The air is cold on the shorn patches in my coat. I can forgive his attacks on my dignity, on my feelings. TheLORDwould want me to. But there are limits. He should not have messed with my looks. I am stinking, stinking mad. Forgive me, LORD, but he is just a selfish piece of ess aitch eye tee. Ted must learn that his actions have consequences.
I go to the living room and jump up on the bookshelf. I push the bottle of bourbon off. It smashes on the floor in thousands of beautiful shards. The stink is strong as gas. My eyes water. For a moment it reminds me uncomfortably of something, some dream I had, maybe, about being locked up in a dark place, and a murderer was pouring acid onto me … My tail switches – whether it was a dream or a TV show, the memory makes me feel bad.
I jump up onto the mantel and knock the horrible fat monster doll to the floor. She falls with a crack, spilling her babies in the air as she goes. They shatter into splinters on the floor. It is a massacre. I try to knock the picture of the Parents down, too. I know it won’t work, but I can’t help myself. I am an optimist. I don’t know what he has done to fix it so firmly – superglued it in place? The squirrels in the silver frame look more skull-like than ever. That thing is silver; I am surprised Ted hasn’t sold it. Maybe he can’t move it either!
Never mind, I have other ideas. I go quietly up to his bedroom and into his cupboard, where I pee in one of each pair of shoes.
I know theLORDwon’t like it but I must have justice.
Ted is calling for me now but I won’t go to him, even though his voice is filled with black spikes.
Ted
I’m back, with the force of a blow – breathless, as if I have been punched in the guts. In one clenched fist I hold a knife. It’s the big one that I keep hidden at the back of the high cupboard in the kitchen. No one knows about it except me. The blade is broad, polished to a high sheen. Grey daylight dances along its length and the edge gleams wickedly. It has been recently sharpened.
‘Steady, Little Teddy,’ I whisper. The rhyme makes me laugh.
Start with the basics. Where and when am I?Whereis easy. I check the living room. Orange rug, bright and cheerful. Ballerina standing proud and upright on her music-box stage. The holes in the plywood are grey circles, filled with rain. OK, fine. I’m home, downstairs.
Whenis a little more difficult. In the refrigerator there is half a gallon of milk, yellowing and sour. A jar of pickles. Otherwise it’s a bare white space. In the trash are sixteen empty cans. So, I ate and drank everything while I was away. I was surprisingly tidy, however. The kitchen’s clean. I even smell bleach.
‘Kitten,’ I call. Olivia doesn’t come. I am filled with bad ideas. Is she sick, or dead? The last thought brings horrible panic. I make myself breathe slowly.Relax. She’ll be hiding.
I lost days, this time. At a guess, three. I check the TV. Yes, almost noon. So three days, more or less.
I go through the house, making sure of padlocks on the cupboards and the freezer, checking everything. I did some damage while I was out. Scratched up the orange rug, broke Mommy’s Russian dolls into tiny shards. When I check my closet I find that some of my shoes are wet. Did it rain? Did I go through a river or something?Or a lake, my mind whispers. I shut that down real quick. I go to take a drink but apparently I broke the bourbon, too. Never mind. I get a fresh bottle and a pickle.
As I’m eating I drop the pickle. When I bend down to pick it up I see a gleam of white. There’s something under the refrigerator. I know what it is. It shouldn’t be down here.
Up in the attic there’s the sound of weeping. It’s the green boys. They’ve been quiet lately but now they’re kicking up a storm. ‘Shut up!’ I yell. ‘Shut up! I’m not scared of you!’ But I am. I have nightmares that one day I will wake up in the attic, surrounded by the green boys and their long fingers and that I will slowly disappear, fading into the green. I hook the white flip-flop out from under the refrigerator and throw it in the trash. It’s got bad memories all over it like fungus.
I don’t put the knife back in the high cupboard. Instead I bury it in the back yardunder cover of dark. Isn’t that a wonderful expression? It makes the night sound like a warm blanket, littered with stars. I find a good place beneath a stand of blue elder.
I am still quite upset so I eat another pickle in front of the TV and slowly I calm down. I can’t stop now. Those women weren’t the right friends for me, I guess, but I’m not a quitter.
Olivia
Ted is gone again. Honestly, he is such a gadabout, these days.
The noise is very bad.Eeeeeeeeeeee.My head is a cavern of sound. I am in desperate need of guidance. I knock the Bible off the table with a paw. It falls open with a thump on the boards. I wait, eyes closed. When the crash comes it is so loud my ears want to burst. The house seems to tremble at its very foundations. There are great cracking sounds, as if the world or sky is breaking. It builds and builds to a scream and I think,Is this the end of everything?Horrible! Scary!
When at last it starts to die away I feel so relieved. I swear, I feel like a salt shaker that’s just been used too hard. I have to sit for a moment to let my tummy settle.
I lean in. The verse that meets my eye is:
And Ehud reached with his left hand, took the sword from his right thigh, and thrust it into his belly. And the hilt also went in after the blade, and the fat closed over the blade, for he did not pull the sword out of his belly; and the dung came out.
Well, if the lord always made everythingperfectlyclear, there would be no point in faith, would there? The whining goes on and on. It almost sounds like a little bee, crying for help. The house feels wrong today, as if in the night someone moved everything an inch to the left for a prank.
Someone starts talking in the living room so I guess Ted left the TV on for me.
‘We should revisit trauma,’ the voice is saying. ‘You know what they say. The only way out is through. Childhood abuse must be excavated and brought into the light.’
Maybe the whining sound is coming from the TV. I have checked the TV before, oh, hundreds of times. But I have to dosomething. The big Russian doll stares at me from the mantelpiece with its blank face, its round body. It looks happier than ever to have prisoned its little friends inside it. The Parents stare down from their horrible frame above the fireplace.Go away, I whisper at them, but they never do.
When I see who’s on screen, I stop, ears flat. Him again. The round blue eyes stare out. He nods earnestly at some unheard question. The room is filled with that scent – spoiled milk and dust. I know he’s only a picture on a screen but it feels like he’s here, somehow. I sit down neatly and lick a paw. That always makes me feel better.I could do this show so much better than you, I tell him.You have no charisma.
He smiles as if in answer. I don’t feel like talking to him any more after that. I don’t know why – it’s not like the TV can hear me. Can it? The smell is so strong, though. It’s not like a ted smell, but like something left out of the refrigerator for too long.
