Black Cat

  "I hope you decide to do it," he said "Don't hesitate to ask me anything if it will help you. Sarah, as well," he added, turning to Mama.

  "Of course," she said. "I'd only be too happy to help you with your future. It's never too late to think about it or too soon."

  Betsy looked as if she had taken a step in a direction she didn't really want to go, but later. overhearing Betsy talk on the phone to some girl she had met. I learned the real reason for her considering community college. She had met another guy, Roy Fuller, who was attending the community college, was a star on their basketball team, and according to Betsy, was good-looking and sexy. Apparently, she had already dumped Dirk and was in serious pursuit of Roy Fuller.

  Two days later she did enroll in the community college. Her father was more than willing to pay every expense, including buying her a late-model used car. After all, she told him, she had to go back and forth to the college and she couldn't put the burden on "poor Sarah, who has an infant to care for and an herbal farm to operate."

  Whenever she was being nice or, in my eyes, conniving, she called Mama Sarah; otherwise, she reverted to addressing her as Mrs. Atwell, especially when her father wasn't present.

  "I'm no longer Mrs. Atwell," Mama would calmly tell her. "Your father and I were married."

  "Whatever," Betsy would say.

  The following week, her father and she went looking for an appropriate car, and they returned with a sporty-looking model in red.

  "If you're nice to me. Noble man. IT take you for a ride," she told me after they had brought the car home. It looked spankingly brand-new and had chrome everywhere and real leather seats. "I might even let you take it for a ride. How would you like that?"

  "Thanks, but no thanks."

  She narrowed her eyes at me, then asked. "Do you have a driver's license?" I looked away.

  "You don't, do you? How can you not want to have a driver's license? Its the first thing anyone your age wants, especially boys. You are weird," she charged, as if I were doing her some sort of injury by not wanting a driver's license.

  "I want it. I just haven't gotten around to it," I muttered to get her off my back.

  "Not gotten around to it! You're too old to be depending on your mommy to drive you around. What is she going to do, pick up your girlfriend for you whenever you decide to have one? That'll be a scene." She laughed at me. "You'll go parking and fool around in the backseat while Mammy sits up front and waits and maybe peeks at you in the rearview mirror."

  "Shut up." I finally. said. I had held back any sign of temper until then. "Excuse me? Shut up?"

  "Just leave me alone," I begged, and hurried away from her. "Freak!" she screamed after me.

  Happily, she was so occupied with herself and her love interests and her new car those first few weeks of our new life together that she rarely paid any attention to me or to Baby Celeste, She wasn't around all that much, rarely ate dinner with us, and always slept too late for breakfast with us, so I didn't have to confront her often. but I could see that she was getting increasingly impatient and annoyed with my deliberate avoidance and disinterest in her and her affairs.

  I was really surprised she actually went through with registration for the community college courses and bought the required books and notebooks. She had made promises to her father before and broken them. Why should this be any different? However, she went through with it and made a big show of it all, mostly to please her father.

  I noticed Mama was noncommittal about Betsy's new college career. She said nothing positive or negative about it to any of us. When Mr, Fletcher praised Betsy for making an intelligent, albeit longdelayed, good step in her life. Mama sat with a soft smile on her face and occasionally shifted her eyes toward me. Her look gave me the eerie feeling things were still falling in place the way she wanted and the way a higher power had designed. I did not

  understand where it was all headed. I was happy about Betsy's decision because I thought it would mean I would have even less contact with her, but other than that. I didn't know what to expect.

  Then, one night Betsy surprised us all at dinner, me especially, by suggesting I might follow in her footsteps.

  "You could enroll just like I did. You have a high school diploma. You could be in the same classes as I am and I'd take you back and forth until you get your own driver's license. Well?" she demanded. "What do you think of the idea? Its a good one, isn't it?" She pushed me to say yes right then and there.

  It threw me into a small panic. I looked at Mama, who sat like Buddha expecting me to come up with a good response and showing me no indication of what she wanted to hear.

  "That really isn't such a bad idea." Mr. Fletcher said. "What do you think. Sarah?"

  "When Noble is ready for it, he'll tell us,," she finally said.

  "Why isn't he ready for it?" Betsy challenged. She turned back to me. "You can't just hang around here for the rest of your life nursing plants and being a babysitter."

  I didn't respond, which frustrated her. She shook her head and looked to Mama. "He's not retarded, is he?" she asked.

  Mama smiled, "Hardly. In fact, Im sure you'll be asking him to help you with your homework,"

  Betsy reddened. "Well, if he's that smart, why isn't he interested in doing something with himself?"

  Mama looked lovingly at me. "Noble is a very special young man. He has more than just some book knowledge. He achieved very high grades on all of his exams and he knows he can do whatever he wants when he wants to do it, but he has something else, too."

  "What's that?" Betsy inquired with a smirk.

  "Wisdom. Wisdom, That's something you don't get out of books or classes or teachers. It comes from in here," Mama said, putting her hand over her heart,

  "Oh. brother" Betsy muttered, shaking her head. "You see what a weird person you married and what a weird family you married into, Daddy?"

  He turned crimson. "Betsy! That's a very inappropriate remark. I want you to apologize immediately." he snapped.

  Ordinarily, she would have laughed in his face, I thought, but he was giving her money; he had given her a car and was going to pay the insurance for it. She was still working to keep on his good side.

  "Okay, okay," she said. "I'm sorry. I just thought it would be nice if my new brother joined me at the college. We could share homework, study together, get to know each other more and more What was so terrible about my suggestion?" she asked, her face full of self-pity.

  Her father's face softened. "Well, those are all good motives. Betsy." He looked at me. "You just have to give everyone a little more time."

  "Time? For what?" she cried.

  "Time for relationships to develop properly. We ease into them slowly, carefully, if we want them to last and be worthwhile for all concerned," he lectured.

  That was a lecture she never heard or cared to hear. I knew her well enough already to know she treated people, especially boys, like someone might treat a new flavor of the month.

  "Okay, Daddy," she said sweetly."Ill give it all time. Whenever you want to know anything about the college. Noble, just ask."

  Mama kept that inscrutable smile on her lips. I could hear her laughing- inside, however. That would be the day I ever needed to ask Betsy for anything or about anything, she thought. She wasn't all that wrong to think it, and as Mama had predicted, soon after Betsy had begun her classes, she came to me to help her understand things, especially the math.

  Up until then, she never came to my room. Now that she and Mr. Fletcher were living with us, I kept my bedroom door shut whenever I was in the bedroom. One evening she knocked on the door and then opened it before. I had a chance to respond. I was lying on my bed reading.

  "You're so smart," she began. "maybe you know what the hell this means."

  Her forwardness with me made me uneasy, of course, but it also intrigued me. There was so much I didn't like about her. yet I couldn't help but be envious of the ease with which she met people, especially boys
. She had no difficulty with little intimacies, making physical contact, holding hands, brushing her body against them, toying with them, capturing their eyes and interest. Did it come from a well of stupidity and recklessness, or a well of self-confidence?

  She walked into my room and sat on my bed_ slapping the math textbook on my lap. I raised my eyebrows and widened my eyes. She misinterpreted it.

  "Oh. did I do some damage?" she asked flirtatiously. "Were you reading something

  erotic which made you excited? I know that could be very painful for boys. Was that it?"

  No!" I said too sharply and quickly. She laughed. "What do you want?"

  She nodded at the opened book. "Look at that gibberish and tell me what it means. I'm supposed to do all those problems tonight."

  I glanced at the pages. "Didn't your teacher talk about it in class?"

  "I don't know. Maybe. I was busy!" She smiled. "Roy sat right next to me, and you can put your hand under the desk. Know what I mean?"

  "Na." I really didn't.

  "Maybe, if you're nice to me. Ill show you one day. So? What about the problems?"

  I sat up and read the pages, hoping she didn't notice the way my hands trembled as I read. She was leaning over me, her warm breath reaching my face, the scent of her shampoo filling my nostrils. This was the way I could affect a boy if I were permitted to be who I really am, I thought. It made me nervous.

  "It's elementary algebra," I began. "This is a college class?"

  "Well, I guess so. I go to the college to attend it. I did take a test first and they did say something about remedial, whatever that means."

  "Why is Roy Fuller in this class? Wasn't he a student there last year?" I asked, remembering some of the things I had overheard her tell her girlfriend on the phone.

  "He isn't actually in the class. He just came to be with me." "The teacher lets him do that?"

  "I don't know. Yes. What's the difference? Who cares about that?" She stared at me a moment. "You la-low, your problem is getting very, very serious. Noble. You need to be with people your own age. You need a girlfriend."

  Almost immediately, it threw me back to my time with her brother. He had told girls at school that he knew me well and he could get me to party with them. He used me to attract a girl he liked to him, and then. when I resisted, he went on and on just the way Betsy was.

  "We could double-date," she said. "I have a girl-friend who would like to go out with you sometime...Well? Don't just sit there looking at me like that. You should be grateful, not dumbfounded."

  "I can find my own friends."

  "Yeah. right. Where will you look for them? In the forest? In the garden? The shed?"

  "Do you want me to explain this Or don't you?" I asked her sharply.

  She shrugged. "Yeah. I suppose. I don't want to flunk out of anything the first week. Daddy would be very annoyed. And Roy would be very disappointed." She laughed.

  I started to go through it. I couldn't help taking on Mama's teacher personality. It seemed to come naturally, but I could see Betsy's eyes moving over my face as I began to explain it as simply as I could. It was soon clear that she wasn't really listening or even slightly interested.

  "Don't you shave yet?" she suddenly asked me. It sent a surge of electricity through my heart and down my spine.

  "Yes," I said. "If you don't want to listen to me, why did you come in here and bother me?"' I shot back at her.

  "Relax. I was just curious. You're probably lucky you don't have a heavy beard or something."

  She sat back, her hands on the bed, her body arched. How wonderfully free of inhibition she was, free of any self-consciousness about her body. When she looked at me, could she see the envy in my eyes?

  "Roy likes to keep a two-day beard. He thinks ifs cool or something. I guess it is sexy. I just don't like him rubbing his cheeks against mine. It burns. See," she said, nodding at me. "girls are going to like you. You want me to talk to Fredda Sacks about a date? She'd like you, and believe me" -- Betsy smiled coyly-- "you'll have a good time."

  "No," I said quickly and firmly.

  She shrugged. "Okay, could you do me a big favor, then? Just finish those problems for me. I've got to get ready to go out. I'm meeting Roy at the mall. You could come if you want."

  If I do these problems, it won't help you. You won't learn anything." learn it later. Thanks. Just leave it in my room when you're done."

  She hopped off the bed and started out. "Once you have sex, you won't be so interested in your plants and things." She laughed. When she closed the door behind her, it was as if she had taken all the air out of the room with her.

  Mainly to keep my mind off what she had said and done. I completed the math problems for her. She was already gone by the time I was finished. but I still knocked on her closed bedroom door before entering.

  I hadn't seen her room since her father and I had moved her things into the house.

  She had left all the lights on. The bed was unmade and clothes were tossed even-where: over chairs, over the bedpost, and merely left in a pile on the floor by the closet as if the closet door were jammed. Her vanity table was just as much a mess, with open jars of cream, uncapped tubes of lotions, brushes, and hair clips scattered over it. What looked like a wet bath towel was draped over the back of the chair, and a stained washcloth was on the floor beside the chair. At the foot of her bed were three pairs of shoes, two lying on their sides, probably kicked off.

  To get rid of what Betsy called a putrid odor, she must have poured a bottle of cologne over the rug. It was so redolent that I couldn't imagine how she slept here. The window was shut and the shades drawn.

  I looked about for a place to put the math book and the work sheet and decided to make a place for it on the vanity table. As I pushed things aside, covered some of the opened jars. I saw a container with dozens of tablets. Under each tablet was the name of each day of the week. I picked it up and saw from the label that they were birth control pills. I don't know why, but just holding the package frightened me and my fingers trembled so badly. I lost my grip. The container fell to the desk and the pills jumped out of their slots and flew off the desk, rolling every which way.

  Panic dropped a sheet of cold ice down my back. For a moment my feet were embedded in the carpet. I couldn't move. My heart thumped with utter dread. I felt smothered. As quickly as I could. I started to gather up the pills. Some had bounced and rolled as far as under the bed. When I gathered up all I could see. I put them all back in the empty places, but there were seven places yet to fill. or. I wondered, were they empty to start? What day did the pills begin? I couldn't remember from my initial look.

  I went back to my knees and searched the carpet even more carefully, inches at a time. When I found another pill, my turmoil intensified. If I had missed this one. I could easily have missed another and another. How important was it to finish all the pills and take them in the right order? What if I messed it up so badly she became pregnant? Was that possible? How I wished I knew more about this sort of thing.

  With the tip of my nose practically brushing the carpet. I went back and forth as methodically as I could to be sure I didn't miss a spot. I knelt down and shoved my arm as far as I could under her bed and began to sweep my hand back toward me. Again, to my shock, another pill appeared. I hurried to put it in an empty space, then went down on my knees again.

  "What are you doing?" I heard Mama ask, and looked at the doorway.

  She was standing there with Baby Celeste, who somehow thought the sight of me on my knees was funny. I had left the door open, having no reason to close it. After all. I was just entering Betsy's bedroom to put the schoolwork somewhere. I was just going in and out.

  "Well? Answer me, Noble."

  I stood up and looked toward the vanity table. "I.. helped her with her math and brought the book back."

  "So why were you on your knees? What are you looking for. Noble?" I started to shake my head and she stepped into to the room.
>
  "What is it?" she demanded.

  "When I put the book on the table. I

  accidentally knocked something off... a container full of pills and some of them spilled out. I was just trying to find them all" I said quickly.

  "Container?"

  She walked to the table and looked at the packet. She glanced at me and then tightened her lips.

  "I see. And have you found them all?" "I don't know. I think I did."

  "You shouldn't be in here. Noble, and you certainly shouldn't be touching any of Betsy's things."

  "I just... she told me to put the book back in her room."

  Mama continued to study the pills. She took the container in hand and then looked at me.

  "Has everything been put back the way it was?"

  "I think so. Im not sure."

  "Very good. Now get out"

  I started away.

  "Take the baby outside for some air," she added as I reached the door.

  "For some air' ?"

  "Yes. Noble. Take her for a walk. Go on," she ordered, and turned back to the vanity table. I wasn't sure. but I thought she was smiling.

  Because it was a somewhat overcast evening. I didn't take Baby Celeste far from the front of the house. As always, she was curious about everything she saw. She wanted me to pronounce the name of anything she held or pointed at so she could repeat it and commit it to her memory. Recently, her vocabulary had grown impressively. She was putting together sentences and thoughts with the ability of someone years older. More and more when I looked at her now. I saw more thoughtfulness in her eves and in her expressions.

  I was proud of her and amused by her, but at times I was in awe of her. Did her quick study and obviously high intelligence mean she was as special as Mama believed, or was she simply a precocious child, just a bright little girl who could leap and bound over the challenges someone her age was supposed to master? I had achieved goals faster than they were normally achieved. Why make any more of it?

  And yet. Baby Celeste did have something more in her eyes, something more in the way she studied everything and everyone. She could very well be the blessed child Mama predicted she would be.