The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares (17 page)

The thistledown gray cat, leaping to catch a dragonfly and swallowing it in midair.

The thistledown gray cat, leaping to catch a pine siskin, tearing at its feathers with his teeth, devouring it at the edge of the clearing.

The thistledown gray cat, leaping from a pine bough to the railing of the veranda, walking tail erect along the railing in the direction of Baby sleeping in her bassinet. And where is Mommy?

I am who am, nobody knows my name.

Jessica was wakened from sleep in the cool pine-smelling dark in this room she didn’t recognize at first by something brushing against her face, a ticklish sensation in her lips and nostrils, and her heart pounding in fear—but fear for what, for what had been threatening to suck her breath away and smother her, what was it, who was it, she did not know.

It had crouched on her chest, too. Heavy, furry-warm. Its calm gold-glowing eyes. Kiss? Kiss-kiss? Kissy-kiss, Baby?—except
she was not Baby
. Never Baby!

•
•
•

It was July, and the crimson peonies were gone, and there were fewer visitors now. Baby had had a fever for a day and a night, and Baby had somehow (how? during the night?) scratched herself beneath the left eye with her own tiny fingernail, and Mommy was terribly upset, and had to be restrained from driving Baby ninety miles to a special baby doctor in Lake Placid. Daddy kissed Mommy and Baby both and chided Mommy for being too excitable, for God’s sake honey get hold of yourself, this is nothing, you know this is nothing, we’ve been through this once already, haven’t we?—and Mommy tried to keep her voice calm saying, Yes but every baby is different, and I’m different now, I’m more in love with ____ than ever with Jessie, God help me I think that’s so. And Daddy sighed and said, Well I guess I am, too, it’s maybe that we’re more mature now and we know how precarious life is and we know we’re not going to live forever the way it used to seem, only ten years ago we
were
young, and through several thicknesses of walls—at night, in the summer house above the lake, voices carried as they did not in the city—Jessica sucked on her thumb, and listened; and what she did not hear, she dreamt.

For that was the power of the night, where the thistledown gray cat stalked his prey, that you could dream what was real—and it
was
real, because you dreamt it.

Always, since Mommy was first unwell last winter, and Baby-to-be was making her belly swell, Jessica had understood that there was danger. That was why Mommy walked so carefully,
and that was why Mommy stopped drinking even white wine which she loved with dinner, and that was why no visitors to the house, not even Uncle Albie who was everybody’s favorite, and a chain-smoker, were allowed to smoke on the premises. Never again! And there was a danger of cold drafts even in the summer—Baby was susceptible to respiratory infections, even now she’d more than doubled her weight. And there was a danger of somebody, a friend or relative, eager to hold Baby, but not knowing to steady Baby’s head and neck, which were weak. (After twelve weeks, Jessica had yet to hold her baby sister in her arms. She was shy, she was fearful.
No thank you, Mommy,
she’d said quietly. Not even seated close beside Mommy so the three of them could cuddle on a cozy, rainy day, in front of the fireplace, not even with Mommy guiding Jessica’s hands—
No thank you, Mommy
.) And if Mommy ate even a little of a food wrong for Baby, for instance lettuce, Baby became querulous and twitchy after nursing from gas sucked with Mommy’s milk and cried through the night.
Yet nobody was angry with Baby
.

And everybody was angry with Jessica
when, one night at dinner, Baby in her bassinet beside Mommy, gasping and kicking and crying, Jessica suddenly spat out her food on her plate and clamped her hands over her ears and ran out of the dining room as Mommy and Daddy and the weekend house guests stared after her.

And there came Daddy’s voice, “Jessie?—come back here—”

And there came Mommy’s voice, choked with hurt, “Jessica!—that’s
rude
—”

•
•
•

That night the thistledown gray cat climbed onto her windowsill, eyes gleaming out of the shadows. She lay very still in bed frightened
Don’t suck my breath away! don’t!
and after a long pause she heard a low hoarse-vibrating sound, a comforting sound like sleep, and it was the thistledown gray cat purring. So she knew she was safe, and she knew she would sleep. And she did.

Waking in the morning to Mommy’s screams. Screaming and screaming her voice rising like something scrambling up the side of a wall. Screaming
except now awake Jessica was hearing jays’ cries close outside her window in the pines where there was a colony of jays and where if something disturbed them they shrieked and flew in quick darting swoops flapping their wings to protect themselves and their young.

The thistledown gray cat trotting behind the house, tail stiffly erect, head high, a struggling blue-feathered bird gripped between his strong jaws.

All this time there was one thing Jessica did not think about, ever. It made her stomach tilt and lurch and brought a taste of bright hot bile into her mouth so
she did not think about it ever
.

Nor did she look at Mommy’s breasts inside her loose-fitting shirts and tunics. Breasts filled with warm milk bulging like balloons.
Nursing
it was called, but Jessica did not think of it. It was the reason Mommy could never be away from Baby for
more than an hour—in fact, Mommy loved Baby so, she could never be away from Baby for more than a few minutes. When it was time, when Baby began to fret and cry, Mommy excused herself a pride and elation showing in her face and tenderly she carried Baby away, to Baby’s room where she shut the door behind them. Jessica ran out of the house, grinding her fists into her tight-closed eyes even as she ran stumbling, sick with shame.
I did not do that, ever. I was not a baby, ever
.

And there was another thing Jessica learned. She believed it was a trick of the thistledown gray cat, a secret wisdom imparted to her. Suddenly one day she realized that, in the midst of witnesses, even Mommy who was so sharp-eyed, she could “look at” Baby with wide-open eyes yet not “see” Baby—where Baby was, in her bassinet, or in her perambulator or swing, or cradled in Mommy’s or Daddy’s arms,
there was an emptiness
.

Just as she was able calmly to hear Baby’s name ____ and even speak that name _____ if required yet not acknowledge it in her innermost heart.

She understood then that Baby would be going away soon. For, when Grandma took sick and was hospitalized, Grandma who was Daddy’s mother and who had once owned the summer place at Lake St. Cloud, though Jessica had loved the old woman she’d been nervous and shy around her once she’d begun to smell that orangish-sweet smell lifting from Grandma’s shrunken body. And sometimes looking at Grandma she would narrow her eyes so where Grandma was there was a figure blurred as in a dream
and after a while an emptiness. She’d been a little girl then, four years old. She’d whispered in Mommy’s ear, “Where is Grandma going?” and Mommy told her to hush, just hush, Mommy had seemed upset at the question so Jessica knew not to ask it again, nor to ask it of Daddy. She hadn’t known if she was scared of the emptiness where Grandma was or whether she was restless having to pretend there was anything there in the hospital bed, anything that had to do with
her
.

Now the thistledown gray cat leapt nightly to her windowsill where the window was open. With a swipe of his white paw he’d knocked the screen inward so now he pushed his way inside, his tawny eyes glowing like coins and his guttural mew like a human query, teasing—
Who? You?
And the deep vibrating purr out of his throat that sounded like laughter as he leapt silently to the foot of Jessica’s bed and trotted forward as she stared in astonishment to press his muzzle—his muzzle that was warm and sticky with the blood of prey only just killed and devoured in the woods—against her face!
I am who I am, nobody knows my name
. The thistledown gray cat held her down, heavy on her chest. She tried to throw him off, but could not. She was trying to scream, no she was laughing helplessly—the stiff whiskers tickled so. “Mommy! Daddy—” she tried to draw breath to scream but could not, for the giant cat, his muzzle pressed against her mouth, sucked her breath from her.

I am who I am, nobody knows my name, nobody can stop me
.

•
•
•

It was a cool sky-blue morning in the mountains. At this hour, seven-twenty, Lake St. Cloud was clear and empty, no sailboats and no swimmers and the child was barefoot in shorts and T-shirt at the edge of the dock when they called to her from the kitchen door and at first she didn’t seem to hear then turned slowly and came back to the house and seeing the queer, pinched look in her face they asked her was she feeling unwell?—was something wrong? Her eyes were a translucent pearly blue that did not seem like the eyes of a child. There were faint, bruised indentations in the skin beneath the eyes. Mommy who was holding Baby in the crook of an arm stooped awkwardly to brush Jessica’s uncombed hair from her forehead which felt cool, waxy. Daddy who was brewing coffee asked her with a smiling frown if she’d been having bad dreams again?—she’d had upsetting dreams as a small child and she’d been brought in to sleep with Mommy and Daddy then, between them in the big bed where she’d been safe. But carefully she told them no, no she wasn’t sick, she was fine. She just woke up early, that was all. Daddy asked her if Baby’s crying in the middle of the night had disturbed her and she said no she didn’t hear any crying and again Daddy said if she had bad dreams she should tell them and she said, in her grave, careful voice, “If I had some dreams, I don’t remember them.” She smiled then, not at Daddy, or at Mommy, a look of quick contempt. “I’m too old for
that
.”

Mommy said, “No one’s too old for nightmares, honey.” Mommy laughed sadly and leaned to kiss Jessica’s cheek but already Baby was stirring and fretting and Jessica drew away.
She wasn’t going to be trapped by Mommy’s tricks, or Daddy’s. Ever again.

This is how it happened, when it happened.

On the upstairs veranda in gusts of sunshine amid the smell of pine needles and the quick sweet cries of pine siskins Mommy was talking with a woman friend on the cellular phone, and Baby who had just nursed was asleep in her heirloom bassinet with the fluttering satin ribbons, and Jessica who was restless this afternoon leaned over the railing with Daddy’s binoculars staring at the glassy lake—the farther shore, where what appeared to the naked eye as mere dots of light were transformed into tiny human figures—a flock of mallards in an inlet at the edge of their property—the tangled grasses and underbrush beyond the peony bed where she’d seen something move. Mommy murmured, “Oh, damn!—this connection!” and told Jessica she was going to continue her conversation downstairs, on another phone, she’d be gone only a few minutes, would Jessica look after Baby? And Jessica shrugged and said yes of course. Mommy who was barefoot in a loose summer shift with a dipping neckline that made Jessica’s eyes pinch peered into Baby’s bassinet checking to see Baby
was
deeply asleep, and Mommy hurried downstairs, and Jessica turned back to the binoculars, which were heavy in her hands, and made her wrists ache unless she rested them on the railing. She was dreamy counting the sailboats on the lake, there were five of them within her range of vision, it made her feel bad because it was after Fourth of July now and Daddy kept
promising he’d get the sailboat fixed up and take her out, always in previous summers Daddy had sailed by now though as he said he wasn’t much of a sailor, he required perfect weather and today had been perfect all day—balmy, fragrant, gusts of wind but not too much wind—but Daddy was in the city at his office today, wouldn’t be back till tomorrow evening—and Jessica was brooding, gnawing at her lower lip recalling now there was Baby, Mommy probably wouldn’t go with them in the boat anyway, all that was changed. And would never be the same again. And Jessica saw the movements of quick-flitting birds in the pine boughs, and a blurred shape gray like vapor leaping past her field of vision, was it a bird? an owl? she was trying to locate it in the pine boughs which were so eerily magnified, every twig, every needle, every insect enlarged and seemingly only an inch from her eyes, when she realized she’d been hearing a strange, unnerving noise, a gurgling, gasping noise, and a rhythmic creaking of wood, and in astonishment she turned to see, less than three yards behind her, the thistledown gray cat hunched inside the bassinet, on Baby’s tiny chest, pressing its muzzle against Baby’s mouth . . .

The bassinet rocked with the cat’s weight and the rough kneading motions of his paws. Jessica whispered, “No!—oh, no—” and the binoculars slipped from her fingers. As if this were a dream, her legs and arms were paralyzed. The giant cat, fierce-eyed, its filmy gray fur lifting light as milkweed silk, its white-tipped plume of a tail erect, paid her not the slightest heed as he sucked vigorously at the baby’s mouth, kneading and clawing at his
small prey who was thrashing for life, you would not think an infant of only three months could so struggle, tiny arms and legs flailing, face mottled red, but the thistledown cat was stronger, much stronger, and could not be deflected from his purpose—
to suck away Baby’s breath, to suffocate, to smother with his muzzle
.

For the longest time Jessica could not move—this is what she would say, confess, afterward. And by the time she ran to the bassinet, clapping her hands to scare the cat away, Baby had ceased struggling, her face still flushed but rapidly draining of color, like a wax doll’s face, and her round blue eyes were livid with tears, unfocused, staring sightless past Jessica’s head.

Jessica screamed, “Mommy!”

Taking hold of her baby sister’s small shoulders to shake her back into life, the first time Jessica had ever really touched her baby sister she loved so, but there was no life in the baby—it was too late. Crying, screaming, “Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!”