Manhattan Mayhem (37 page)

He had mice, he said. Not just a few, but hordes of them.

“They got into my bedroom closet, my kitchen cabinets. I found a
dead one in my bathtub the other day. And yesterday, I was trying to do a photo shoot, you know, in the living room, and a mouse ran right across the client’s feet. She walked out, and now she won’t pay me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, but—”

“So, I’m wondering if you guys were doing something—”

His gaze dropped and his eyes widened. I glanced down and saw Dizzy and Gillespie, standing guard at my ankles, staring up at him.

“Cats!” Milford said.

“Obviously.”

“You’ve got to get rid of them.”

“S’cuse me?”

“I said, you have got to get of those … 
things.
”

I couldn’t believe his nerve. “Ain’t happening. They’re my mother’s cats, and they are here to stay.”

And they really had become
her
cats. I had been the one to push for them, but she was the one they took to. And she took to them. It was Mama who came up with the idea of naming them Dizzy and Gillespie, after the great jazz musician of the 1940s. It was Mama those two cats cuddled up to at night. It was her they loved, and it was clear that she loved them. She had found renewed strength to go down the hallway to the kitchen. She couldn’t stand long enough to cook, but she could feed her cats, all the time fussing about “how you’ve got to feed them just right.” Then she would come sit in the living room with me and watch them play and get into mischief. She would laugh and clap her hands! She said she used to be afraid of cats, but she wasn’t afraid no more.

“They something else,” she said. “So pretty, and so sharp! Why, they understand everything I say!”

We’d tried every medicine under the sun to bring down Mama’s blood pressure; they’d all failed or caused bad side effects. Dizzy and Gillespie got it down to normal in a week. Between the mischief that made her laugh, the purring that soothed her nerves, and the security of knowing she could sleep in a mouse-free bed, those cats had brought Mama more joy and better health than I could’ve imagined.

So, no. We were not going to get rid of them.

“Why don’t you get cats of your own?”

“Hell, no!”

He said he was going to take it to the landlord.

“Do that,” I said. “He don’t care. Saves him the cost of hiring an exterminator.”

Then I shut the door and gave Dizzy and Gillespie good ear rubs.

Mama wanted to know what was going on.

“I thought you said he was a nice man,” she said when I told her.

I shrugged. “Seemed like it.”

She sighed. “If he’s the type of folks moving up to Harlem these days, then …” Her voice trailed away.

“Then what? You wouldn’t be saying you want to move, would you?”

“No,” she said. “It’s them I’m talking about. They the ones gonna have to go.”

Two days later, Milford was back at our door. Mama was the one who answered.

I watched from down the hall as he bowed and handed her a bouquet of flowers. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know what was wrong with me. I had no right to say what I said.”

Mama accepted the apology, and the flowers. After he left, she turned to me and said, “Well, well, well. I guess he’s not so bad after all.”

“C’mon, Mama. You know what happened as much as I do.”

“The landlord gave him a piece of his mind?”

“Of course, he did.”

The next few days were quiet. I put Milford out of my mind and went back to worrying about work. For the time being, my concerns about Mama were eased. Her health had stabilized. Her depression had lifted. She talked about Dizzy and Gillespie all the time, about how sweet they were, how smart they were, how they were just about the best cats of all time.

Then one day I came home from another useless interview and found Mama sitting in the living room, holding Dizzy. I knew right away that something was wrong. Dizzy was real still and, Gillespie was sitting at Mama’s feet, meowing.

“Mama?” I put a hand on her shoulder.

“She’s gone,” Mama said.

Dizzy’s little mouth was open and her body twisted. She must’ve died in agony.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know.” She looked up at me, and the grief in her eyes made my heart constrict. “One minute she was healthy and happy, as frisky as you please. The next, she was having a fit of some kind. Then she started vomiting, and before I could do anything, she was … like this.”

Dizzy was still so small she fit into a boot box.

“Don’t put her in the garbage,” Mama said.

“I wouldn’t do that. I’ll take her to the vet tomorrow.”

“We’ll go together.”

“Okay.”

But the next day when I came home to pick up Mama, she was in no state to go anywhere. She was sitting in her bedroom, and this time it was Gillespie she held.

Mama had taken Dizzy’s death hard enough, but Gillespie’s really floored her. She was heartbroken.

I couldn’t understand it. “Two healthy cats don’t just up and die like that.” I asked her if she wanted the vet to do a necropsy, but she said not to. “Leave well enough alone.”

I said I would, but I couldn’t. I asked the vet what had gone wrong. She had a one-word answer.

“Strychnine.”

In other words, rat poison.

I was stricken. This was my fault. I told Mama, “They must’ve gotten ahold of what I bought. I’m so sorry. I thought I put it all away. But I guess I didn’t.”

I hoped for a scolding word, but she said nothing, just sat there
wrapped with grief. Over the next two days, she went back to sitting in the dark. “This is twice this has happened to me,” she said. “I ain’t never gonna let it happen again.”

She wouldn’t say what she meant by that. Just told me to clear out everything belonging to the cats.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “Even if Dizzy and Gillespie are gone, their smell might keep the mice away, at least for a little while.”

But her mind was made up.

“Get rid of it. All of it. Then scrub the place clean.”

So I did.

Within days the mice were back. Mama’s depression deepened and her blood pressure soared.

The doctor was worried. “If we don’t do something, then …” He let silence fill the blank. “And it could happen soon, real soon.”

I tried to talk to her about getting another pair of cats, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

“No,” she shook her head. “Never again.”

I didn’t know what to do, so I put my arms around her and hugged her. “It’s gonna be okay, Mama. It’s gonna be okay.”

For a several seconds, we just held each other, sitting in her room. Then she said something.

“What?” I asked.

Her voice was hoarse. “It was my fault,” she whispered, “my fault they died.”

“What?”

“It was me.”

I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

She didn’t answer.

Then understanding dawned. I covered my mouth in shock. She had killed them. She had killed Dizzy and Gillespie. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. But then I searched her eyes, and saw not just the grief, but the guilt.

“You—? It was you? But why? I thought you loved them. I—”

“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I don’t why I—I just …” Her eyes pleaded with me. “I think I just … I just wanted to be a good neighbor.”

“What does that mean?”

But she couldn’t answer. She was gone, withdrawn into her own world.

“Mama?”

She turned from me, wringing her hands.

“I … I know I can’t bring them back,” she said, “but I’m gonna make it right. I’m gonna make it right.” She kept saying that. She wouldn’t talk to me except to say that.

I was so hurt and angry, I didn’t know what to do. How could she have done something like that—that hateful? Kill two helpless cats? Cats she loved? And how could she ever think she could make it right? I didn’t want to be around her. I had to get out of there. I grabbed up my coat and my bag, fled down the hall and out the door.

I walked for hours, wondering what I was doing with my life. And I didn’t go home that night. I stayed with a friend, trying to swallow the anger, trying to understand. I so wanted to move out. But I was trapped. I couldn’t afford another apartment, and she couldn’t live on her own. We were stuck in that apartment together, with the stench and the mold and the mice.

I took another step back. Here I was, a grown woman, and all I could think about was running away from home. How crazy was that? All night I thought about it. By morning, I was exhausted, but I had decided.

No matter what, she was my mother and I loved her. As long as she was staying, so was I.

Coming up the hill from the train station, I saw police cars, an ambulance, and a crowd standing outside our building. It was my mother. I just knew it was my mother. She had fallen or had some other mishap,
and I hadn’t been there to help her.

I ran the last few yards to the house and pushed my way through. The lobby was packed with neighbors and cops telling them to get back.

“You’ve gotta let me through,” I cried. “I’m her daughter! Her daughter!”

The cop gave me a strange look and asked me what apartment I lived in.

“Twenty-four.”

“That’s not the one.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, and that’s when I saw what I would’ve seen to begin with if I hadn’t been so panicked.

Milford’s apartment door stood open. A paramedic came out, stripping off his rubber gloves. He said something to one of the cops. I couldn’t read his lips. I didn’t have to. His expression said it all.

“What happened?” I asked the cop.

“Did you know him?”

“Sort of. I mean, yeah. He’s my neighbor.” I glanced back at the open apartment door. They were carrying Milford out on a stretcher, in a body bag.

I couldn’t believe it. Milford,
dead?

“What happened?” I asked again.

“We don’t know yet. But look,” he said, “why don’t you give me your name and apartment number in case we need to talk to the neighbors.”

“Sure,” I said, and gave him the info. “Now, look, I really need to get upstairs. My mom’s up there. She’s old, and frail, and she needs me. I—”

“Okay. Fine. Just make sure you go straight up.”

“I will.”

Later, I’d remember sensing an odd emptiness, a telltale stillness the moment I let myself in. But at the time, all I could think about was sharing the news about Milford.

“Mama?! Hey, Mama!”

No answer. I checked her bedroom, which was right next to the front door, didn’t see her, and ran down the hallway, calling out for her. The bathroom door was open. She wasn’t in there. Not in the kitchen either.

But she
was
in the living room, sitting in her rocking chair. Her eyes were closed, as though she had fallen asleep, and loosely clasped to her breast, in hands gone slack, was a photograph.

“Mama?”

There was no answer.

“Mama?”