Lights Out

by Douglas Clegg

She stood on a chest of drawers

  I could not sleep some nights

  Looking at that placid face,

  So shiny and white in the nightlight’s halo.

  She beckons and repels with her gently curved hand.

  Her lips move at night,

  But she has no voice.

  Things happen in houses

  Where families live.

  She watched,

  And I watched her watch.

  She smiled as it happened,

  Held her fan close,

  But her gaze told me nothing.

  I watched her lips move,

  But she remained silent

  While it happened.

  Now, in the attic,

  She rests,

  For she knows more than she can say.

  Her black hair is ragged,

  Her obi torn,

  Her perfect feet, tucked into wooden sandals,

  Arthritic at her age.

  But she smiles,

  Holds her fan just so,

  Without voice,

  Reminds me of things that happened

  In families,

  While she stood

  Watch.

  The Five

  1

  The wall was up against the carport, and Naomi, who was just beginning the gangly phase, stretched out across it like she was trying to climb up the side of the house to the roof. She heard the sound first. She knew about the cat, the wild one that lived out in the Wash. Somehow, it had survived the pack of coyotes that roamed there, and she had thought she saw it come near the house a few times before. But there was no mistaking the mewling sounds of kittens, and so she presented the problem to her father. “They’ll die in there.”

  “No,” he said. “The mother cat knows what she’s doing. She’s got the kittens there so the coyotes won’t get them. When they’re old enough, she’ll bring them out. They’re animals, Nomy, they go by instinct and nature. The mother cat knows best. The wall’s sturdy enough, too. Walls are good, safe places from predators.”

  “What’s a predator?”

  “Anything that’s a threat. Anything that might eat a cat.”

  “Like a coyote?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Where’s the father cat?”

  “At work.”

  He showed Naomi where the weak part of the wall was, and how to press her ear up against it with a glass. Her eyes went wide and squinty, alternately, and she accidentally dropped the glass, which broke.

  “You’ll have to clean that up,” he said.

  Naomi — barefoot — stepped carefully around the chips of glass as she went to fetch the broom.

  She took a few swipes at the broken glass and leaned against the wall again.

  Her father was, by this time, just starting up the lawn mower in the side yard. She wanted to ask him more about the cat, but he was preoccupied, and since (she’d been warned) this was one of his few days off for the summer, she decided not to bother him.

  She went indoors and told her mother about the cat and the kittens and her mother was more concerned. Her mother was much more sentimental about animals than her father, and went outside with her immediately to examine the wall.

  “There’s the hole near the drainpipe. I don’t know how she did it, but she squeezed in there. Good for her. She protected her children.” Naomi’s mother pointed up to beneath the eaves, where the pipe only partially covered a hole that her father had put into the wall accidentally when he was repairing the roof.

  “I’ve seen her before,” Naomi said. “The mother cat. She watches gophers over in the field. She’s very tough looking. My father says she’s doing it because of instinct.”

  Her mother looked from Naomi over to her husband, mowing. “It’s his day off and he mows. We see him at breakfast and before bed, and on his day off he mows.”

  “It’s his instinct,” Naomi said. The air was smoky with lawn mower exhaust and fresh-cut grass; motes of dust and dandelion fluff sprayed across the yellow day.

  She thought about the kittens all afternoon, and wondered how many there were.

  “I think several,” her mother told her. “Maybe five.”

  “Why don’t people have babies all at once like that?”

  Her mother laughed, “Some do. They’re crazy. Trust me, when you’re ready to have children, you won’t want several at once.”

  “I can’t wait to have babies,” Naomi said. “When I have babies, I’ll protect them just like the Mom cat.”

  “You’re much too young to think that.”

  “You had me when you were eighteen.”

  “So, you have nine more years to go and you need to pick up a husband along the way.”

  Her father, who had been listening to all this even while he read the paper, said, “I don’t think it’s right to encourage her, Jean.”

  Her mother glanced at her father, and then back at Naomi.

  The living room was all done in blues, and Naomi sometimes felt it was a vast sea, and she was floating on a cushion, and her parents were miles away, underwater.

  Her father, his voice bubbling and indistinct, said something about something or other that they’d told her before about something to do with something, but Naomi had known when to block him out, when to put him beneath the waves.

  Naomi climbed the drainpipe just after dinner, with a flashlight held in her mouth making her feel like she would throw up any second. She grasped one edge of roof, and cut her fingers on the sharp metal of the pipe, and lodged her left foot in the space between the pipe and the wall. She directed the flashlight down the hole, and saw a pair of fierce red eyes, and movement. Nothing more than that. The eyes scared her a bit, and she tried to pull her foot free so she could shimmy down, but her foot was caught. The mother cat moved up into the hole until its face was right near hers. Naomi heard a low growl, which didn’t sound like a cat at all. She dropped the flashlight, and felt a claw swipe across her face. She managed to get her foot free, and dropped five feet to the ground, landing on her rear. She felt a sharp pain in her legs.

  Her mother came outside at the noise, and ran to get her. “Damn it,” her mother gasped, “what in god’s name are you doing?” She rushed to Naomi, lifting her up.

  “My leg.” It hurt so much she didn’t want to move at all, but her mother carried her into the light of the carport. She was trailing blood. It didn’t spurt out like she thought it might, but just came in drips and drabs like the rain when it was spitting.

  “It’s glass,” her mother said. She removed it; Naomi didn’t have time to cry out. Tears were seeping from her eyes. The pain in her leg, just along the calf, was burning.

  Her father had heard the shouting, and he came out, too. He was in white boxer shorts and a faded gray T-shirt. He said, “what’s going on here?”

  “She cut herself,” her mother said.

  “I told her to sweep up the glass,” he said, and then turned to her, and more softly said, “didn’t I tell you to clean up the broken glass, Nomy?”

  Naomi could barely see him for her tears. She looked from one to the other, and then back, but it was all a blur.

  “We’ve got to take her to the emergency room.”

  Her father said, “yeah, and who’s coming up with the three hundred bucks?”

  “Insurance.”

  “Canceled.”

  Her mother said nothing.

  “We can sew it up here, can’t we?”

  Her mother seemed about to say something. Almost a sound came out of her mouth. Then, after a moment, she said, “I guess I could. Jesus, Dan. What if this were worse?”

  “It’s just a cut. It’s only glass. You know how to put in stitches.”

  Her mother asked her, “sweetie, is that all right with you?”

  “If it’s what my father wants,” she said.

  Her father said, “she always calls me that. Isn’t that strange? ‘My father’. Why is she like this?”

 
Her mother ignored him. She felt the warmth of her mother’s hand on her damp cheek. “It’s okay to cry when things hurt.”

  “She never looks me in the eye, either. You ever notice that? You’re Mommy, but I get ‘my father’. Christ.” Her father said something else, but even the sounds were starting to blur because Naomi thought she heard the kittens mewling in the wall, just the other side, and they were getting louder and louder.

  Even later, when her mother took out her sewing kit and told her it wouldn’t hurt as much as it looked like, even then, she thought she heard them.

  2

  The stitches came out a week later, and although there was a broad white scar, it wasn’t so bad. She could still jump rope, although she felt a gentle tugging. She hadn’t been outside much; she’d got a fever, which, according to her mother, was from an infection in her leg. But all she’d had to do was lie around and watch old I Love Lucy shows, and eat Saltines and guzzle cola. Not the worst thing, she figured. As soon as she was able, she went out to check on the kittens.

  She had a can of tuna with her; she knew cats loved it, and her mother would never miss it. She set up the step ladder, and climbed up.

  But the hole was no longer there.

  It had been sealed up. White plaster was spread across it.

  She asked her mother about it.

  “They got old enough to leave,” her mother said, “and so the Mom cat took them back out to the field to hunt mice.”

  “What about the coyotes?”

  “Wild cats are usually smarter than coyotes. Really, honey. They’re fine.”

  3

  Although she wasn’t ever supposed to go into the field that adjoined her father’s property, Naomi untangled her way through the blackberry and boysenberry vines, and went anyway. The grass in the field was high and yellow; foxtails shot out at her and embedded themselves in her socks. She picked them out carefully. There was an old rusted out tractor in the middle of the field, and she found several small stiff balloons near it, and a pipe made completely of brass. She kept searching through the grass. Something moved along the mound where the grass grew thickest. A great tree, dead from lightning, stood guardian of this spot. A peregrine falcon sat at its highest point. She looked up and down, and all around, which was something she’d once heard about. The grass quivered. The falcon flew off across the field and glided above the orange groves.

  She saw two ears rise slowly above the grass.

  A coyote was not four feet away from her. Its yellow-brown head came into view. It was beautiful.

  She stood still for several seconds.

  She had never seen a coyote this close.

  And then, the animal turned and ran off down the field, towards the Wash.

  Naomi had been holding her breath the whole time, not realizing it. The sun was up and boiling, and she looked back across to her house. It seemed too far away. She sat down in the grass for a minute, feeling the leftover heat of fever break across her forehead. She cupped her hands together like she was praying, and rested her head against them. She whispered into the dry earth, “Don’t let anything hurt the kittens.”

  When she awoke, the sun was all the way across the sky. Ants crawled across her hands; some were in her hair. She had to brush them out. She felt like she’d been sleeping for years, it had been that peaceful. Her mother was calling to her from the back yard. She stood, brushed dirt and insects from her, and ran in the direction of the familiar voice. She jumped around the thorny vines, but her leg started to hurt again, so she ended up limping her way up the driveway. She went along the side of the carport to get to the back gate, when something leapt out in front of her.

  It was the mother cat. Snarling.

  Naomi froze.

  The mother cat watched her.

  Naomi looked around for the kittens but saw none.

  And then she heard them.

  She followed the sound.

  Pressed her ear against the carport wall.

  She heard them.

  Inside the wall.

  The five.

  4

  When her father got home from work, he went in and sat in front of the television to watch the ten o’clock news. Naomi was supposed to be getting ready for bed, but she had been pressing herself up against the wall in the living room, because she thought she heard something moving behind it. She wandered into the den, following the sounds. Her father glanced at her, then at the television. The noise in the wall seemed to stop at the entrance to the den.

  Naomi leaned against the door. “You didn’t take the kittens out, did you?”

  He looked at her. His eyes seemed to be sunken into the shriveled skin around them; his eyeglasses magnified them until she felt he was staring right through her.

  “Nomy?” he asked.

  “You left them in the wall.”

  He grinned. “Don’t be silly. I took them out. All five. Set them down. The mother carried them into the vines. Don’t be silly.”

  “I heard them. I saw the big cat. She was angry.”

  “Don’t be silly,” he said, more firmly. He took his glasses off.

  She realized that she was alone in the room with him, and she didn’t like it. She never liked being alone with him. Not inside the house.

  She ran down the hall to her mother’s room. Her mother lay in bed, reading a book. She set it down.

  Naomi climbed up on the bed. “Mommy, I have a question.”

  Her mother patted a space beside her. Naomi scooted closer. She lay down, resting her head on her mother’s arm.

  “It’s about the kittens in the wall.”

  Naomi looked up at the ceiling, which was all white, and thought she saw clouds moving across it, almost forming a face.

  “What I want to know,” she said, “is, did the cat take the kittens out before he covered the hole?”

  Her mother said, “why?”

  “I heard the kittens earlier.”

  “Before dinner?”

  Naomi nodded. The cloud face in the ceiling melted away.

  “You didn’t tell me you heard them.”

  “I was really angry. I thought you lied to me.”

  “I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  “I asked my father, and he said I was being silly.”

  “Well, it’s not silly if you thought you heard them. But you must’ve imagined it. I saw them leave. With the Mom cat.”

  “I saw her, too. She looked angry. She looked like she was mad at me for letting her babies get put in the wall like that.”

  “Oh,” her mother said, stroking her fine, dark hair, “cats don’t think things like that. She was probably just asking for milk. Maybe she’s getting tamer. Maybe one day she and all the kittens, grown up, will come back because you were so nice to them.”

  “I was sure I heard them.”

  “Maybe you wanted to hear them.”

  Naomi was fairly confused, but had never known her mother to lie.

  Her mother said, “you got sunburned today.”

  “I saw a coyote in the field.”

  “You went in the field?”

  “I was looking for the kittens.”

  “Oh, you. Don’t tell your father.”

  In the morning, she returned to the carport wall. She pressed a drinking glass to it, and then applied her ear.

  Nothing.

  No sound.

  She tapped on the wall with her fingers.

  No sound.

  And then…something.

  Almost nothing.

  Almost a whine.

  And then, as if a dam had burst, the screaming, shrieking of small kittens, and the sound of frantic clawing.

  She almost dropped the glass, but remembering her leg, she caught it in time. I wouldn’t lie to you, she heard her mother say, a memory.

  I wouldn’t lie to you.

  She put the glass up to the wall.

  Nothing.

  Silence.

  Sound of her own heart, beatin
g rapidly.

  5

  That night, she lay in bed, unable to sleep. In the daylight, she would be all right, but at night she had to stay up because of things in the dark. She thought she had forgotten how to breathe; then realized, she was still inhaling and exhaling.

  About one in the morning, her door opened.

  Someone stood there, so she had to close her eyes.

  She counted her breaths, and hoped it wouldn’t be him.

  She felt the kiss on her forehead.

  That, and the touching her on the outside of the blanket, was all he ever did, the nighttime father, but it was enough to make her wish she were dead and wonder where her mother was to protect her.

  But as she lay there, she heard them again.

  The kittens.

  Mewling sweetly, for tuna or milk.

  They had traveled to find her, through the small spaces within the walls, to find her and tell her they were all right.

  She fell asleep before the door opened again, listening to them, wondering if they were happy, if they were catching the mice that she knew occasionally crawled into other holes and vents and cracks. The five were still there, her kittens, her kittens, and she knew it would turn out fine now.

  6

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “Well, Dan, if we’d taken her to the hospital instead of letting the infection go like that…”

  “And somebody would’ve accused us of child abuse. That’s all that ever happens anymore. And it’s not some infection, Jean. Look at her. Why is she doing that?”

  “I think she’s sick. Her fever’s back.”

  “What’s gotten into her?”

  Naomi heard them, but paid no attention, because the kittens were getting louder. They were three months old now, and they sounded more like cats. They played there, behind the diamond shaped wallpaper in the kitchen, just behind the toaster. One had caught a mouse or something, and they were playing with it—she could hear the frightened squeaks. She pressed the palms of her hands against the wallpaper, trying to open up the wall, but no matter how much she pressed, nothing gave.