Black Cat

  "I want you to take Baby Celeste up to the turret room and keep her quiet," she said.

  It was what I always had to do whenever anyone came to our house -- hide Baby Celeste, occupy her so she made little noise and attracted nobody's attention. Nothing was more important than keeping her existence a secret.

  As if she herself understood how important it was. Baby Celeste did not cry or complain whenever I had to hide her away. If anything, my taking her up to the turret room amused her and she always kept relatively quiet. She would gaze at all the old furnishings and antiques like someone lovingly looking at religious icons in a church. I was sure any other child would have been bored, but not Baby Celeste, Her patience amazed me. Mama, of course, was not surprised by Baby Celeste's behavior at all. She believed Baby Celeste was the true heir of all the family's spiritual powers.

  -She'll be even greater than I am someday," Mama had told me.

  "Don't just stand there looking stupid. Noble," she snapped at me now. "I told you. The woman is on her way here. She could be coming down the driveway any moment. Hurry!"

  "Okay, Mama " I scooped up Baby Celeste

  The gravity and criticality Mama had whenever she wanted Baby Celeste hidden away frightened me. I had nightmares of her being discovered and then taken from us for one reason or another. After all, what sort of people keep a baby hidden from the world? Where did the baby come from anyway? they'd wonder. Why was her hair being dyed? If I expressed my fear about this. Mama would shake her head at me as if I were too stupid to ever know anything.

  "Don't you understand that they would never let that happen, Noble?" she asked. "I would have thought you did by now."

  The they in our lives were the spiritual family members who hovered about our farm and home, in and out, watching over us always. I didn't disbelieve her. I had seen the way they looked at us and watched over us. warning Mama of things from time to time. The way Baby Celeste looked in the direction of a family soul, and the way her eyes grew small and interested, convinced me she had already crossed over Perhaps Mama was right about her. Perhaps she came directly from them and didn't need to cross. She was never away from them. Birth had simply been another doorway in the spiritual world for her and not as it was for the rest of us, a doorway to a lesser place, making it necessary for us to find our own way back.

  "Up we go," I sang, and ascended the stairs.

  Baby Celeste smiled at me and lay her head on my shoulder. I kissed her little forehead and brushed back her hair. How could anyone who saw us together not know instantly she was my child? Maybe Mama was afraid of that more than anything and that was why she grimaced whenever I did show Baby Celeste too much affection,

  "You can love her, but as a brother would love a sister, as a sister," she would constantly remind me. Baby Celeste was truly locked away in the world Mama envisioned for us.

  I wondered how being so confined, so isolated, would effect Baby Celeste. How long could it go on? When would it end? Or would it never end?

  Rarely feeling the sunlight on her face, rarely smelling the aroma of spring flowers, hardly ever luxuriating in the soft touch of the breeze. Baby Celeste would surely be disadvantaged in ways I couldn't imagine.

  And yet. when I sat with her in the turret and listened to Mama and her customer's muffled voices below, I realized how similar my plight was to my baby's. Wasn't I as trapped and shut away in the prison of Noble's identity? Rarely did I look out as I would if I were permitted to be myself. A woman's world was as distant to me as playing and being in daylight was to Baby Celeste.

  "We're alike in so many ways, Celeste," I told her, whispered to her while we waited in the turret room.

  She glanced at me, the tiny dimple in her cheek flashing like a small Christmas light as she tightened those sweet, small lips. Often when she looked at me or listened to me, she seemed so much older. She wore the face of someone who understood things far beyond her years. And then, an instant later, she was Baby Celeste again, laughing and giggling at the most insignificant little things.

  A ray of sunshine trapped the floating dust and she marveled at the way the particles glittered. She reached out to touch them and then laughed and looked at me to see if I had the same wonder.

  I smiled.

  A long time ago so many things were fall of wonder for me. Stuck in the dark places

  now, I closed my eyes. I lowered my head. I plodded along afraid of stepping too far to the left or too far to the right. Nothing frightened me as much as disappointing Mama. More often than ever these days, she made me feel it was only the three of us, floating on some raft in a sea of turmoil. We needed each other. Wt had to keep our world tightly guarded, behind tall, thick protective walls. It was only then that we would be safe.

  Baby Celeste played quietly with one of her dolls while we waited. Shortly after Baby Celeste had been born. Mama had brought out the dolls Mr. Taylor Kates, the owner of the biggest lumber company in the community, had given to me. He had courted Mama after Daddy's death, and there was a time I thought he would become our new daddy, but he was killed in a terrible car accident when a drunken teenager in a truck rammed into him on his way home from our house. I had really begun to like him. too. Even Noble, who was resistant and angry about Daddy's passing, had started to accept him.

  His death reinforced some of the rumors about Mama, especially because Mr. Kates's sister spread them. Back then she had people believing that anyone who got too close to us was in some sort of danger. Mama was beautiful and still striking. She could have had one man after another romancing her, but she didn't seem to mind our isolation. In fact, she welcomed it, especially after my supposed

  kidnapping. Being a former schoolteacher, she continued my homeschooling. Back in those days. I could count on the fingers of one hand how many visitors we had a month, not considering our spiritual visitors, of course.

  She played our piano at night, raised her herbs and vegetables, and walked the farm with her ancestors at her side. Before I had crossed over and could really see the spirits if only occasionally, I would watch her stroll with her head slightly bowed, nodding, pausing, and gesturing to someone standing beside her. I remember straining, studying the air, searching desperately for a vision. I so wanted to be like her to see what she saw, to hear what she heard.

  At dinner she would tell me things she had been told, stories from our past, episodes of sickness, accidents, love affairs, fights, an anthology of our heritage. There were young women who had had their hearts broken in love and women who had died young, as well as men who were killed in wars or suffered fatal accidents. There were many stories about my great-great-grandfather and grandmother who were buried on our property along with their unborn child. In that small square of fieldstone were three tombstones and of course Noble's or my unmarked grave long ago covered with new grass. No one but me and Mama knew it was there.

  Sometimes. I would sit on the grass in the small cemetery and think about Noble lying below. I would think about our days together before the tragedy. He had had a wonderful imagination, and like Mama he never seemed lonely. His dragons and knights occupied his days. I used to be jealous of that. I thought it surely meant he would cross over long before I did, which was what Mama always expected, but the ghostly figures Noble saw were manufactured in his own mind and did not come out of the world beyond.

  I didn't think Mama would like me visiting the unmarked grave, so I did it when I was confident she was too occupied to see or when she was on one of her shopping tips. I used to think how horrible it was for him to be buried and forgotten this way. Lately, I have heard him pleading from beyond, asking to be acknowledged. Until he is, he is caught in some limbo. He can't be with our daddy and he can't' come back to us.

  However, just the thought of telling Mama this terrifies me. I know she will see it as some sort of betrayal, and whenever she thinks that, she assumes something evil has entered the house or me. She would lock me away, make me fast, give me some secre
t herbal cure that would make me sick to my stomach. It didn't matter. In her mind it purged me of the evil.

  My only hope is she will hear Noble's pleas herself one day, but she hasn't yet, not yet.

  One of the first words Mama taught Baby Celeste was Noble. That is all Baby Celeste ever calls me. It's on the tip of my tongue when Pm alone with her to have her call me Mammy, but I'm afraid of what Mama would do to her if she ever looked at me and said such a thing in front of her. Surely, she would think evil had contaminated her and she would probably lock her away and feed her some herbal medicine designed to purge her of the darkness, too. How she would suffer. I wouldn't be able to stand it, so I don't dare put any ideas in Baby Celeste's mind.

  And yet, especially when we're alone as we are now in the turret room, I catch her looking at me differently. Perhaps it's only wishful thinking on my part, but it seems to me she gazes at me the way a child lovingly lazes at her mother. She loves to throw her small arms around me and press herself to me. She can lie beside me for hours without becoming restless, and she loves falling asleep with me in my bed. whenever Mama permits her to come to my room and do so.

  The Noble in me tries desperately to remain a little aloof, but he is quickly swept aside. I stroke her hair. I kiss her cheeks and forehead. I hum a lullaby. I hold her tightly and rock and close my eyes.

  And I hear Noble arguing and pleading, You can see you should stop being me. It's not fair to the baby. Get Mama to let you stop. I'm cold and it's dark and I'm afraid. Please, Celeste, Help me,"

  I'm crying now just thinking about it.

  The tears streak down my cheeks and drip from my chin. but I do not make a sound. I hold my breath and bite down on my lower lip. An ache in my heart is growing larger and lasting longer every passing day, but what can I do to stop it? What do I dare do?

  The front door opens and closes below. I hear a car's engine start and I stand up and peer out the window to watch Mrs. Paris drive away with her bundle of herbs and her newfound wisdom. She will spread the word even more and there will be additional customers. I'll be hiding up here with Baby Celeste again and again and again.

  Soon after Mrs. Paris's car turns and is gone, Mama comes up the stairs and opens the turret door.

  "How are my children?" she cries.

  Baby Celeste smiles up at her. I hide my final tears and take a deep breath. "We're fine. Mama," I tell her.

  She picks up Baby Celeste and we descend the stairs with her listening to Mama talk about Mrs. Paris, how the woman was mesmerized by the things Mama told her. Mama reinforces and confirms what I suspected.

  "She'll be happy and she'll tell others and well have more customers for sure. Noble. We have a lot to do. They're starting to appreciate me around here,- Mama says proudly. "Your father never thought that would happen," she adds, looking out the window. Then she laughs.

  I'm sure she's right about all of that and I'm happy for her. Somehow. I still can't say I'm happy for us. Perhaps I never will. There are times when I feel so terribly lost, but I can't say it. She would not understand. She would even get angry at that.

  I return to the work in the garden. The sun is sliding clown the sky now. It's almost to the tip of the mountain range, and its rays thread through the woods around us, lighting up the green leaves, turning them into emeralds dangling off branches. I can almost hear the shadows stirring and unfolding like charcoal cellophane in the darkest corners.

  Something takes shape and soon I am sure I see a pair of female cousins who had lived nearly two hundred years ago come out of the woods and walk toward the house. They are barefoot, but its all right because their feet don't quite touch the ground. I see they are chatting excitedly. They want to tell Mama something, something new, or perhaps something they had forgotten to tell her the last time they had spoken. I'm sure I will hear about it at dinner tonight. They don't look my way until they are just about to the house. Then they turn and both wave. I wave back.

  "Tell her to let Noble go." I whisper. "Please. If you tell her, she will listen."

  They don't hear me, or if they do, the idea frightens even them. They go into the house, and for a moment or two it is as quiet as a graveyard. Then the scream of a large crow spins my head around. It rises out of the woods as if it's being chased and then veers toward the descending sun and disappears in the glare.

  I cover my eyes quickly before the hot, bright light bums them. Too often these days I welcome darkness.

  My brain is jumbled, mixed images rush through like visual static: Noble falling backward off the rock: Elliot waving foolishly at me: as the water carries him off, his laughter dying away: Daddy coming home from work and scooping us up into his arms and crying, "My twins, my right arm and my left": Mr. Calhoun in our front doorway, his hat in his hands, his head bowed; Mama walking out into the darkness to speak with her spirits; and Noble smothering his cries in his pillow, his anger in his pillow.

  Something has brought us here, something. as Mama often says, far greater than us. We cannot challenge or defy it. We must be who we are. It's our destiny. It flows along like the creek. I dream of it, of our blood flowing, our faces floating on the water's surface like discarded pictures.

  The sound of Mama's piano flows from the house, out of any opened window, and snaps me out of this reverie. I close my eyes and listen to the melodies. Most of the time they are sad and heavy, but sometimes, she plays light, happy tunes. Sometimes, she even sings along. She's doing so tonight. She has a wonderful voice, a voice Daddy used to call angelic. It could fill us with happiness and hope and make us wonderfully content with each other, with ourselves.

  Those cousins. I think, surely they must have came to her with something good, something wonderful. She'll be happy tonight. She will chatter continuously at dinner and laugh at everything Baby Celeste does or says. All the dark shadows will be swept away. It will seem like everything is really all right.

  These nights, these times are special gifts, aren't they? Aren't they? Shouldn't you be grateful for every one, every hour and every minute? I ask my reluctant self.

  I do not answer. There is only silence around me. Even the birds are mute and the small breeze has stopped. The whole world has been put on pause.

  I suck in my breath and work on until it is time to Do in to wash up for dinner and help Mama with Baby Celeste. Noble's pleas die down behind me and get carried off in the breeze, carried into the shadows in the forest.

  I cannot help him, although it makes my heart ache so. Once again, another night. I leave him buried in his unmarked grave with my name on his lips and his name branded invisibly on my forehead.

  2

  Mama's Voice

  .

  I can tell just from the way Mama has prepared

  dinner tonight that she is going to declare something important. The spirits have spoken, just as I suspected. She works quietly, hardly saying a word to me, and from time to time she glances at an empty chair or at a doorway and nods slightly. I see nothing, but that doesn't surprise me.

  Mama once explained that there were levels and levels of existence in the spiritual world and it took years of devotion and faith to reach them all. It was her way of accounting for why I could still not see spirits and hear spirits she could see and hear and why I did not know things she knew.

  Even when I was just a little girl. I realized that Mama travels on different highways. When she plays her piano, the music carries her off. I can see it in her face. She might have her eyes turned toward me, but she doesn't see me. She plays but she is really like someone in a trance, and when she stops playing, she often has new things to tell me. She is truly returning from a journey where she had gone to places inhabited by wise souls.

  It is often the same when she works in such deep silence as she is working now. She is there in the room with me. but I don't feel she is really there. She is so distant it is as if she has left her body behind and gone off somewhere. I do not interfere or try to get her attention. I
wait and I keep Baby Celeste occupied so she doesn't disturb Mama.

  Baby Celeste helps me set the table. I watch her work and see how serious she is about her

  assignments, how carefully and determinedly she folds the napkins, arranges the forks and spoons. It is like looking back through time at myself again and it brings a smile to my lips. I was so like that, so intense, so concerned about doing it all perfectly. I remember how that annoyed Noble, who didn't want to take any of these household chores seriously. He would be satisfied eating right off the table. How many times had he come to the table without washing his hands and been sent back? Dozens if one Mama tried sending him to bed without eating, too, but he was insufferable and stubborn.

  Now of course I try not to be so interested in what Noble called sissy things, but I can't help but love handling our old china and running my fingers over the embossed golden design along the edges of each plate, dish, and bowl. They were Mama's greatgrandmother Jordan's dishware and the old, heavy silverware had belonged to Mama's great-greatgrandmother. Heirlooms are important in our home because Mama believes that possessions like that are still tied to the spirit of those who possessed them. When we used them, when we sat in her greatgrandfather's rocking chair or slept in the beds our ancestors slept in, we were more connected with them.

  "Everything has spiritual importance," Mama told me. "Think of it as you would think of indelible ink. When someone from our family touched something, his or her prints became forever a part of it, and now we can feel them, see them easier."

  She told me these things when I was very young and it left a deep impression on my mind and fostered the belief that our home was a living thing. Everything in it felt and saw and heard. It all breathed and was sacred. The walls ,,vere like sponges absorbing and holding on to the laughter, the words, the cries, of all who lived here or visited. Nothing was lost and forgotten.