Becoming the Story (11 page)

“I would feel better if there were twine,”
Muffins said.

“I am sorry. I have no idea what you mean.
What I want to know is, do you feel
forgiven
? Do you feel
pure
? Like a newborn babe?”

Muffins thought about it. She wanted so much
not to disappoint the woman, she even tried to feel what the woman
meant. But Muffins had not been human for long enough to lie. “I
feel nothing,” she said.

The eyes that stared at Muffins flashed, and
she had trouble identifying the emotion: Disillusionment? Anger?
Pity? Or maybe all.

The eyes that looked at Muffins softened as
their owner reached one hand forward and touched Muffins on the
knee. “It can be tricky when there is nothing for the eyes to see.
I think I know what will help.”

Before Muffins could respond, the woman got
up and disappeared into a room behind the checkout counter. Muffins
heard water running and soon the woman returned with a damp cloth
rag. “Where did you put your perfume, honey?” Muffins pointed to
the spot above her clavicle and the woman swept the warm rag over
it again and again until the rough texture hurt. “Consider this
your baptism,” the woman said.

The woman finally set the rag aside and
withdrew something shiny from her pocket. “Now you are ready. Hold
up your hair and bow your head.” After a moment of confused
hesitation, Muffins scooped up the locks that fell down her back,
bent her head forward, and felt something cold against the skin at
the top of her spine. After a moment the woman said, “Okay, now you
may raise your head.”

The woman handed Muffins an oval handheld
mirror, which she had taken from one of the shelves. Muffins could
now see what the woman had done. Aside from a red patch due to all
the rubbing, a gold chain fell toward her breasts and at the end,
at the topmost point of her cleavage, hung the golden cross pendant
with the red gem set inside.

“There,” the woman said. “That is what you
are
supposed
to do with a cross necklace. At last you are
pure, for you have made yourself worthy of it in the sight of
God.”

Muffins performed an emotional
self-examination. And this time she
did
feel something, a
shiver from a kind of nonphysical wind. The air glittered. She felt
strange
. Her skin tingled. “Yes,” she said. “I
do
feel different.” She felt…great. She felt a sense of
rightness
. She felt…furrier. And hotter. The room was either
growing taller, or her eye level was sinking, but not so far down
that she could not see the look of alarm – and even horror –
evident on the pale grey eyes that stared at her.

She was becoming too small for her clothes
and soon felt herself engulfed in a sunken tent of fabric, and
struggled to extricate herself. She no longer had hands to grip.
When she tried to use her paws, her claws became hooked into the
fabric, so she was forced to use her nose to sniff and push her way
out of the darkness.

When she finally did, the woman could only
stare at first, her face frozen. When Muffins mewled to try to ask
what had just happened, the woman let out a piercing shriek, “Get
thee behind me Satan!”

The way the woman had said “Satan” Muffins
had a feeling that if he was around, she had better run, and that
is what she did. She jumped down to the floor and hurtled herself
through the open door. She fled through the streets, the wind in
her face, seeing better than she had before in all the
darkness.

She hid behind a metal garbage can in the
back parking lot of a square building and tried to catch her
breath. She clung to the cool shadows, but after a few minutes it
became clear that no one was chasing her.

Cautiously, she emerged, a world of scent
open to her now. She smelled old meats and boiled cabbage, and
distantly smelled a trace of lilac perfume she had dropped before
finding the lamp lit street where she had begun her adventure.

She followed the subtle scent of lilac and
got closer, until the scent gathered into a definable cloud of
density. And she followed the path of scent away from it, trotting,
until she found herself at the house where she had lived.

At the door she trembled, remembering too
well her former treatment. She was betting she might be better
received now that she was walking on four legs again, but
emotionally she was not so sure.

She did not think she could bear to see,
again, the alarm in the eyes of her former servant Evie. Evie might
have been a servant, but she was bigger than Muffins and could do
harm. Muffins worked up her courage and stroked the door screen
with her paw, mewling as loudly as she could.

At first there was no response, but just as
Muffins was about to turn away, there was a rattle and the swinging
sound of a heavy door.

At first Evie looked at her with blank
confusion, but in a moment comprehension registered and her face
changed and the outer contours of her eyes expanded. At first
Muffins thought it was from anger and began to back away.

Meanwhile, Evie expelled a heavy breath and
rushed out the door. Muffins felt herself gripped beneath her belly
and lifted, and soon her fur was wet with kisses, and it was hard
not to struggle against the fierceness of the welcome.

Muffins was carried inside. She let herself
go limp for the ride, staring at the familiar surroundings, until
Evie set her on the floor. “Oh Muffins, I was so afraid that awful
girl had stolen you, that
thief
. Can you believe that bitch
stole my dress? Who does that, steals a used old dress? But you
must have escaped, because here you are! Such a smart kitty!” She
leaned down and stroked Muffins on the head and kneaded the loose
skin on her neck as Muffins unleashed a rumbling purr. “Such a
smart,
smart
kitty!”

Within hours Muffins was sprawled in front
of the fireplace hearth, her forepaws stretched across her carpeted
scratching post stand. Her food dish was inches from her along with
an empty saucer that had contained warm milk, an intoxicating
creamy elixir that had made her feel warm inside, warm and safe and
loved.

When she had first gotten home, she
investigated all her favorite places to make sure things were still
the way she had left them: the plastic milk rings and bread
wrappers she had pawed under the refrigerator, just within her
reach.

She had not seen any string since she got
home, sparkling or otherwise, though she had searched for it. She
remembered so well the joys of gamboling and frolicking and
chasing, and the feeling that all that mattered in the whole world
was catching the glittering string and showing it who was boss.

She wondered if returning to her old self
was the salvation the woman had talked about. It had seemed so
dramatic at the time, so profound, with all the tingling and the
sparkling air, yet the only result was that she was back to her old
life. If returning to cat-hood was salvation, what had been the
point of any of it?

Maybe it was to make her aware that having
to clean toes every day was nothing compared to the difficulty of
being human, which had appeared to be awfully complicated and
confusing, with all the sinning, saving, and trying to live
forever.

She wondered if what the lady said was true,
that lives were not eternal without divine help, and if someday
Muffins was going to die. She could not believe it, not now,
because the moment she was in felt eternal to her, with the warmth
from the fireplace, the sound of embers popping, the crackle, and
the belly full of milk.

Muffins looked around and wondered, “What if
this is all there is, the milk and the warmth, and the soft carpet,
and the cool wind coming in from the crack in the windowsill,
letting me know that outside it is dark but inside there is light
and life?”

She tensed at that thought,
all there
is
. But then she remembered the sparkling twine in all its
beauty. She stretched her forepaws, let herself go deliciously
limp, and thought, “Then I will take it.”

With a languorous yawn, Muffins closed her
eyes.

The Aliens Do
Laundry
(A
parable about first contact with a coy
alien species)

The day humanity discovered that it was not
alone in the universe, the world rejoiced. At least most of it
did.

There were orations and celebrations and
irate pulpit sermons, and military mobilization, and fear. The news
had lifted everyone from personal concerns, dull jobs, and tepid
sit-coms as they contemplated all the beauty and terror of the
discovery: 
We are not alone
.

What did it mean for the earth? What was to
be done?

The U.S. Defense Department knew, or thought
it did. When it came to aliens, one could not be too careful. It
manufactured new weapons and recruited new soldiers. To assume that
an unfamiliar race of intelligent beings was friendly would be
folly. Most likely the aliens would want to colonize earth in order
to exploit its valuable resources.

Though cautious, the White House chose to
publicly view the event in a positive light. In a speech the
president reached unprecedented levels of grandiloquence in which
he took all the credit for the discovery. “I am deeply humbled to
report that this momentous event has occurred under my watch. You
see? I promised change and here it is.”

The speeches were overflowing with wonderful
sound bites that people would repeat for many days to come. “A new
chapter of our history is being written,” he said, “and every day
is going to be a new page.”

During these speeches protesters gathered on
the White House Lawn holding illegible signs. What they were
protesting and chanting unclear. Each person seemed to have their
own idea of what needed protesting.

A few were conspiracy theorists who doubted
the aliens existed and thought the government had invented the
story to protect itself, as a diversion from sex scandals that had
swept the White House in recent months.

On the opposite end, cults sprung up that
worshiped the aliens as gods. Naturally, a few of the cults drank
poison and died. One cult believed that Planet Zod was their
ancestral home, which they equated with Eden in the book of
Genesis. They believed that their spirits would be received by the
Zodonians.

Despite those tragedies, the discovery of
extraterrestrial life was the most magnificent and beautiful and
horrible thing to ever happen to humankind. In every culture, new
art flourished. New literary forms were created. And there was a
pervasive feeling that all humanity was witnessing a spectacular
revolution.

Everyone seemed to exist in a constant state
of amazement. Everyone was desperate to see what the aliens would
say next. What did they look like? What were their bodies made of?
What were their customs?

But gradually humankind began to notice
something unsettling. Despite copious radio messages being fired
through space, the aliens were not “answering the phone” anymore.
Where were they? Why were they so silent? Weeks passed, then
months. Finally, a year passed.

In response to hundreds of desperate
inquiries about themselves, the Zodonions at last replied. Decoded,
the message said: “You wanted to know if you were alone in the
universe. We have generously answered your question. But frankly we
have no interest in your planet. If you continue to clutter our air
space with unwelcome inquiries, we will be forced to issue an Arg
Arg. Please do not contact us again.” No one knew exactly what an
Arg Arg was, but many suspected it was a kind of cosmic restraining
order.

If the aliens had announced that they were
going to invade and colonize earth, humanity could not have been
more devastated. Humans had always assumed that if they did make
contact with intelligent extra-terrestrial life, the aliens – bad
or good – would be just as thrilled to discover humans as the
humans were to discover them.

Despite the discouragement, astronomers
continued to blast off more inquiring messages, to which they
received no response. It was unbearable: the expectation, the
curiosity, all the preparation; and then, silence.

The collective sanity of earth-beings
buckled. New scandals erupted. An official at the U.S. Defense
Department colluded with an astronomer in sending a message of his
own: “Our planet is full of delightful resources such as water,
air, salt, and precious minerals ripe for exploitation. Surely
there must be something here that you would like to mine or
harvest. I am sending you some helpful coordinates. Please invade
our world at once and promise to take me to your planet with you.
Other than our highly colonizable resources, my planet sucks.”

The world held its collective breath in
preparation for the coming cataclysm. The Defense Department
pointed nuclear weapons toward the skies. Doomsday enthusiasts
prowled the streets with signs and looked creepy on purpose.
Americans set flags in their windows and candle flames flickered in
every church.

After many weeks of praying and preparation,
the worst thing of all happened and also the least expected:
nothing. The streets remained silent. No doomsday interstellar
messages interrupted regularly scheduled television programming. No
high tech bombs rained in the streets.

The newscasters feigned enthusiasm, but
anyone could see the dullness in their eyes. Viewers recognized the
look because it was what they felt. The lack of an invasion was not
just anticlimactic, it was insulting. The aliens did not want our
natural resources, even after they had been explicitly offered.
What was wrong with our resources, and why were they not good
enough for the snobby Zodonians? A saying cropped up, which
reflected the collective despair and confusion.