Black Cat

To Reb, Nom, Woodrow, and Akito for telling me what scares them.

“When I was a child, I had a natural goodness of soul which led me to love animals — all kinds of animals, but especially those animals we call pets, animals which have learned to live with men and share their homes with them. There is something in the love of these animals which speaks directly to the heart of the man who has learned from experience how uncertain and changeable is the love of other men.”

-Edgar Allan Poe “The Black Cat”

If you could understand … well, Mimi was the only family I ever had. I don’t really know what she was to me, specifically, other than the woman who raised me. She told me she was my grandmother most of the time. Sometimes she suggested she was an aunt or a put-upon family friend. My father was in prison; my father was dead; my father was an asshole who left; my father was a hero; no one knows who my father was. But my mother … we never spoke of my mother. The mention of my mother was the comatose of a stone.

It was only just the two of us, though older cousins and uncles would come to stay occasionally. Notable among them was Uncle Stan because he came to stay so often and for so long. He always brought me Black Jack gum and would say, “It’s the good stuff, kiddie.” I didn’t like the poisonous dark flavor of the licorice gum. Even if I didn’t see Uncle Stan, I knew when he was visiting because the house was a mustardy phlegm-colored miasma of Pall Malls and Natural Light. I didn’t like Uncle Stan.

The cats that roamed our backyard were my best companions. Mimi said they came around because there were vermin in the storm cellar, which was why I shouldn’t chase them down there. So, I kept a respectful distance as they bathed in the sun or made lazy circles around the yard. I watched them chatter at the birds. One or two of the cats would let me pet them. We’d sit in the sunlight together, watching clouds and I would tell them of my troubles. Except the black cat – he never let me come close. There was once a little orange cat that seemed to like me the most. He would follow me around and mewl. I named him Rusty. I remember asking Mimi if he could come inside and sleep with me.

“That’s disgusting,” she snarled. “Why on earth would you want to sleep with a fleabag whose only purpose is to chase off vermin?”

“Because I love him,” I said. “And he loves me, too,” I added, thinking it would add heft to my argument.

“Don’t trust anything that loves you, silly girl. If it loves you, it needs you for something. It will use you for something.” But then I would think, “Mimi must love me.” Why else would you cling to a thing so tightly? Especially a thing like me.

A few weeks later, Rusty just disappeared. I never knew what became of him.

I didn’t meet any people my own age until I was twelve or thirteen years old. I couldn’t have been sure. I was never sure when I was born. Most of the time, my birthday was October 6. But a few times, Mimi told me it was August 17. Once, she threw me a party of just the two of us on March 6. Said it was a special day for me, but never told me why. So, it was late August one year and a woman who wasn’t an aunt or cousin came to our front door. Mimi’s voice was the voice she used when there was no need to argue, but the lady at the front door didn’t know that. She handed Mimi an envelope and left. Then, Mimi called me to the kitchen table to tell me I had to go to school. She said something about nosy neighbors and bullshit bureaucracy before she pinched me hard on my knee.

“You will tell me everything,” she squeezed hard right above the kneecap of my right knee, “EVERYTHING that happens every day at that school.” Her eyes bore a hot fire into me.

I went to school. I learned that it was a little strange to not have a mother or a father or brothers and sisters. I wasn’t the only one who was raised by a grandmother, but I was the only one who didn’t also have someone else. Anyone else. Then I met Erika. Erika had an aunt and uncle an no one else. We talked about being lonely. We wondered what it was like to have a sister or a mother. Her uncle made her nervous, too. She told me about her pet dog. I told her about the cats that came and went through our backyard. We talked about our teachers and our classmates and started sitting together at lunch. Erika gave me a bracelet she braided from colorful threads and said it meant we were friends. I had a friend.

One day, Erika asked me to come spend a Friday night at her house. But Mimi said no. Mimi said she didn’t know Erika’s aunt and uncle.  I asked Mimi if Erika could spend the night at our house. And Mimi said no again. It wasn’t a good weekend because Uncle Stan was coming. She used that voice that told me there was no use in arguing.

But I had my first friend and I was emboldened. Two or three weekends later I asked again if Erika could come for a sleepover. Mimi’s shoulders rose and her back stiffened like the black backyard cat when I got too close to it. “Are you simple, child?” she hissed. “I’m trying to protect you. If you want to keep this so-called friend, then you don’t want her coming here and seeing what you really are.”

What was I?

Mimi exhaled and her posture looked like Mimi again. “What do I care? I don’t care if you have a little friend or not. Ungrateful child. The things I suffer … .” Her muttering trailed off and she gave me a cold and watching glance from the side of her eyes. She was daring me. She did this sometimes. It was a taunt I had learned better than to fall for.

Erika made some other friends and eventually stopped sitting next to me at lunch. I lost the bracelet she had given me. I was alone again.

Soon after that, I got my first period during lunch. I was wearing a skirt and watched as blood trickled down my bare leg. I thought I was dying. I’d seen the backyard cats make bloody messes of blue jays in our backyard. I was bleeding like one of them. I just stared at it, waiting to die. My heart was racing. The world around me turned to the white of static. The pressure in my head exploded and I was vaguely aware of falling. Is this what dying was?

I woke with a damp wad of coarse paper towels on my head and the school nurse standing over me. A crowd of kids were circled around. Some were laughing and pointing. Some looked worried. Some just stood impassively. The nurse shooed the kids away and helped me up. She had brought a threadbare gym towel that smelled of bleach and wrapped it around my waist as she escorted me to her office, snickering dying off behind us. She asked me if this was my first period. When I told her I didn’t know what that was, she clucked her tongue and rolled her eyes dramatically and pulled a pink booklet from one of her many cabinet drawers. She gave me a pad and some wet wipes and told me to clean myself up in the little bathroom in her office. She let me lay on one of her cots with a heating pad and read until the end of school because she said I’d already had it bad enough for one day.

I went home infuriated with Mimi for never warning me. She just laughed, her gleeful cackles eventually subsiding into something more rueful. “Well, now you know it. But here’s what you don’t know, and I’ll tell you. You just got a lot more dangerous. And expensive.”

Uncle Stan was in the house somewhere. The smell of his cigarette smoke made me nauseous. I hoped he couldn’t hear our conversation. I was sick to my stomach and went to bed early. I lay in bed and I could hear Mimi and Uncle Stan laughing and fighting, like they always did.

That night, I dreamt that I was dying. My heart raced and I was dizzy. Blood leaked from my nose, eyes, ears and vagina. I was wiping at my mouth, but each time I did, a tooth came out in my hand. I was clawing at dirt and stone in a dark place, but my fingernails broke off exposing bloody nailbeds. My hair was ripped out in tangled clumps by some unseen hand. I woke up with a terrible pain in my abdomen – another womanly secret that had been concealed from me, so I was sure at the time that my experience was not the normal experience. In my sleep, my pad had leaked and there was sticky blood on my thighs and on my sheets. I got up. When I went to wash up, there was dirt underneath my fingernails, but they were all there. I checked to make sure I had all my teeth. I did. But I didn’t have all my hair. Mimi’s pinking shears were on the basin. My hair was cut in random chunks and long copper strands were in the sink. I screamed.

Mimi flung the door open. She noticed the bed first. “Stupid little whore! You’re cleaning up this mess! And no school for you tomorrow, missy!” Then she saw me and she grinned with all her teeth showing. “Good! You’ve gone ahead and punished yourself. I might not be failing to raise you right, after all. You will be going to school tomorrow.” She hummed as she left the room, making a point to widen the door all the way open with a glance that told me I was not to shut it again.

What did she mean I had punished myself?

I got to work cleaning up the mess. By the time I finished, my alarm for school was ringing. I was exhausted. I found a knit cap to wear over my hair, but Mimi snatched it off me as I walked out the door. “We reap what we sow,” she chided.  After that night, she didn’t call me “silly child” anymore.  And I never saw Uncle Stan again, either.  I asked Mimi about it. She spat and said that Uncle Stan was a no-good feral cat and that feral cats go missing all the time.

Kids at school gasped and pointed. My hair was so distracting that my English teacher sent me back to the nurse. “I don’t know what happened,” I cried. “I woke up this way.” The nurse eyed me suspiciously and said, “Puberty is really rough.” She sat me down, pulled out some scissors and did her best to even out my haircut. Then she sent me to the guidance counselor with a note.

“Hmm,” he said. “Are you scared of becoming a woman? Is that why you cut your hair?” It felt strange to have a man talking to me about becoming a woman. It made me feel sick in my stomach, like when Uncle Stan winked at me. I thought about telling him that I didn’t remember cutting my hair, that I wasn’t entirely sure that I had. Mimi had never told me about periods. What else was she not telling me? What would I accidentally say? What would Mimi do if she found out I talked to this man?

“Yes,” I lied.

“It’s okay. Everyone goes through it. “Talk to your  …” he glanced at a manilla folder and frowned, “… grandmother? Talk to your grandmother about it, she went through it, too. She’ll explain it to you.”

Would she?

I told Mimi the nurse fixed my hair into the tidy little pageboy I had but I didn’t tell her about the guidance counselor, and it made me nervous. I was worried she’d find out. But I also knew that if I told her about it, she would call me a stupid little whore.

The days of my lonely existence couldn’t pass fast enough. I spent more time with the backyard cats. I tossed bird feed into the yard to attract blue jays for them to kill. It didn’t bother me like it used to. That’s how I knew I must be growing up. Another scrawny orange cat showed up and was my instant favorite, but I didn’t name him this time. The black cat still wouldn’t let me get close.

Until one night, I woke up with a start from a dream I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t breathe. I tried to fill my lungs, but they ached with a stabbing pleurisy. I opened my eyes and on my chest was the black cat. Only he wasn’t the small skinny thing that ran from me in the backyard; he was immense and calculating. I felt his breath on my face and heard a low angry rumble from the back of his throat. His yellow eyes stared intently, daring me to move, but I couldn’t. I told myself if I could just scream, I could scare him off. My vision blurred. All my limbs burned with lactic fire. Then suddenly, the cat darted through the window and I gasped. I was drenched in sweat.

Each night, for what might have been days or months, I would wake, suffocating, with the beast on my chest. Sometimes it hovered above me and grew long tentacles that reached into my nostrils and squeezed around my chest. Other nights it merely sat on me, pawing at my mouth when I tried to inhale. Then one night, it started to talk.

“Do you want to know what you’ve buried inside yourself?” It hissed before darting out the window. The next night it said, “Would you rather die or live?” Another night, it growled, “Why did you stop asking about your mother?” Then it raked a heavy paw across my eyes.

Up until then, I thought I was just having nightmares, but that morning, I saw a bright red trident starting above my left eyebrow down a diagonal to the apple of my cheek.

“That’s what you get for all your prowling, you stupid little whore,” Mimi said.  “All your mewling and moaning all night like a beast in heat. One of these nights you’re gonna get got.”

One night, the cat said, “Weren’t you ever curious?” But instead of darting out my window, it stopped on the frame, waited, then beckoned me out. I didn’t think to put on shoes and socks or proper clothes. I just followed. The cat walked me out into the yard, into a bramble of overgrown hedge where I’d seen it lurk a hundred times before. We crawled through an opening and onto the alley way outside. We passed through the unfenced yards of neighbors. I was aware of barking dogs in the distance and the wet grass beneath my feet. The air smelled of overripe magnolias and garbage in the warm air.  We walked down to the drainage ditch that ran beneath the main road and along the pathway that led under the bridge. Then we stopped.

“Why are we here?” My voice was not thin enough to keep from bouncing off the concrete supports under that bridge. The cat shone reflective yellow eyes and shook its head. “Look.”

I peered into the darkness but saw nothing. I turned around to face the moonlight, and still, I saw nothing but a small length of my own shadow that jittered and bounced as the wind moved nearby trees across the light’s path to me.

“Look,” the cat said again and walked to me to an odd pile of stones high up on the slope that met the underside of the bridge.

“Dig.”

I dismantled the discrete cairn, stone by stone, until I’d revealed a small hole beneath. The hole was shallow, but not shallow enough that I could see into it in the darkness. I reached my hand in until I felt a very thin fabric rope. I tugged at it until it came loose. In the darkness and the grime, I couldn’t make out the color, but my fingers knew it immediately, for I had worried at it a thousand times when I had worn it around my wrist for that short time I had real friend.

“I don’t understand,” I said, but the cat was gone. I went searching for him in the moonlight and the shadows and the wind and the smell of overripe magnolias.

I was first aware of sharp gravel on my knees and the heels of my palms. Then I was aware of a blinding light. I closed my eyes and saw blue echoes of a person’s shape in my eyelids. Someone grabbed me under the armpits and was lifting me.

“Can you walk?” the stranger said. I was slowly starting to feel my legs under me as I let the stranger put me in the passenger side of his car.

“Are you hurt? Do you need to go to a hospital? Do you need me to take you to the police?”

I was jolted out of my stupor. I was in a strange man’s car. If Mimi had to come get me at the hospital or police … .  I shook my head.

“Can you just take me home?”

“Look kid, are you sure? You’re half-dressed and dazed under an overpass at 3 a.m. People usually don’t end up that way for any good reasons. Are you in danger?”

I didn’t know the answer to that.

“Did someone hurt you?”

“No. I don’t … I just need to get back home.”

“Geez, kid. I’d say. Your parents must be worried to death. I know I would be. I have a daughter a little older than you. You’re lucky it was me that was coming home from work and not  … .” He trailed off. I noticed that he looked scared as he shook his head and squeezed the steering wheel hard enough to make his knuckles turn white.

I told him to drop me off at the end of my block.

“Oh no, ma’am. I am taking you directly to your front door. I don’t know what kind of trouble you’re in and I am going to make sure you’re safe and sound.”

“But I’ll be in trouble if Mimi  … She’ll be so sore at me.”

The man considered me for a moment and then softened. “Trust me. Your Mimi will just be glad you’re home safe.”

I panicked. My heart raced and I got that dizzy feeling again. What could I do? I thought about lying about which one my house was, but what if a neighbor called the police? What if they kept a rifle, like Mimi did? What if they told Mimi. We neared my block and I indicated that the next right was mine. As the man slowed the car to turn, I opened the door and jumped out. I landed hard on the ground and rolled. I think I twisted my ankle, but I didn’t care. As quickly as I could, I darted down the alley to hide behind one of the full garbage cans.

“Jesus Christ!” I heard the man swear. I heard him slam a car door. I heard footsteps crunching on the gravel. I held my breath. I heard him swear again and retreat to the car. I didn’t know if he would come back with a flashlight or back up his car to use its light for the alleyway, so I seized the chance to run. I made it to the brambly overbrush and hid there until I didn’t hear or see anything. I didn’t remember falling asleep.

“You stupid, stupid little whore!” Mimi shrieked as she pulled at my wounded ankle. I cried out in pain. She dragged me by my legs out of the bushes, and all the little cuts and scrapes and bruises woke up with me.  She hoisted me to my feet.

“C’mon with you. Get over here.” She squeezed my upper arm and yanked me over to the porch. “Strip off yer clothes and stay put.”

I did as I was told. My pajamas were covered in dirt. A patch of pajama pants was glued with blood to my knee. It stung to peel it off. Mimi turned on the garden hose and sprayed me down. Cold water pricked at my bloody knee and dried blood dissolved from my elbows and legs. I stood there, naked and shivering. Mimi barked another order to stay put and she slammed the screen door as she went back into the house. I thought she was getting me a towel, but she came back with a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a box of borax and the pot scrubber.

“Hold out your arms and stand with your legs apart.” Mimi poured rubbing alcohol into the scrapes on my elbows and forearms. Then she doused me with it in between my legs and it ran into the scrapes on my knees. The tears in my eyes stung almost as much as it did.

“Now wash yourself clean until you shine.” She handed me the box of borax and the pot scrubber and watched as I scrubbed over every stinging inch of my exposed body. When I was red and raw, she finally seemed content and motioned for me to go inside.

“Hurts, huh?” she said without the slightest bit of concern. “That’ll teach you to go rolling around wherever it was you went rolling around last night. Remember that next time you think wanna go out. Believe me, it could hurt much, much more if you get yourself into some kind of trouble.”

I imagined what would have happened if I had let the man drop me off. If I had let him explain that I wasn’t doing anything wrong. That I was just lost and confused. Then I imagined Mimi accusing that man of something vile and grabbing for her rifle. I hoped the man could understand that it was better this way.

Mimi gathered up my soiled pajamas. She turned out the pockets of my pants out and found the bracelet.

“Where the hell did this come from?” She sounded more confused than angry. She tossed it into the waste bin and gave me that daring sideways glance.

That night, Mimi gave me some licorice flavored cough syrup, even though I didn’t have a cough. I hated it, but she told me it would help me sleep and watched to make sure I didn’t gag it up. I slept soundly and the cat didn’t come stand in my window, but I had very strange and upsetting dreams. I was in a dark place. Light was coming through the ceiling. I saw the back of a women’s head, and I knew it was my mom. I called to her, but she never turned around. I started to cry, and all of the yard cats came to rub against my legs and purr.

The cat didn’t stay gone for long. A few nights later he was back again to squeeze out all my breath until I just wished my lungs would collapse for good. When I finally gasped, he spoke.

“There is more you should know that has been hidden. Come and see.”

“No … no. Please go away. I can’t,” I whispered. “Please go.”

But the cat would not go.

“I will sit here until you follow. You will turn blue from not breathing. Your ribcage will collapse in on itself. Come, silly girl. Come see.”

I was numb and spellbound. Bereft of volition, I climbed out the window. This time, the cat led me the short distance to the storm cellar.

“Go inside,” he purred. “Go see.”

I opened one door of the cellar as quietly as I could and descended the small set of stairs. There was junk in there. My old tricycle. A utility shelf littered with rusty tools and paint cans. A musty green cot. Nothing seemed particularly important.

“Dig,” he said. “Under the cot. Dig.”

I moved the cot and started to dig.

“Wait. Here.” The cat indicated a garden spade that seemed somehow familiar to me.

I routed around with the spade until I found a small feline skull. I dug around the skull to reveal bits of fur that looked like it may have once been orange.

“No.” I knew it at once. Despite myself, I began to sob. “No.”

“Dig,” the cat said again. “Over here.” He was standing by the utility shelf. “Behind here.”

I moved the shelf aside to reveal a stone and mortar wall. Some of the stones looked recently disturbed.

I protested, but the cat hissed and I was seized by the terror of not doing as I was told.

I pried at some of the looser stones. Almost immediately, a crumpled pack of Pall Malls fell from the hiding place onto the floor. Recognition gripped me. Understanding robbed me of my breath. Ephemeral flashes of memory stunned me until white sprites swarmed at my vision and I felt myself falling. Was this what dying felt like?

I found my way to the floor and hugged my knees into me. The cat let out an almost sweet, soothing mewl before vanishing up the stairs and into the night. The other wing of the cellar door flung open and I saw the shape of menace outlined by moonlight.

“You insufferable, stupid, little whore. I’ve done nothing but protect your ugly little secrets and this is how you repay me? You gotta go digging into everything. You can’t just let it be, can you?”

Mimi charged at me. I was suddenly alive and awake and aware. My reflexes remembered, and they did not fail me. I grabbed a dirty shovel that leaned against the wall and swung with all my might at Mimi’s head. I hit her hard and she went down. Blood gushed from her temple.

“Now you wanna kill me, too? Who will keep you safe? Who is going to teach you?”

I raised the shovel high above my head and brought it down on her legs. I had to make sure she couldn’t get up and come after me. Her rage faded into fearful outbursts as I struck her hip.

“You’ll be all alone. All alone. All alone,” she whimpered as I raised the shovel again.

“Wait. No. Child. But I love you. I know what you are, and I still love you.”

You can’t trust something that loves you.

She had given me the permission I needed. I summoned strength I never knew was inside me and brought the shovel down on her head again and again until she stopped gurgling and all I could hear was the hammering clang of metal against concrete.

I thought I would be exhausted, but I wasn’t. I had never felt better rested.

I worked away at carving a nice hole for Mimi right next to Uncle Stan. And then, I piled all those stones back up and smoothed them into the wall.

I walked out into the daylight and lay on the grass, smiling up at the sun. The black cat nuzzled at my hand and purred.