Ugly Ways (10 page)

Then, while she was on the air reading the evening news a few days before Mudear died, she felt something soft brush up against her ankle and she screamed right into camera 2, "There's a cat under my desk!"

No one reacted for a while because the director, a tall hunky gay blond California boy, felt pulled in two directions. On the one hand, he knew he had to switch cameras and get his popular evening anchorwoman off the air. He had been watching her all week peeking around corners, looking over her shoulder, checking in drawers, and he knew she was not quite right. Besides, he had heard from a friend of his from her previous station about her two-week "rest" at the clinic outside of D.C. On the other hand, he couldn't resist pondering what a nervous breakdown on the air would do for his news show's ratings. Hell, he had seen
Network.

The cats made Annie Ruth think of all the stories she had heard all her life from her family about cats and what suspicious, sneaky, vicious, filthy creatures they were. When the girls were small, they would sit on the floor between two of their beds in the old house. And in the darkened room, illuminated only by the cream-colored dinner candle Emily kept in a shoebox along with matches and things under her bed, Betty would tell them about the time the cat tried to kill Annie Ruth in her crib.

"I was about seven or eight," Betty would begin the story, "and they had just brought you home from the hospital, Annie Ruth, not too long before. We didn't ever have any pets around the house, but about the time you came home, a big old gray cat started hanging around the house. Somebody must have been feeding it because it hung around and hung around 'til I looked for him every morning when I went to school.

"Then, one day I came home from school and that cat was inside on the back porch. He must have walked in with somebody, and he was in the corner staying out of the way. I didn't say anything 'cause I kind of liked him. Then, it was the next day. I had just come in when I heard Mudear upstairs let out a scream and I ran upstairs. I didn't know what had happened to her. And when I ran into Mudear's room where they kept Annie Ruth's crib, I saw something that, like Mudear say, made my blood run cold. That big old gray cat was up over your crib, Annie Ruth, with one of his paws just dangling down to where you were laying. Mudear was standing there with this scary look on her face. She said the first thing she thought about was stories she had heard as a girl about cats suffocating babies in their sleep while they try to be sucking the babies' milk out of their throats. I don't know. That's what Mudear said.

"So, Mudear let out another scream and grabbed for that cat with all her strength and it jumped right out of her reach to the windowsill and tried to get out a hole in the screen no bigger than my thumb. I don't know how he planned to squeeze through a little old hole that little. But it didn't matter 'cause Mudear went after him again and grabbed hold of him by his skin and threw him so hard against the wall he bounced off and fell on the floor just like he was dead. But he wasn't because I could see his stomach moving up and down.

"And then, Mudear and me ran over to your crib ... I don't know where you were, Emily. You were just a little girl, maybe you were sleeping. Anyway, we ran over to your crib, Annie Ruth, and Mudear said she nearly passed out when she saw your rich red blood on the collar of your little white shirt. That cat took a swipe at Annie Ruth with his old long sharp claws and nearly ripped her throat open!

"Well, it wasn't exactly ripped open, but it was bad. They had to call the doctor, and he said if that cat scratch had been an inch over to the left it would have severed Annie Ruth's jugular vein. Uh-huh, Emily, an important one."

"What happened to that cat, Betty?"

"What you think happened? Mudear killed that cat."

Remembering the story, Annie Ruth thought, it's a damn shame the best you can say about your mother is that she killed a cat for you once.

Anyway, she hadn't seen a cat since she landed in Mulberry.

The last one sighted had been on the plane when she had gotten on and found her seat number. Perched on the back of the seat was a gray cat with a white bib. Annie Ruth let out a little gasp and threw her purple suede purse as hard as she could at the cat. All the contents of the bag came tumbling out, but the cat jumped down soundlessly and ran to the rear of the plane toward the coach seating. And that was the last she saw of the feline. The man sitting next to her didn't say a word and tried to avert his eyes from her during the entire flight.

Now that she was home with her sisters and could think more clearly, it didn't surprise Annie Ruth that it was cats that she saw. More than any other animal, she hated cats. It was her family's fault. Not only was she brought up on Betty's story about her early encounter with a cat. She had grown up hearing the most vile stories and tales about cats.

Now that she thought about it, Mudear had always used the image of cats to describe her most horrendous thoughts. When Betty had gone through that phase that time and couldn't stop scratching herself, and then, she couldn't seem to get it together and go on with her life after her divorce and moved back in with Poppa and Mudear for a while, Betty told her that Mudear had talked about cats all the time. Mudear would exclaim from her bed from time to time in exasperation, "Shit, craziness is hanging around this damn house like a hungry cat smelling fish!"

It was just what poor Betty had needed to hear in her state, Annie Ruth thought as she took a black cotton knit cat suit out of her bag, folded it over once, and laid it on the back of the dressing table chair.

I can wear that tomorrow when we go to the funeral home, she thought as she moved to another bag to get her short high-heeled black boots. In a third bag, she found a smaller quilted bag, opened it, and took out a beaded blue, yellow, and red necklace from South Africa, a gift from the anthropology professor at UCLA she had dated.

One of the few truly boring black men she had ever met, she thought, and started to chuckle at the thought of the distinguished-looking professor who lived a varied and interesting life but who seemed incapable of communicating any of that on a date. But she stopped laughing when she was suddenly swept with such a wave of nausea that she had to sit down at the dressing table and hold her head between her legs to keep from throwing up all over the baby-blue shag carpet.

For a while she thought she was going to have to run to the bathroom all the way at the end of the hall and throw up, but the feeling left as suddenly as it had come on. That was the way it had been happening for the past couple of weeks. Her morning sickness came around all times of the day. And nothing—eating soda crackers, drinking ginger ale, abstaining from food—nothing seemed to help.

She stood up slowly, took a couple of deep breaths, and patted her stomach.

"It's gonna be okay," she said out loud.

Now, she commanded herself not to get up and check under the bed for a feline visitor even though she thought she heard a faint rustling under the dust ruffle around the bottom of the bed.

If I don't give in to it, she thought, it won't be there. As she threw back the covers, she noticed the clean sheets on the bed had a slightly musty odor. Mudear must have been sicker for longer than we knew to allow sheets to smell like this in her house, she thought as she fluffed up the pillows and flapped the sheets of the familiar bed.

Then, she was immediately sorry that she had invoked Mudear's name. Now, I'll never get to sleep. And she knew she would need every little bit of strength she had to face Mudear in her casket the next morning.

It didn't matter, because before she could take off her new silk robe and lay her head down, a flood of nausea swept over her again, forcing her to jump up and run to the bathroom next door, the lavender one, Mudear's own personal bathroom.

It's funny that Annie Ruth should be seeing cats everywhere. There's always been something about cats and the women in this family.

When I was just a little girl, the strangest thing happened to me that had to do with a cat. That's when we had the house in Greenwood Bottom way out Broadway. I wasn't any more than about seven or eight and my mother, I called her Mudear, too, had sent me to the store four streets over from my house to get a nickel's worth of fatback meat to go in some turnip greens. It was in the summertime and my mother always had a big garden. She grew collards and turnips winter and summer. That's where I get my love for gardening from. Back then, most everyone had a little vegetable garden where they grew beans and greens and tomatoes and such for their family.

Anyway, she sent me to the store. It was run by two Italian brothers. The only other white business in that area was Joe's Saloon that was run by Jews. And just before I got to the store, I thought I saw this little boy who was a friend of my brother's running 'round the side of a house. I called out his name, but by the time I did, he had disappeared 'round the back of the house. So, I went 'round there to see what he was doing. But when I rounded the corner, he wasn't nowhere in sight. So, I went up the back steps—in those days, you didn't have no fear about going up on somebody's porch. Not like now where I see all kinds of things on the TV about missing and murdered children and little children running the streets all times of the day and night 'out anybody knowing where they at. But when I ran up the steps, I tripped on something and fell and nearly broke my neck. If I hadn't grabbed onto the porch post, I would 'a taken a bad fall. When I looked around to see what had tripped me up, I was surprised to see a cat laying on the steps just as fat and sassy as anything. It was a sleek black cat with white paws and a little white vest. I don't know where it came from unless it came from under the house 'cause I didn't see it at first. But it was laying there just licking itself and acting as if it had paid that month's rent on the porch.

I'd never been around cats much, but this was such a pretty cat, I sat down on the steps and watched it lick and bathe itself. And before I knew it, I was stroking the cat's soft black fur and listening to it purr and growl down in its stomach. It felt so good to rub the cat, and it must have felt just as good to that cat because it stood up and stretched its long black body one time and slowly walked around me where I was sitting on the top of the porch. Then, it laid back down in the same exact spot and turned on its back for me to rub its black and white stomach. And when I did, it just curled up its pretty white paws and extended its long milky clear nails and seemed to curl them up, too.

Its fur was so soft and the sounds it was making was so smooth and soothing that I forgot I was on an errand for my Mudear, and I almost dozed off just sitting there in the hot summer sun. It was about the prettiest cat I think I'd ever seen. The whole time I was stroking its fur I was talking to it. I'd never had no pet of my own.

"
You sure are pretty," I said to the cat. "You belong to anybody? I wonder what Mudear say if I bring you home. She so softhearted, I bet she let me keep you. What you think she say?
"

And then I giggled 'cause it sound like the cat almost meowed a answer to my question. I'd heard about cats purring and all, but I'd never held one close and heard it myself. It just made me giggle to hear the purrs and rolls and clicks the cat was making. It was so entertaining and soothing that it was a while before I realized that this cat wasn't just making random cat noises. It was doing something more. It was purring a little tune, a song with notes and a rhythm.

Well, I tell you, my eyes flew open and I sat up straight then. I couldn't believe my ears at first. So, I leaned forward to hear better. I always was a brave little child. Didn't much scare me. But what I heard coming out of that cat's mouth made me jump up so fast I bumped my head on the post of the porch.

As clear as day, I heard the cat purring a little melody and singing the words to the song.

Your mammy don't wear no drawers

I saw her when she pulled them off.

She sold 'em to Santy Claus.

Don't she know it's 'gainst the law.

To wear them dirty drawers.

I didn't know whether to laugh or scream. I hadn't ever spent much time around animals, cats especially, but I knew enough to know cats and dogs don't talk, let alone sing. But still, I had to believe my own ears. This cat was singing. It was singing like a gravelly whiskey-voiced old woman. She was singing it right, too, just the way it should be sung, with the beat on the last word of each line.

Your mammy don't wear no
drawers

I saw her when she pulled them
off.

She sold 'em to Santy
Claus.

Don't she know it's 'gainst the
law.

To wear them dirty
drawers.

I knew how the song was supposed to be sung—coming down hard on the last word of every line—because I had heard a woman and a group of men singing it outside Joe's Saloon right there in my neighborhood. They were probably drunk out there singing, but I didn't know nothing about being drunk then.

I just stood there frozen to the spot I was standing in, watching that singing cat who now wasn't saying a word. Then, the animal stood up and stretched herself again—I guessed it was a girl cat by its voice and because when it turned over on its back for me to rub its stomach I could see her titties. I called 'em buttons. She stretched to her full length, pushing her front paws out on the cracked wooden porch, waving her shiny black tail back and forth, then dragging her hind legs behind her so her whole body was laying flat against the floor like a mouse slipping under a closed door. She stopped for a moment as still as the little statues of Jesus the Italian brothers kept near the cash register of their store. Then, she came to life again and began slowly licking her shoulder down to the front of her paw. She rolled her marble cat eyes up to stare me right in the face. I still hadn't moved. She had this real lazy look on her face and her face looked just like a litde teacup. Then, she start walking toward me again.