Captives

after DFW

Because downpours and construction bulwarks shooed us 
from the ostentatious front entrance, we followed schools
of children and parents through a side door into the innards 
of Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium. The main hall frothed
with victories—spring break and procreation; sometimes 
one is made to feel one’s gayness. Try cruising Scenes
from the Rainforest or Life in the Great Lakes—
all babies and beasts behind glass: the crocodile, bifurcated
by a meniscus, part snout, mostly dragon; the boy with popcorn
drawing cave paintings on the window, all boy.
“Is that the one that can eat a human?” someone asked,
as a sub lolled by, flashing, as it turned, a fence
of neon-pink crescents from scales the size and shine of quarters.
Young couples in cliques huddled around the dyeing
poisonous tree frogs encased in 3D-printed skins.
Proverbial multitudes of fish thronged in the larger cells. 
Mark wondered how often, and what happens, when they die, 
who fishes them out, and if they become snacks for sharks.
A waste of alabaster shells pried open and licked clean
lay on the manufactured seabed near the rock lobster and star,
still with guilt. No need to spot the octopus—she clung
to glass, crouched high in her public lair, a voguing Medusa
of pale purple liquid stone, pink chiffon and suckers,
one eye half-closed above her dirigible snout. At the food court
we purchased water in aluminum cans, ate “Chicago Dogs,”
and shared a basket of peppered fries before heading
to the main attractions: “Get ready for shit,” I said,
as we entered the Hall of Penguins, a tableau vivant
covered, as I had predicted, in shit. The landbound birds 
posed on faux stone, bilious, bitchy. We couldn’t tell 
if they hated us, or if Nature had soured them. Nevertheless, 
they steeled our fealty to the otters, sleek, black, permanently wet,
with paws, like our dog, if he liked water, and could see. 
“They have no teeth,” said the instructive voice of a woman
as we stood captivated by the freewheeling, amphibious pets. 
We believed her, even though we could see the whites
of their tiny fangs as they crewed by on backs. Then she said,
“They don’t have brains either.” We believed this less,
and had to use our own brains to puzzle the hazards 
of eavesdropping at an aquarium stuffed with kids.
If you’ve never seen the underbelly of a beluga whale,
you don’t know white suede, the bend of cartilage, 
nor the way bare bones look wrapped in blankets. 
One of them poked its head above the surface, side-eyed us, 
sighed, then melted into the pool. “They can see you,” 
someone said, confirming suspicions. Soon rumors flew 
about the dolphin-show amphitheater filling up. 
When we got there, the cast was already stunting 
for scattered applause and rewards from seal-suited trainers. 
On the other side of the Vegas-sized tank, plate glass windows,
arranged in an expansive arc, held back Lake Michigan’s
lackluster green. We picked a steppe of concrete to sit on. 
The audience swelled of exhausted families in need of things 
that didn’t involve walking, waiting in line, or forking over cash, 
hollering names like Hayden, or arresting delinquent flesh
and blood with bare hands. A Voice of God (again, a woman’s)
warned us of the show’s imminent start. Ushers penned us in
from the front. Mark noted a change in lighting. Then,
as though the ghost of John G. Shedd himself were being roused 
from the grave, the largest curtain the world has ever seen
descended over the arc of windows, creating, recursively, 
an artificial scene within the scene we were already in. 
Upbeat music cued the Voice of God, who turned out to be
blond. She broke the ice by splitting the audience into factions
with a referendum on dolphins: Freshwater mammals, or salt?
The doubt and discord a single question can sow on its own
was wild, so we sympathized with the pack, somewhere in the middle,
whose cheers for “freshwater” drew giggles from the know-it-alls,
and from the Voice of God, an expression spanning teacherly grace 
and regret. “Okay… Now, who thinks it’s saltwater?”
The issue settled, trainers lifted arms in praise and whistled
until the dolphins embarrassed Olympians by vaulting eye-level
with the nosebleeds, dashing across the skim like a pair of
unmanned jet skis, weightless, joyous. The Voice of God 
proceeded with more about the dolphins, their anatomy 
and diet, how fast they can swim, and the vast neighborhood 
of the Pacific. Everything but their names—Harmony, Kri, 
Katrl (as in Kim), Munchkin, and Makoa—these had to be gleaned
from the website. Then came chipper prophesies on global warming
and what we, humans, could do about it. The words 
floated above our heads like notes rolled up in plastic bottles 
set loose on a listless sea—Take it or leave it.—as two white bellies 
began moonwalking in sync to rapt cheers. That’s when Mark 
broached the question we’d skirted that morning when deciding to spend
an afternoon and a hundred bucks on a trip to the aquarium.
What, he asked, were the ethics of captivity? We chewed on this,
noting, first, the soothing predictability and abundance of food. 
Second, the merciful absence of predation, if, that is, you discredit
the lower beings on the food chain, the krill and plankton,
whitefish and mollusks, kidnapped by the ton to stuff
the aquarium’s keynote denizens so full they appear (to the guests,
at least) happy, fat, wrapped in purposeful safety. I despaired.
“Remember the zoo in Puerto Vallarta?” Mark grimaced.
Then our thoughts bent toward more selfish considerations. 
“Consider this,” I said, “we’re captives, too, here in the aquarium.” 
Mark agreed. “Then there’s the city, Illinois, ‘America,’” I said,
in air quotes. “The planet and the universe,” Mark added. 
“The whole ‘mortal coil’ thing,’” I said, not squandering a chance
to use air quotes again and cite Shakespeare. Just then,
one of the dolphins rocketed into the sky, a glossy missile.
It did a double-twisting double flip, nosedived flawlessly
into its Ph-perfect, three million-gallon home, then raced
to the dead fish swinging from a trainer’s hand. Nothing,
we realized, could unknot these considerable problems.
And anyway, we wanted to believe in it, in the aquarium,
in the theater and sincerity of interspecies encounters 
framed by science, and fun. We understood that, of all the debris
washing up at our feet, it was relativity—its ample everydayness,
its mesmerizing slicks of ambergris, the casual way it packages
contradictions and lets them go on as they are, as they probably will be, 
with or without us—that we’d bought into. Of all the creatures there, 
not the beluga, nor the abalone, but the alibi, we learned,
was the best-trained, most tame, and, when called, would
come, breaching tide for rock, like Ariel in that scene
from The Little Mermaid when she can’t stop singing about
how out-of-this-world it would be to shed fin and be free.