Alexia Arthurs has published fiction and nonfiction in Small Axe, the Paris Review, and the Paris Review Daily. She is the Paris Review’s 2017 Plimpton Prize winner. Her debut short story collection, How to Love a Jamaican, is forthcoming (Ballantine, 2018).
When this story ended—or when it began, because who on June Plum Road could tell the difference?—the mermaids were floating at the top of Old Henry’s tank. The green hair of one and the pink hair of the other fanned out on the water’s...