“She’s demon-possessed, I swear. I just came out of the bedroom and I could feel her hiding in the closet, waiting. She probably does suck our souls out of us at night.”
Luscious and beautiful, eyes like knives; eyes that stabbed you as hard as her claws that came out as the second you overstepped her spacial boundaries, her territory - Tazha was an evil, vicious queen from the moment we chose her.
“Stupid bloody beast,” Jonah muttered, limply and pointlessly pulling the torn couch cushion back together, and then letting it fall apart again, slashed and ripped open.
Still, she came with us every time we got the dread-filling, gut sinking notice attached to the front door knob. That cold piece of typed paper, which prematurely shoved us out of each little complex den we found. Regardless of how stripped down or basic, we could never afford it for long. These mornings always brought too soon the clutter and racket of birds chittering and clanging their songs into my head.
“It’s so far away. I hate being so far away. It's half an hour drive just to get milk. It’s going to suck.”
Jonah sat and breathed smoke out through his nostrils and his mouth, his lips parted open just barely, while puffs of white floated up in a thin fog around his head. His gray aura; somber, quiet - the heavy kind. Silence that penetrated me like Tazha’s eyes. Fierce and unyielding.
Quietude, something to celebrate, a reason for pride - I looked for these things on posted signs, in the classifieds, word of mouth, or public announcements. Things were often purposelessly busy, without peace. There was no kingdom here. The air hung raw and hot, wilting around an unfiltered parade of blaring, deserted television sounds and sights that were never really heard or watched; never offered any distraction, or preoccupation or brief rescue. Something was always dripping with another thing gone wrong; noisy thoughts that were always bleeding empty answers. Rent, $565 a month, utilities not included. Help wanted: waitress.
“Do we have to take her? Isn’t there someone who we can give her to?”
“Maddy, “ Jonah sighed with impatience cluttering in his throat, “no one is going to want her. She’s a bitch. Besides, its our responsibility. We can’t just go shirking her off to someone.”
“She hates us though.”
“So? Can you blame her?”
Strong, feral, beautiful. She would roar almost silently as she pounced on her prey. I'd reach my hand down to my ankle to inspect the wounds, the missing flesh she tore out of me. She was small, so much smaller than I, and yet drew my blood a hundred times, making it run down my ankle and in between my toes; waiting patiently around corners, stalking with crouched hatred in her shoulders. She perched for hours, balancing herself on fierceness and loathing and tenacity; dedication to her prowess, her throne.
Moving into the new yellow house was a little better than before. Last time it was that strangely placed low-rent condo in a closed off suburban cul-de-sac, where the next door neighbor called the cops every time she smelled beer and youth. Pieces of drunken stories that recounted a young boy who had to freeze a wart off of his ass, or peeing in the forest which gave him a crotch full of poison oak; or our bursts of short-lived laughter that somehow managed to slip through hairline cracks - at any of it, she would scream we were juveniles, derelicts. She had lion in her, too, and she roared at us. She had a throne, and we encroached upon it. So we moved, and moved, and moved and moved. We moved bigger, farther away. This time it was a box-shaped, one-level yellow country house with white trim, sitting removed and isolated in the Appalachians on a whole acre of land and a huge Amish farm behind it.
I imagined it was ours. Jonah's and mine. We owned it, it was ours. I refused to believe in the rent payment we scrounged from our dusty bank account and my waitress tips.
Our second week in the yellow house, the Amish boy from the farm behind us walked by, waved hello, and a minute later sat down on our stoop and talked about doughnuts while we stared at him, at each other. He had no kingdom inside of him, not like Tazha or the townhouse suburbia neighbor bitch. His innocence was freakish; I wanted to touch it. I wanted to see if he stayed a while longer, that maybe I could learn some of it. Learn his. . his innocence. We asked him if there were other Amish families close by.
"How did you know I am Amish?" he asked with sincere curiousity, bewildering us . We did not know how to answer.
“Can you believe that kid?” Jonah stared at the Amish boy's back from our rented yellow house, as the boy walked away mildly, with ease - almost a slight skip. “How can he not know that his clothes and his appearance don't give him away?"
I shrugged my response, and stared at his shadow getting smaller in sunset light, and the shadow of the brim on his antiquated farmer's hat making stretched dark brown shadow ovals out in the dirt road that led to his Amish farm home. I wanted to follow that easy, mild, innocent-sincere shadow, all the way to the Amish farm, and watch them sweep and milk and husk and eat lamb and green beans, and say prayers and sew and knit without thick, heavy air; watch them sleep and find how or where to slip into a dark place of peace where there are no cold lion eyes roaring at my thoughts.
Innocence. Quietude.
He did not come back again. I wondered, did he smell the same thing the suburban bitch did? Was it dingy, sick, or stifling? Or maybe our light was too weak, too dim, for him to see us at all.
“Tazha! Tazha! Dammit, where did that stupid cat go?”
I was out of cat food again. I shuffled over to the cupboard for tuna. I started the electric can opener, and she came flying out of her hiding place, her shadowy stalking corner. I wanted to kick her when she told me I was negligent and malicious; roaring meows at me as I was still opening the can; accusing me of maltreatment while she ate with feverish hunger and desperation; deliberate lion hunger. Her usual crisp, sullen eyes cast downward, obsessed with her food. It choked me with guilt; I wanted to kill her.
“I fucking feed you, everyday! Sometimes several times a day! What the hell is your problem!” I demanded an answer from her. An answer for the noise,l still bleeding.
Despite a sudden dwindling of her physcial state, her demeanor and authority and her kingdom were unchanging, unfaltering. She'd gotten skinny, frail. Only a few weeks had passed in the yellow house, but her fur was thin, patchy, and balding. Another thing dripping down in front of me, dripping and dripping, with nothing to wipe it clean. I gave her pet medicine for fleas. I crushed pills into her tuna for various worm removal, I sprayed her with parasite guards and crushed more pills to remove any that might be feasting inside her. I had nothing to give a vet to look at her.
Tazha continued to dwindle. There were no patches of fur lying on the armchair or in a pile on the floor to confirm its continual loss. There were no fleas diving into her back. My other cat, my friendly, sweet tomcat was healthy. Yet somehow, Tazha was more and more ragged, more emaciated. No one could make sense of why.
She refused to bend to it. She would not give me the satisfaction of nurturing her, or being pitied. She was losing beauty, losing the wealth of her long haired, calico coat, losing opportunity to catch prey, to draw blood, to conquer. But she was a juggernaut, strong, still.
M.E. Simpson
