She laughed, and then her sister laughed as though waiting Kelly’s cue to do so. The boys looked around with exaggerated curiosity. “Where is your dog, then, Colleen?” Paul asked. “Make sure you tell it not to bite me!” This caused the boys to dissolve into laughter.
“She’s a she, not an it, and she’d never bite you,” I said. I looked down at Sarie, who stood at my side and gazed up at me with her calm regard. “You wouldn’t bite Paul, would you, Sarie?”
There was a silence, and then Peter gave a long, low whistle. “She believes there’s a dog there,” he said. His tone was the same as if he’d said, ‘She’s wet her pants,’ and I didn’t understand why.
I looked at Sarie to see what was embarrassing or shameful about her, but could find nothing. At my home, I’d never been made to feel ashamed of Sarie.
“Because she is there,” I said with all the defiance I could muster. Suddenly Kelly’s hand on mine seemed too tight, a shackle. I wanted my mum and Mum’s kitchen. I wanted to cry.
Sarie pushed her head into my free hand, and I curled my fingers around her silken ear and felt calmer. Kelly smiled at me and grabbed her sister’s hand and tugged us both along. “Come on, everyone,” she said. “We don’t want to be late the first day.”
Before we went into the little building, Kelly kneeled before me on the pretense of straightening my sash. “Colleen,” she said and smiled into my eyes, but there was a serious cast to her set features, “don’t tell the other children about your dog, all right? They wouldn’t understand. And you don’t want to start your first day as a laughingstock.”
So I resolved not to tell any of the other children about Sarie. But I still didn’t understand why no one could see her but me.
When I was seven, our house caught on fire while we slept.
Sarie had been strange all that day, nervous and prancing and crying. I could barely get her to sit still in my lap as I studied my homework. Instead she kept jumping down and nipping at my skirt, even going so far as to grip my ankle and pull. “Sarie, what is it? Please calm down, angel,” I told her.
It had made me so nervous that I’d been unable to eat my supper that night. Mum asked me why I wasn’t eating, and I told her that there was something wrong with Sarie. Mum and Pop exchanged a glance filled with worry.
I’d fallen out of the habit of talking about Sarie in the three years I’d been going to school. I had to keep her a secret there, so began to keep her a secret everywhere. When I talked to Sarie, I made sure no one else was around, or I’d merely talk to her inside my head, knowing she could hear me regardless.
I imagine now that my mum and pop must have thought my ‘imaginary playmate’ had dwindled with my age and at some point disappeared completely as they are commonly known to do.
But Sarie was not imaginary, even though they could not see her.
“Is Sarie ill, Colleen?” Mum asked, and I looked at Sarie, who sat by the back door. She was watching me intently and whining. She turned on the mat by the door and turned again.
“I don’t know, Mum,” I said because I wasn’t sure. “She’s just…she’s acting very nervous.”
Pop sat back on his chair, and it groaned as if complaining under him. “Is she, now?” he said, and his tone was jokey. “Does she have a big test tomorrow? Hasn’t she finished her homework?”
Mum looked at him doubtfully, her face pulled together in concern. Then she smiled and put her hand on mine. “Do you want some rice and chicken for her, Colleen? That is said to settle a dog’s stomach. Maybe that will calm her nerves.”
Sarie shook her head as though shaking off water. Then she whined again and pinned me with her dark eyes.
“I don’t think so, Mum,” I said. I shook my head. “I don’t know what’s got into her; I’ve never seen her act this way.”
Pop frowned. He and Mum both followed my gaze to the door. Sarie barked, which she seldom did, and then she barked again.
Mum sat back abruptly, her eyes wide on Pop’s. “Did you hear–?”
Pop said, “No…I…no, course not!” He pushed abruptly back from the table, making the dishes chatter as though astonished at his behavior. “Aw, now, she’s making us all nutty,” he said and laughed. He kissed the top of my head. “Almost bedtime, little Colleen. Help your Mum with the dishes, now.”
He left the room but was careful not to step too near the back door.
Mum regarded me for a long minute and then put her hand to my cheek. She tilted her head and smiled at me. “I almost thought I heard her barking,” she said, and I smiled back. Maybe Sarie was finally, finally becoming visible to everyone, but then Mum said, “You’ve a big imagination, Colleen, big enough to almost make people believe in a dog that isn’t really there.” Behind Mum, Sarie sat and tilted her head as if copying Mum’s gesture. “It’s good to have a big imagination, but you must be careful not to fall into it yourself. I don’t want my little girl getting lost, you understand me, Colleen?”
I didn’t, but I understood enough that she wanted me to go along, so I nodded. I was careful not to let my eyes stray to Sarie the rest of that night before I went to bed.
It was dark when I came suddenly awake with Sarie jumping impatiently against my shoulder. She pounced like a fox after a mouse, spun, and pounced again. I reached to turn on my bedside lamp, saying, “What is it, Sarie? I was sleeping!”
My room was filled with smoke.
Sarie pounced again, shaking me out of my shock, and I scrambled from the bed. I stood at my bedroom door, terrified to open it, terrified I’d see a wall of flame.
I was frozen with fear, shaking and made dumb by it. I coughed, unable to get a breath to scream. Sarie pushed her nose into my hand, and that woke me from my paralysis–I had to save us! I screamed out for Pop, and when I didn’t hear them stir in the room next to mine, I screamed again as loud as I could and pounded my fists into the wall that adjoined our rooms.
There was a thump and a crash, and then Mum’s and Pop’s voices, first confused and questioning, then raised in alarm.
Pop burst into my room, his arm to his mouth. He was sleep-muzzy, but had grasped the situation. Mum was behind him, her eyes wide with panic. “Do you have her?” Mum cried, and Pop called out an affirmation as he scooped me up. Fire roared too close by, and Mum screamed as something crashed nearer the back of the house. The noise was deafening. Pop carried me from the room, and I jiggled and joggled against his shoulder as we ran down the hall and out the front door. The yard was shockingly quiet after the chaos inside.
Pop put me down and ran to the closest neighbor’s house, and Mum grabbed my hand and collapsed onto the lawn, her white nightgown flowing out around her like the moonlight itself. She was crying. But I was calm as we sat and watched the smoke pour from the house. Sarie was by my side, snuggled against me. I caressed her silken ears and told her how much I loved her.
Misunderstanding me, Mum said, “I love you, too, Colleen.”
Sarie looked up at me with a secret smile in her dark eyes, and I smiled back, happy that she understood I wouldn’t correct Mum, but that it didn’t mean I loved Sarie any less.
Two days later, as men tromped through the house with Pop, pulling up rugs and pulling down the sodden curtains, I sat in the bedroom with Mum as she sorted through what clothes to take back with us to the boardinghouse where we were staying until the house could be fixed up again.
“My poor little house,” Mum said. “The poor little place, but look how well it held up, Colleen! It could have been much worse, the firemen said. And your pop has already said that we’ll build over the kitchen from scratch, everything the way I want it.”
I smiled from the chair in the corner and hugged Sarie. I nestled my face into her warm fur to catch her faint scent of cinnamon. Her body trembled. She was nervous, I thought, being back in the house. It was still scary for her.
“What woke you that night, Colleen?” Mum asked. She wasn’t looking at me, but had her eyes on a shirt she was folding w
ith care. Her back looked rigid and tense as though she’d been steeling herself to ask that question. “Was it the sound of the fire that woke you? Or was it something else?” She shot me a glance over her shoulder.
I thought for while about what I should say and then decided the truth would have to do; anything else seemed like something worse than a lie.
“Sarie woke me,” I said and kept my eyes cast down. Sarie, on hearing her name, turned in my lap to gaze into my face. I smiled and rumpled her ears. Then I looked back up at Mum. She was staring at me wide-eyed, and that made me drop my hands. “I’m sorry, Mum,” I said, not sure why I was apologizing but feeling it necessary anyway.
“No,” she said and came to stand near me. The shirt hung unforgotten in her hand. “Please don’t be sorry, Colleen…I…I just…” She gestured with her free hand to my lap. “Is Sarie there now? Is she sitting with you?”
Sarie, who had turned to look up at Mum, looked back at me as though wondering how I’d answer the question. I smiled at her, looked up at Mum and nodded. “She’s sitting in my lap,” I said. “It makes her nervous being back here, but I keep telling her it’s all right.”
“Can you…would you tell her for me that…” Mum stopped abruptly and laughed, her face coloring. “Would you tell her that I said thank you?”
I gripped Sarie’s little front feet in my hands, I think to have contact that wouldn’t be quite as obvious as petting her. Sarie panted, and her trembling stopped. “She heard you, Mum,” I said. “She knows. Don’t you, my angel?” I addressed Sarie before I even knew I was going to do it, and it felt odd after having not done so for so long while in the company of others.
Mum shifted, and then as if deciding something, she knelt beside the chair. “Can I pet her? Or at least…I don’t know…can you put my hand on her, Colleen?”
I took Mum’s hand in mine and placed her flattened palm on Sarie’s back. Sarie panted and turned to lick Mum’s hand.
“Oh!” Mum said and drew her hand back. Then she laughed again. “I thought…I thought I felt…goodness me.”
“She licked your hand,” I said, and Mum looked at me, eyes large with wonder.
“Yes, I thought I felt that,” she said. She looked at Sarie (but without seeing her), and then she smiled at me. She gripped my hand in hers. “I don’t know what Sarie is,” she said, her voice quiet but fierce in its determination, “but I know now that she really is there, Colleen. I’ll never doubt it again, my girl.”
She pulled me to her, and Sarie scampered from my lap to dance in circles as if overjoyed at the acknowledgement.
I was never a silly child, so I knew that I still had to keep Sarie a secret at school, but it was a relief to share her with Mum, although Pop never came around. The summer I was nine, he asked me if I wanted a dog. “A real dog,” he said with a wink, but I shook my head no. A kitten? A guinea pig? A horse? I shook my head to each suggestion, laughing as they became more outrageous. An alligator? A hippopotamus? A giraffe?
I said no to all his fanciful suggestions. He smiled, but there was concern in his eyes. “You still have your imaginary dog, Colleen?” he asked, and I had to nod. I couldn’t deny her as we three sat here in the house she’d saved, our lives in her paws, too.
I overheard him that night talking to Mum about it in the living room. I couldn’t catch every word, but I caught enough to know that he was worried about my mental health in regards to my pretend pet. Mum’s voice was low and considering, and at first, Pop’s laugh was loud and almost, almost derisive. But as Mum went on, Pop got quieter and quieter. Finally he said, “You believe in it, too, then?” and Mum murmured some more.
The next day, I caught Pop giving me some long, confused glances as if considering me for the first time. Although he never brought up the subject of Sarie with me, he also never mentioned getting another pet–I believe that was as far down the road of believing as he could get. At least during the summer I was nine.
Later on, something else would happen that would get him further down that particular road.
By then I had made many friends at school, and that fall when I turned ten, there started a trend of sleeping over at each other’s houses. There was a ritual to it that involved bringing stuffed animals, favorite dolls, hairbrushes, and best pajamas, all wrapped up into a blanket and toted by strong fathers to each gathering.
Mum and I had started a ritual, too.
Sarie became nervous the first night I was due to sleep over at another girl’s house, so I had to kneel and stroke her ears, push my face into hers for a kiss, and scratch gently down the length of her back. I told her how much she meant to me and that it was important she take good care of Mum and Pop while I was gone. “They’ll need you because they’ll be missing me,” I told her. She whined softly, her eyebrows quirked in concern. She put her tiny paw on my hand as if asking would it truly be okay? I told her that it would, and she had nothing to fear. Then I stood and tapped my side for her to follow me, and I walked her to Mum. “Stay by Mum, Sarie, my angel.” Then I would tell them both I loved them, and I felt better about leaving with Sarie back home in that known and comfortable environment.
Sleepovers and school began to take more of my life, pulling me from the house for longer and longer chunks of time. Sarie had stopped going to school with me and stayed more and more with Mum. I am ashamed to say that there were a few years in my teens where I almost forgot about her completely, only catching glimpses of her here and there as I passed through the kitchen on my way to somewhere else.
But she always slept in my bed when I was there. Sometimes she did not come in until after I had begun to fall asleep, but then I’d feel her gentle weight denting the covers, and she’d settle behind my legs, her warmth a comfort that never failed to lull me into deeper, more restful sleep.
It was when I was a junior in high school that she saved Mum’s life.
I was a neighborhood away, a group of us gathered in a classmate’s basement. It was a graduation party for her older brother, and for the first, excruciating time, there were boys present.
I was sitting on the couch talking to Paul Sinclair when I heard a bark outside. I looked up at the basement window, and Sarie was standing there, framed in cinderblock and aluminum. When my eyes lit on hers, she barked again, her front feet lifting off the ground and stamping back down to show her urgency.
“Paul,” I said, putting my hand on his forearm, “did you bring a car?”
He blushed and said yes, but it was Kelly’s, she was only letting him borrow it while she was home on spring break. I told him that part didn’t matter but could he drive me to my house?
Surprised looks followed us up the stairs, but I didn’t care…Sarie needed me. I felt the last handful of years like a burden as my neglect of her weighed me down. I tried to keep the tears locked in my throat. She was already waiting by the front door, and without thinking, I said, “Come on, Sarie; come on, my angel,” and spread my arms as I stooped. She leapt easily into them, and I marveled at how small she had become and then with a start realized it was my own size that had changed.
“Colleen?” Paul said, and I stopped him with my hand on his arm.
“Don’t ask right now, Paul, all right?” I said as I headed toward his car. “Please just take me home.”
To my surprise, and great relief, he hesitated no further. The ride home took less than ten minutes, but those were the longest ten minutes of my life. Sarie nearly thrummed on my lap so great was her distress, and her whine was so constant it was nearly a hum.
We pulled into the driveway, and I opened the door before Paul could properly brake, and Sarie sprang out in a skittering panic. She ran flat out to the front door and danced there, trying but unable to reach the doorknob.
Paul followed me into the house, and I called out for my mum…I still didn’t know what had Sarie so determined, but Mum would tell me.
Sarie barked at me from the kitchen doorway and stamped her little front fe
et. Paul, who’d been looking at me, looked in her direction, his face puzzled. “Colleen, did you–?”
“Paul, please call an ambulance,” I said. My insides had gone icy, and time slowed as I followed Sarie into the kitchen and Paul picked up the phone behind me. Everything was in its tidy place, even Mum, after a fashion.
She lay by the sink, crumpled over like a rag doll.
Sarie stood by her, whining and pawing at Mum’s sleeve. I knelt and took Mum’s head in my arms, pulling her onto my lap as I stretched my legs out, my back against the cabinets. “Mum, I’m here,” I said. One of her eyes sagged, and her mouth on that same side had been dragged into a sad frown. But her good eye, the one that still moved with bright determination, watched me. I said, “The ambulance is on its way. You’re going to be fine, Mum. I’m here; I’m here now.” I kissed her forehead, her cheek. Her mouth worked, and I hushed her, told her to rest. Her hand came up, gripped my wrist.
“Sarie,” she said, the word coming out in a whisper, Mum’s effort evident as half her face worked to get the rest of the words out, “…told…I told Sarie…to…find you…”
I smiled and kissed her again. “She did, Mum, she did. Just rest.”
I tried to slow the heavy pounding of my heart; it seemed ready to push through my chest. Sarie trotted around Mum and sat before me, her little face tilted up to mine. “You’re a good girl, Sarie,” I said. I didn’t care that Paul had come to stand in the kitchen doorway, one eye on us and one eye on the flung-open front door as he looked for the ambulance. I stroked Sarie’s head, letting my fingers trail over her ears, and my heart finally began to calm. “You’re our good angel, Sarie,” I said. I bent to kiss her nose.
Mum’s good hand left my wrist, and she reached to Sarie, her fingers trembling like fine antennae. I took Mum’s hand and placed it on Sarie’s back as I’d done so long ago, after the fire. When I released Mum’s hand, it stayed where I’d placed it. Her fingers worked across Sarie’s smooth fur. I looked down at Mum, astonished.
More Good Dogs: More Stories About Good Dogs and the People Who Love Them Page 6