by Lillian Barden
The cat was very orange and bigger than most of the other cats around; I’d seen it a few times in the basement by the garbage cans but never before in the courtyard. It lay among the low bushes alongside the step where I usually sat; I wasn’t allowed to leave the courtyard until my older sister came out. The cat didn’t move as the double glass door closed behind me and I held my breath, thinking it might be dead. I stared at it for a long time before I saw a paw move just a little and its eyes open slowly in a narrow slit. I sat down carefully and crossed my arms on my knees.
The courtyard was mostly cement with dirt spaces for spindly bushes around the perimeter with a large oval planter in the middle. Hedges planted in the center oval were designed to screen the three apartment entrances from each other; but they never grew enough, likely hardly ever watered. The courtyard oval opened at one side in a double tier of wide steps flanked by stone lions, the bottom tier emptying onto the broad concrete street. The steps were wide enough for people to pass and children to sit and play, though we were chased on regular basis if we got too noisy.
I got up early in the summertime, the heat in our third floor apartment too stifling for sleep. The bedroom I shared with my sisters faced the morning sun and I slept under a window that rarely let through a breeze. Mother never let us camp on the fire escape at night like most of the other kids.
“We may have to live with trash, but we don’t have to act like them,” she’d say with bitterness. This was usually followed by the familiar reminders about my father leaving with that tramp and having to be mother and father to us, and how this wasn’t how she thought she deserved to wind up. And it was bad enough to be a single parent but if we didn’t behave it would reflect badly on her and get us sent to a home.
Mother slept on a pull out couch in the living room and I would tiptoe to the apartment door so as not to wake her. She didn’t mind my going out early but if she woke up it was unpredictable.
The double doors to the apartment entrances in the courtyard each had their own wide steps, and I sat to one side of our doorway and imagined that I was in the country on the steps of a big house with a wide porch — a fantasy only minimally supported by a few fat birds and the scrawny bushes. Few people were out at that time, the morning stream to the subway over.
The super kept cats to keep the mice in the basement under control, but they were generally wary of children and mostly avoided the courtyard. I tried to pet them as they passed, usually getting scratched for my trouble. Some of my friends in the building had pets, small dogs and cats and I loved to touch their warm fur and feel their tongues on my face.
“Animals are dirty and bring fleas; they belong outside and don’t let me catch you playing with any of them either, I don’t need to have you come down with something.” was the response when I asked to have a cat for one of my birthdays. “Besides, I have enough to do to feed you girls on what the government gives me. I’m not feeding anything else.”
The cat and I looked at each other for a long time; maybe my stillness fooled him. My eyes are green; nasty mean cat’s eyes my sister would yell when we were fighting. I didn’t look much like anybody in my family that I could tell, my hair and skin darker than theirs. At eleven I was already well over five feet, taller than my older sister and almost as tall as my mother who said she was sure I had a tapeworm considering how much I ate and how skinny I was.
I sat very still, just waiting and staring, trying not to blink.
The cat wasn’t all orange; it had a bit of white on the top of its head like a star and white paws, which it started to lick as I watched.
I ventured a very low “Here kitty, here kitty.” It stopped licking for a moment and stood up. I didn’t move or breathe as it leaned into my leg and I lifted my hand carefully to pet its fur as it began to purr.
The high grasses at the edge of the jungle parted slowly and the great cat stepped toward the clearing in front of the altar as the hot sun rose in the awful blue of the sky. The woman stood tall and regal, her bright robes and strange eyes glowing with color. The animal climbed the steps, its muscles rippling beneath the orange fur, the white star on its head coming to rest under her hand as the people gathered before her. She looked down at them and smiled.
Leave a Reply