The Angel Goldfish Theory

angel goldfish: 03

CHAPTER THREE

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I didn’t know that I was a disappointment until my Mom told me so when I was nine.

It was a year before Dad left us, so Dad was still there, as far as I could remember. I wonder why I remember so many bad things so clearly even when I don’t want to. It’s like my own brain wants to agonize me for as long as I live.

I can remember it like this: I was wearing my old sweatshirt with ketchup stains from the previous two Christmas holidays, on the 3-seater couch, biting my lower lip, looking down my cute little feet. Mom was in front of me, pacing back and forth as she’d always had, wearing her office attire from that day, and my Dad was sitting on a single couch in front of me as he looked at my face. He had always looked at me after all—unlike Mom.

“You’re a disappointment to us, Piper.”

Right, she couldn’t have said that any better. I looked up at her face, and I saw that she was finally looking at me. I sighed and puckered my lips.

“What does that mean?” I asked, and my Dad hugged me.

–

Ms. Harper was brought to the hospital that very day.

She was screaming in pain as she was put on the stretcher, her arm swollen. At least it looked purple, I thought, her favorite color.

But I didn’t mean that. I was keeping myself from shaking as I stood at the gates, watching the ambulance drive away, tears threatening to come out of my eyes. I wished I was home with Buffy.

–

“I didn’t mean it, Mom,” nine-year-old me said.

It was the first time I got into trouble at school, and it was something purely because of an accident, something I didn’t really mean, something I didn’t even want to happen. It was a confusing thing when you are a child, when you know yourself you feel bad for something that happened because of you, but people around you still want you to swallow all the blame as if you aren’t trying to.

It was pretty stupid, really—what I did. I accidentally poured latex paint water onto my teacher’s coffee mug, and it turned out she was extremely allergic to it. She was quickly brought to the hospital. I could clearly remember how bad she threw up and how red her mouth was. The way my classmates looked at me in annoyance and in anger are etched into my mind even up to now—it gives me a horrible, sinking feeling in my stomach—I somehow never forgot about this.

I was really sorry for what I did and I didn’t know how else to show it or to talk about it because no matter what I did, I was the bad kid. I remember that the teacher stayed in the hospital for weeks, and she gave me very bad grades when she came back.

I wish Mom didn’t find me a disappointment at the time because it hurt, but maybe it was the truth and that I needed to hear it. But did I really need to? Maybe I needed to hear something else, like, what’s important is you understand your mistake or I am proud that you are acknowledging the consequences, but she didn’t.

I’d wondered what would have happened if she did.

Maybe I wouldn’t even end up on that riverbank bridge and meet Indie Vega, then I wouldn’t have to write her name on the exam paper, and Ms. Harper wouldn’t break her arm. I stood there at the gates thinking of this, and slapped my own face for even thinking that.