Rutting Season

by Mandeliene Smith

  “Copycat,” Janie muttered. She lay back and looked into the blazing, upside-down bowl of the sky. She was bored, bored, bored. Even her arms were bored, even her legs. She thought they might fall off from boredom. They might just unstring themselves and fall in the dirt. She tried to picture how it would be with no arms and legs. Would she have to roll down the stairs?

  The screen door slapped shut. It was her mother. She had a dress on and she was holding the baby.

  “I’m going out,” she said. “You keep an eye on Jeremy.”

  Janie sat up. “Can I come?”

  “No.” She turned back toward the house. “Tommy! Get a move on!”

  Tommy came out with a black trash bag. He had his head down and he was walking slow; his sneakers went scuff, scuff, scuff in the dirt.

  “Jesus, would you move it?” her mother said. “I ain’t got all day.”

  “How come Tommy gets to go?” Janie said.

  “Mind your own beeswax.” Her mother turned to open the car door and the baby’s dumb baby face stared back at Janie over her shoulder. Janie stuck her tongue out but the baby just stared—she didn’t know anything; she was just a dumb baby. Janie lay back down and listened to the car doors shut: slam, slam. Then the squealing of the engine and the sound of the car backing up and roaring forward down the street. Then nothing, the lazy drone of summer.

  * * *

  It never occurred to Janie that Tommy was gone, that her mother had come back with only the baby and a trunk full of groceries. In fact, when she ran inside and saw the plastic grocery bags slumped on the kitchen floor, her brain was too lit up with happiness to think of Tommy at all. There were Pop-Tarts and Popsicles and Cocoa Krispies and pieces of corn wrapped up in plastic—there were so many things Janie couldn’t even see them all.

  Her older sister, Melissa, was taking everything out and putting it away. She gave Janie a look. “Don’t even think about it,” she said.

  “And there’s hot dogs,” her mother was saying, “and hamburgs.” She was sitting at the table with her legs up on a chair and she had a golden drink in a glass; the black-labeled bottle it came from was standing next to it. “And Doritos . . . I bought out the whole goddamn store.”

  Her words were slow and blurry at the edges; in fact, everything about her seemed to have softened. She was like Janie’s Barbie when she put her in the bath and her hair floated and her clothes floated and she changed from a hard, pointy thing into something rippling and soft. This was the kind of mood in which her mother might do the unexpected—say yes or hug her or maybe even cry if they showed one of those animal stories on the news.

  “Can I have a Popsicle?” Janie asked.

  Her mother’s eyes wandered over to her. “Go ahead, knock yourself out,” she said, waving her hand sloppily in the air. “I got tons of everything.”

  “I have one, too!” Jeremy cried.

  They waited while Melissa opened the box and grudgingly handed each of them a Popsicle. Janie stripped off the wrapper: grape. She put it in her mouth and went back to stand near her mother.

  “And I got Honey Smacks,” her mother was saying, “and that marshmallow cereal.”

  Janie walked in close; then, very slowly, she leaned against her mother’s lap.

  Her mother didn’t push her off; she kept talking. “And deli chicken. D’you see that? We could have that tonight.”

  Janie breathed in the medicine smell of the drink and the sweat-and–baby powder smell that was her mother’s. She was happy, leaning there—happy and jumpy in that ready-to-run way she always felt when her mother was nice. Slowly, the room began to fade. The words Melissa and her mother were saying became just sounds, like the wind or airplanes overhead. As the last sweet-cold lump of Popsicle slipped down her throat, she felt her lazy eye drift to the side like an empty boat. It was okay, she could rest; she could lean there in the comfortable, sleep-smelling scent that was her mother.

  The door smacked open. Duane came in wearing his security guard uniform.

  “Did you get it?” he said, throwing his keys on the counter.

  Janie’s mother reached over to fish an envelope out of her bag. “Oh, and I got those Ranch Doritos,” she said. “Melissa? You hear me?”

  Duane opened the envelope, pulled out a thick stack of money and began to thumb through it. “This ain’t all of it,” he said. “Shannon! This ain’t all of it.”

  “I know it ain’t,” she said. “What do you think I bought them groceries with, my looks?” She looked at Melissa and laughed, like it was a joke only Melissa would get.

  Duane crossed his arms. Then, in his bad, quiet voice he said, “That ain’t what we agreed on.”

  Suddenly Janie’s mother slammed her drink on the table and jerked to her feet. “Was that your son, mister?” she yelled. She pointed her finger at Duane’s face. “Was that your son just drove off with two strangers? Huh?” She started to tip and caught herself against the table. “You don’t know what it’s like watching one of your babies go. You don’t have a fuckin’ clue. So don’t even try to talk to me.”

  “Who?” Melissa said, halfway to the cupboard with the bag of Doritos. “Who drove off?”

  Her mother sat down and took another sip from her drink. “Tommy, honey,” she said in a regular voice. “Tommy got adopted by a nice man from Boston and his wife.”

  There was a rushing in Janie’s ears.

  “Tommy got adopted?” Melissa said.

  “That’s what I said, ain’t it?”

  “But you said Eddie!” Janie cried. “You said it’d be Eddie or Melissa.”

  Melissa turned on her. “Oh, right! You wish!”

  “But you said. You said because they were oldest—”

  Janie’s mother grabbed her arm and spun her around and Janie looked up into the cold of her eyes.

  “I never said that,” her mother said. All the softness had gone out of her. She was looking down at Janie and her eyes were mean. “Did I.”

  Janie’s arm was thin as a stick inside the hard press of her mother’s fingers. “No,” she whispered.

  “Anybody asks, you say Tommy’s with his uncle. ’Cause that’s where he is, he’s with his nice aunt and uncle in Boston. Got it?”

  Janie nodded.

  Her mother let go of her with a little shove and sat down heavily in the chair. “They didn’t want a teenager, anyhow,” she said to Duane. “They would’ve took the baby if I’d’ve let ’em.”

  “Better the hell not,” Duane said.

  Janie stood very still, holding her arm. She could feel its flat thinness, and the hurt place where her mother’s fingers had squeezed, and something else she had no words for: a crack or hole; a fast, cold drop into darkness.

  * * *

  The next morning, Janie’s mother brought home the cat. A present, she said it was, a surprise present just for them. She’d bought it from some boys in the parking lot when she and Duane went to get the new TV. Everyone was standing in a knot by the front door looking at it when Janie came downstairs the next morning.

  “So I said, ‘Let’s get something for the kids,’ you know?” Janie’s mother was saying. “Get you guys a treat.” She broke off. “Aww, look at it!” she cooed.

  “Awww!” Melissa said. “It’s so cute!”

  “I know, right?” Janie’s mother said. She was leaning over the cat, smiling.

  Not mad anymore, Janie saw; friendly. Suddenly she was excited, too. “Let me see!” she cried. But when she pushed past Jeremy to look, a tiny bolt of electricity struck her heart. The cat wasn’t cute, it was ugly—ugly and small, with weak, spindly legs and patchy fur. And something else, which she seemed to see with the center of her chest: crooked eyes.

  “But it’s ugly!” she burst out. “It’s a ugly cat!”

  Her mother turned on her. “What?” she said. Her face had gone hard. “What’d you say?”

  “Shut up, Janie!” Melissa said. “It’s cuter than you anyway.”

&n
bsp; “Hey, it kinda looks like her,” Eddie said. “See? It’s got those messed-up eyes.” He crossed his eyes and made zombie noises.

  Janie’s mother laughed; then Melissa laughed, too. Even Duane looked up from where he was unpacking the new TV to laugh at her.

  A sound like the wind started up in Janie’s head. “Shut up!” she cried.

  “Shut up!” Eddie copied in a fake girl voice.

  She was going to show him—kick him or hit him or yell in his face—but before she could move, something worse happened: The cat stood up on its rickety legs and began to stumble across the rug right toward her, just like she’d called it. “You shit!” she cried. “Get away from me!”

  Eddie laughed. “Janie’s scared of the cat.”

  “No I ain’t!”

  “Then why’re you yellin’ like that?” Melissa snorted. She bent down and scooped the cat up in her arms.

  “Janie’s a scaredy-cat,” Eddie said. “Get it? Scaredy-cat?”

  “I ain’t scared!” Janie cried. But she didn’t feel not scared; she felt trembly and weak, like anyone could push her over, even Jeremy.

  * * *

  The cat was called Someday. It was supposed to be Sundae, but Jeremy had come up with the name and “Someday” was the best he could say it. Janie’s mother gave it a plate of pebble-shaped cat food and a bowl of water and Melissa made it a toy out of tinfoil and string.

  Janie watched the cat flap its paws at the ball of tinfoil from her perch, high inside the kitchen doorframe. She’d climbed it by jamming her feet and hands flat against the wood—her “monkey trick,” her mother called it—but today her mother hadn’t even looked. She hadn’t looked at or talked to Janie since the morning.

  The cat stood up on its hind legs and whacked at the foil with both paws.

  “Oh my God!” Melissa laughed.

  “I know, right?” Janie’s mother said. “It looks like a little bear or something.”

  Jealousy stung Janie. She would have liked to laugh at the cat, too, or wave the string around for it to bat at. But it was too late; she couldn’t go back now. She pulled in her hands and feet and dropped to the floor. “Actually, I hate cats,” she said.

  “So?” Melissa said. “Stay away from her then.”

  Her mother blew out the smoke from her cigarette. “Damn well better,” she said. Not to Janie, to the ceiling.

  “I don’t got to,” Janie said. “You can’t make me.”

  But her mother just turned her hand over and picked something off one of her fingernails.

  “You can’t make me,” Janie said again.

  Nothing, not even a look. It was like she wasn’t even there.

  Fear swept up in her, a crazy, panicked whirl. Her eyes landed on the cat, sitting all alone in the middle of the floor, and suddenly she saw what she could do. She rushed at it. For a split second, the cat’s crooked eyes snagged on hers. She felt her foot hit the little body, saw it fly through the air. Then she heard her mother’s chair scrape fast against the floor and she ran.

  * * *

  “Who cares,” Janie muttered under the picnic table. She hated them, anyway: her mother and Melissa. The cat, too—she’d kick it again if she got a chance. But the idea of kicking the cat, which had felt so right, was mixed up now with the sound it had made, that little meep of hurt and surprise, and she didn’t want to think about it.

  “Who cares,” she said again. She could live out there if she had to. She could make a bed under the picnic table and sneak in to steal food, and if her mother came after her, she could run out to the woods, climb a tree. She glanced over at the screen door—still shut.

  Maybe her mother had forgotten; maybe she wasn’t going to come after her at all.

  Suddenly, Janie couldn’t sit there anymore. She crawled out from under the table and sprinted across the yard, quiet as a spy. Find her mother, she was thinking; make her look. She tiptoed up the stairs to the back porch and pressed her face against the dust-smelling screen.

  Her mother was in there, talking on the phone. “No, you can’t,” she was saying. “A deal’s a deal.”

  Janie heard the faint voice on the other end of the line rise into a wail.

  “Stop being such a crybaby,” her mother said. “Did you see Frank crying? Huh? Did you?”

  Tommy.

  Her mother was tucking the phone under her chin, shaking a cigarette out of her pack. She put it between her fingers to light; then suddenly she seemed to forget about the cigarette, she let her hand drop and started shouting. “I ain’t your mother anymore! Get it through your head!” Then: “I’m hanging up now. Tommy, I’m hanging up!” She took the phone away from her ear, pushed the button, and threw it down on the table.

  Janie watched her fumble with the lighter: rasp click, rasp click. After a few tries, she threw that down, too, and lit the cigarette from the stove. Then she just stood there with her shoulders bent, smoking and staring at the floor.

  Something tugged in Janie; she put her hand on the door to yank it open.

  Her mother’s eyes jerked up and saw her. “What’re you looking at, you little shit?”

  Janie felt the fear whirl up. “I can look,” she squeaked.

  “ ‘I can look,’ ” her mother imitated. “You better not be coming in here, you hear me? And don’t even think about bugging that cat.”

  The cat. Janie spun around: It was there, right behind her, sitting on the top step. She hadn’t even seen it. “I could bug it!” she cried, turning back to her mother. “I could bug it if I want!”

  Her mother’s narrowed eyes glinted at her through the smoke of her cigarette.

  “I could bug it!” Janie said again. “See?” She ran at the cat and it shot into the yard. “See?” she yelled over her shoulder as she chased after it, but there was no answer, and when she looked back, she saw that the screen door was dark—her mother had gone.

  Her legs dragged to a stop. Around her, the yard stretched out like a desert, flat and empty under the hot glare of the sun. And in the middle, like a terrible message just for her, the cat.

  It was hunched over itself in a patch of dead grass, sucking its sides in and out, and a horrible sound was coming out of it, a gross, scraping hack. “You gross!” Janie cried. “Shut up!” But the cat didn’t shut up; it kept lurching and gagging, lurching and gagging, until Janie couldn’t stand it, she had to make it stop.

  She ran over and hit it across the thin grille of its ribs. The cat skidded across the dirt; then it scrambled up, pitched forward, and vomited a string of bubbly spit.

  Sick.

  Janie’s breath caught. Her mother would think she’d done it, she’d made it sick. She looked around to check if anyone had seen and then she stood up and scurried away, her heart crouched down like when she ran across the top of the monkey bars at school, a dizzy drop of air on either side.

  * * *

  “I dunno,” she’d say if anyone asked her, “I ain’t seen it.” She stared up at the thin slashes of light in the top of the picnic table. Maybe a shrug? She splayed her hands, helpless. Inside the house, the phone started ringing again. Janie abandoned the shrug and put her fingers in her ears. Two, she counted, three.

  The phone had been ringing all afternoon. At first her mom had answered it so she could yell at Tommy to stop calling, but now she wouldn’t even pick it up and if you so much as walked near it, she’d scream at you. Twenty-one, twenty-two. Janie’s arms were getting tired. Twenty-three. She gave up and let her hands fall back down. The phone gave one last, choked-off ring and stopped.

  Quiet now; she could play if she wanted. But she couldn’t, she was thinking about the cat again.

  She crawled out from under the table and began to walk slowly along the edge of the house, her legs dragging through the heavy air. Not under the bushes, not behind the garbage cans, not in the suffocating gloom under the back stairs. She didn’t want to find the cat. She didn’t want to see its little body freeze or raise her hand and
hit it or sneak away afterward with that bad, wobbly feeling inside. But she had to. Even if she was playing something, even if she was too hot to move, the idea of it would come to her and she’d have to go find it.

  Not by the driveway, not under the front porch. She was just about to turn away and quit when she spotted it: a flash of gray under the evergreen bush by the front door. The jolt went through her chest. “You shit!” she gasped.

  She lay down on her belly and began to pull herself over the powdery, needle-flecked dirt. The cat was in the back, a raggedy ball of fluff by the stone foundation of the house. Bent around itself. Licking. Janie blinked and looked again. No, not licking—biting—biting its own stomach.

  Fear surged up in her and she shoved her arm across the dirt and poked it hard in the side.

  * * *

  That night, when Melissa was handing out the hot dogs, the phone started ringing again and Janie’s mother blew up.

  “That’s it!” she yelled. “That is fuckin’ it!” She stomped over and pulled the plug out of the wall. “Any of you so much as touches that plug, you’re outta here.” She glared around at them. “Out! You hear me?”

  Melissa said it wasn’t fair; what if her friends were trying to call her?

  “Ask me if I care,” Janie’s mother said, sitting back down. “Go ahead. Ask me.”

  Melissa didn’t ask her. She just stood there with her arms folded and her chin jutted out like she was going to fight someone.

  Jeremy was tipped sideways on his seat, looking under the table. “Where Someday?” he asked.

  Melissa looked at Janie. “Where’s the cat at?”

  “I dunno,” Janie said, but her voice came out wrong, shaky-sounding.

  “Did you do something to it?” Melissa demanded. Her eyes were skinny and hard. “Did you, you little shit?”

  “No!” Janie said.

  “Better get off your ass and find it,” her mother said.

  Janie tried to concentrate on her hot dog—the juicy pop of its skin, the red, meaty flavor—but she couldn’t taste a thing.