Black Cat

  "Why not?" I asked,

  "Dave's taking me to a special bed-andbreakfast place eighty miles or so away from here. It's near Albany." she said, "and it wouldn't make any sense to go there to eat and enjoy the surroundings if we had to hurry back.

  "You'll have to take care of Baby Celeste. Be sure she eats well and goes to sleep early. I'll call you in the morning and let you know about what time I'll return."

  "But I was going to get up early to finish the shed roofing tomorrow, Mama. It's easier to work in the morning now."

  "It will wait," she said firmly. Then she smiled at me. "Im very proud of you, proud of the way you've gone about your work on the farm. Noble. Your father would not have done much better. He's proud of you as well. Has he told you so? Have you heard his voice lately?"

  I shook my head,

  "You will," she promised. It will all come back to you. Were in a transition period. Everything waits on everything, but we'll be fine. We'll all be fine." Then she hugged me and held me longer than she usually did. "Everything I've been told would be will be," she whispered. "You'll set."

  More than ever now. I wanted to know exactly what that meant, what she had been told would be. but I still didn't dare ask. Sometimes, it was better not to ask. I thought. Sometimes. I didn't want to hear the answers, but it was on the tip of my tongue to warn her about Elliot, to tell her what I had seen, to warn her about his anger, about the threat a vindictive spirit like that could bring to us, especially after I had seen her do what she had done with the black box.

  But I couldn't bring myself to do it, for after all, it had been I who had brought Elliot into our world. I was responsible for everything that had happened as a result and that could happen in the future.

  "What about Mr. Fletcher's daughter. Betsy?" I asked instead. Of course. I wondered if she knew anything about Mama and her father.

  "What about her?"

  "Is she still gone?"

  "Yes, and it breaks poor Dave's heart to worry about her so each and every day. Ms.- grandmother used to say that sometimes children are rained down upon us as a punishment for past sins. I'm afraid its so in Dave's case. His children were never any source of pleasure and pride for him.

  "Unlike mine,' she added, running her fingers through my hair. "My beautiful children."

  As if she sensed she was being referred to. Baby Celeste cried out for us. She had woken from her daily nap.

  "I'll see to her and then I have to get myself ready,"

  Mama said. "Go finish what you're working on today, have your and Baby Celeste's dinner prepared. All you will have to do is warm up things. Baby Celeste will be excited about helping you without me supervising. She will have more to do, more responsibility. It will be an adventure for her, You know how excited she gets over new things."

  Mr. Fletcher had yet to set eves on Baby Celeste and, like everyone else in the community, had yet to learn of her existence. When and how would Mama deal with that? I wondered.

  When I returned to the house. I found Mama all dressed and ready to go. She had her hair brushed and styled beautifully. Two days earlier she had gone to a beauty salon for the first time in ten years and had it cut. When she came home that day, I almost didn't recognize her. However, it wasn't only the use of makeup now, the change in her hairstyle, and the updated wardrobe that surprised me. A new brightness was in her face, a new life in her eyes, that truly made her look younger and more vibrant. Did this come from being in love? Could she be in love?

  I was actually a bit jealous. Despite all the pledges and vows I had made to myself. I

  couldn't help but imagine what I would look like with longer hair, with makeup on my face, and with jewelry and new dresses and shoes. This

  overwhelming fantasy revived feelings and emotions I had experienced years ago in the forest in my special place where I had gone to be alone, to explore my inner self and feel the freedom of being who I really was, even if only for a short while. These thoughts, my curiosity, was titillating, tantalizing, drawing me to the edge of some precipice, tempting me with simply leaping off and sailing into the wind of my driving desires.

  I said nothing about it to Mama, of course. She remarked about the flushness in my face and thought it was a result of my hard work in the hot sun. She had packed a small bag and waited by the front window for signs of Dave Fletcher's approaching automobile. When he turned down our driveway, she kissed and hugged both me and Baby Celeste and made us promise we would behave and follow all her rules, the most important one still being to keep Baby Celeste from being seen and discovered.

  "I'm sorry you have to stay inside all morning tomorrow. Noble." Mama said. but I'll try to get back as early as I can. Remember to clean up after dinner" she called back from the door, going out as soon as Dave. Fletcher drove up to the house.

  I peered out through a curtain and saw him get out to take her little overnight bag and give her a kiss, this time smack on the lips and a little long, too, like a kiss in a movie full of passion and surrender, a kiss that lingered in sighs of contentment, a kiss I would never know. I heard her laughter and watched her hurry around to get into his car. He had opened the door for her, bowing like a gallant gentleman out of a romantic novel. After she got in, he came around and looked at our house. I pulled back from the window and waited until he was into his car, too. Then I watched them drive away.

  Baby Celeste stood by watching me quietly. I shook my head when I turned to her.

  "Mama's making a mistake." I said. "I don't understand what she is doing. How can this be good, be part of some wonderful plan for us?"

  Baby Celeste smiled at me as if I were the one who didn't know what she was doing and not Mama, or as if she knew I was drawing my words mostly from a well of envy. Then she hurried out of the room.

  "Kitchen. Noble." she cried. She knew we were going to work on our own dinner, and as Mama had predicted, she was excited about doing it all.

  Before, during, and after dinner, I felt this trembling inside me. I told myself it was simply because I was worried so about Mama, but deep in my heart of hearts. I knew that wasn't the reason. It wasn't trembling born out of fear. It was from a tickling that began in my heart and emerged around my breasts, tingling at my nipples and warming through my body, down around my thighs.

  Every once in a while. I would stop and think about Mama all dressed up and I would see her kissing Dave Fletcher and think about that kiss. I saw myself being kissed, not by Dave Fletcher, of course, but by someone young and handsome. and I could almost feel the touch of his warm lips on mine. I shifted and squirmed in my dining roam chair almost as much as Baby Celeste.

  For a while she was a good distraction, filling my hours, demanding my attention, but finally, she grew tired and lay limply against me. I carried her upstairs and dressed her for bed. She hugged me around the neck and held on to me for a few moments longer than she had ever done, perhaps because she knew we were going to be alone for a long time. that Mama was far away from both of us. I put her doll in her arms and she closed her eyes and fell asleep almost immediately.

  As I stood there looking down at her and admiring how beautiful she was. I realized

  Mama hadn't been on top of dying her hair as she usually was. Her natural red color was climbing up through those soft strands. For as long as Baby Celeste had been alive. Mama was careful not to let the tiniest spot of red return. She couldn't have missed this, I thought.

  Something new was about to happen, something important.

  I left Baby Celestes bedroom and hesitated in the hallway. I should just go downstairs and read or go to bed myself, I thought. I should. I even started for the stairway, but stopped at the top. My heart was pounding. I closed my eyes and bit clown on my lower lip, hoping that the pain would drive the feelings and the urges out of me but it was too hard, too hard to fight it, to drive it away. I couldn't help myself

  I turned and headed for Mama's bedroom, At the doorway I hesitated, battling with myself
one final time and losing. As soon as I entered the room, I knew I would not turn back. There was only one vanity table and one vanity table mirror and one full-length mirror outside the turret room, and they were here. I gazed at myself and then quickly took off my shirt and jeans. I unstrapped my bosom and lowered my underpants.

  It was truly as if I were reemerging to the surface of my own body, maturing instantly into a young woman. I tingled all aver. My breath

  quickened. I sat at the table and began to experiment with Mama's new makeup, trying on different shades of lipstick, eyeliner, facial powders. All I had to go by were pictures I had seen in the few magazines we had in the house. what I caught on television when Mama permitted it to be turned on, and of course. what I had recently seen her do.

  I tried brushing my short hair so it took on some style like hers now had, and then I went to her closet and began to try on her skirts and blouses, her dresses and even her underthings. I had never worn a bra, and the way it shaped my breasts, especially under one of Mama's pretty pink or white sweaters, fascinated me. I tried on different earrings, necklaces, and bracelets. With every completed outfit. I imagined a different occasion: a date, a dance, attending a theater, or just going shopping in a mall. I strutted about and pretended boys were looking at me, smiling, flirting, beckoning with their eyes.

  "Don't go too close," I warned myself as if I were with a far more sophisticated girlfriend. "Don't answer them. Don't look back. Don't smile."

  But wasn't there always one to look back at, one handsome boy who held my attention and my imagination? I had to smile back. I closed my eyes and dreamed of our conversation, of our meeting and walking together. He would ask me on a date and I would agree to go.

  As quickly as I dreamed of it. I returned to the closet and sorted through the garments for something appropriate. What do you wear on your first date with a boy you like? You can't be too obvious now, but you have to be attractive. Its not wrong to emphasize your attributes, is it? Just a little. Oh. how I wish I had a real girlfriend, someone with whom I could talk for hours and hours on the telephone, talk about the absolutely silliest, most insignificant things that so filled our lives and dress them up like balloons and crepe paper at a party.

  I'm missing the party, I thought with some panic. I'm passing it by forever and ever. Shaking the sadness out of my head. I continued.

  I found a light blue dress that could be worn off-shoulder. It had a deep V-neck collar that exposed the depth of my cleavage, and it fit me snugly around my waist. The sight of my feminine self took my breath away. I am pretty; I could be sexy. I thought,

  "Stop giving me those reprimanding looks. Mama." I said to the face I imagined in the mirror. "You had the same thoughts and did the same things when Daddy came to take you out on your first date, didn't you? You fell in love with yourself, too. And don't try to tell me that was different because that was then and this is now. It's always different for you. Older people always say that."

  I looked through the earrings for a pair that I thought fit my dress, and then I found the necklace Daddy had once given Mama a long time ago, a necklace of real diamonds. She never wore it anymore.. For me it was the most forbidden thing to wear. but I did anyway,

  Because I imagined this to be so special a date. I returned to the vanity table and changed my lipstick color, again to fit my dress, my look. I kept the eye shadow and brushed my lashes. Once.. Mama had considered trimming my lashes, but in the end she'd decided they were all right. "After all," she said. "think of how many women are heard saying 'I wish I had his eyelashes' when they see a boy who has naturally long ones."

  Yes, think of that.

  I finished by spraying myself with one of Mama's colognes, and then I stood up and spun around, laughing at my image in the mirror, at my wonderful transformation,

  'What now? I thought when I stopped.

  I looked at the bedroom doorway. Do I dare? It had been years and years since I'd worn girl's clothing in this house. Only in the turret room in secret or in my own room and bathroom had I uncovered my female body since those days in the woods, at my secret place.

  My excitement gave me courage, but my heart pounded as I started toward the doorway. What if Mama suddenly appeared and caught me? What if she had changed her mind, was too worried about us, or had even had an argument with Dave Fletcher and was on her way back? What if she walked through that front door and confronted me? The very possibility nailed my feet to the floor. I couldn't walk out. I couldn't

  Then I looked back and saw myself caught in the vanity table mirror. I'm beautiful, I thought, I truly am. I shouldn't be hidden away.

  More firmly determined, I left the room and went to the top of the stairway. After all, I imagined, hadn't I just heard our doorbell? It was my date. Mama had let him in and he was standing down there and looking up in anticipation of my descent. I started down slowly, a soft smile on my lips, the same soft smile I recalled on Mama's when Daddy was alive and they were alone and didn't know I was watching.

  There he would stand, my imaginary handsome boyfriend, standing at the doorway and looking up at me.

  "You're beautiful," I would surely hear him tell me in a breathless voice of admiration,

  "I am not." I would say, and blush to keep my veil of innocence and humility over my face.

  Mama would step back. In fact, she would disappear into the wall because she couldn't prevent this. It would be like standing in the creek and trying to hold back the water with your bare hands. I flowed around her and finally over her.

  My boyfriend would hold out his arm for me to take and we would walk out and get into his fine sporty, flashy, red automobile.

  It was all there, all happening right before me if I only let it happen. I descended the stairs.

  Then I turned and walked into the living room and sat on the sofa as if it were the front seat of that car. I was in his car. I was.

  "You drive carefully," we heard Mama call from the house.

  His smile, my excitement, our anticipation, was an umbrella that kept the rest of the world away, kept it out there. Mama's words fell like rain and

  disappeared in the ground. We could hear only our own voices. He reached out and took my hand into his and squeezed it gently.

  "I'm so happy you decided to go out with me. Thank you," he said. Of course he would say that.

  All I did was smile and look down, thinking, be modest, be coy.

  We drove off. Where would we go? A fine restaurant? A movie? To a dance club? Just

  somewhere beautiful where we could walk and be alone? No matter where we went, we longed to be alone. I could feel the need building inside me and I could see it building inside him. too.

  We'd park, just as people on dates always did. He knew a place, a secluded place where no one would disturb us. When we drove in, he turned off the lights.

  I did the same in the living room. I was sitting in the same sort of darkness now.

  "I really like you. Celeste," he would say. "I've admired you for a long time and worked hard at getting up my courage to ask you out. If you had refused, it would have broken my heart, cracked it like an egg."

  "Sure it would," I would say cynically. I was supposed to say that and then he was supposed to protest and vehemently assure me and reassure me that I was truly someone special in his eyes, the girl of his dreams.

  "Not a night has gone by when I haven't closed my eves and seen you and fantasized that you and I were together like this. I've waited for this night and for this kiss," he would say, and he would kiss me, and yes, it was wonderful and even better than Mr. Fletcher and Mama's kiss, It tingled down inside me, deep, into my very soul so that I softened in his arms and let his hands explore my body, a body I turned into him eagerly. It was as though I had been waiting for him for a thousand years. My surrender excited him more, and the more excited he became, the more I did.

  I felt myself sliding down on the back of the sofa just the way I would in the car. I f
elt his hands behind my back, unzipping my dress, lowering it until my breasts were uncovered and he could bring his lips to them, to my nipples, to nudge them and moan and swoon over me.

  It was like sinking slowly into a warm bath. I didn't stop his hands from moving under my skirt to my panties. Soon naked beneath him. I heard him whimper with delight and I heard him say, "I love you."

  Our lovemaking was gentle and then our passion seized us and made us frantic with the need to please each other as well as ourselves. I cried out many times and he kissed me so many times. I felt he had left his lips on my cheeks and on my mouth. When it ended, it was like closing the covers of a wonderful book, a book about us. I was satisfied and yet disappointed that it was over.

  "Love like this is so intense and so demanding. Celeste," he told me when I complained about it ending. "that if we didn't stop, we would destroy ourselves, explode, burst our hearts because of how full we filled them."

  "Yes. yes,- I would whisper, did whisper.

  I closed my eyes and embraced myself, just realizing then that I was naked. that I had somehow taken off Mama's clothes as I had imagined in my fantasy. Then I heard a snicker and my eyes snapped open.

  He was silhouetted in the doorway. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, but the shadow didn't go away. There was just enough light when he moved to the right to reveal his red hair.

  "How did you get in here?" I whispered. Even though he stood in the darkest places. I could see his smile,

  "You let me in," he said, "When you're like this, you let me step across. Don't you know that?"

  I shook my head. I knew it, but I didn't want to know it, to believe it.

  "If you didn't change, if you remained like this, if you would be who you are, your troubled little brother could come in. too. Instead, he's trapped out there in the darkness. Go to the window and look. Open it and listen."

  "Get away," I cried.

  "I'm not going to go away, and if your mother continues to do what she's doing,Ill be back many, many times." After a moment he added. "How's my baby?"