by Mark Parker
***
Miss Mowry was enjoying her drive home from school as she did every day. It was her decompression time—when she was allowed to shed her school teacher persona with all its demands and just be everyday Christina Mowry.
She drove her purple Prius alongside the army of evergreens, nodding her head occasionally at anyone that stood out among the others. With her window down she greeted them.
“Merry meet,” she said in a monotone that matched her nearly monochrome persona.
She looked like something in a colorized black and white film. Deprived of such interference, the white woman's burgundy lips would surely be dark gray (and on late-night excursions off the clock, they in fact were), and the hint of olive hue in her cheeks would most definitely translate to light gray. She complimented her palette by wearing her favorite colors—black with gray and purple.
None of the trees replied to her greeting, but it didn't bother her. She was used to silence and the solitude that usually accompanied. But once, just once, she would give anything to truly hear nature speak.
“Merry meet,” she said to another.
Ahead, a white car drove at a Sunday pace, and the distance between them was quickly closing. She exhaled an impatient sigh and reduced her speed until the gap between them was a steady one.
She saw another tree ahead worthy of greeting.
“Merry meet,” she said with a glance toward the tree.
When her eyes returned to the road, a dark shape bolted across the grassy shoulder out in front of her car.
“Oh Goddess!” she blurted out and stomped the brake.
When the car came to a screeching halt in the right lane, she threw the gear in PARK, popped her seat belt, flung the door open and jumped out.
“Please don't be dead. O Goddess, please. Are you okay, whatever you were—I mean, are?”
She circled the car, paying special attention to the grill and undercarriage, but found no sign of the thing, dead or alive. She looked for a trail of blood (or worse) behind the car, then across the highway to see if the critter had made it there safely.
A car horn honked loud and long.
“Pull off the road, freak!” a voice yelled.
As the car passed she recognized the high school student, his head hanging through the passenger side window. She mumbled a curse under her breath when the speeding car swerved dangerously around her own and raced ahead past the white car down the road.
When she saw other vehicles coming up the long, country road she hurried to hers and buckled up. She adjusted the rear-view mirror and bid the anonymous animal farewell.
“Merry part,” she said with a frown.
She laid a heavy foot on the gas to put distance between her and the approaching vehicles, but it wasn't long before she had caught up with the white car in front of her.
When she looked to her right she observed the last of the emerald sea of evergreens. No more trees to greet or imagine responding. Instead of ents, dryads and wood elementals, she found herself surrounded by cold, brick buildings, chain stores and mom & pop shops. Her melancholy resumed.
Meow.
The cry interrupted her pity party with the same unwelcome surprise a balloon popping in one's ear might bring. She felt it brush against her leg. The animal had obviously climbed inside her car when she went looking for its carcass.
She involuntarily raised her foot and sure enough the small cat took an assumed cue to climb over her brake and gas pedal.
The car naturally decelerated but when Christina returned her attention to the road, she saw the white car with its right blinker on at a near-full stop, executing a turn.
She lowered her foot to hit the brake but felt the fragile feline beneath her shoe. She played an untimely game of footsies to shove the cat to any side it would go, but when she finally won the round and placed her foot squarely on the brake, she nicked the tail end of the white car. It spun and shot forward like a cue ball nearly 20 feet. When it came to a stop it faced the oncoming traffic.
“Oh Goddess!” she screamed, clearing the intersection before her car halted.
She gripped the wheel, hyperventilating. When she caught her breath, she reeled about to catch her bearings. Her stiff fingers opened, releasing the wheel to adjust her rear-view mirror. Reflected inside was the immobile vehicle behind her. A steady, indiscernible stream of smoke or steam poured from its hood.
A tapping sounded to her right, someone rapping on her window.
“Hey, you! You in there! Roll down your window!” an old voice wheezed.
“Hello?” she called to the outsider while searching the floorboard for the mischievous cat.
“Hey!” the man called.
She faced the stiff-legged senior in turtleneck and lavender jacket. A comb-over with lazy-fingered strands relaxed limply atop his balding head like the “brain-suckers” those jerks from high school had so often placed upon her head.
He circled from the passenger side of the car, placing his heavy-handed left palm on her hood with each hurried step.
“Do you know what you did to my car? Get out here and look!” he wheezed.
“I'm sorry. I didn't see—”
“No kidding. I hope you're not one of those freeloading hippies who don’t pay their insurance.”
“I'm insured—”
“Then I hope you're fully insured. With good insurance. Not that barely legal crap!” he said, waving his finger at her.
“Don't put your finger in my face,” she said and rolled her window up.
“Don't you roll your window up on me! You get out here and look what you did to my car,” he said, pulling on her door handle.
Her heart raced. “Hey! Don't touch my car!”
“You're worried about me touching your car when you just ran into mine? I ought to kick in your headlight and break your window, you freeloading hippie.”
“What did you call me?”
“You heard me, you freeloading hippie! Now get out here!” he gurgled on a throat full of phlegm and pulled on her door handle again.
“Quit touching my car!”
“Get out here!”
“You're crazy, old man!”
“Whadidyou call me?”
“You heard me, you senile octogenarian,” she said and hit the gas.
“Come back here, you hippie!” he yelled and slapped her car as she sped off—off past the ugly, cold world of brick and mortar and black hearts that reminded her why she preferred the silence and solitude of nature and all its denizens, even when at their most disagreeable.
“Goddess! Stupid old people,” she complained aloud. “Why don't they just all just die? Especially you, you senile freak in your loud clothes! Just die, old man. A slow, horrible death.”
Meow.
The cat startled her from the passenger seat.
“Jesus Christ!” she shouted.
The black thing hissed at her with raised fur.
“Well, quit jumping out and scaring me, already!” she said to it and stared back at the road. “You nearly got me killed.”
It continued hissing, the fur on its back like a black, serrated blade.
“Calm down, already. Goddess!”
She faced the irritated cat with a forced smile.
“Let's try this…Merry meet.”
The hissing ceased. The erect fur lowered.
“Merry meet?”
Meow.
“Much better.”
She relaxed and set her eyes on the road ahead.
***
“So this is my place,” said Christina.
She closed the door behind her, the cat cuddled in one arm.
Meow.
It looked into her eyes.
“Okay, our place,” she corrected herself and let it down on the hardwood floor.
It stood on its hind legs to climb her burgundy couch. The piece's pattern was a purple diamond outlined in orange inside one in purple, next to one in orange outlined in purple
in one in orange, all repeated across the fabric.
“Not your place,” she scolded the curious cat.
Meow.
It dropped its front paws on the floor and looked about the room for a more suitable spot.
A rectangle of inviting sunlight from the only uncovered window surrounded a stone pedestal in the center of the living room. Beneath the pedestal sat a round braided rug, its alternating rings in indigo and gray.
The cat approached the pedestal and gazed up at the white, plaster bust atop. From the animal's view it was firm breasts covered in toga folds, a relatively undefined chin, pouty Greek lips and large, but delicately flared, nostrils.
“Kitty, meet Diana. Diana, meet Kitty,” said Christina.
The cat's head bobbed side to side while it observed the bust's ventriloquist act.
“That wasn't the statue talking, silly. It was me.”
The cat gazed at the bust, only to scurry away when Christina's unseen hand came down upon the nape of its neck.
“I'm sorry, Kitty. I didn't mean to scare you,” she said, pulling the cat into her arms and petting it. “This is the goddess Diana, one of the deities I serve. Do you serve, Diana?”
Meow.
“I thought so. Go ahead. You can have this spot, it’s all yours,” she said and placed the cat in the rectangle of light.
The cat gazed at the bust again before laying down in the sun's satisfying warmth.
“Good kitty.”
***
Christina sat with her back to the hand-carved headboard of her bed. She took a sweet spoonful of Rice Dream from the wood bowl in her lap while watching the evening news on her dresser-top TV set. The black cat lay at her feet.
After a story about a local drug rehabilitation program, a video clip of a familiar intersection was shown. There was the corner drug store she drove past every day, and between the east and westbound lanes there was a white car turned diagonal.
On the blue bar at the bottom, bold white text read “HIT & RUN TURNS DEADLY.” When Christina recognized the car as the one she had clipped, her heartbeat skipped.
She placed the spoon in the bowl and turned the volume up with the remote from her nightstand.
“Eyewitnesses say the dark-colored vehicle that struck Arthur Watts' white Ford Focus fled the scene, leaving a distraught Watts in the middle of the intersection, exposed to oncoming traffic,” the journalist narrated.
The next clip featured a young fair-skinned girl with her orange hair pulled into a ponytail, her black Saturn in the background.
“I didn't see him at all. It's like he just jumped out of nowhere,” the trembling teen said, wiping tears from her eyes.
“That's when this vehicle, driven by Tern Point senior Elizabeth McDowell, ran into Watts, trapping him beneath,” the journalist continued as the video clip changed. “Emergency personnel arrived soon after, but faced difficulty when trying to remove the former insurance salesman of 45 years from between the street and the Saturn's still-hot exhaust system.
“When he was recovered he had third-degree burns on his chest and face and is believed to have expired from carbon monoxide poisoning. An investigation is now underway. Anyone with information regarding the vehicle that struck Watts is instructed to contact the police.”
Christina sat open-mouthed with the remote in her hand still aimed at the TV.
Meow.
“Did you see that?” she asked the cat, who raised its head.
Meow.
It walked across the gray blanket that covered her crossed legs.
“If they think I'm turning myself in over some senile man who physically threatened me, they've got another think coming. He got what he deserved. Senile, old man.”
When Christina looked down, she caught it licking from the bowl in her lap.
“Hey…that was mine.”
The cat ignored her.
“Go ahead, you can finish it. Not like I need it anyhow,” she said, eyeing her slender frame with disdain.
When the bowl was emptied, Christina placed it on her nightstand and turned off the TV and lamp.
“Good night.”
The cat squirmed about in the dark until it found a comfortable spot on her bed.
***
Meow.
Christina jumped awake from a deep sleep. Her pounding-heart reminded her she had forgotten something. Something black. Cat. Black cat.
She looked at the alarm clock. 5:29 am. She closed her eyes and fell back into her pillow.
“I still had a—”
The alarm clock rang.
“—minute,” she finished. She swatted blindly at the clock until she found the OFF button.
“Okay. Where are you?”
Meow.
Christina opened her eyes and looked to her feet, then rolled to the side of the bed.
“There you are.”
***
The last step of her short morning routine and Christina would be ready to hit the road. She nibbled on a lightly toasted slice of gluten-free bread smothered in orange marmalade.
Meow.
“What?” she asked with her mouth full.
Meow. It looked at Christina's breakfast and pawed at her leg.
“I'm sorry. I guess I forgot little guys like you need to eat, too. Let me get you some milk.”
She placed the piece of toast on the plate and ventured to the fridge. She removed the carton of soy milk and placed it on the counter, then found a terracotta bowl in the dish drainer.
Meow. Its head bobbed side to side curiously.
“Just wait. I'm getting it right now.”
Meow.
A paw brushed at her foot.
“I heard you. Be quiet.”
Meow.
“Okay, okay. Here you go. Shut up, already.”
Christina placed the red-orange bowl on the floor by the counter. The cat lowered its head, and after a sniff and a quick lick, raised its sad, hungry eyes back to its mistress.
Meow.
“What? It's milk. Or soy milk. Same thing.”
Meow.
Christina sighed impatiently. “Okay, have some water then.”
She took the bowl, emptied it in the sink, filled it with cold water from the tap and placed it back on the floor. “On the way home I'll stop by the store and get some real milk.”
The cat looked at her, then at the bowl. After a moment it lapped up the cool water. Christina finished her piece of toast and dropped the plate and knife in the sink.
She took her purse and went to the door. “Don't crap anywhere.”
Not being fluent in feline just yet, and for the sake of her house, she returned to the cat, took it one arm, yesterday's newspaper from the coffee table in the other, and carried them to the utility room connecting to the kitchen. She let the cat down and unfolded the paper on the floor.
“Okay, you can crap here, and only here; nowhere else.”
Meow.
“Okay. I hope you understood that, because I have to go. Be a good kitty. Bye.”
The cat watched its hostess pull the door shut and disappear from view. Within a minute a car door shut, an engine started, and the car that almost killed the cat drove off.
When the silence had settled in the small house, the cat crossed the floor to the round braided rug beneath Diana's bust. It gazed up at the towering image.
***
Christina ascended the concrete stair to the double-door entrance of Beagle Elementary. In her dark clothing she was a rain cloud against the school's yellow cinder block facade. She entered and soon passed the quiet library, her footsteps echoing through the high hall. When she neared the bend, a door opened and a head peaked through.
“Chris, Mr. Brickman would like to see you,” said Mrs. Robins and retreated back into her classroom.
“Thanks, Drew,” Christina said and continued toward the bustling cafeteria ahead to her left. When the smell of buttered yeast rolls and sausage hit her, she was reminded
how much she once loved them, before she committed to her vegan lifestyle.
She passed the cafeteria and entered Mr. Brickman's office to her right. She immediately cringed when she saw the mounted deer head on the wall, its giant, arching antlers like the top of a bare, autumn tree. Donald Brickman sat at his heavy, oak desk, his affects spread across the top behind an engraved nameplate that served to remind visitors of his position: PRINCIPAL D. BRICKMAN.
He was white, fat, and, judging by the framed photos and taxidermist's tokens scattered about his office, a gun-owner wealthy enough to go on hunting trips and exotic safaris. In essence, everything she could possibly hate with every ounce of her being.
“Chris,” he greeted her informally, neither standing nor extending a hand.
“Don,” she said, her hand not leaving the purse strap on her shoulder.
“We need to have a talk.”
“About what?”
“Just have a seat.”
While she placed her purse on the floor and took her seat, he approached the gray, metal filing cabinet and found the M-N drawer. He pulled the silver steel handle and after sifting through several folders, removed one labeled Mowry.
“This morning I received a phone call from an irate mother about your handling of a situation involving her son yesterday,” he said gravely.
“Is that what this is about?”
“I think it goes deeper than that.”
With a hand on the bottom to keep the contents from falling out, he sat at the desk and removed a pair of glasses from his shirt pocket.
“We're all aware why you left your position at Tern Point,” he said.
“And what does that have to do with anything?” she asked.
“Just let me finish, Chris.”
She squirmed in her seat when he opened the folder and adjusted his glasses. He ran his finger down a page.
“In your resignation you listed repeated sexual harassment as your reason for leaving, which seems to be general knowledge, so don't get bent out of shape for bringing this up—” he said with eyes raised, “—but you alleged that one of your male students was responsible.”
“Alleged, nothing. He was guilty as charged.”
“My point is that you appear to be transferring your dislike or distrust of male students to a nine-year-old boy who kissed a girl on the cheek. Does that seem reasonable to you?”