Four cats live between the houses. They used to live in a house, until one early morning, when the sky was still yawning; the lights of the law skipped down the street. There was an exchange of space, a body displaced, and all at once they were left on the stoop. Nothing fancy, a mat with some cats on a porch in the sun. Another morning, nothing to notice, by the time the Mr. had kissed the Mrs. and shook the hair of his son drinking juice, the cats had left the mat. No one knows if they were heartbroken, although I think they were. For from then on they were never seen in the same place at the same time, probably because they reminded each other of home.
A few girls getting sparked by the park where our road takes a bend swore that a cat with red eyes climbed down a lamp post face first and told them to “run”. Of course, they did. In opposite directions, with fumes in their brains from the grass, one of them, the youngest, dashed onto the road as the Mr. was rushing home. A screech of tires, a cracking, some wind to carry a leaf past a lamp post.
The neighborhood took it hard; the girl was seventeen and had disproportionate dimples, she didn’t deserve to die. Mr.’s son went to high school with her, used to have gym class with her, used to comment on her dimples. Now he’s pinned down to the change room floor, forced to keep his eyes open while they spit into them. He doesn’t cry out. Mrs. begs Mr. to move them somewhere closer to his work, and for a time he talks her out, but his son talks him in, and they wrap up in old newspapers. In one of them, some two month old sepia renders a picture of the girl at her graduation. The boy notices it, tears it to a mess and his parents look on without pausing their packing.
No one remembered the cat, even though it attended the watching every night until the mortician came in the morning to prepare the room. When the girl’s family had left for the night, with all their sniffling and contorted throats, the cat would sit, alone, in the dimly lit room of the funeral home, and with its red eyes, watched over the body. From one of the chairs in the front row, with its tail to the side, the cat peered into the casket. Eyes closed, dressed dark with the shades of death, there was no confusing it for sleep. Her grey skin made to look warm by the mortician, her form, unitary, like all others have been and will be. The makeup on the hands, oily, smeared with tears from moist fingertips that caressed the dead limb for a one last time. Unseen by all her relatives,two native coins lay under her palm atop her unmoving chest. The uncle who placed them there when no one else was looking but his son, looked down at the boy and said, “she loved money.” I like to think that the coins are for Charon.
A small Christian service was held for the girl the night before her funeral, all quotation and feigned remorse. But when the vestment had finished speaking, a cousin was left standing between the body and the mourners.
He sang, amazing… his throat caught, snagged like a fish. … grace… his voice shook… how sweet… he was barely mumbling the words, his breath staggered… the sound. As the rest of the family joined in, tears appeared out of every surface of the room. That saved… a wretch… like meee… Misunderstanding children looked up at their deconstructed relatives … I once… some of them trying to cry … was lost… some of them staring… but now… all of them being scarred for life… am found… on a level they’ll never recognize until … was blind… it’s too late… but now… I seee.
On the morning of the burial, the immediate family was allowed to make their final goodbyes. Her mother, morbid, a fountain of salt water, kissed the girls forehead softly, getting some of the makeup on her lips, but no one cared to tell her. Her sisters holding onto each other for support, trembled like two trees trying to hold out a storm. Her father, worst of all, couldn’t stand, he couldn’t look. He knelt, on his knees, in front of the body with his face buried into hands that rested against the casket in a steeple. He barked in sorrow and growled when anyone tried to console him. When the time came, the mortician, well practiced in dealing with the grief of others, gave a silent indication that the casket had to be closed. Of course no one could have noticed, but as they slowly fixed the cover of the coffin over, the body the coins, that I think are for Charon, were gone.
