I didn’t believe her. How could I? It was all so outlandish. Fish eyes! A tiny purse! 

And yet, she was such a precocious child, or so we were told, that I wondered. 

As new parents, we didn’t have other children for reference. Her first word was “Octi,” for the crocheted octopus she eventually carried everywhere. One of its olive green spirally legs, “the right one,” was an inch longer from her continual twisting and fingering it, always with a far-off look on her round little face. 

She walked at nine months, early according to Penelope Leach’s well-worn advice book, our generation’s Dr. Spock.

And much earlier, at two weeks, she rolled over from her padded bedding on the wicker “coffee table” trunk, startling her dad, who jumped up to catch her but accidentally landed on an empty drinking glass with his bare foot, severing an artery. I wrapped them both up and drove to the ER in spite of the remnants of a February blizzard and my post-op restrictions about driving.

She kept us guessing what first would be next.

She was four when we had the talk. Or maybe three, now that I think about it. 

The ruffled muslin curtains had been drawn in her little upstairs bedroom on Dodge Avenue. Drowsy from her warm bubble bath and snuggled into her clean nightie, she’d heard my bedtime story and song and finished her child prayers. 

Her eyes were starting to fall, heavy with the pleasant fatigue of a satisfying day of child work: helping me dust and cook, making voices for her Teddy Ruxpin characters, taking an afternoon stroll to the park, supper with Poppy and me.

As I twisted the dresser light’s switch one click to make the tiny bulb inside the train engine glow, she whispered. “Remember when I had that little purse, Mama?”

I turned around in surprise. “A purse? Nooo, what did it look like?”

“It was hard.”

Hard? My eyes darted around the room‘s shelves mentally sorting through gifts from overindulgent grandparents, aunts, and uncles. What was I forgetting? A little Easter purse from Auntie Amanda? An old-fashioned clasp purse in the dress-up bag from Mamaw?

I leaned over and smoothed her hair. “No, sweetie, I don’t remember a purse.”

I pulled her flowery, quilted bedspread higher and tucked it around her little body.

“You know, the fish one,” she went on.

“The fish!” I said with a laugh. “I don’t remember a purse shaped like a fish.” 

What was she thinking about? The only thing she had that related to fish were her copies of Rainbow Fish and One Fish, Two Fish…

“No,” she corrected me with a gentle scold. “It wasn’t shaped like a fish; it was a dried-up fish. I kept things in it.”

My eyes narrowed. Where in the world would she get such an idea? Was this…?  No, surely not. But just on the off-chance, as her eyes got heavier and she struggled to keep them open, I prodded.

“What else did you have?”

“Fish eyes,” she murmured, snuggling her shoulders lower under her covers.

Fish eyes! This was getting weird.

“What about fish eyes, sweetie?”

“We ate ‘em,” she replied groggily.

I recoiled without thinking, my eyes huge. It was almost too much. Was she talking about some past life? A time where her people had dried fish and she’d played with one, and then eaten the eyes because they were so poor? Did people do that? Had they ever done that? I’d read about young children having memories from past lives, but I wasn’t sure if I believed it. And not my child, who looked so perfectly content, tucked in for bed.

A gentle smile played on her lips, as if she were remembering some past delight.

“They were candy.”   

She sighed in satisfaction, wriggled, and then drifted into heavy, rhythmic breathing that took her to a different world. 

A world I would never know, and the first of many more.