Page 33 - WTP Vol.VII #2

about her grandpa or father, she rolled her eyes and continued talking.
sucked lightly, the flesh barely elevating. She kissed the slope just above her left breast. For the first time, Sadie opened her eyes wide, and I swear puffs of crim- son wafted into the air above her, like the slow motion dissipation of wind-blown snow. I delayed my work; my linoleum knife was dull, requiring a rhythmic sharpening with a metal file, the glue had thickened, necessitating a dose of turpentine, my knees were sore, a stretch the answer.
“I never met my grandpa, but I see him in my dreams,” she said, her eyes lined in magenta. Asserted it was because of what her grandpa had endured crossing the rolling Atlantic. “He ate rats.” She said some nights she’d wake with the sensation of a rodent tail flicking in her mouth. Claimed the rats were afraid of him and gave him a wide berth, but he caught them anyway and cooked them up.
Nadya took in a stray cat, a scrawny female, appearing to have given up on life like Sadie. Its tail was de- nuded with mange and pockets of fur were balled into marble-sized clods. The poor creature’s eyes were ringed red, and it hugged the floor, listless, a desire to sink beneath the surface of this life.
She had vertigo. Fell down in the oddest of circum- stances—getting up out of a chair, sweeping her cement porch, and reaching for the coffee tin in a cupboard above her stove. Once when she had a dizzy spell, she asked me to look into her eyes and tell her what I saw. I saw nothing unusual, no flickering eye- ball, no change in size of her iris, and I told her so. She seemed terribly disappointed at my answer. These bouts would increase during our time together and result in serious injury.
Nadya placed this suffering creature in a shallow tub of warm water.
~
“Hold her head high. We don’t want her to drown,” she said to Sadie. A concoction of hydrogen peroxide and Twenty Mule Team Borax was sprinkled over the cat’s back and tale. “Let’s rub it in gentle like. Got to get
A woman named Sadie came by for a fortunetelling. She was beautiful, should have had the world at her beckon, but prodded along with her head down, a horrible depression filling her life-path like a swamp. Her eyes were bloodshot, but I never saw her cry. Her fingernails were bitten to the quick, jagged and scabbed, but I never saw her lift them to her mouth. The hairline that skirted her neck was uneven, but I never saw her pull at strands.
out all those mites.” Nadya mimicked the contact she desired and took Sadie’s hand, rubbing it across the animal’s body. “You’re going to be just fine. Yes, you are, you beauty.” Splash. Splash. “Who made you so beautiful? Your mama?” The pathetic creature lay in the bath without fighting, without caring, Sadie hold- ing its head above the surface. Together, they lifted the cat from the bath and patted it dry. “I feel life sparking back into you, you honey,” said Nadya.
At first, Nadya just held her hand and whispered words I couldn’t hear. Sometimes, Nadya brushed her hair with slow motion strokes. Sadie sat slouched with her hands sunken between her thighs. I worked on the kitchen floor using mismatching sections of linoleum that I got for a dime. I tried to arrange the different colors in patterns. When finished, it would look kind of pretty. Nadya pulled Sadie’s hair from the brush, rolled it in her palms, and held it high above
a candle with the tips of her fingers. When the hair caught, Nadya released the tiny wad. It created a flash of light that soon filled the room with a pungency that wrinkled the nose. “There it goes,” said Nadya.
Another time, with the gentleness of a surgeon, Nadya dipped Sadies’s index finger into a jar of petroleum jelly and positioned the finger under the cat’s nose. The cat weakly extended a tongue and licked. A fleshy gurgle emanated as the cat swallowed. Then, another lick. And another. Finally, the cat consciously tidied her chops. I wasn’t partial to cats, but heartened to see this creature resisting death.
During one session, Nadya unbutton Sadie’s blouse. Nadya gently lowered the material below Sadie’s shoulders, exposing her breasts just above the nipple. Facing her, Nadya whispered, “Bruises, long vanished in the daylight, still skulk beneath the surface of the skin.” Nadya put her lips to Sadie’s shoulder and
Nadya named the cat Angel. While Sadie positioned Angel on her side, Nadya cut away the bulbs of fur that clung to her side and chest. “Your hair’s gonna grow back and make you look like the princess you are,” said Nadya.
They kept this up for a week, every day, Saturday and Sunday too. It took me forever to clear the creosote from Nadya’s primitive fireplace. I heard Sadie’s voice for the first time. It crackled and stalled like an ancient
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