to the city because you wanted to.”

She took her hand away from me. A shift into something colder. “You know, it’s not my fault that you’re alone. You could’ve taken classes with me. You could’ve talked to people at work. You could’ve found something you like doing. But, instead, you choose to stay here in this apartment and do nothing and wait for me when I never asked you to.”

Again, silence. A minute or two passed. Then, a whisper. “I came here to be with you. Our lives, you said. We are living our life.”

“We are still separate people and you know that. We can’t be this—” Kristen lifted her hands, clasping them together, and shook them— “thing you want us to be. We’ll tear each other apart.”

“You’re like my parents,” I said. She flinched away, as if stung by some creature, and stood up.

“And you make me feel trapped,” she replied.

 Kristen packed up a bag of her things that night and left for the weekend. She stayed at her friend’s house and didn’t answer my calls. I stayed in the same place. When she came back home, she was so high she forgot about the fight altogether. Her eyes wide, the whites riddled with tiny red veins. We returned to how we were.

#               #               #

The lobster refused all interactions with me. It pouted in the corner of the tub and let its food disintegrate into the water. Treaded to the other side when I dipped my hand in. Nothing I did wavered its hostility. One day, I stepped into the tub and curled my toes on the rocks’ slime. Another, I moved all the palm trees and tikis so they circled its body. Sat in the tub until my fingertips pruned. Moved the lobster to the sink for an hour. Watched it curiously prod the gaping hole of the drain. Draped my body over the lip of the tub and stared. Begged it to love me again.

On the third day of this, someone knocked at the front door. I was spread across the air mattress, letting my body take up all its space. My hair greased to my scalp so much it looked damp. Like I had just come from a long hike in the warmth, like I had just climbed mountains. I couldn’t remember when I last showered, but the reek of me and the lobster, tang and salt, coated everything. My nails were long and lined with grit. I thought of the lobster. Lurking in the bathtub. Indifferent, annoyed, cruel. Answering the door would mean revealing my aloneness to someone. We would meet each other’s eyes and know.

“Hello?” I said, sitting up.

“Sorry to bother you. I have a package for this address,” the man behind the door said. His voice was soft, kind. I could picture him: a small house with a big yard for his dogs, a garden, tomatoes and peppers ripening at the end of summer, a wife in colorful flowing dresses, two kids who played soccer and got good grades, bike rides and church on the weekends, holidays with a giant sticky ham and sweet potatoes scaled in marshmallows, the wet of forehead kisses at night, the warmth of sleep.

I didn’t answer him. Instead, I stood. Pressed my face to the door. Listened to his breathing. Held onto the sound.

“Miss?” He said. “Are you okay?”

I wasn’t expecting this question, and my throat knotted, my chest shuddered like I was drowning. I stayed quiet. When lobsters are waiting for their new shell to harden, they bury themselves deep in the mud, so no other creature can see them.

Eventually, the man placed the box on the floor with a faint thud and walked away. The package was from Kristen’s mother. A box of pasta and spices and dish soap. I wondered if it was for me or for her. That night, I slept leaning on the door.

#               #               #

When we moved to Phoenix, one of the first things Kristen wanted to do was go to a rave. The multicolored strobe lights, the fishnets and bikini tops, glitter, overpriced drinks in plastic cups, deafening music, water and joints and vapes shared with strangers. Kristen wanted it all. It was the most people either of us had ever been around. Constant touching. Someone’s elbow in your back. Their breath climbing down your neck. Their sweat swimming with yours. Kristen bought extensions that made her hair long and bright red. She stuck rhinestones to her face with eyelash glue. Wore knee-high boots that made her half a foot taller. Spent all the money she had. We stopped at the drink line and she faced me, placing one arm on either of my shoulders. Her brown eyes were all pupil.

“Isn’t this so fun?” She asked, her tone dramatic and high pitched. Different. She looked around. Smiled. A person behind me slid along my back to push through the crowd. “This is why I wanted to move here. We can do whatever we want. It’s beautiful.”

Behind Kristen, a girl vomited into a trashcan. The music was loud, thrumming against everything, a shell of sound. I touched her hair, brushed it behind her ears. “I’m glad you’re happy,” I said. Her brows furrowed and she took my hand, squeezed it.

When I smiled at her, my lips felt too dry, like they were cracking. The bartender called her over before I could reply. The air was balmy, crowded. Kristen bought her drink and handed me one. Cranberry juice and vodka and maraschino cherries.  She pulled me into the direction of the stage while drinking hers in large mouthfuls. It was her fourth or fifth. Earlier, I watched a girl smear ketamine on her gums. Another girl gave her a beaded bracelet then kissed her on the neck.

“Let’s go see this set,” she said. “I think you’ll like this one.” Excitement wafted off her body, and, for a moment, I could feel it too.

We got to the edge of the crowd hoarded around the stage and Kristen dragged me between two guys with glow sticks wrapped around them. Then, she kept pulling. We dived deeper into the mass of bodies. It smelled of weed and perfume and alcohol. Sometimes, Kristen looked back at me and the lights turned her blue or green or purple like she was a different species. There was no space. People. Elbows. Arms. Legs. Heads. Hands. Feet.

I didn’t want to tell her to stop. “Are we going to keep going further?” I asked, letting go of her hand so she would turn around. But she didn’t. She moved forward, pushing into the crowd until I couldn’t see her anymore. She was gone.

I couldn’t think. The music. Someone knocked my drink out of my hand and the liquid ran down my legs. The bodies. A hand touched my back to move me forward. The lights. I turned around to push myself out. Bodies and bodies and bodies. Touch and touch and touch.

By the time I escaped the crowd, I couldn’t breathe. I kept going. I didn’t stop until I was at the exit, until I was walking down the road. A cool breeze circled me. I went home alone.

#               #               #

 I read that lobsters can spend a few hours out of water before things get bad. The next day, I scooped the lobster out of the tub with oven mitts and carefully placed him in a tote bag. I threw in a couple wet paper towels and ice cubes along with a few extra pellets and left the apartment. Maybe getting out of the apartment would cheer him up. The heat slapped me the moment we stepped outside, but I continued anyway. Determined.

The park was a few-minute walk: three benches, mostly dead grass, a jungle gym with a red slide that burned your thighs in summer, rust-spotted water fountain. We sat in the small shade under a thin wiry tree and I took the lobster out of the bag quickly, before he had time to protest. On the grass, in the flits of sunlight darting through the leaves, he looked a brighter shade of red. Pomegranate or rubies. He didn’t move too much. Twitched antennas. Brought legs up and back down on the ground.

When we lived in Kingman, there was a park Kristen and I would go to after school. We’d get cherry slushies from the 7/11, counting quarters at the register, before meandering along Main Street to get there. We’d hold hands, skip, spin, sing whatever pop song was on the radio at the time. It took Kristen until the last two years of high school to realize that everything happening to her—parents, siblings, suffocation, loneliness—wasn’t normal, so she was never mad about it until then. Before, she was so bubbly. She never stopped moving, smiling, talking. She was endearing in an almost annoying way. At the park, we’d sit on the swings, sway side to side, bumping into each other in a repetitive lull while she chattered away. Sometimes, I spoke too, but I was happy to just listen. Things I remembered from this time: Kristen dotted her i’s with stars, she stole a Care Bear ceramic from the craft store and painted it for me as a birthday gift, sour candy made her wince but she would always try it when offered no matter how many times she hated it before, she cracked her knuckles when nervous, though she wouldn’t tell anyone. She disliked every type of soup, the sound of markers on paper, classical music, and flip flops. Her favorite word was “facetious.” She smelled like strawberries. She laughed at every joke, even if it wasn’t funny.

I was so angry at her funeral. Kristen met all these new people in Phoenix, but did they really know her? None of them came, so I didn’t even have someone to give that anger to. I spent the whole service rotating between some deep stretch of empty and rage. They didn’t know her. They didn’t have her. They didn’t understand her. When I imagined Kristen in my head, every image of her was from before the move. I didn’t like to think about her with these other people. The places they went. The things they did. The moments they experienced.

The pastor—short and bald, a random clergy member from a random church that none of us attended—started the eulogy for her with “Kristen was an intricate soul.” What he meant was that Kristen was complicated. Varied. She had the ability to transform.

The heat was mushing my brain into something hazy. I felt almost drunk. For a moment, I considered letting the lobster go. I nudged his tail. Moved farther away from him to give space. Trailed water from his nose to the center of the park. Still, he never moved. As I sat next to him again and touched his back, the hard shell, a million questions floated to the surface. Maybe there was something more than knowing. More than having. More than understanding.

#               #               #

The lobster lifted one claw up and down. He sat in the corner of the bathtub again, water grayed. I didn’t smother him. Just let him be. Let his cold, his resentment blanket me. I laid on the mattress for a while. Made a mental inventory of all her things that congested the room. Noted all the places in the apartment where one still felt her: the stick figure she Sharpied onto the wall above the door frame, a fake eyelash stuck to the bottom bathroom drawer, a month-old burrito bluing in the fridge, hair ties hidden everywhere.

I put away the things her mother sent. Remembered when we made spaghetti the first night here. Kristen giggled like a child, smearing sauce onto my face. The meal was bland and flavorless. But we ate it sitting on the floor atop bathroom towels, our sides touching, leaning, feeding each other. Later, we slept under a fleece blanket. Too hot, but content.

Placing all of Kristen’s things back in a box, something inside me released. A tension left my body calmly as if whispering goodbye. I cleaned every mark of her. Scrubbed the walls. Swept the floors. Wiped down every surface with Clorox wipes. I put a pot of water on the stove. Breathed in the scent of clean while it came to a boil.

When I wandered back into the bathroom, kneeling next to the tub, the lobster came to me, kind, like he was the first day. He walked gently into my palm and I pulled him out of the water. Brought him close to my chest, brushing his shell. He pinched my arm lightly and we sat like that for what seemed like hours. Taking our time. We were both wet and salty and cold.

Then, I got up. Carried him into the kitchen. Stood in front of the stove. I held him in front of my face, staring into his small warm eyes. When I lowered him into the pot, he didn’t fight or struggle. Didn’t look frightened or betrayed or sad. He accepted the water gratefully.

Issue 49 • Spring 2024

Fiction

Poetry

Fiction

Poetry