Hey, Diary!
School was really boring today. It rained in the morning so we couldn’t go outside for recess, and today wasn’t an assembly day, and Jimmy wasn’t there. He misses a lot of school on account of his spina bifida, but he keeps up with his work. He’s really smart, and sometimes I take his books to him and his assignments and stuff, and that’s what I did today, ’cause of the math test tomorrow, and he needs to study, just in case he feels well enough to go to school in the morning.
Mrs. Morris opened the door when I rang the bell.
“I brought Jimmy’s schoolwork,” I told her. “How’s he doing?”
“He’s sitting out on the deck, dear,” she said. “You can go see him.”
I followed her into the house and back to the dining room, and when she went into the kitchen I opened the big sliding door and stepped out onto the deck. Jimmy was wrapped up in some kind of a blanket, even though it was really warm out. He looked awfully pale and his eyes were sort of red and burned looking, so I knew he was having one of his headaches. He gets headaches a lot. Mom told me that he had hydro-something when he was a baby and it made his head swell up, and he had to have a couple of operations to fix it, only I guess the doctors didn’t do such a good job, ’cause he still gets the headaches, sometimes really bad, like today. But he smiled at me and said “Hi.”
“I’ve got your stuff,” I said. “Mr. Parrish is giving us a test tomorrow. You think you can come?”
“Sure.” Jimmy always says that, even when it’s obvious that he’s too sick to go anywhere. “What’s the test on?”
“Chapter Thirty-four. It’s mostly review, but I thought you might like to go over it. I can help you if you want.”
“That’s okay.” He was kind of grinning at me, and I knew what he was thinking. When it comes to math, it’s usually him helping me. But English and history, that’s a different matter. Especially writing - I really like to write. But you know that already, old pal Diary. Mom says I have a really vivid imagination, and I guess she’s right, because I’m always seeing stuff that nobody else sees.
“Any sign of the cat today?” Jimmy asked.
“Nope. I left some food out for him last night, and it was gone this morning.”
“How do you know it’s a him?”
“I don’t.”
“Could be a girl cat. Does your Mom know you fed it?”
“Uh, uh. I didn’t tell her.”
“How come?”
“Just didn’t think of it, I guess.”
That wasn’t exactly the truth. I don’t lie to Jimmy often, only I didn’t want to get into the whole thing about my Dad, how he won’t let me have any pets. Once when I was eight there was this stray cat that came into our yard, and Mom let me feed it some tuna fish, and then it started coming to the door all the time, and I wanted to keep it and Dad threw some kind of a fit, all about how we’d end up with fleas all over the house, and how cats smell and make messes and scratch the furniture. I don’t know what happened to the cat, ’cause when we stopped feeding it, it disappeared after a few days. That made me really sad. I wasn’t going to go through that again, which is why I didn’t even tell Mom this time.
“Want to go look for it?” I asked.
“Can’t,” Jimmy said.
I nodded. Jimmy never explained when he couldn’t go someplace, and I never expected him to. He never talked about his spina bifida. It’s just, you know, the way things are with him, so what’s the use of talking about it?
“You gonna feed it again tonight?” he asked.
“I guess so.”
“Don’t let Mr. Harding see you.”
“How come?”
“Remember what he said when he was yelling at me? He doesn’t want the cat hanging around.”
“He doesn’t own the street,” I said, a little bit annoyed. “Anyway, the cat’s probably gone by now.”
Jimmy’s face kind of screwed up then, like he was in pain. He turned and stared out across the lawn, only he wasn’t really seeing anything, you know? I could tell. I put his books on the patio table next to his wheelchair.
“Guess I’ll see you tomorrow in school, huh?” I said.
He kind of nodded a little but he didn’t look at me. That was okay. Like I said, we’re best friends, and I understand when he can’t talk to me. Some of the kids think he’s stuck up or something when he gets like that, but I know it’s ’cause every so often he hurts something awful, his head or his back, and he just goes off somewhere inside himself to get away from the pain.
I wish I had somewhere to go like that.
I went back into the house and found Mrs. Morris in the kitchen. “I think maybe Jimmy’s not doing too good,” I told her.
“This isn’t one of his best days,” she said. She was smiling like she almost always does, a kind of a sad smile. “Thank you for bringing his books.”
“That’s okay. Maybe he’ll feel better tomorrow.”
“I’m sure he will.”
I left Jimmy’s house and walked down the street. Mom was doing something to the roses up next to our house. She had a box that said “Rose Food” on it, and she was digging all around the roots and pouring some pellets in and tamping them down.
“You’re late,” she said as I dropped my backpack on the front steps.
“Jimmy missed school today. I had to take him his assignments.”
Mom nodded her head and picked up her clippers and started pruning or whatever it is she always does. She used to ask about Jimmy, but she doesn’t any more. I guess when somebody’s sick a lot, other people stop caring. Well, not stop caring exactly, but just sort of accepting that there isn’t anything they can do to help.
Mom doesn’t talk much about anything any more, ever since Dad started acting so strange. We used to talk a lot, and I miss it, only now I think she’s a little bit lost inside her head, like Jimmy when he’s hurting. There’s all different kinds of hurts.
I picked up my backpack and climbed up the steps and went into the house. It was dark inside. It used to be that Mom always opened all the shades early every morning, and she’d sing while she was making breakfast, just simple little tunes that I think she made up herself. Now the house is quiet most of the time, and gloomy. I don’t stay in it any more than I have to, except for my own room, and I never pull my shades down, even at night. I let in all the light there is.
I left my backpack in my room and headed for the kitchen. There was a half-full package of shaved chicken in the meat drawer, and I scooped some out and wrapped it in a paper towel. Then I wandered out the back door into the yard. There’s a loose board in the fence, and I can just squeeze through into Mr. Harding’s yard so I can get to the street without Mom seeing me. Not that it would matter much if she did, except that she’d ask me where I was going, and I didn’t want to explain why I had the chicken or tell her about the cat, and I didn’t want to lie to her, either.
I sneaked along the side of Mr. Harding’s house, keeping low out of sight of the windows, and peered around the front corner to see if he was sitting on his porch. He wasn’t, and I hurried out to the street and turned toward the railroad tracks. They’re kind of overgrown, ’cause the little short line that uses them only serves the gypsum quarry out near Windsor and the feed mill in Port Williams, so we only see maybe one or two trains each week. I crossed over and squatted down next to the dyke gate.
“Here kitty,” I called softly. I didn’t want Mom to hear me, in case she was still out in the yard. I wasn’t really expecting the cat to be anywhere around, and I was surprised when it came out of the bushes right away and came up to me. I reached out to pet it, and it rubbed up against my leg and stretched. I opened the paper towel and spread it out on the ground with the chicken in the middle, and the cat sniffed it a couple of times and sort of hunched down and started to eat.
I wish Jimmy had been there to see it.
The cat finished up all the chicken. Then it sat up on its haunches and began to lick one paw and rub it all over its face. My Sunday School teacher, who has three cats, says they’re very clean animals, and that they always wash their faces after they eat. I don’t think Mom would say I was very clean if I spit on my hand and rubbed it all over my face, but I guess there’s a different standard where cats are concerned. At least this one didn’t smell, like Tristan Cruikshank’s dog does.
A fee-bee bird started singing in the trees along the tracks. Fee-bee, fee-bee. Mom says they’re called chickadees, ’cause sometimes they say “chick-a-dee-dee-dee,” sort of scratchy like. Then I heard something rustling in the bushes, and the tops of some of the weeds started swaying, as if an animal was slinking around. Something coughed, and a pheasant broke cover and went squawking off toward the dykes. I felt scared.
A tiger crept out of the bushes and pinned me down with its big yellow eyes. It began to stalk me, carefully extending one huge black and yellow striped paw after the other as it crept along the gravel path, lips curled back above big yellow teeth, traces of blood matting the dark yellow fur around its mouth. Ugly mustard yellow! I tried to scream, only my throat was dry and all I could do was croak. The tiger was almost on top of me when Jimmy came wheeling along the sidewalk like a madman, waving a rifle and shouting. The tiger stopped dead in its tracks, its big head swung around, and it snarled at Jimmy. Jimmy jumped up and knelt down on one knee and brought the gun up to his shoulder and fired. The bullet hit the tiger in the chest, and it sort of collapsed in on itself and vanished in a puff of smoke. Jimmy stood up and blew across the end of the gun barrel like Clint Eastwood or Harrison Ford, with a smug grin pasted across his mouth. He turned and swaggered off down the street, leaving his wheelchair behind. He climbed into his plane and took off, and waved to me as he flew out over the dykes and way up into the sky.
That’s how I like to think about Jimmy.
I wadded up the paper towel and walked back toward Mr. Harding’s yard. He still wasn’t outside, and I got as close to the fence as I could and hurried down the property line toward the loose board. Just as I was lifting it up to sneak back into my own yard, I looked back and saw the cat following me.
Suddenly I felt very angry, angry at Dad for making Mom so unhappy, angry at God for making Jimmy with that awful hole in his back so he can’t run and play like other kids, and really, really mad at the three college kids who kept a pet cat only as long as it suited them, and then just dumped it out to fend for itself when they had to go home for the summer. What’d they think, the poor cat would catch mice or birds or something when it was hungry? Suppose it doesn’t know how, like Peter in my book? And how about water?
Water.
I propped the board open a little bit and ran inside to get a bowl. When I came back out the cat was sniffing around the opening in the fence, and I turned on the garden hose and splashed some water in the bowl and set it down. The cat came into the yard really carefully, testing the air with its whiskers twitching and looking all around. Finally it came over to me and sniffed the bowl. It must have decided everything was okay, ’cause it started to drink, its pink tongue darting in and out of its mouth, looking like a little slice of ham. I didn’t see how it was getting much water that way, but it must have worked for the cat, because after a couple of minutes it stopped drinking and sat back and started to wash again.
I added some more water to the bowl and tucked it away under the back steps where the cat could find it if it stayed in the yard, which I was hoping it would. Right about then I heard Mom coming along the side of the house to put her gardening tools away in the shed, and I scooped up the cat and carried it into the house. It must have been used to being carried ’cause it didn’t struggle or anything, and only flinched a little when the screen door slammed shut behind me with a loud bang. I hurried upstairs into my room and closed the door behind me, and put the cat down on the floor. It must have felt right at home, because it jumped up on my bed real quick and started clawing at the comforter, then turned around two or three times and flopped back on its rear end and lifted one leg and started to wash.
I’m glad I don’t have to wash myself that way.
Something Jimmy said reminded me that I didn’t know whether it was a boy cat or a girl cat, but when it started to wash down near its tail, it was pretty obvious that it didn’t have any extra equipment, not like Tristan’s dog, for example, so it had to be a girl. So I could start calling her “she” instead of “it” all the time.
I didn’t dare try to take the cat back outside right then in case Mom saw me, so I decided to get my homework out of the way before supper, and was reading my history book when she came down the hall and knocked on my door. Everybody always knocks in our house. We have a rule that everyone is entitled to their privacy, and that nobody comes in unless they’re invited.
It wasn’t always that way. Mom and Dad used to come in and out of my room whenever they wanted to. Only when Dad started getting all strange, what with going off to be with some woman at the university and all, I didn’t want him around so much. One day he just barged right in when I was getting dressed, and I screamed and yelled “Get out!” and he said “Don’t talk to me like that, young lady,” and I screamed again and Mom came running, and they had an awful fight. Anyway, from then on nobody comes into my room unless I say it’s all right, and it’s okay with me when it’s Mom, but not Dad. Only now he never comes to my room anymore, anyway, ’cause he’s never around much.
I guess I told you that already.
Anyway, like I said, Mom came and knocked on my door. “Hanna, are you in there?”
“I’m doing my homework,” I called out.
“I could use some help in the kitchen.”
“Coming!”
The cat was asleep in the middle of the bed, and if I had told Mom to come in she’d have seen her right away, so I shut my book and hurried to the door and opened it just enough so I could slip out and closed it again. Mom didn’t see the cat. I followed her downstairs and helped her get supper, and it was just her and me again, ’cause Dad hardly ever comes home until pretty late any more. I don’t know why he bothers to come home at all.
After we ate and cleaned up I told Mom I had to finish my homework, and I went back upstairs. The cat was sort of prowling around the room, and when I tried to pet her she acted kind of strange. She jumped up on the windowsill and scratched at the screen, and I figured she wanted to go out. I was going to try to sneak her downstairs to the front door, but when I picked her up she wiggled so much I had to put her down again, and she jumped back up to the window and stretched up against the screen, and it fell right out and down onto the lawn with a really loud noise.
The cat almost fell out too, and scrambled around and jumped down on the floor. Then she jumped right back up again. There’s this big maple tree outside my window, and one of the branches comes pretty close to the house, only not close enough to reach, but the cat sort of crouched down and then jumped, and she landed on the branch, and the branch swayed up and down but the cat hung on, and when she found her balance she ran along the branch to the trunk and backed all the way down to the ground and ran off toward the fence where I’d left the board propped open, and disappeared into Mr. Harding’s back yard.
I hurried downstairs and found Mom standing outside on the back steps, looking at my screen lying on the grass. She turned around when she heard me come out.
“What happened?” she said.
“I was just looking out my window and the screen fell out,” I told her.
“It looks kind of bent. Were you leaning on it?”
“No,” I told her, and it was the truth. It wasn’t me who leaned on it.
“You could have fallen out, you know. You’d better stay away from the window until we get it fixed.”
“Maybe I can bend it back in shape,” I said.
“Leave it for your father. Bring it inside and put it in the back hall.”
I figured I could fix the screen myself, and if I left it for Dad to do, it’d be Christmas before he got around to it, but I didn’t care. I picked it up and brought it inside, and then I went into the living room and called Jimmy to tell him about the cat, only his mother said he was asleep and couldn’t come to the phone.
I wonder if I’ll ever see the cat again.