Cat's eye (23 page)

I try to picture what she would look like, if I met her on the street for instance: would she be wearing clothes like my mother’s, or that blue dress and crown, and if it was the blue dress would a crowd gather? Maybe they would think she was just someone out of a Christmas play; but not if she had her heart on the outside like that, stuck full of swords. I try to think what I would tell her. But she knows already: she knows how unhappy I am.

I pray harder and harder. My prayers are wordless, defiant, dry-eyed, desperate, without hope. Nothing happens. I squeeze my fists into my eyes until they hurt. For an instant I think I see a face, then a splash of blue, but now all I can see is the heart. There it is, bright red, rounded, with a dark light around it, a blackness like luminous velvet. Gold comes out from the center, then fades. It’s the heart all right. It looks like my red plastic purse.

I
t’s the middle of March. In the schoolroom windows the Easter tulips are beginning to bloom. There’s still snow on the ground, a dirty filigree, though the winter is losing its hardness and glitter. The sky thickens, sinks lower.

We walk home under the low thick sky that is gray and bulging with dampness. Moist soft flakes are falling out of it, piling up on roofs and branches, sliding off now and then to hit with a wet cottony
thunk.
There’s no wind and the sound is muffled by the snow.

It isn’t cold. I undo the ties on my blue knitted wool hat, let it flap loose on my head. Cordelia takes off her mittens and scoops up snowballs, throwing them at trees, at telephone poles, at random. It’s one of her friendly days; she puts her arm through my arm, her other arm through Grace’s, and we march along the street, singing
We don’t stop for anybody.
I sing this too. Together we hop and slide. Some of the euphoria I once felt in falling snow comes back to me; I want to open my mouth and let the snow fall into it. I allow myself to laugh, like the others, trying it out. My laughter is a performance, a grab at the ordinary.

Cordelia throws herself backward onto a blank front lawn, spreads her arms out in the snow, raises them above her head, draws them down to her sides, making a snow angel. The flakes fall onto her face, into her laughing mouth, melting, clinging to her eyebrows. She blinks, closing her eyes against the snow. For a moment she looks like someone I don’t know, a stranger, shining with unknown, good possibilities. Or else a victim of a traffic accident, flung onto the snow.

She opens her eyes and reaches up her hands, which are damp and reddened, and we pull her upward so she won’t disturb the image she’s made. The snow angel has feathery wings and a tiny pin head. Where her hands stopped, down near her sides, are the imprints of her fingers, like little claws. We’ve forgotten the time, it’s getting dark. We run along the street that leads to the wooden footbridge. Even Grace runs, lumpily, calling, “Wait up!” For once she is the one left behind. Cordelia reaches the hill first and runs down it. She tries to slide but the snow is too soft, not icy enough, and there are cinders and pieces of gravel in it. She falls down and rolls. We think she’s done it on purpose, the way she made the snow angel. We rush down upon her, exhilarated, breathless, laughing, just as she’s picking herself up.

We stop laughing, because now we can see that her fall was an accident, she didn’t do it on purpose. She likes everything she does to be done on purpose.

Carol says, “Did you hurt yourself?” Her voice is quavery, she’s frightened, already she can tell that this is serious. Cordelia doesn’t answer. Her face is hard again, her eyes baleful. Grace moves so that she’s beside Cordelia, slightly behind her. From there she smiles at me, her tight smile.

Cordelia says, to me, “Were you laughing?” I think she means, was I laughing at her because she fell down.

“No,” I say.

“She was,” says Grace neutrally. Carol shifts to the side of the path, away from me.

“I’m going to give you one more chance,” says Cordelia. “Were you laughing?”

“Yes,” I say, “but…”

“Just yes or no,” says Cordelia.

I say nothing. Cordelia glances over at Grace, as if looking for approval. She sighs, an exaggerated sigh, like a grown-up’s. “Lying again,” she says. “What are we going to do with you?”

We seem to have been standing there for a long time. It’s colder now. Cordelia reaches out and pulls off my knitted hat. She marches the rest of the way down the hill and onto the bridge and hesitates for a moment. Then she walks over to the railing and throws my hat down into the ravine. Then the white oval of her face turns up toward me. “Come here,” she says.

Nothing has changed, then. Time will go on, in the same way, endlessly. My laughter was unreal after all, merely a gasp for air.

I walk down to where Cordelia stands by the railing, the snow not crunching but giving way under my feet like cotton wool packing. It sounds like a cavity being filled, in a tooth, inside my head. Usually I’m afraid to go so near the edge of the bridge, but this time I’m not. I don’t feel anything as positive as fear.

“There’s your stupid hat,” says Cordelia; and there it is, far down, still blue against the white snow, even in the dimming light. “Why don’t you go down and get it?”

I look at her. She wants me to go down into the ravine where the bad men are, where we’re never supposed to go. It occurs to me that I may not. What will she do then?

I can see this idea gathering in Cordelia as well. Maybe she’s gone too far, hit, finally, some core of resistance in me. If I refuse to do what she says this time, who knows where my defiance will end? The two others have come down the hill and are watching, safely in the middle of the bridge.

“Go on then,” she says, more gently, as if she’s encouraging me, not ordering. “Then you’ll be forgiven.”

I don’t want to go down there. It’s forbidden and dangerous; also it’s dark and the hillside will be slippery, I might have trouble climbing up again. But there is my hat. If I go home without it, I’ll have to explain, I’ll have to tell. And if I refuse to go, what will Cordelia do next? She might get angry, she might never speak to me again. She might push me off the bridge. She’s never done anything like that before, never hit or pinched, but now that she’s thrown my hat over there’s no telling what she might do. I walk along to the end of the bridge. “When you’ve got it, count to a hundred,” says Cordelia. “Before coming up.” She doesn’t sound angry any more. She sounds like someone giving instructions for a game. I start down the steep hillside, holding on to branches and tree trunks. The path isn’t even a real path, it’s just a place worn by whoever goes up and down here: boys, men. Not girls. When I’m among the bare trees at the bottom I look up. The bridge railings are silhouetted against the sky. I can see the dark outlines of three heads, watching me.

My blue hat is out on the ice of the creek. I stand in the snow, looking at it. Cordelia is right, it’s a stupid hat. I look at it and feel resentment, because this stupid-looking hat is mine, and deserving of ridicule. I don’t want to wear it ever again.

I can hear water running somewhere, down under the ice. I step out onto the creek, reach for the hat, pick it up, go through. I’m up to my waist in the creek, slabs of broken ice upended around me. Cold shoots through me. My overshoes are filling, and the shoes inside them; water drenches my snowpants. Probably I’ve screamed, or some noise has come out of me, but I can’t remember hearing anything. I clutch the hat and look up at the bridge. Nobody is there. They must have walked away, run away. That’s why the counting to a hundred: so they could run away.

I try to move my feet. They’re very heavy, because of the water inside my boots. If I wanted to I could just keep standing here. It’s true dusk now and the snow on the ground is bluish-white. The old tires and pieces of rusted junk in the creek are covered over; all around me are blue arches, blue caves, pure and silent. The water of the creek is cold and peaceful, it comes straight from the cemetery, from the graves and their bones. It’s water made from the dead people, dissolved and clear, and I am standing in it. If I don’t move soon I will be frozen in the creek. I will be a dead person, peaceful and clear, like them. I flounder through the water, the edges of the ice breaking off as I step. Walking with waterlogged overshoes is hard; I could slip, and fall all the way in. I grab a tree branch and haul myself up onto the bank and sit down in the blue snow and take off my overshoes and pour out the water. The arms of my jacket are wet to the elbows, my mittens are soaked. Now there are knives going through my legs and hands, and tears running down my face from the pain.

I can see lights along the edges of the ravine, from the houses there, impossibly high up. I don’t know how I’m going to up the hill with my hands and feet hurting like this; I don’t know how I’m going to get home.

My head is filling with black sawdust; little specks of the darkness are getting in through my eyes. It’s as if the snowflakes are black, the way white is black on a negative. The snow has changed to tiny pellets, more like sleet. It makes a rustling noise coming down through the branches, like the shifting and whispering of people in a crowded room who know they must be quiet. It’s the dead people, coming up invisible out of the water, gathering around me.
Hush,
is what they say. I’m lying on my back beside the creek, looking up at the sky. Nothing hurts any more. The sky has a reddish undercolor. The bridge is different-looking; it seems higher above me, more solid, as if the railings have disappeared or been filled in. And it’s glowing, there are pools of light along it, greenish-yellow, not like any light I’ve ever seen before. I sit up to get a better look. My body feels weightless, as it does in water.

There’s someone on the bridge, I can see the dark outline. At first I think it’s Cordelia, come back for me. Then I see that it’s not a child, it’s too tall for a child. I can’t see the face, there’s just a shape. One of the yellowish-green lights is behind it, coming out in rays from around the head. I know I should get up and walk home, but it seems easier to stay here, in the snow, with the little pellets of ice caressing my face gently. Also I’m very sleepy. I close my eyes. I hear someone talking to me. It’s like a voice calling, only very soft, as if muffled. I’m not sure I’ve heard it at all. I open my eyes with an effort. The person who was standing on the bridge is moving through the railing, or melting into it. It’s a woman, I can see the long skirt now, or is it a long cloak? She isn’t falling, she’s coming down toward me as if walking, but there’s nothing for her to walk on. I don’t have the energy to be frightened. I lie in the snow, watching her with lethargy, and with a sluggish curiosity. I would like to be able to walk on air like that.

Now she’s quite close. I can see the white glimmer of her face, the dark scarf or hood around her head, or is it hair? She holds out her arms to me and I feel a surge of happiness. Inside her half-open cloak there’s a glimpse of red. It’s her heart, I think. It must be her heart, on the outside of her body, glowing like neon, like a coal.

Then I can’t see her any more. But I feel her around me, not like arms but like a small wind of warmer air. She’s telling me something.

You can go home now
, she says.
It will be all right. Go home
. I don’t hear the words out loud, but this is what she says.

T
he lights on the top of the bridge are gone. I make my way in the dark, up the hill, sleet rustling around me, hauling myself up by branches and tree trunks, my shoes slipping on the packed icy snow. Nothing hurts, not even my feet, not even my hands. It’s like flying. The small wind moves with me, a warm touch against my face.

I know who it is that I’ve seen. It’s the Virgin Mary, there can be no doubt. Even when I was praying I wasn’t sure she was real, but now I know she is. Who else could walk on air like that, who else would have a glowing heart? True, there was no blue dress, no crown; her dress looked black. But it was dark. Maybe the crown was there and I couldn’t see it. Anyway she could have different clothes, different dresses. None of that matters, because she came to get me. She didn’t want me freezing in the snow. She is still with me, invisible, wrapping me in warmth and painlessness, she has heard me after all. I am up on the main path now; the lights from the houses are nearer, above me, on either side of me. I can hardly keep my eyes open. I’m not even walking straight. But my feet keep on moving, one in front of the other.

Up ahead is the street. As I reach it I see my mother, walking very fast. Her coat isn’t done up, she has no scarf on her head, her overshoes flap, half fastened. When she sees me she begins to run. I stop still, watching her running figure with the coat flying out on either side and the unwieldy overshoes, as if she’s just some other person I’m watching, someone in a race. She comes up to me under a streetlamp and I see her eyes, large and gleaming with wet, and her hair dusted with sleet. She has no mittens on. She throws her arms around me, and as she does this the Virgin Mary is suddenly gone. Pain and cold shoot back into me. I start to shiver violently.

“I fell in,” I say. “I was getting my hat.” My voice sounds thick, the words mumbled. Something is wrong with my tongue.

My mother does not say,
Where have you been?
or
Why are you so late?
She says, “Where are your overshoes?” They are down in the ravine, covering over with snow. I have forgotten them, and my hat as well.

“It fell over the bridge,” I say. I need to get this lie over with as soon as possible. Telling the truth about Cordelia is still unthinkable for me.

My mother takes off her coat and wraps it around me. Her mouth is tight, her face is frightened and angry at the same time. It’s the look she used to have when we would cut ourselves, a long time ago, up north. She puts her arm under my armpit and hurries me along. My feet hurt at every step. I wonder if I will be punished for going down into the ravine.

When we reach the house my mother peels off my soggy half-frozen clothes and puts me into a lukewarm bath. She looks carefully at my fingers and toes, my nose, my ear lobes. “Where were Grace and Cordelia?” she asks me. “Did they see you fall in?”