pets

Running along the creek by my house, I spotted a small blackness jutting out of the water, stiff and stinking in the sun. I turned my head away from it, moving quickly through the greeness of sun-drenched leaves, my breath expelled through young lungs, alive.

Days passed. One afternoon, a neighborhood boy dragged a garbage bag across our front yard as I sang and looked out the bedroom window. Today could be the day that I caught a butterfly or made my parents another mud turtle sculpture. But that bag...what was in that bag? It made me feel bad. Soon I had to take my medicine. It had never really bothered me, though I bruised easily. I hated the boy dragging that bag. I tiptoed down the hall and stood at the top of the stairs as Dad peered into it. He signed. I twirled back to my room to finish my song, complete with high kicks. I had a butterfly to catch and a mud turtle to sculpt, so I needed to finish that song.

A few years earlier, I had been playing in the back yard when Mama started her car and I heard the screech of a cat. She pushed me inside, trying to calm me down by rubbing my face and explaining that when fans spin, they become sharp enough to cut. So I tested that theory by raking my fingers across different fans covers throughout the house. Nothing happened. And my needles didn't hurt me, they kept me alive. But the fan killed my cat. I understood very little about how the world worked. I still don't.