My mother was casual when she told me she started The Climacteric. She explained that the process shouldn’t be too painful as if she were telling me the coffee she poured me shouldn’t be too hot. It pissed me off.

“I’ll have to switch to decaf and get used to not drinking caffeine every day,” she said, pulling a carton of International Delight from the refrigerator. She always took her coffee with super sweet flavored creamer. I took mine black.

My mother reaching the age of The Climacteric meant I only had a finite amount of time left with her. Why was she acting so chill? I began forming a list of chores in my head that I had to do over the next week to prepare to move back home. I would need to purchase a wheelchair, find someone with a pickup truck and visit Costco, maybe I could find some Texas boy on Tinder who lived in Jersey City. They all had trucks.

“Are you absolutely sure?” I asked my mother, watching her gracefully mix her coffee until the dark brown turned to milky white.

“That there’s no coffee in the ocean?” She chuckled, tapping the spoon on the rim, ding ding ding. “Unless Starbucks has really expanded their locations, then yes, I’m sure. She’s the only mermaid who stays on land.” She snorted before catching my eye and turned her gaze down, sucking in her lips in guilt. It was a habit that meant she wished she had kept her mouth shut.

I let her off the hook before she needlessly apologized. “No, Ma. Are you sure it’s time yet? It feels too early.”

“I’m right on time, my seastar. It happened to your grandmother after she turned 53 too.” She smiled into her mug. I knew she was looking forward to seeing her mother again, her older sisters, her aunties, but my chest ached in a way I didn’t want to admit to her.

I was about to lose her forever to the ocean.

The women in my family were only half-human. Once they reached The Climacteric, the other half started to show and thus began a slow and tedious transformation. It’s a fertility thing, the answer to the age-old juvenile question of procreation. My mother has lived only half her life, served her time on land, and now her ancestral home, her ancestral body, was reclaiming her. Taking her from me.

In the old stories they were called merrows, but over time, after colonization and immigration to America, the term “mermaid” became easier to go by. My mother still called herself a merrow. She was sentimental. She told me stories about the first merrows to come ashore to mate with human men since the male merrow was supposedly too ugly to mate with, but I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen one.

The merrows in those stories always died or simply returned to the sea without any mention of the babies. The stories never mentioned how those babies got dropped off on the docks for the brawny fishermen and handsome sailors to parent but were abandoned instead.

The stories never explained how eventually the merrows figured out it was easier to simply stay on land, raise their babies themselves, and return to the sea later. Over time, their bodies just evolved, and biology caught on. Practicality forced evolution’s hand. Like how humans were slowly losing our pinky toes. Now the transformation was automatic, commanded by time and hormones. And the babies were always daughters. No one really knew why, and we were told not to worry about it. We didn’t need men. Human men would only cage us or dissect us, my Aunt Cherry used to say.

The tradition was to pick a suitable mate, the more commitment-phobe the better––which was not difficult to find––get knocked up, say nothing, and wait for the man to inevitably leave on his own, never knowing he conceived a child with a mythical creature disguised as a human woman. Easy peasy. They did this for generations. Thus formed my matriarchal family. Aunt Silvie talked about the tradition as if it was a divine ritual that procured precious gifts: the gift of family, the gift of motherhood, the gift of a long-awaited life in the sea with your mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers. Merrows lived a long time. Once you hit that seawater, the aging process slowed, something about the preservation effects of brine, so there was little worry that our grandmother wouldn’t be alive anymore by the time my cousins have their turn.

Good for them, lucky them. Live long, happy, briny lives.

My aunts told me and my cousins about The Climacteric before we even got our periods. They warned us about the hot flashes, told us that we should savor our youth because once their transformation started, our freedom would be gone until the process was complete. And then our mothers would be gone in the sea for years and years until it was our turn to join them, and wouldn’t we forever regret not spending every second possible with our mothers?

I missed my Aunt Silvie and Aunt Cherry having their turns. My mother said it was okay and encouraged me to just focus on living my life and my studies up at Cornell, far away in Ithaca. Four hours by car, six by train. Growing up in Brooklyn made me desensitized to the city, and I was more interested in nature, the woods, mountains. Silence. I never visited home, and anyway, I didn’t want to bother my cousins who were all busy taking care of their mothers. I realized too late they could have probably used it. My second eldest cousin Chelsea also had her newborn daughter to care for, the only cousin to successfully procreate in her twenties. My mother texted me pictures of baby Willow, but I never went to see them in person. I was busy with school, trying to graduate summa cum laude. I probably would have just gotten in the way. I was always going to be alone anyway.

I always assumed I’d have to do this alone. I had to. But now I wasn’t so sure if I could. I mentally kicked myself. It didn’t matter, I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t ask for my cousins’ help after not showing up for them. Sitting with my mother at her coffee table on a Sunday morning, the small Brooklyn bayside neighborhood was quiet while everyone was at church, the sun blazing through the windows making my neck sweat. Pressure built in my skull. I had Advil in my bag, though I shouldn’t take it without food. Ah, fuck it. I pulled out the travel tube from my tote and popped two pills, swallowing them with a gulp of my coffee.

My mother leaned forward to put her hand over mine, which was clutched tight around my mug and starting to shake. “Vicky, please don’t worry. We’ll figure it out. We’ll be fine.” I knew she would be, but would I? Why was she so calm? It made me angrier. Irrationally angry. I took a deep breath. Counted to five.

“Ma, can I ask you something, and promise not to get upset?”

She frowned. “Alright. I can’t promise I won't have any feelings whatsoever. But I’ll try.”

“I don’t want you to think I’m accusing you of anything, or think I’m ungrateful, or that I don’t love you with everything in my heart. But I don’t think we’ve ever talked about this, and maybe it’s time.” I swallowed. My mother stared at me. She knew what was coming, and she gave me the space to say it, patient as a saint. “I just want to know, honestly, why you adopted me, knowing I wouldn’t be able to follow you home?”

She looked away, blinking back tears I knew would come, quicker than I expected.

It was never a secret to anyone that I was adopted. My mother never hid that from me. She thought it was better, more honest that way, and I agreed. Closed adoption, not a trace of my birth parents. She could have easily pretended, but she knew eventually the truth would come out, once I reached the age to grow a tail that would never come. It was what it was, and no one made a fuss about it. It’s not like I even resembled my mother, anyway. Next to her smooth light hair, upturned hazel eyes, and soft rounded figure, my short dark shag, rounded brown eyes, and gangly features stood apart. I was always still her daughter. She would always be my mother. She never once made me feel different.

But I was different. I wasn’t a fucking mermaid.

The bare fact of it sat in the stretching silence until she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

I nodded, knowing there wouldn’t be anything more to say. I got up, circled the table to stand over her, and wrapped my arms around her plump body, planting a kiss on her graying head.

*

Often as a child, my mother took me sailing up the East River, hoping to train my sea legs. I saw all the trash collected around the docks and floating in the water. Cans and beer bottles and plastic bags. My young anxious mind imagined one of those bags getting caught on my mother’s head and suffocating her. Later, in middle school, my science teacher showed us a documentary about ocean preservation. I became a loudmouthed environmentalist, verbally attacking anyone I witnessed littering or snuffing a cigarette on a boardwalk, telling them to care about other living beings for once in their selfish lives. My mother would always apologize on my behalf, but she wasn’t good at disciplining me. Eventually that youthful, energized activism turned into tired academic research and a friendless adulthood. All my cousins were friends with each other, but I was too young to hang out with them growing up. They didn’t dislike me, at least I thought they didn't, but I wouldn’t have considered us close.

That’s why my cousin Brandy surprised me by offering use of her truck.

“Believe me hun, you’re going to need it. I’ll go to Costco with you, we can have some girl time,” she said to me over the phone after I had officially moved back into my childhood home two weeks later. After a polite back and forth of refusals and insistence, I accepted and brought coffee to her apartment in Sheepshead Bay the next morning in thanks. I didn’t know what she liked, so I just got her a generic mocha latte. Mine was a large cold brew.

She greeted me with a beaming smile full of pearly straight teeth. All of my cousins were beautiful, though not exactly conventionally attractive. They all had an alluring quality and charisma that drew you to them, made you like them, and want them to like you. Brandy had brilliant hazel eyes set too far apart under long eyelashes that matched her thick shiny black hair. A pair of big gold hoops caught the light under the curled ends of her curtain bangs. She spoke with a slight lisp that made her more charming and approachable.

“How are you holding up, lil cuz?” She asked me after we buckled in and got on the road.

“I’m okay. I appreciate you taking the time to help me.”

“That’s what family’s for. You have no idea how much stuff you don’t even know you’re going to need, and you’ll probably need to make more trips than just this one, so feel free to call me whenever you need a ride. You don’t have your license, right?”

“I don’t, but I should get one soon. Everyone has a car upstate.”

“How are you getting to work and everything? What do you do again? Chemistry?”

“I test wastewater for its potential toxicity, it’s a lot of chemistry, yeah. And I live close to the lab I work at; I just bike a lot. Got a big basket for it.”

“Always the Green Girl. I’m glad you’re still doing something you love. That’s really awesome.”

I asked her about her job in return, a middle school history teacher. Apparently, the kids were uncontrollable the last few years. They didn’t know how to spell or sit still, and they threw a tantrum if they didn't immediately get what they wanted, which was usually their iPad.

“I don’t know what their parents are doing at home,” she said. “Honestly, I hate to say this, but some people just shouldn’t be parents if they don’t want to actually parent their kids.

I’m at my wit’s end.”

I asked about her sister, my cousin Chelsea, and niece, Willow. Brandy gushed about her niece, the little angelfish, already a good swimmer and eating seaweed. “She can’t get enough of the stuff. She calls it ‘sweeds,’ it’s so cute.”

“Does it make you excited to have your own daughter one day?” I asked, feeling warmed up to her, daring to ask a personal question. For a moment I thought she didn’t hear me, then realized she was just focusing on finding the exit.

“Um, no, not really,” she said. “To be honest with you Vick, I don’t think I want kids.”

“Oh,” I blinked. “I mean, yeah. That’s valid.” Maybe it was just because she was a teacher, but I assumed she was good with kids and wanted little ones of her own. There was also the glaring fact that we were told outright that having kids was important to keeping our species alive, but that never applied to me. I thought all my cousins were steadfast in following the matriarchal rules of succession. I didn’t know that much about her, it seemed.

We parked close to the entrance of the Costco Wholesale in Queens. Brandy led me through the aisles throwing various bulk boxes into the cart, some of which I already planned to buy (large towels, deep moisture lotion, a humidifier, mineral water, dried seaweed snacks) and some I wouldn’t have thought to consider (DVDs, a sleeping bag, a foot massager). While we shopped, she chatted airily, letting the brief tension from the car float away.

She told me about the experience she and Chelsea shared taking care of their mother, my Aunt Silvie, through her transformation. “It was ugly, and stinky.” She threw a large box of scented tea candles in the cart. “But every mermaid’s different, so you never know what’ll happen. Aunt Di-Di is so sweet and mellow. The mellow merrow, ha.” She snorted, and still, it was charming. “You might have an easier time than we did.”

My mother, Diana, was the youngest of her pod. Aunt Silvie was the eldest, technically my mother’s older half-sister from another father, the same as Brandy and Chelsea. The middle sister was Cheryl, who we all called Aunt Cherry. She named her daughter Daryl after the actress Daryl Hannah who played the mermaid in the movie Splash. Aunt Silvie mocked her endlessly over it. Aunt Cherry insisted that it was a coincidence, and the real reason is that she’s a huge Blade Runner fan. She was technically my mom and Aunt Silvie’s cousin, but because they were all in the same generation, they considered each other sisters. I could admit I was jealous of that bond and wondered why that never happened with me and my cousins. I told myself it was because of our age difference. Brandy, Chelsea, and Daryl were all in their early to mid-thirties, while I just turned 24. When we were younger and would see each other at family gatherings, parties, and holidays, I was just a baby to them. I wanted to think this was the reason, and not because of the other thing. My being human, and all.

“I was expecting stinky, to some degree, but ugly?” I said, wheeling the cart down the aisle. “Is it alright to call your mom ugly while she’s going through something like this?”

Brandy offered me a sympathetic smile. “It does no one any good to sanitize it and give you false expectations. You’ll see what I mean.”

Maybe that bond was forming now. The unfamiliar feeling of close sisterhood came upon me as Brandy led me to the checkout line and told me to wait while she got us soft pretzels. She was being so nice after I did nothing for her in the past. I looked into the heaps of items in the cart, feeling unsettled by the amount of disposables, plastics, all the stuff I was purchasing, but bit my tongue since Brandy was helping me. I didn’t want to seem ungrateful.

*

The first week was, as Brandy predicted, mellow. My mom and I enjoyed a lot of quality time, ordered takeout from Kushi Asian Fusion, watched early 2000’s rom-coms, played cards, and read each other’s tarot every day. I took family medical leave from work, telling my boss there was a sudden emergency. She thought my mother was dying, and I was caring for her in her last days. It wasn’t too far from the truth.

The second week came quickly, and my mother started singing in her sleep. It wasn’t pleasant singing, more like a pagan ballad of long sharp notes interspersed with hiccups. I started taking melatonin and wearing earplugs. Her skin was drying out, so every evening before bed I sat her on the toilet and put lotion on her legs, the humidifier hissing away. She hummed to me while I worked. Her legs were thick and short, with cellulite puckering the width of skin under her buttocks. Her ankles were swollen, and feet were callused. I put them in the foot massager and let the machine knead her feet for ten minutes. Afterwards, I painted her toenails with nail strengthening polish and applied cuticle cream.

“Gold or silver?” I asked, holding up two bottles of nail polish, kneeling at her feet. She always preferred the shiny metallics.

“You know that isn’t necessary, my seastar. It’s not gonna matter how nice my toes look soon enough.”

“I want to do it, Ma. You deserve to enjoy every special foot luxury while you can. So, gold then? Since you did silver last time.”

“You’re a good daughter,” she told me as I unscrewed the top. Her voice was strained.

“Maybe I did something right.”

Brandy had warned me about the dramatics.

“Oh hush,” I said, grabbing her big toe, “now hold still.”

*

Brandy came by again a few more times after her first visit, but with her school requiring her to do end-of-year dance chaperone duties, her nights got busy helping the kids decorate the school gym. So, Chelsea decided it was time to step in. They must have previously discussed a schedule.

Chelsea came by the house with her daughter Willow near the end of the first month. My mother’s skin was drying up and at that point, no amount of lotion, humidity, and mineral water was enough to hydrate her.

“She needs to be scrubbed down and exfoliated to get all that dead skin off. Trust me, it’s faster with two people. And it’s easy for me since I’m short.” Chelsea was blessed with a well-endowed figure, but she was so short one could mistake her for a child if she wore baggy clothes. Her hair was long and curled, the same bright shade of red as Willow’s thin braids. Chelsea and Brandy must have each taken their respective father’s looks, but they both had the family’s sparkling hazel eyes.

My cousin sat Willow down on the floor in our living room, pointing a finger in her face as she instructed her to behave, while I turned on a Disney movie to play for her in the background. Willow must have been five or six years old if my math was right, though she looked younger. Chelsea shoved an iPad shielded by a thick plastic blue case into her lap. Even with the movie playing on the big screen, Willow’s attention immediately locked onto a game with bubbles and candy.

I tried to contain my relief as Chelsea helped me lead my mother into the bathroom, turning on the faucet as I situated Ma on the tub. Only one month in and already I felt completely lost, drowning in a whirlpool of lotion and towels and singing. How did I ever think I could get through this alone? Did Brandy and Chelsea step in like this when Daryl took care of Aunt Cherry, less than a year after they said goodbye to Aunt Silvie?

An intrusive, nasty thought crossed my mind, a thought about how my cousins came to help my mother because they didn’t expect me to do it. Maybe they thought I wasn’t capable. The only non-mermaid, absent for her aunts, why would she be there for her mother? Why wouldn’t I be here, though? How could I not? She’s my mother.

She was grouchy as we tried to get her in the sudsy water. The more time went on, the less herself my mother seemed. She snapped at me when I gripped her arm too hard, or when I walked too fast for her. Chelsea said not to let it bother me, that it was normal.

“My mom was way bitchier,” she said as we turned on the faucet. She brought special exfoliating wash towels that she bought in Chinatown. My mother’s skin had started peeling as if it was healing from a bad sunburn. Flakes of dead skin were all over her bed, I had to vacuum the covers and mattress before I could wash them. Chelsea and I lathered my mother up with aloe soap. As we scrubbed, she began singing. It was a nice tune, a radio song from the 80’s, though I didn’t know what exactly.

“It’s nice of you to paint her toes,” Chelsea said when we were done. “I hope you know it won’t last long. But it’s nice you did it.”

*

Chelsea was right about the toenails.

In the second month, my mother’s legs started growing scales. They sliced through the skin, thin and veiny and bloody, until they popped out so a stronger scale could grow in its place. My mom needed to shed three layers of scales before they would be strong enough to stay, and all the while the skin from her pelvis to her thighs was beginning to fuse together.

I ordered the wheelchair online to be delivered. It arrived at our front door in a box and I sat on the floor for an hour screwing it together, testing it out by slamming myself down onto the seat to make sure it would hold my mother’s weight. The tools and screws littered the carpet among the hundreds of translucent scales. I couldn’t vacuum them like I could with the skin flakes. They were too sharp and ripped the interior bag. So, I picked them up by hand as if I were on the beach collecting shells.

No longer able to wear underpants, my mother lay naked inside the polyester sleeping bag on her bed before my third cousin, Daryl, came over to help me transition her into the wheelchair. She brought rubber flippers with her. She told me they were a hand-me-down pair originally bought by Brandy, shared with Chelsea, then given to Daryl, and now to me.

“Start a routine,” she instructed. “Every morning at dawn go to the pool and swim ten laps with the flippers on. It’ll make you feel closer to her and pay off later. You’ll see. I like the pool at King’s Bay, but wherever you want to go is up to you.”

I could see why swim training would pay off for them later, but I couldn’t see why it would matter for me. I thanked her for them anyway and stashed them in my closet.

After Daryl helped me get my mother into the wheelchair, we sat down for tea. She had flat, straight blonde hair cut bluntly at her collarbone, and full pink lips that were chapped. Like the actress she was named after, she was striking in appearance, with the family’s shining hazel eyes, but spacey and distracted in mannerism. As we sat and chatted, I noticed she often had her hand at her mouth and thought she was just focusing deeply on the conversation, a deep thinker. After a while, though, I realized her knuckle was pushing her bottom lip up in between her teeth to rip the skin off until it bled. When she stood up to leave, flakes of her lip skin fell from her lap onto the floor.

I decided to do a deep clean. I vacuumed the kitchen and my cousin’s lip flakes, and wearing rubber gloves picked up my mother’s scales. They were becoming pinker the more she shed. At night I unzipped her sleeping bag and collected the scales that accumulated there. Her legs had joined together a little bit more, only the bush of pubic hair marking where her legs once began.

As I scooped out the scales, I noticed something different in the pile. A flake of gold. I glanced at my mother’s toes. Her toenails had come off. The tips of her toes were pink and shiny from the fresh exposed skin. I put a dot of antibiotic ointment on each pink toe and wrapped her feet with a bandage so her shedding scales wouldn’t irritate them.

“I’m sorry,” my mother whimpered. I glanced up from the bandage I just secured and saw she was crying.

“Mom, it’s okay. I don’t mind.”

“It’s disgusting to have to clean up after your mother like this, I know. I did it. I’m sorry you’re doing this, you don’t have to. You don’t have to take care of me, just wheel me out into the street and I’ll go to a shelter, it’s better for you that way.” The dramatics were getting worse like this by the day.

I shushed her, telling her not to say such silly things, and wheeled her into the living room where I left tea cooling. Where were such horrible thoughts coming from? Did grandma say such things to her? I couldn’t understand why she felt so guilty. Though, maybe she expected me to do what I did in college: avoid it. Stay away. Live a human only life. But how could she think that of me? I’m her daughter. No, I wouldn’t let her see anything bother me.

I handed her the mug and sat on the reclining chair next to her.

“What should we watch?” I asked, clicking through the movie playlist.

“Don’t,” she was still crying. “Just leave me, please. You shouldn’t see me like this. I don’t want anyone to see me like this, fat and gross and disgusting.”

“You are not gross and disgusting. Drink your chamomile.” I didn’t know why I suddenly felt angry at her, but the apologizing and self-deprecation really irritated me. Of course, I would take care of her. Who else would? I didn’t have any siblings or a father to step in, and I could never ask my cousins to do more than they already were. They did their duties. I had to do mine.

I was a daughter of this family after all, wasn’t I?

*

I decided to take the flippers to the pool at dawn the next morning, if anything to just blow off steam with a good workout. I intended to do ten laps as Daryl recommended but found that one was all I could manage without needing to stop for breath.

It took the entire next month to manage ten laps. During that time, my mother’s legs had completely joined together, looking as if she’d been born with conjoined legs. The scales stopped popping out finally but were now sticking out at odd angles because I still had her mostly living in the sleeping bag. She insisted it wasn’t uncomfortable, and Brandy said they should flatten out over time. The important thing was that I watched out for any patches or bald spots. Going back into the ocean with missing scales was bad for her health, and also bad for her welcoming. It was considered bad luck, apparently. Also, I assumed it would have been seen as a sign that she wasn’t taken care of properly. I did a full tail check every morning when I woke her up after I returned from the pool and every night after tea. I began letting her sit a while longer in the bath, listening to her sing, sometimes singing with her.

“What was Mermaw like?” I asked her one night, sitting on the toilet next to her. She’d told me much about her mother throughout the years since I’d never met her. I knew she was petite, classy, no-nonsense, that she would take my mom and Aunt Cherry and Aunt Silvie to Chinatown in Manhattan to shop for gold jewelry because that’s where she insisted the good stuff was. She wore her hair long, down to her waist, and was always doing Sudoku puzzles on the subway. All this I knew. So, my mom knew what I meant when I asked her, what was she like when this happened?

“She was… a lot,” my mother said. “Insufferable, actually. I never did anything right by her. Silvie was her favorite. She’s the spitting image of mom in her younger years, but taller.” “Do you think it was easier, having two sisters to help you?”

“No, no, it was too crowded. Someone was always getting told to piss off, and usually it was me or Cherry. We’d take drives down to Coney Island to cool off.” She swirled her fingers through the water. “I’m sorry I didn’t give you siblings to help you.”

“You know I never cared about being an only child. I don’t care now. Look at us, no one’s telling anyone to piss off. At least not tonight.”

She smiled, a real smile that I hadn’t seen in days. “You have the girls, at least.” She meant my cousins. “They’re your sisters, always remember that.”

*

The end of the third month marked some important threshold that called for a gathering. Brandy, Daryl, Chelsea, and Willow all came to the house with cupcakes and wine and cheesy mermaid-themed party accessories. They put a fin-shaped hat on my mother’s head that made her laugh. Chelsea told her she was a good sport, and that Aunt Silvie refused to wear something so childish.

“I like it, it’s cute,” my mother said. Brandy snapped a selfie with her, a shellfie! Say sweeds! Chelsea plopped Willow on my mother’s lap and Daryl took a Polaroid instant photo of the moment, slapping it on the fridge under a seagull magnet before it finished developing.

The whole ordeal made my stomach ache. I had no idea there was such a tradition. Where was I for Aunt Silvie’s and Aunt Cherry’s tail parties? No one bothered to let me know they existed, let alone when they were happening. Back then I was six hours away without a car, but still, if I had known how big a deal this was, I would have made the effort. I’d have boarded the train and come home for the weekend.

I lightly mentioned this to Brandy when I had a moment alone with her in the kitchen, trying not to seem like I was complaining or looking for pity.

“It’s usually just a thing between mother and daughter, don’t worry Vick,” Brandy told me in a hushed voice, like she was bringing me into a conspiracy. “Daryl didn’t come when Chelsea and I did this for our mom, and we didn’t go to Aunt Cherry’s.” I nodded, feeling better, but suddenly self-conscious. “It was Chelsea’s idea to crash Aunt Di-Di’s party. I think secretly she just wants to show off Willow, but she insisted it was important for the four of us to spend more time together.”

Chelsea came into the kitchen then as if summoned, exaggerating exhaustion.

“I left Willow with Aunt Di-Di and Daryl, I need a break. That should be fine, right? They can watch her fine enough, right?” I don’t know why she was asking us. I reassured her that Willow would be fine. “Christ Almighty,” she swore, pouring herself a glass of wine, “I love my daughter to death but ladies, let me warn you, you’re gonna be wiped off your feet once your little ones come.”

I glanced at Brandy. She caught my eye and lightly shook her head. Chelsea turned to me and said, “Vicky, are you seeing anyone? How’s the dating scene upstate?”

I laughed, because it was a ridiculous thought that I’d be seriously dating anyone, but also I wanted to keep the mood light. “No, there’s no one.”

“Well, you know, it’ll happen when you least expect it. How’s your mom doing these days? Think it’s almost time?”

“Um,” I sipped some old tea that I’d left on the table. “I kind of hoped she would know when it’s time. To be honest, I have no clue how to tell.”

“You’ll know,” Chelsea winked. “How’s her appetite? She’s eating okay?”

“She’s eating alright, but it changes every day. Last week she wanted only seafood, but it had to be fresh, so I bought a cart-load of expensive imported tuna from J-Mart. The way she was going through food, I thought she would eat it all within a few days. But the next day she told me no seafood, accused me of force-feeding her her own kin, and suddenly decided she was a vegetarian. I still have some tuna in the freezer, if you want it.” They laughed, smiling like we all now shared an inside joke. “And I had to express order more seaweed packs. She wants so many different flavors. Did you know they make teriyaki roasted seaweed?”

“Oh God, that was our mom’s favorite,” Brandy giggled. “She couldn’t get enough.”

The three of us forged something in that moment. We were connected in a way we hadn’t ever been before, not even as children. We weren’t fully formed people back then, just cousins, playmates, other kids in the vicinity. Now we were adults, and it took more than being close in vicinity to be a family. Walls had come down, and the air felt lighter. My smile felt softer, easier.

“You know, Vick,” Chelsea said, her tone tightening the air just slightly, “I’m kind of jealous of you.” Brandy reached out to her, squeezing her shoulder. Whatever Chelsea was admitting, they’d talked about it before.

“What is there to be jealous about?” I asked.

She shrugged, pretending to be casual about something she obviously wanted to spill out onto my shiny clean floors. “You get to watch Willow grow up.”

Oh. Why hadn’t I considered this before? In years’ time, I might be Willow’s only family member, unless I or Brandy had daughters.

I would be Willow’s only family.

“I’ll be there for her,” I promised. I didn’t yet know what that entailed, if Willow would even want me in her life, but I wasn’t about to tell her mother otherwise.

Chelsea smiled. It was strained.

“I’m jealous of you too,” I said. “You get to meet Mermaw.”

She nodded without meeting my eyes, Brandy too, like they were acknowledging a sacred mission they knew their whole lives they were destined to carry. “We’re gonna tell her all about you,” Chelsea said.

“All of them,” Brandy added. Mermaw, great-mermaws, great aunts. I couldn't fathom the generations of merrows waiting for them, who I will never know. “They’re going to love you.”

*

The rug needed another vacuum that night. Willow liked to crush her goldfish and pour them over her ice cream, which sounded like a bad combination and a little violent, but I didn’t question a child’s appetite after adhering to my mother’s cravings. She wanted egg salad sandwiches for dinner. I told her egg wasn’t vegetarian, and she replied, “Since when was I a vegetarian?”

She insisted it was the dry air and the high altitude that was disrupting her memory. “It just makes me woozy, and I can’t focus. I’m sorry.”

I told her, for the millionth time, not to apologize. I turned off the vacuum and put it away. “Okay, teatime.”

I had just turned to go into the kitchen when my mother said, “I was selfish.”

I looked back at her. “You want shellfish?” I knew what she said, but if I could twist it into a joke, I could offset the oncoming storm.

She was looking down into her lap, where the top of the sleeping bag was bunched around her waist. “When I adopted you. I was being selfish.”

She must have overheard the conversation in the kitchen earlier. I sat down on the couch beside her wheelchair, putting my hand over her knees. “I don’t think you were selfish. It was your choice.”

“You know…” she hiccupped, “why I couldn’t get pregnant. How long I tried. I even did IVF.”

I braced for the heavy winds coming. “Yes, I remember you told me. It didn’t work.”

“Silvia and Cherry both had daughters already. It was my turn. My duty. There’s not many of us left, you know. The girls in Staten Island, they all moved down to Florida. We knew a pod down in Jersey, but they’re down to just two, even smaller than we are. Only one of them could get pregnant. You remember Sandy’s daughter Angela?” I didn’t but nodded for her to go on. “We’re almost gone. All gone. And I felt horrible, I couldn’t do anything. And I was so jealous of my sisters, I wouldn’t talk to them for years.” These were stories I didn’t know. I wondered if it was okay to let her go on admitting this, but I found myself wanting to hear it, needing to hear it.

“Silvia pulled me back in, after Brandy was born. Once I saw little baby Brandy, I knew I didn’t just want to have a daughter for the sake of having one. I wanted to be a mother. I wanted it so bad. Even if you weren’t a mermaid, I didn’t care. I just wanted what my sister had. Motherhood. It was so selfish. I thought it would be okay, that you would be a sea-faring girl, a diver, I don’t know. I had this fantasy of taking you with me, somehow. But it’s not possible.” She shook her head, and a tear landed on the top of my hand. “I can sense it, the pull. It’s so far down. I have to swim so far down into the depths, farther than you could ever follow. I don’t think I can come back. I’m too old. I’m already too old. I’ve ruined your life, by forcing you into being my daughter. I’m so sorry.”

I shook my head, squeezing her. “No, Ma, please don’t say that. I have a wonderful life.

You gave that to me.”

“You have no father because of me.”

“I don’t need a father! Look at me! Look at us! Aren’t we enough?” I held her hands tightly, cradled her head to my bosom, shushed her like I was the mother, and she the child. “It’s you and me, Ma, you and me.”

*

Dawn, Sunday morning, early August.

The water was warmed by the heat of summer. The boardwalk was empty except for me, pushing my mother along in her wheelchair, and my cousins. They would stand watch to make sure no one approached. My mother was completely naked, except for a small towel covering her waist and pelvis. She didn’t seem to mind that her top was exposed. We went to a dock off Gravesend Bay. It wasn’t a touristy, beachy area. We were surrounded by parking lots and shopping centers not yet open for the day.

Together the four of us lifted my mother out of the chair and carefully sat her on the edge of the dock.

I kneeled next to her and bowed my head for her to lean her forehead against mine. We were still for several moments, soaking in the salty breeze, the sun, the briny scent of the bay. My cousins stood watch, silent, our protectors. My mother pulled back first, and kissed my forehead. I sat back on my bottom to pull on my flippers, dressed in a full-coverage wetsuit and a pair of diving goggles. I’d been training as Daryl told me to every morning. Sitting side by side with my mother, I admired her fully formed tail. It was pink like a salmon, thick and meaty, the scales mostly flattened out now. She was luminescent in the morning light.

We pushed ourselves over the dock and into the water. She dropped without any hesitation. Adrenaline, I supposed. I could sense the eager thirst in her eyes the second I saw her that morning. It was time.

Under the water, I saw her float. She was weightless, majestic. The fat of her stomach rippled, and her arms stroked above her head gracefully. Her breasts appeared full and round without the weight of gravity pulling them down. I was reminded of a fertility goddess sculpture I once saw at the Brooklyn Museum. She brought her hands together, thumb to thumb, and used them to guide her body in one large stroke that ended with her tailfin flipping up. I copied her motion, trusting her instinct, and tried to keep up with her. But she was a natural-born swimmer.

This is why Daryl told me to train, I realized. For this moment. I wanted to keep swimming with her, as far down and out as I could go, all the way to the ocean. I was running out of air. Once I could no longer keep going, I let my body just drift, watching her swim ahead of me. I was afraid she would keep swimming without turning around. My eyes were struggling, the goggles blurring from some water leak. Tears, I realized once I felt the water’s heat. My eyes were blurring from tears, flooding the inside of my goggles. I could see my mother only distantly now, a blur, a mirage, a fantasy. My legs paddled desperately. I had to go up. I needed air, needed to breathe. But I couldn’t take my eyes away. If I looked away, she might disappear completely. I kept looking.

She turned and spiraled in the water, making formations I never imagined she could do. I saw her wave, and blow bubble kisses.

I never saw a more beautiful creature.