Black Cat

  "Let's not worry about the dishes right now," Mama told Mr. Fletcher when he rose to help her. "Take everyone into the living room and I'll play something."

  "Fine," he said.

  Betsy looked confused when we all rose.

  "We're going into the living room," I told her as I started for Baby Celeste, but to my surprise, she turned and reached out for Mr. Fletcher instead.

  "Here we go," he cried, and lifted her out of her seat to carry her.

  Betsy's eves grew small with envy and anger before she rose and followed along. When we got there, she plopped into Grandfather Jordan's rocking chair and closed her eyes.

  Before Mama came in to play for us. Betsy was asleep. Mr. Fletcher was too occupied with Baby Celeste to notice.

  I looked at Mama and she raised her eyebrows and then smiled.

  "She won't be a problem," she whispered, then went to the piano.

  10

  Elliot's Web

  .

  Betsy didn't wake up until Mama stopped

  playing and it was time for her and her father to leave. It was as if Mama's music had kept her in a coma. She looked confused, even a bit frightened, at how much time had gone by and how much she had missed. She sat up, her eyes blinking, and vigorously rubbed her cheeks.

  "Are you feeling all right. dear?" Mama asked. "Yes," Betsy said quickly. "I guess I was just... bored." she offered, trying to climb out of her pool of embarrassment. Even Baby Celeste was staring at her as if she were some sort of freak.

  "Bored? How could you be bored with that music?" her father asked, "That kind of music puts me to sleep," she insisted, "It's elevator music."

  "Perhaps you're just not used to a simple. gentle lifestyle." Mama said, keeping her irritation under a waxy smile. "In time I'm sure you will adjust and be very happy."

  Betsy raised her eyebrows at me as if she expected I would offer sympathy and ate with her review of Mama's music. When she saw I wasn't going to come to her defense, she shook her head.

  "I can't wait." she said. "Look at how much it's done for Noble man."

  "I'd rather you didn't call him that," Mama quickly retorted, but still held on to her smile.

  "Noble? You don't want me calling him Noble? I thought that was his name. Does he have a nickname?"

  I felt the blood rise to my cheeks.

  "I don't want you calling him Noble man. " Mama looked at me. "He is a very noble man, but his name is just Noble, as yours is just Betsy and not Betsy girl," Mama explained as pointedly and as carefully as she would explain to a foreigner.

  "Right," Betsy said. "Fine. Noble it is." She really looked as if she didn't have the energy to put up any arguments. At her father's obvious urging, she thanked Mama for the evening and left ahead of him, showing how anxious she was to get out of our house.

  "I'm sorry about her behavior," Mr. Fletcher told Mama when we all stepped out together.

  "She'll get better," Mama assured him.

  He shook his head and smiled at her neverending- optimism. "You're something. Sarah. Thank you far everything." He kissed her goodnight. He patted me on the shoulder but gave Baby Celeste a hug and a kiss on her cheek.

  "Bye-bye.'' she called, and he laughed.

  "What a child." he cried back to us, got into his car, and drove off., We stood there watching the car go down the driveway.

  "You never told me about all the work that was done on what would be Betsy's bedroom. Mama." It had been simmering under my tongue ever since Mama had showed it to Betsy.

  "Work was done on your room as well. Noble," Mama said. smiling, "We all love you and will never stop loving you."

  "I know, but you never mentioned doing anything to that room. I was just surprised."

  Her smile evaporated quickly. "You sound more envious than surprised. You wouldn't be either if you were trying," she accused, and went back inside with Baby Celeste, who was looking at me over Mama's shoulder with a similar expression of accusation on her face. Sometimes, she reminded me of a puppet when she was with Mama.

  "Trying? What do you mean. trying? What haven't I done?" I asked. following.

  Mama paused and turned slowly back to me. "You're not doing enough if anything is a surprise to you. Put out all the lights and go to bed." She started up the stairs to put Baby Celeste to bed. Rather than her rising above me. however. I felt as if I were sinking lower and lower with every step she took, shrinking until I might disappear into the floor.

  If anything was a surprise to me? What was all that supposed to mean? What did she expect me to know?

  I put out the lights and ascended the stairs, feeling almost as exhausted and depressed as Betsy. However, once again, as was too often these days, sleep was hard to capture. I tossed and turned, fretting in and out of dreams full of faces I'd never seen. voices I'd never heard. In between, I saw Betsy's smirking face and felt her eves crawling over my body like two spiders trying to get into every opening.

  She stayed away from our house all the following week. Whenever Mr. Fletcher appeared for dinner, he said she was either not feeling well or seeing some friends. Both Mama and I knew he was making excuses for her. but Mama pretended it didn't matter or upset her. while I was relieved not to be swimming through all that tension.

  The talk at dinner was always about the wedding and what would follow. Mr. Fletcher and Mama still had no plans for any sort of honeymoon, but they did talk about trips we might all take in the near future. I couldn't imagine Betsy being part of any of it.

  Possibly because the gossip about us in the community was now so thick and curiosity about us so overwhelming. Mama's regular group of customers returned more often and new customers accompanied them. No matter what remedies they sought, their conversation always turned to Mama's impending marriage to Mr. Fletcher. Everyone wanted to look at Baby Celeste, who always enjoyed their attention. It was truly as if she knew how to model and perform the way Mama wanted her to perform. She'd smile, talk, and let anyone who wanted to hug her, hug her. If Mr. Fletcher was there at the same time, the visitors obviously considered it a bonus. Anyone could see how quickly Baby Celeste had taken to him. Heads would nod like those of the little toy animals people put in the rear windows of their automobiles. Off the busybodies went like hens clucking eagerly to spread the news.

  "People are talking about us everywhere," Mama said. She called it "a symphony of wagging tongues" and laughed as if she were the satisfied orchestra conductor. Indeed. everything Mama wanted to happen seemed to be falling into place. Unlike me, nothing surprised her. She expected it all and her confidence influenced my own growing belief that higher spiritual powers were truly directing her every decision.

  The crowning piece then occurred. Ten days after the New York couple had visited Mr. Fletcher's house. they made an offer. He countered and they settled. Everyone who visited us and learned of the relatively quick sale was astonished. From what I overheard them say, real estate apparently didn't move that rapidly in our area, and certainly not a house as old as the one the Fletchers had bought. Suddenly, instead of bad luck attending anyone who had personal involvement with Mama, good luck came. Combined with the positive results enjoyed from her herbal medicines and supplements, this new air of promise about Mama encouraged the gossips and meddlers to want to be in her aura, to shake her hand, to touch her or have her touch them.

  One of Mama's strong beliefs was in fact a faith in her ability to transfer good energy into someone. It wasn't exactly the same as what people called the laying on of hands. She never claimed to have divine powers. Instead, she talked about an inner heat. Her body was simply blessed with the ability to capture the positive spiritual flow around all of us and channel it into people who needed and desired it.

  How many times had I seen her place her palms on someone's temples, close her eyes, and hold her hands there until the client, as she liked to refer to him or to her, opened his or her eyes and declared the headache was gone? She removed aches and pains in should
ers and arms. legs and stomachs, and together with her herbal concoctions, she cured insomnia, indigestion, arthritis, migraines. as well as sped up the healing of operations and injuries.

  I could still remember her soothing Daddy's tired muscles and healing his aches and strains with merely the massaging of his shoulders and back.

  "I don't know if you have powers or not. Sarah," he would say, "but I sure like your warm touch."

  It brought a smile to my face to remember those days, those happier times when Noble and I were young enough to still believe in the promises of rainbows and miracles. Mama filled our ears with wondrous possibilities. It was truly like being in a special womb, cared for and protected. The spirits that whirled about our home and us were impenetrable, inviolate, and most important. loving.

  Although Noble did not care or pursue the spiritual as much as I did, Mama's talk of it

  encouraged him to have a faith in his own

  invulnerability. He could jump from any free, run as fast as he wanted, go as deeply into the forest as he pleased, without the fears that accompanied most people. Warnings ran down his back like raindrops on a windowpane. His own death must have been a terrible surprise, a betrayal he never imagined. I could never stop thinking about that moment, that brutal, ugly moment that changed all our lives.

  By the end of my musings and reveries, my vivid recollections of those precious days. I usually had a deep feeling of sadness and an even deeper sense of loneliness. Once. Noble was the only friend I had in the world. Now. I had none and the prospect of Betsy being any sort of friend was slim and even frightening.

  She had little or no interest in me anyway. Between the time Betsy had come to dinner and the next time she was at our home, she had spent time in the village and mails, renewing some old friendships and making new ones. Mr. Fletcher complained that she could attach herself to a new boyfriend in hours. No sooner had she met someone who interested her than she was bringing him around and treating him like someone she had been with for months, even years. I understood Mr. Fletcher to mean she was intimate too quickly.

  "I suppose it's my fault," he told Mama. He was always blaming himself.

  They would sit together on the porch after dinner and talk, and I would be with Baby Celeste in the living room with the window open. I could hear their conversation.

  "And why is that. Dave?"

  "I never gave her the love and attention she required. She always had great needs, my Betsy, so she went elsewhere. She still goes elsewhere. We keep drifting apart. The truth is we're more like strangers these days."

  "Perhaps we'll be able to change all that very soon."

  "If anyone can help me do that it's you, Sarah. You must have been a wonderful teacher. I'm sure the school was sorry to see you stop."

  "I was a teacher here. I never stopped," Mama said as sharply as I had heard her say anything to him.

  "Oh. sure. I bet. I mean. I know, and one can easily see what a wonderful job you've done with Noble. He's a fine young man, bright, polite, and very responsible. Why couldn't I have met you first?"

  I knew Mama was smiling at him. The silence led me to believe they had kissed as well.

  Sometimes. when I overheard them talk like that and when I saw the way Mr. Fletcher looked at Mama, his eyes full of admiration and love. I wondered myself if she hadn't cast some sort of a spell over him. Was there an herbal concoction she had fed him, a love potion as many people believed, which she still fed him? Were there ways to do such a thing, and if you did, how could you feel the person really loved you? What would happen if you stopped feeding him, stopped the spell? Was it something he really wanted and something you merely showed him how to have, or was it simply trickery?

  It was on the tip of my tongue to ask Mama these questions. but I was afraid, afraid she would somehow see it as a weakness or a failure on my part. How could I even think such things? she might ask, then narrow those eyes with suspicion and once again cross-examine me about who whispered in my ear. No, it was better to wait and have her tell me things, I thought. It was almost always better to do that.

  Betsy never let go of the theory about some magic spell, however. She never visited

  with me without either coming right out and stating it or implying it Whenever she returned to the farm, she would come up behind me in the shed or at the garden and rant.

  "My father is very different" she would tell me. "I don't even recognize him anymore. It's Sarah this and Sarah that. He tells me I should try to be more like your mother. Imagine comparing me to someone who sells fake medicine and believes in ghosts,"

  "We don't believe in ghosts," I snapped back at her.

  "We? Oh, is it we? You believe in it all, all this spiritual mumbo jumbo my father rants about? Energy in the air, a balance in nature?"

  I said nothing. I didn't want to mention it. but I was sure I saw two of our cousins standing nearby listening and whispering to each other. They were wagging their heads, too.

  "If you want to know the truth, its this," she said, stamping her foot to get my attention. "After Elliot died, my father told me never to set foot anywhere near this place. Not even look in your direction, and here we are, practically moved in already. How did that happen if she didn't do something weird to him. huh? Well?"

  I wish he still believed we were bad and wanted what he had told you. I thought. "People can change their minds, and people fall in love," I muttered in' stead.

  "Oh, people fall in love. Look who's telling me. Mr. Plant Man whose only experience with sex is planting seeds in the ground. You're pathetic."

  When I didn't respond to any of her baiting, she would get bored and leave me, mumbling all sorts of accusations and curses under her breath.

  Some days before the wedding, her father began to bring her things over to our house. She was still being bitchy about the more and wasn't helping him carry the cartons, suitcases, and other things up to her room. Instead. I helped him.

  "Reality for Betsy is settling in quickly whether she likes it or not he told Mama. "The furniture the new owners didn't buy along with the house is going out the door tomorrow, and her bedroom set is part of that."

  It didn't surprise me to hear it. The plan was for them to move in a few days before the wedding.

  He thanked me for helping with Betsy's things, and we brought them all into the house and up to her room. Some of the clothing we simply laid over the bed.

  "We'll just leave it all like that," Mr. Fletcher said. "It's her job to put her things away. That goes for unpacking the boxes as well."

  When the boxes were placed on the floor. I could see their contents. One box contained her undergarments and another was filled with blouses. Another had a few bathing suits.

  "She doesn't throw anything away or give anything away,' Mr. Fletcher commented when he saw how closely I was looking at it all. "Charity is a curse word to Betsy. God forbid she think of someone beside herself."

  After I finished bringing things up with him, he took a walk with Mama and Baby Celeste. He had a late shift at the drugstore so he left soon afterward. After dinner, after Baby Celeste had been put to bed and Mama had retired to her bedroom. I thought about Betsy's things. I couldn't help it.

  As quietly as I could, I went to her bedroom and looked at the clothing we had placed an the bed. Going to the boxes. I sifted through the

  undergarments, the bathing suits, and other things. Her clothing was of course quite different from Mama's. Mama didn't have skirts as short or skirts with slits an the side. I never saw Mama in a twopiece bathing suit, and she certainly didn't have such sexy, abbreviated panties or sexy bras.

  I found an outfit I recalled Betsy wearing that first night when I'd played Peeping Tom and looked in at her, Elliot, and Mr. Fletcher. This was shortly after they had moved into the old Baer property. For years people believed Mr. Baer had something to do with my disappearance, and the nasty rumors and innuendos finally drove him to sell at almost any price.


  I watched them having their dinner. Betsy wore this black-and-red-pinstripe, short- sleeve blouse with a black tie tied loosely around an open collar and a pair of matching black-and-pinstripe pants. I thought she looked more like a boy than I did except that her cleavage was prominent in the opened blouse and her hair was beautifully brushed down about her shoulders. Something about the clothing was fascinating, the way it turned out to be feminine. Was it only because she wore it?

  Seeing this outfit again and recalling how she had looked awakened my interest in myself, in the me buried inside. What would I look like in it? I didn't have as big a bosom as she did. but I was as tall as she was. The pants would fit. Somehow, looking at her things-- her bra, her panties, all of her clothes-- like this was just like being a Peeping Tom again. It stirred me in places I had always tried to keep still.

  Betsy couldn't possibly remember everything she had. I thought, In an impulsive rush, I scooped up one of her pairs of black, sexy panties and with the pin-stripe outfit in hand went to the door of her room, paused to be sure Mama was still in her bedroom, then tiptoed as softly as I could up the small stairway to the turret room. Once there, I closed the door softly. My heart was pounding.

  Enough moonlight was coming through the windows to illuminate the room. but I knew one table lamp also worked. Under the subdued light in front of one of the antique-framed, full-length minors. I slowly began to take off my clothes. At one point I thought I heard the sound of footsteps on the small stairway and I froze to listen. The house creaked as it often did. but I heard nothing else and released my trapped, hot breath.

  I took off the boy's briefs and put on Betsy's sexy panties. They were a little big, but the sight of myself in them fascinated me. They made my rear end feminine and my tight, hard legs somehow softer, more curvy than I had imagined they were. I turned and looked at myself from all angles before putting on the pin-striped pants and the blouse. I left it

  unbuttoned just the way I remembered she had. The blouse was also too big, but not terribly so. The pants fit well enough. Then I tied the black tie loosely around my collar and gazed at myself. Was I as interesting, as fashionable, as sexy, and as attractive as Betsy had been? Even thinking the word sexy made me shudder. For a long moment I stared at the sight of my cleavage. My breasts were perky. firm, Surely. I thought. I was more beautiful than she was Young men would look my way faster than they would look hers.