Cat (3 page)

"With a mother calling you a freak, why wouldn't you?" Jade muttered just loud enough for me to hear.
"Yes," I said. "I suppose that's true. My mother never liked me to wear what other kids my age were wearing. I had to always wear shoes, never sneakers, and my dresses were drab and not very fashionable. She complained often about the way other young people dressed to go to school, especially girls. Every time she brought me to school, she would wag her head and mutter about the clothes other kids wore. She wrote letters to the administration but for the most part, they went unanswered.
"One afternoon when she picked me up, she spotted a tiny spot of lipstick on my lip. I was in the fifth grade by then. A lot of girls came to school wearing lipstick, even though they were only ten years old. There was a girl named Dolores Potter who talked me into putting it on while we were in the girls' room together. I was embarrassed to admit I had never done it before, but she could tell and laughed because I put it on too heavily. I fixed it with a tissue and we went to class.
"I was so self-conscious about it. It was like I was wearing a neon sign. I remember every time I lifted my eyes and gazed around the room, I was positive boys were looking at me more. When the bell rang for the end of the day, I rushed into the bathroom and wiped my mouth with a wet paper towel. I thought I had gotten it all off, but there was just this one spot in the corner.
"My mother always looks at me through a microscope. She doesn't look at anyone else that way. She fixes her eyes on me and looks at every little thing. If I have a strand of hair out of place or my collar is crooked, she spots it and makes me fix it. She has this thing about me being perfect, her idea of perfect," I added. "Anyway, she spotted the lipstick and erupted. The blood rose up through her face like lava. Her eyes popped and her eyebrows rose up and without a word, she brought her right hand around from the steering wheel and snapped it against the side of my face. It felt like a whip made of fire. She was so fast, too. I didn't have a chance to brace myself. My head nearly spun completely around. I guess it frightened me more than it actually hurt, but fear can slice through your heart and bring a deeper pain.
"I lifted my arms to protect myself. My mother could lose her temper and hit me a dozen times. Where she gets the strength for someone her size, I don't know, but she sure can explode."
"You mean she still hits you?" Jade asked "Sometimes. Usually, it's just a slap; she doesn't hit me hard anymore and always only once."
"Whoopie do," Jade said. "How lucky can you be?" "Next time she goes to slap you, put your fist right in her face," Star advised.
"I couldn't do that. My mother just believes if you spare the rod, you spoil the child."
"You're not a child!" Jade practically yelled at me. She looked at Doctor Marlowe. "The girl's seventeen, isn't she?" Her eyes were bright with anger, like sparklers on July Fourth. "That's the trouble with parents these days. They don't know when to stop treating us like children:'
"Amen to that," Star said.
"It's not easy for my mother:' I said in her defense. "The entire burden of raising me has fallen on her shoulders. She doesn't have any family support system. It's really just the two of us:' I explained. "I try to be like she wants me to be. I try not to make her any unhappier."
I looked at Doctor Marlowe because she and I had discussed some of this. She nodded slightly.
"I mean, my mother is a victim, too. She doesn't mean to be cruel or anything. She's just . .."
"What?" Misty asked. "Frightened," I said.
Doctor Marlowe's eyes filled with satisfaction and she relaxed her lips into a soft smile.
"It took me a long time to understand that, to realize it," I said, "but it's true. We're two mice living alone in a world full of predatory cats and lots of traps."
"Is that another one of her expressions?" Jade asked. "No. It's one of mine," I said. She shook her head and looked away.
"Did your father hit you, too?" Misty asked.
"No," I said. "He never touched me in a way that wasn't affectionate or loving," I added.
I glanced at Doctor Marlowe. Should I say it now? Should I begin to talk about the deeper pain? Should I start to explain how those fingers burned through me and touched me in places I was afraid to touch myself?
Should I talk about lips that had become full of thorns? Should I describe the screams I heard in the night, screams that woke me and confused me until I realized they were coming from inside me? Is it time to bid the little girl inside me good-bye forever and ever?
In my dreams Doctor Marlowe was standing off to the side with a stopwatch in her hand. I was bracing to begin my flight. Seconds ticked away. She looked up at me almost as she was looking at me now. Her thumb was on the watch's button.
"Get ready, Cathy. Get set."
"What if my legs don't move?"
"They will; they must. It's time. Five, four, three .. ." She pushed down on the button and shouted, "Go! Go
on, Cathy. Get out of here. Hurry. Run, Cathy. Run!"
I let go of the little hand that 1 held and chafged forward, tears streaming down my face. I looked back only once to see a rag doll staring after me. It was Bones, but its face had become Daddy's face.
I ran faster and faster and harder and harder until I was here in Doctor Marlowe's office, surrounded by my sisters in pain.

Misty was saying. "And a lot meaner."
"What?"
I didn't really hear her. It was as if she were

standing behind a glass wall and her voice was muted. "Mothers can't hit as hard, but they can sting
more with their words and their looks sometimes," she
explained with a nod. She looked at Jade and Star,
who just stared at her. Then, looking as if she was
going to start to cry, she sat back in her chair. "Anyway," I began again so I wouldn't cry,
"after the lipstick incident, my mother decided to take
me out of public school and enroll me in a parochial
school."
"Just because of that little bit of lipstick?" Jade
cried.
"I wasn't that unhappy about it," I said quickly.
"I had to wear a uniform and that ended my feeling so
different from the other girls because of the clothing
my mother insisted I wear. No one was permitted to
put on any makeup, of course, even lipstick, which
made my mother happy. Discipline was strict. I knew girls, however, who snuck cigarettes in and smoked them. One was caught and expelled immediately and that stopped the smoking for a while. I got into trouble with Sister Margaret, who was basically the disciplinarian, because I went into the girls' room when two girls were smoking and the smell got into
my clothes."
"So why would that get you into trouble?" Star
asked.
"Sister Margaret is known for her nose, not
because it's too big or anything, but because she can
smell cigarette smoke a mile away. Her nostrils twitch
like a rabbit's when she suspects someone.
"Anyway, later I was in the cafeteria waiting to
get my lunch. I wasn't even thinking about having
been in the bathroom with the smokers when suddenly
I felt her hand squeeze down on my left shoulder, her
fingers pinching me hard and puffing me out of the
line.
"'Come with me,' she demanded, and marched
me to the office where she accused me of smoking
just because she could smell it in my hair and clothes.
I swore I hadn't been smoking and I started to cry,
which was enough for Sister Louise, the principal, to
judge me innocent, but Sister Margaret was relentless. "'All right, if you didn't smoke, you were right
in it and certainly close enough to see what was going
on. Who was smoking?' she demanded.
"The thought of telling on girls I had just gotten
to know was terrifying, almost as terrifying as being
caught myself. I shook my head and she grabbed my
shoulders and shook me so hard, I thought my eyes
would roll out. The sisters could hit you, too," I told
them.
In anticipation of what I was about to describe,
Star's eyes widened with anger.
"She made me put out my hands and slapped
them with a ruler until the tears were streaming down
my cheeks and my palms were nearly cherry red and I
couldn't close my fingers."
"I'd have kicked her into her precious heaven,"
Star said.
"What did you do?" Misty asked.
"I told her again and again I didn't know who
was smoking. 'I don't know everyone,' I lied. I closed
my eyes expecting lightning to strike me or something
because I was lying to a nun.
"'Then you'll point them out,' she decided and
marched me back to the cafeteria.
"The moment we entered, all the girls knew why I had been brought back. They stopped talking and looked up at me. You could almost hear them breathe. The two girls who had been smoking were very frightened. They looked down quickly, probably
reciting Hail Marys at the table.
"'They're not here,' I said.
"'What do you mean? They have to be here.
Everyone's here,' Sister Margaret snapped. She still
had her hand on my shoulder and squeezed so hard, it
sent pain down my spine and through my legs. "I pretended to look around the cafeteria and
then I shook my head.
"'They're not here!' I cried. Tears were dripping
off my chin by now.
"She was fuming. I thought I could see the
smoke she hated so much coming out of her ears. "'Very well,' she said. 'Until your memory
improves, you'll eat lunch by yourself in my office
facing the blank wall every day.' She kept me there
for a week before telling me to return to the cafeteria.
The good thing was they never told my mother," I
said.
"How old were you when this all happened?"
Jade asked.
"I had just turned eleven. I was still in the fifth
grade."
"Girls were smoking in the fifth grade?" she
muttered.
"That's nothing. Kids in my school have been
smoking forever," Star added.
"Terrific. Maybe Cathy's mother is right.
Maybe the country is going to hell," Jade said. "You don't know anything about hell," Star told
her. "Your idea of hell is a bad hairdo"
"Is that so?"
"Girls. Aren't we getting a little off course?"
Doctor Marlowe softly suggested.
Jade threw a look at Star that could stop a
charging bull, but Star waved it off with a smug turn
of her head and a small grunt.
"It sounds so horrible. What did your father say
about your changing to a parochial school?" Misty
asked. "Was he for it, too?"
"Like I said, when it came to most things
concerning me, my mother was in charge. She told
him what she wanted me to do, of course. It was an
expense, but he just nodded as usual, glanced at me
for a moment, snapped his paper and continued to
read."
"Didn't he care about what you thought and
wanted?" Misty followed.
I shook my head.
"Another absentee parent," Jade quipped. "Why
do they bother to have children in the first place?
What are we, some kind of status symbol, something
to collect like a car or a big-screen television set? I'm
not going to have any children unless my husband
signs a contract in blood, swearing to be a concerned
parent."
"You know you have to get pregnant to have
children," Star teased with a coy smile. "You know
that means you'll lose your perfect figure, and you'll
throw up in the morning."
"I know what it is to be pregnant, thank you." "Unless you adopt like her parents did," Star
said nodding at me.
"Yes, that's right," Misty said. "It doesn't sound
like they really wanted children. Why did they adopt
you?" she wondered.
I turned and gazed through the window. Angry
clouds had reached Brentwood and had drawn a dark
gray veil over the trees, the grass and flowers. The
wind was picking up and the tree branches were
swaying. They looked like they were all saying, "No,
no, no."
Why did they adopt me? If I had asked myself
this question once, I had asked it a thousand times.
My mother wouldn't reveal any answers, but I had my
own deep suspicions, suspicions I had never
expressed before, even to Doctor Marlowe. When I
glanced at her, I thought she was hoping I would now
and I thought maybe this was one reason she wanted
me in this group therapy.
"I can't imagine, could never imagine my
mother having a baby the normal way," I began. "I
have seen my father kiss her on the forehead and
occasionally on the cheek, but I have never seen them
kiss like people in love, never on the lips. Mother
probably would be thinking of some contagious
disease if he did. Even when he kissed her on the
forehead, she would turn away and wipe it off with
the back of her hand. Sometimes, he saw her do it;
sometimes he didn't."
"Don't they sleep together?" Star asked. "Not in the same bed," I said. "They always had
twin beds separated by a nightstand. He's not there
anymore, of course."
"But even people who don't spend the night in
the same bed can get together long enough to make a
baby," Jade said. "I have friends whose parents even
have separate bedrooms."
"What do they do, make a date to have sex?"
Star asked her.
"I don't know. Maybe," Jade replied, thoughtful
for a moment. She smiled. "Maybe it's more
romantic."
"Oh yeah, you're married, but you got to make a
date to have sex. That's really romantic."
"Passion should be . . . unexpected," Misty said
with dreamy eyes turned toward the ceiling. "You've
got to turn toward the man you love and have your
eyes meet and then float into each other's arms with
music in your heart."
"You're living in your own soap opera," Star
told her, but not with her usual firmness. She looked
like she hoped she was wrong.
"Maybe, but that's the way it's going to be for
me and the man who loves me," Misty insisted. Jade drew her lips up in the corners and shook
her head. Then she turned back to me.
"So you don't think your mother and father had
sex? Is that what you're saying?"
"They had to have had it once," I said. "What do you mean? You just said they
adopted you:'
"My father told me there was almost a baby. He
was alone with me one night when I was feeling very
low, and he told me the story. He said my mother
didn't know she was pregnant or didn't want to know.
She found out when she had a bad pain in her
stomach, went to the bathroom and lost the baby that
was in her. She flushed it down the toilet."
"Ugh," Misty said.
"She collapsed and he had to help her to bed.
She refused to go to a doctor even though she kept
bleeding. My father made it sound as if she wanted it
to happen. From the way he described it to me, I don't
think she wanted to have sex and I think she was
angry it had happened and she had become pregnant. I
don't know. To this day I can't imagine them making
love," I said. I guess I had a guilty look on my face.
Misty widened her eyes a little and-leaned toward me. "What?" she whispered.
"Nothing," I said quickly and looked away. My
heart had started racing again, beating almost like a
wild frantic animal in my chest.
"Come on. We've told you lots of things we
wouldn't dare tell anyone else," she urged.
"You know that's true, Cat," Star said. "We
hardly have a secret left."
"You can trust us," Misty said. "Really. Who
are we to talk about someone else, right?"
I looked back at the three of them. They did
look sincere.
My mother's warning returned, but she didn't
understand how important it was for me to get all this
out. Look what keeping the ugliness inside her had
done to her, I thought. I don't want that to happen to
me.
"After my father had told me the story of the
lost baby, I would spy on them," I confessed and
quickly added, "I was just very curious."
"So? What did you see?" Star followed. "How did you spy on them?" Misty asked. "All our bedrooms are upstairs, next to each
other. We have a two-story Spanish colonial with a
deck running alongside their bedroom and mine." "A Monterey-style cantilevered porch,
probably," Jade said knowingly. "My father designed
a house like that and I saw the drawings," she
explained.
"Thanks for the information," Star said. "I
couldn't have lived ten more minutes without it." "If you don't want to learn anything. ." "Let her talk!" Misty exclaimed, excited and anxious for me to continue. "Go ahead, Cat," she
urged. "I'm listening even if they're not."
"Usually, when they were both in their
bedroom, I would hear some muffled conversation for
a few minutes and then silence. I couldn't help
thinking about it. I had read some things, knew some
things."
"So you went out on the porch and peeked in
their window?" Star asked impatiently.
"Yes, but only a few times," I added.
"And?" she asked, holding up her arms in
anticipation.
"My mother sleeps in a nightgown with a
cotton robe wrapped around her. Every time I looked
in, she had her back to my father and he had his back
to her. I never saw them embrace each other or touch
each other or even kiss each other. I remember
thinking they were like two strangers sharing a room
for the night. How could they ever have made a
baby?"
"No wonder they broke up. I'm surprised they
were together as long as they were," Star said. Misty
and Jade nodded.
"So your mother had gotten pregnant against
her will, didn't want to have sex with your father anymore, and therefore, the only way they would ever
have any children was by adopting," Jade concluded. "Maybe someone else had made her pregnant,"
Star conjectured.
"No, I doubt that," I said.
"Maybe your father practically raped her,"
Misty suggested, "and that was why she wanted to
lose the baby."
"You ought to write soap operas," Star told her
Misty shrugged and motioned for me to continue. "Why would her father remain married if he
had no love life?" Jade pondered.
"Maybe there's something wrong with her
father now. Maybe he's one of those men who can't
have sex anymore," Star suggested. "I heard that can
happen to a man. He's impotent or something," she
added, insecure about the word.
"No," I said, a little too fast.
"What do you mean, no? How do you know?
Have you seen him with some other woman? Is that
why they got divorced?"
"That's it, isn't it?" Misty asked, smiling.
"Welcome to the club."
I looked away again, took a deep breath, and
then looked at them and shook my head.
"No, I never saw him with anyone else." "So then, how can you be so sure?" Star
queried. She turned her eyes on me like two tiny
knives. What she saw in mine made her eyes widen as
she continued to look at me.
"I know what she's saying," she said almost in a
whisper.
They were all staring now, a cold look of
realization moving in a wave from one face to the
other, and with it, an explosion of pity, fear and
disgust in their eyes.
It felt like all the blood in my body was rising
and gathering at my throat. Suddenly, I couldn't
swallow, but I couldn't breathe either. I guess I was
getting whiter and whiter. Doctor Marlowe's face
erupted into a look of serious concern. She rose from
her chair.
"Let's give Cathy a short break," she suggested.
"Come on, honey. I want you to splash your face in
cold water and relax for a few moments."
I felt her helping me to my feet, but I wasn't
sure they wouldn't just turn to air and let the rest of
me fold to the floor. Like a sleepwalker, I followed
Doctor Marlowe out to the bathroom and did what she
prescribed. The cold water revived me. The blood
retreated and I could swallow again and breathe. "Feeling better?" she asked.
I nodded.
"You don't have to continue, Cathy. Maybe I'm
rushing you," she suggested.
I considered it. How comfortable and easy it
would be for me to agree and go home, return to my
room and go to bed. I could pull the blanket up to my