CPS is at the door again when Oma begins her change. She’s lying in the tub, curlers pinned to her scalp, and I can hear the faint bossa nova beat of her favorite Rosemary Clooney record playing. 

“Should I answer it?” I ask through the cracked bathroom door. Scales drop from her skin and clog the drain as she tries to climb out. There’s a crash of water as she collapses back into the tub, fins slipping against the porcelain. “You’re right – they’ll come back later.” The record spins idly and I wait in the darkened living room, ignoring the doorbell, until she’s ready to come out. 

Oma has not mastered her transformation yet. Unlike her sisters, she has no control over her body. Spiny rays sprout along her neck at inopportune times – in line at the supermarket or at my Spring concert.

Oma says one day I will go through the change as all of the aunties did, as my mother did before she died. At night I lay in my bed and feel my skin pucker, but no scales surface, no gills slit my cheeks. I am both ashamed and relieved.

* * *

Oma has never believed in church, eyeing the priests and their baptismal pool suspiciously. But she went when my mother was married, and again when she died, even though she knew it would do no good. The aunties sat with us, holding on tightly to Oma so she would not change even when the holy water grazed her forehead. The other mourners assumed the aunties were keeping her upright so she wouldn’t collapse in a heap of tears. The other mourners did not know my mother or our family’s story.  

When she was a child, the revivalists tried to rid Oma of her affliction. She doesn’t speak of it, but sometimes when she’s washing dishes I see the marks on her wrists where the chains held her fast in the flame. But fire was never Oma’s path. The aunties told me the story once, when we lost Oma in the swamp after my mother died. As we searched through fern and sedge, cattail and water lily, the aunties remembered how the revivalists claimed they could cure anything. Oma’s parents were tired of having “special” daughters, daughters that could change without their permission. As the eldest, Oma was cast first. But when they watched the flames lick her body, tears jelling in her wide eyes, her parents relented. The aunties doused the fire and dragged Oma to the creek, where her charred skin sank into the mud. Her parents never spoke to Oma again, shame stiffening their tongues. I watched the aunties cry for the first time when we finally found Oma curled against a cypress, scales pimpling her skin, that same look of horror paralyzing her.

* * *

The CPS officers are back. They look me over, as though I were a boar at a county fair. “No lice, no bruises, has all her teeth,” one checks off a list. The state awarded Oma custody when my mother died, but the judge was suspicious of her eccentricities – the way she twitched in the courtroom, unable to make eye contact – and required check-ins by CPS for the first six months.

“Where’s your grandmother?”

“In the bathroom. Dinner didn’t agree with her,” I say, hoping they’ll just leave.

I can feel Oma sinking deeper into the water, as if wishing she could wriggle down the drain pipe, escaping this humiliation. She worries she’s a bad Oma; she isn’t. She roils at even the suggestion of impropriety.

“Tell your grandmother we hope she’s feeling better and we’ll see her next month.”

Even from the living room I can feel the waves of embarrassment wash over Oma as the CPS officers leave.

* * *

I pull out a map and spread it across a pool floatie. Oma lounges in a checkerboard swimsuit and watches as I point out all of the possible places we can stop on our vacation.  Pagosa Springs, Idaho Springs, Havasupai Falls. All of these tout the purest water this side of the Mississippi.

Her eyes widen in hope, but doubt lurks at the edges of her smile. She sinks in the community pool, the water carving through her, until she hits bottom and reluctantly propels herself to the surface.

* * *

“Don’t give up. She’s frustrated. She’s tried this for years,” the aunties comfort me as they teach me to drive after school. “Change isn’t for everyone.”

The aunties have vouched for Oma with CPS. They have years of experience faking normalcy and can provide things like proof of income and insurance coverage. I do not blame Oma. The aunties have never lost a child. They are whole. Oma is like the strainer she prepares my noodles in, or like the grater that shreds the cheese in raw, shaggy clumps.

* * *

When school lets out, we begin our vacation. But the hot springs are no help. Oma flops in the water and tries to make a show of it, but she can’t fool me. I see the holes in her as deep and raw as my own. None of our wounds have healed.

Oma sleeps in the backseat of the van, her feet in a bucket of ice, a damp towel draped around her neck to keep her cool.

I drive us west, following the sun until the road ends. It’s midnight when we reach the ocean. I pull Oma out of the car and can feel her lighten as her feet hit the sand. She sheds her girdle and housecoat, kerchief and curlers. The salt water buoys us, begins to fill our holes, sediment sealing us up. 

“She loved old movies,” Oma says, remembering.

“And mashed potatoes,” I smile, the memory catching in me, sticking to my ribs.

We float in the moonlight, treading in the memories of my mother, until at last we dive deep into the water, our scales iridescent as we swim.

* * *

Ⓒ Shelly Jones

Originally published in Wizards in Space, April 2024. Reprinted here by permission of the author.