They call me Fishgirl

Miracle Child

I was born on the night of a great storm.

Almost 15 years ago Miami was struck by rain it had never seen before. Daddy was sure it would turn our rundown apartment into rubble when it was done. The storm had started small. A light drizzle to cool off the thick summer heat, but too quickly it turned into hard fat raindrops and twisting cutting winds. It smashed windows and tore the roofs right off of houses as easily as a person takes off a hat. Thunder rumbled and lightning crackled bright blue, illuminating the black clouds filled with more water to pour on the city.

That is when I came.

Momma had me under the sea away from humans, where her sisters helped bring me forth. Not that she needed it. I was her 173rd child and she knew all there was to know about childbirth. As soon as I was out she swam to the surface and held me high in her hands so her gods could judge me. I never understood how anyone could judge a baby not even a minute old, but that was how mermaids did things. When no lightning was sent to strike me down she whispered an ancient spell summoning a huge white stork, 15 feet tall and smarter than any normal bird. She then wrapped me in seaweed , put me in a white conch shell large enough to hold a baby snugly, and let me go. The stork flew me high in the sky, right into the storm, it's huge wings beating against the winds. Daddy says that Momma should have waited until the storm passed, that it was too dangerous for a baby to travel in, yet I still made it to his doorstep.

At home he and my stepmom were huddled in the bathtub because if a storm decides to blow down a building the bathroom always survives. Yet, something called for him to go outside. It wasn't a voice, he'd say, more like a feeling. Like something was tugging at his soul. When he opened the door there I was, tiny, brown and laying on his doorstep in my shell. Above me the stork stared at Daddy with knowing black eyes.

"What is it Chris?" asked my stepmom, Patricia, coming to the door. At this time she would have been twisting the wedding ring that Daddy had just given her.

"It's a baby." Daddy breathed, his voice barely a whisper.

"Who's baby is that?" she look nervously from the stork, to me, to my father.
Also in the shell was a note written by my mother that said:

Dear Chris, meet Jameesha, our daughter.
She is too young to stay with me. So, you will raise
her until she is old enough to join
the other mermaids under the sea.
Love, Isisa.

"I suppose she is mine." And with that daddy lifted my shell off the ground and carried me into the house. And the stork took flight, back to the ocean from whence it came.

Daddy always says that I shouldn't have survived my trip to land that night. It was impossible. But here I am alive and breathing. So he calls me his miracle child. But I don't feel anything like a miracle.

It almost sounds like a fairytale when he talks about it, but that can't be true either. If this was a fairytale then I would be a pretty, have money, everyone would love me, but this is real life and in reality I am just a chubby black girl.

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