The Cat Sitter's Cradle Read online

  We looked at the girl, who seemed to understand what Joyce had said. She pulled the baby tighter and looked as if she was about to scramble to her feet and run away.

  I said, “Would you leave your baby with strangers?”

  I thought of how precious my daughter, Christy, had been to me from the moment she was born. I would have fought like a rabid badger if anybody had tried to take her away from me. I had a feeling this young mother felt the same way about her daughter.

  Joyce sighed. “I can’t keep her indefinitely, but I have a spare room where she can stay for a while.”

  I said, “I’ll bring some clothes and some diapers and things. And some food.”

  Joyce knelt down and picked up a leather handbag that was on the ground. “Is this yours?”

  The girl nodded.

  “You can come to my house. To my casa.”

  The girl nodded, and her eyes welled with tears. Joyce shouldered the bag and tipped her chin at a large cardboard box under a tree. The box was dented and broken, and rain had disintegrated it in places.

  She said, “I suppose that’s where she’s been living.”

  I got up and walked over to the box, my Keds flopping without their laces. Kneeling at the opening, I pawed through the jumble of clothes and trash, looking for anything else the girl might want to keep, but there was nothing.

  Joyce said, “I hate to make her walk, but I don’t know how else to get her home.”

  I said, “Fireman’s carry, but first I’ll get the dogs.”

  While Joyce helped the girl to her feet, I ran over to Rufus and Henry the VIII and untied them. I gave them both a good scratch behind the ears to let them know that everything was going to be okay, even though I wasn’t sure of it myself.

  The young mother was swaying slightly with the newborn tight against her chest. I slipped the leashes around my wrist, and Joyce and I stood behind her and crossed our arms in the classic fireman’s carry, but the leashes got in the way. Rufus had circled around Joyce’s legs, and Henry the VIII looked like he was about to bolt, his tail wagging so vigorously that his little rump was jiggling back and forth. I was holding one leash in my mouth while I tried to untangle the other from Joyce’s legs when the young girl giggled.

  “Aquí,” she said.

  She gently shifted the baby to her other shoulder and held out her open hand.

  I passed her the leashes, and she sat down gingerly on our crossed arms. With the dogs leading the way, we shuffled down the street in the pale morning light like a slow-moving parade. Rufus let out a few commanding wufs! as if he wanted to clear the road. Move it, people! Newborn coming through!

  The girl wasn’t heavy, but carrying her was awkward and unpleasant. I could feel her warm blood wet on my arms, and it brought a combined feeling of disgust and awe. Disgust at having another human’s blood on my arms, but awe at the miracle of life asserting itself in all its direct, honest reality.

  I started humming an old hymn, “Bringing in the Sheaves,” but I sang it the way I thought it went when I was a little girl: “Bringing in the sheets, bringing in the sheets, we shall go to Joyce’s, bringing in the sheets.” Seemed appropriate at the time.

  At Joyce’s house, we carried the girl directly to the shower and undressed her. Her ribs were like piano keys on her thin body. She was too weak to stand, so she slid to the floor and sat under a warm shower with her face tilted back to receive its blessing. Joyce scurried to fetch a clean nightshirt and cotton underpants that she lined with a makeshift pad.

  While Joyce took care of the girl, I cleaned the baby at the bathroom sink where the mother could see me. She was a beautiful baby. A little underweight, but healthy otherwise. She had a mop of jet black hair on her head and the biggest blue eyes I’ve ever seen on a baby. Joyce brought me a roll of paper towels and some masking tape.

  “See if you can make diapers out of this.”

  “I’ll get some pads when I get diapers and the other stuff.”

  “Better get several boxes. She’s bleeding a lot.”

  “The 911 operator asked me if she was hemorrhaging.”

  Joyce shook her head. “No. Just heavy bleeding. She’ll be okay as soon as she has some nourishment and rest.”

  We led the girl over to the edge of the bed and sat her down. I laid the baby next to her, and Joyce made a barrier out of pillows and blankets along the edge of the bed. I brought a towel from the bathroom and started to pat the girl’s hair dry.

  I said, “Your name … como se llama?”

  She smiled weakly. “I am Corina.”

  I patted the side of her face. “I am Dixie, and this is Joyce.”

  Tears made her dark eyes shine. “Thank you, Dixie and Joyce,” she said. “Ustedes son hijas de Dios.”

  We helped her lie down, and within seconds she had fallen asleep, the baby nestled in her arms. We pulled the sheets up over her and laid a blanket over her legs.

  I whispered to Joyce, “I’ve got pets to check on, but I can come by after with supplies.”

  “Okay,” Joyce said. “I’ll stay here with her while she sleeps, and if anything changes I’ll call you.”

  I hoisted my bag over over my shoulder and tiptoed across the room. At the door, I turned and looked back. Joyce had lain down on the bed next to Corina with one hand resting lightly on the baby’s tiny outstretched arm. It looked like she had fallen asleep, too.

  “Joyce!” I whispered.

  She raised her head. “What?”

  “What the hell is a sheave?”

  She smiled and laid her head back down. “Dixie, I have no friggin idea.”

  The sun was coming up now, and there were a few early birds on the path. A couple of retirees rolled by on a matching pair of bright yellow bicycles. A man in red sweatpants and a Mets baseball cap walked by, briskly pumping his arms up and down to the beat of the music playing through his headphones.

  Rufus and I made our way back to his house, both of us feeling a bit shell-shocked. I left him with a peanut-butter-filled chew toy, and, with a kiss on the nose, assured him that our afternoon walk would be a little less dramatic.

  3

  I thought about the morning’s proceedings as I made my way over to the Suttons’ house at the opposite end of the Key. Most of the time my work is pretty predictable. I check the food and water, I let the dogs out to do their business, I clean the litter boxes, I brush the fur, I give some hugs and kisses, I wave around a peacock feather or a piece of cheese, and then it’s on to the next pet. I have it down to a very smooth routine, and that’s the way I like it.

  Taking on the responsibility of a young if not underage illegal alien with a newborn baby is not routine. It’s crazy. The best that could happen was Joyce and I would give the girl a little comfort for a short time. The worst was that when we sent her on her way she’d have tasted a better life and would hate her old one even more. When I tried to imagine how bad it must have been in her home, so bad that she felt compelled to risk her life and the life of her unborn child to go to a foreign country and live in a box … my mind skittered away in guilt and shame and helplessness. I was born in a country that allows me enormous advantages, and I was no more deserving than that poor girl was. I was just luckier.

  I pulled into the Suttons’ driveway and flipped through my keys, which I keep on a big ring like a French chatelaine. Their Sophie is a tuxedo cat, mostly black with white boots, a white bib, and just a dip of white at the end of her tail. She met me at the door with some serious tail choreography and an excited thrrrip! to let me know I was late. While I prepared her breakfast, she purred and circled around my feet.

  I have always prided myself on being a good citizen. I pay my taxes, I vote, I don’t litter, and I don’t speed … much. I get mad when I see a flag flying in the rain, and I feel a surge of pride when I sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But if I helped this young mother I would be breaking the law. I would be aiding an illegal alien, which is wrong. At least, it’s
wrong in the eyes of the law.

  I took Sophie out to the back porch overlooking the bay and brushed her. Or, to be precise, I held the brush steady and Sophie did all the work, cooing and purring as she pressed the full length of her body through the brush, first one side and then the other. I had never given much thought to the immigration brouhaha, but now I thought about the poem at the Statue of Liberty that epitomizes what it means to live in a democracy: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…” I thought about what Jesus said to his followers: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” I’m not very religious or political, but some things are either right or wrong, and you don’t need to belong to a certain church or party to know which is which. Sending a homeless young woman with a newborn baby out into a world that was all too ready to label her a pariah was just plain wrong.

  When I finished up my morning rounds, I headed over to the Village Diner, which is practically my home away from home. Like most of my pet clients, I am a creature of habit. Pretty much every day of the year, I go to the diner and have basically the same breakfast. Two eggs over easy with extra crispy home fries and a hot biscuit. There are a couple of booths in the front that have a nice view of the street, but I usually take one of the booths in the back. My friend Judy is the waitress there, and by the time I’m sliding into my usual spot she’s sliding a cup of coffee in front of me. It’s a well-choreographed dance we’ve been doing for I don’t know how many years.

  Judy is long limbed and quick, with honey brown hair, piercing hazel eyes, and a sprinkling of freckles on her nose. She’s left a line of no-good men in her trail—all bums, cheaters, liars, losers, and sons of bitches, or as Judy calls them, dicks. I’ve held her hand through almost every one of them, and she held mine when I hit that bump in the road I mentioned before. Although I rarely see her outside the diner, she’s probably my closest friend in the world other than my brother.

  This morning, while Judy was pouring my coffee, I slipped into the restroom first. Normally there’s maybe a little cat hair and some dog slobber to wash off, but not today. I pulled a few towels from the dispenser and wadded them up into a makeshift sponge. I scrubbed between my fingers and under my nails. I scrubbed my arms up to the elbow. I scrubbed like a sailor swabbing the deck of a shrimp boat. I’m sure I’d gotten it all off before, but there’s something about having blood on your hands that makes you feel a little panicky, like the lady in that Shakespeare play—“Out! Out! Damn spot!”

  When I felt like a certified clean freak, I tossed the towels in the trash pail and smoothed the wrinkles out of my shorts. I studied myself in the mirror. I don’t know if it’s a blessing or a curse, but it seems like I’m always getting mixed up in stuff I probably shouldn’t be.

  Judy was waiting for me at the table. She was twirling a pencil in her hair and had a particularly mischievous grin on her face.

  “Your boyfriend was here earlier,” she said.

  I slid into the booth, feigning ignorance. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Uh-huh.” She shifted her weight to the other hip. “You know, he left me an extra big tip and was giving me all kinds of smiles. I think he might be a little sweet on me, just so you know.”

  “Oh, really?” I asked, cupping my hands around the coffee mug. “You should hop right on that.” I wasn’t taking the bait. I know Judy far too well.

  She went on. “Well, I’ll tell you, it was distracting. And I think he’s just so damn tired of waiting for you he’s ready to settle for little ol’ me.”

  “That must have been very upsetting for you,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’d settle with him any day of the week. In fact, I’d settle with that boy every day of the week!”

  She flipped her hair off her shoulders and sashayed back toward the kitchen, swaying her hips for extra effect.

  I had to admit, Judy was probably right. Ethan probably was tired of waiting for me. And why I kept him waiting, I had no idea. Ethan Crane is an attorney in town, and he happens to be one of the most devastatingly beautiful specimens of man you could ever hope to lay eyes or hands on. He could carry around one of those numbered ticket machines, like the ones they have at deli counters, and women would line up for blocks. We’ve had a sort of on-again, off-again flirtation going, but something’s always gotten in the way. And that something has always been me.

  Five years ago—five years, six months, and a couple of days, to be exact—I lost the two most important things in the world to me: Christy, my little girl, and my husband, Todd. A ninety-year-old man plowed his car into them in a grocery store parking lot. He later said he meant to step on the brake pedal, but instead he stepped on the gas, and they were both killed instantly, or so I was told.

  Christy was three, and Todd was thirty.

  It’s funny how it takes just a few seconds to tell the story of what happened, because it feels like it goes on forever. At first I spent a lot of time in bed or staring at the wall. I didn’t eat and I barely slept—to be honest, I was a slobbering, filthy mess. Certainly, as anyone around here will tell you, I was unfit to be a police officer, let alone carry a gun.

  I’m okay now, except that sometimes I feel like it’s all been a terrible play, and then the curtain comes down and the lights go up and I realize I’m not in the audience, I’m on the stage. And you don’t need to be Sigmund Freud to know that I’m a little commitment-phobic. That tends to throw cold water on the fire whenever somebody comes along that I might want to get a little committed to. Somebody like Ethan Crane.

  I know Todd would want me to be happy and be with someone, and I know Christy would want the same. For a while I was happy, with Guidry, a local homicide detective I fell very hard for. But then he took a job in his hometown of New Orleans, and I didn’t want to follow him there, or I was afraid to. And that was that.

  Judy returned with the coffeepot, and Tanisha, the cook, came out with my breakfast. Tanisha is built like a linebacker but has the heart of an angel. We’re good friends, even though we only see each other at the diner, mostly because she works nonstop. The thought of going away and letting anyone else in her kitchen drives her crazy. She runs a tight ship, and she doesn’t want anybody messing with it.

  “Tanisha, when are you going to take a vacation?” I asked. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in here when you weren’t cooking away in that kitchen.”

  “Oh, Lord,” she cried. “Plenty times I think I’d like to just walk out of here and keep on walkin’. Go to Tahiti or some fancy island somewhere and never look back.” She crossed her massive arms over the back of the booth and looked at me dreamily. “Lord knows they ain’t nobody gonna stop me. But you know what my problem is?”

  “You’d miss me too much.”

  She grinned. “Nope. I’m too nice. I’d be scared I’d hurt y’all’s feelings if I up and disappeared.”

  “It’s true,” I said. “You’re about the sweetest person I know.”

  “Oh, honey, I know it,” she continued. “You know if there’s even a fly in my kitchen, I don’t go swattin’ after it. I move him out the back door like a goddamn fool, like a dog steerin’ a herd of sheep!” She shuffled across the floor back to the kitchen, dodging around an imaginary fly. “Come on, mister fly sweetheart,” she said. “Get yo ass back home. Your fly friends is all worried ’bout where you been!”

  I wanted to tell Judy and Tanisha what had happened that morning, but I was afraid they’d just tell me I was nuts to get involved, and I already knew that. Anyway, by the time I left the diner I had made up my mind. I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t try to help Corina. I might be arrested, but I didn’t care. I had to look into my own eyes when I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, and I wouldn’t be able to face myself if I turned her in. I’m not sure what that made me in political terms, but I wasn’t thinking politics. I was thinking of all living beings and
the fact that we’re all part of one enormous family. If we don’t help raise one another up, we will all go down together.

  The question was: How could I help her?

  4

  I pulled my Bronco into the parking lot at Walmart and made a few slow circles before I found a good spot. I always get a little nervous in parking lots. Usually I’m totally unaware of it until I see my knuckles whitening on the steering wheel, the same color as those painted lines on the asphalt.

  As I walked across the lot, I tried to imagine myself in Corina’s shoes. She had probably suspended any fear of being taken into a stranger’s house when faced with the alternative: alone in a strange world with a newborn baby, no medical help, no money. What could she possibly have been thinking? Where would she live? How could she hope to fend for herself and a newborn? I tried not to think of the possibilities as I pulled out a cart and headed over to the baby supplies aisle.

  It suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea what to get. Before Christy was born, Todd and I had read every baby book under the sun. We could tell you which diapers were the most absorbent, and what brand of baby slings were 100 percent cotton and why you shouldn’t give a pacifier to a newborn. Surely I’d gone out and bought all this stuff before, possibly in this very store, but I couldn’t remember it to save my life. It’s as if I’d blocked it all out.

  There was a woman balancing a package of disposable diapers and a can of powdered infant formula in one arm and a towheaded baby boy in the other. The girl was young and pretty, in pale-washed jeans and a light pink tank top, with straight blond hair and clean skin. On her shoulder was a tattoo of a bird, perched atop a cross of thorns.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I was wondering if you could help me a bit?”

  “Yeah,” she said, shifting the baby to her other arm, “if you’ll get this.”

  She lifted one leg up to reveal a white paper napkin stuck to the inseam of her jeans just above the ankle.