Cat At The Wall

by Deborah Ellis

  But I wanted to eat more than I wanted to scratch. If I was up high and they brought out some food, I might not get down in time to snatch it away.

  If they decided to eat.

  And if they dropped any food.

  I didn’t know how long I’d have to wait for food, and I hate waiting. I never liked it. And there was so much waiting around when I was a girl! Waiting for the Monopoly game to end so I could escape from Family Game Night. Waiting for my father’s client to finish his will-writing appointment so that I could watch TV in the study instead of in the rec room with my sister. Waiting for my mother to get off the phone and drive me to the Westgate Mall.

  I hated all of it. My heart would start to pound and I’d want to wring someone’s neck.

  “It’s not good for me to have to wait,” I told my parents. “Really, it isn’t healthy. I’m not kidding.”

  But they just went on making dinner or mowing the lawn or talking on the phone to Grandma, even though it would have taken them No Time to do what I wanted.

  I wonder if they’re sorry now.

  Sometimes I was able to get what I wanted by being really, really bratty about it. I’d unplug the lawnmower or I’d stand right in front of my mother while she yakked on the phone.

  “If I drive you this one time will you promise to settle down and not act like this again?”

  Of course I promised. And of course I did it again.

  Now I either wait or I go do something else. And nobody cares. It’s terrible. Nobody ever thinks about the wants and feelings of a stray cat.

  I rubbed my ears on the smelly carpet again, then closed my eyes. Cats can nap anywhere.

  My ears perked up at the sound of a package being opened. My nose twitched. I smelled cheese. One of the soldiers had unwrapped a hunk of cheese and was cutting it into pieces.

  In a flash I was out from under the sofa. I grabbed a big piece of cheese and bounded up to the top of a cupboard.

  “Hey!”

  I held the cheese in my teeth and raised my hind leg to my ear and gave those fleas a good hard scratch. It felt like heaven.

  I scratched, then I ate. The cheese stuck in my throat a bit, but I didn’t care.

  Simcha, laughing, reached out to grab the rest of the cheese. I hissed and swiped at him, scratching his hand.

  He stopped laughing and backed off.

  Now both of them were scratched. I wasn’t a bit sorry.

  When my breakfast was done, I enjoyed a long session of grooming. I’ve learned that grooming my fur is as soothing as brushing my hair used to be when I was a girl. I used to love brushing it and looking at the shine of it in the bathroom mirror, no matter how often it made my mom late for work. I don’t think that’s vanity, to admire something beautiful, even if the beautiful thing was me.

  I had another good scratch. Then I settled down on my perch for a nap. I was feeling so good I almost decided to purr.

  Then my nose told me something I hadn’t paid attention to before.

  There were three humans in the little house.

  Two of them were the soldiers.

  The third was a boy. And he was hiding.

  Three

  —

  What did I care if a boy wanted to hide? It had nothing to do with me.

  The best thing about being a cat is that nothing is my fault.

  Oh, I suppose if I deliberately ran in front of someone carrying a huge tray of bread rolls on his head, making him trip so the rolls went flying into the gift shops along the narrow streets of old Bethlehem, that would be my fault. (And has been, more than once!) But no one would ever blame me in a serious way. No one would think to punish a cat. No one would bother giving a detention to a cat.

  I’ve become a living Get Out of Jail Free card.

  So what if a boy was hiding? So what if the soldiers had taken over his house?

  So what if he might be in trouble?

  Not my fault. Not my problem.

  I reminded myself of this when I sniffed out the boy.

  Not your business, I told myself. You have enough trouble of your own, stuck in this awful place with fleas and no TV. That boy hiding away will never help you. So why should you help him?”

  That got my thinking straightened around to where it should be, back to the place where most of my thoughts and feelings have been since I died.

  On hatred for my homeroom teacher.

  She was the one responsible for my death. That means that all the stuff that’s happened to me since is her fault, too.

  She had it in for me from the start.

  She was new to Lehigh Middle School. I came back from summer vacation expecting to have Mr. Hutchins for eighth grade. He told jokes in his class and was so close to retirement he didn’t care what his students did as long as they were quiet about it. But over the summer he went and had a heart attack, ruining my plans for an easy school year. He was out, and this new teacher was in.

  I walked into her classroom on the first day of school just five seconds late and she practically ripped my head off.

  She didn’t say anything. She just looked at me with ice-cold eyes. She didn’t even respond to my smile, a smile that most adults thought was sincere.

  I sized her up right away — forty, frustrated, forgettable, a long way from young and a long way from retirement. Her hair was in tight, short poodle curls edged with gray. She wore a drab navy dress that made her look more like a cop than a teacher.

  I thought about staring her down but instead flashed another of my winning smiles to show she hadn’t gotten to me and took a seat at the back of the room. I liked to sit at the back because I could see everything from there. I needed to stay on top of things so I’d know who to make fun of.

  “My name is Ms. Sealand,” this new teacher said. “I will be your homeroom teacher and I will also teach you history and literature.”

  I texted my impressions of Ms. Sealand to my friend Josie, stuck in the other eighth grade class in the school. I kept my eyes on the teacher while I texted. My grades were good. As long as I pretended to pay attention, teachers usually left me alone.

  Ms. Sealand babbled on about the usual start-of-the-year stuff. I didn’t listen. I was busy texting possible nicknames for her. Sealand made me think of seals and walruses, but they didn’t quite fit. Sea also sounded like Zee, and then I had it. Zero. We would call her Ms. Zero.

  “Is everyone happy with their seats?” the teacher asked. “Anyone want to change? This is your one and only chance.”

  I smiled at the comment Josie texted back about Ms. Zero.

  “Good,” the teacher said. “Everyone, please pick up your desks and pivot them one hundred and eighty degrees.”

  I had a vague sense of the confusion around me as the other kids tried to figure out if she was serious. But Josie was texting the nickname of her teacher, so I didn’t take much notice of anything else.

  My phone was snatched out of my hands.

  “Hey!”

  The word came out of my mouth before I could stop it. When dealing with teachers, the first rule is to look like you are on their side. Any outright expression of disagreement is the sort of thing they remember, and you don’t want them to remember the bad stuff.

  The teacher stood silently at the back of the room, which was now the front of the room. She had four cellphones in her hands. One of them was mine.

  I suddenly realized I was the only kid who hadn’t turned her desk around. I felt stupid doing it while everyone was watching, and especially stupid because Ms. Zero waited in silence until I was done.

  “You have all been informed of the school board’s no-phone policy,” she said. “If you would like to change that policy, you are welcome to follow the democratic process and make a deputation at a meeting of the board.”

  “Do we get o
ur phones back at the end of the day?” someone asked.

  “Your parents are welcome at any time to come to the school and retrieve them.”

  I tried my smile again. “My mother likes to know that she can get in touch with me.”

  “Then perhaps you could share the school’s general phone number with your mother,” Ms. Zero said. “Before we begin our lesson, let me say a few other things. This school year will be unlike any school year you have had to date. I believe in respect — giving and getting. You all have my respect from the start because you have shown up today, ready to learn. My respect for you as individuals will grow or wane throughout the year. You choose which by your attitude and your behavior. I am not your friend. I am not your parent. I am your teacher, and I put a high value on that. It is a value I hope you will come to share. If so, I can promise you will leave this classroom in awe of the power of your own minds.”

  She went on and on about how it was our job to keep up with her, not her job to chase after us, that assignments turned in late would get a zero unless we had prior clearance from her, and that she would be conducting regular sessions on time-management at lunch hour.

  “These sessions are open to the entire school,” she said. “There is a sign-up sheet by the door. I suggest you sign up early.”

  Then she handed out a Statement of Agreement. We each got three copies.

  “This is a contract between you and me,” she said. “It clearly states my rules and expectations, and it also outlines what we will be studying together and what the major assignments will be. You and your parents will sign all three copies, as will I. One copy is for your parents, one is for me, and the last one is for you to keep. I enjoy clarity in communication. The world provides enough ambiguity.”

  “She can’t make us sign this,” I whispered to the girl across from me. I was a lawyers’ kid. I knew a little bit about contracts.

  “You have an objection, Clare?” Zero asked.

  “No one can be forced to sign a contract,” I said. “What if we don’t want to sign?”

  “You and your parents are welcome to meet with me to discuss your objections.”

  She had an answer for everything.

  There was no way I was going to show that contract to my parents, but I wasn’t worried. I was good at forging their signatures.

  “Let me be clear,” the teacher said. “Next year you will be in high school. A very few short years after that, you will legally be adults. This year is to prepare you for that. It is time to grow up.”

  And then she smiled. It was like a smile on a vampire.

  “We will also have fun. You will find that school is much more fun when you are treated like mature students instead of like little children who need to be babysat. And the fun part begins now. Human beings tell each other stories to try to bring order to chaos. What do I mean by that?”

  All the bright-eyed kids jumped into the discussion. I used the time to come up with a story for my parents about losing my phone. They had made me promise not to bring it to school.

  “Allahu Akbar.”

  The call to prayer interrupted my thoughts. It was loud. The mosque must have been close to the little house I was hiding in.

  “Ashhadu an la ilaha illa Allah. I bear witness that there is no God except one God.”

  Another day was starting.

  Another bloody day.

  Terrific.

  Four

  —

  I discovered that I can now understand all the languages humans speak.

  This is how I figured it out. I was in downtown Bethlehem, in the square outside the church that now stands on the spot where Jesus was born. There were a lot of tourists eating lunch and dropping bits of food. Someone left half a burger on their plate while they had their picture taken — plenty of time for me to help myself!

  I wandered among the legs of all the people in cafes and eating ice cream in Manger Square. Many were in organized tour groups, with guides carrying the flag of France or Japan or India. There were women in saris, men in multi-colored African shirts and women with black kerchiefs on their heads. There were Muslim women in head coverings and Greek holy men in long black robes.

  It was pretty clear that people were there from all over the world. I heard all their conversations, and I wondered why everyone was speaking English.

  Then I realized that they weren’t, but that I could understand them anyway.

  At first it was pretty cool, and I wandered around, listening to people talk and feeling pretty pleased with myself that I could understand everything. I could eavesdrop on everybody!

  Then it dawned on me that a lot of what I was hearing was really boring.

  “Where’s the bathroom?” “Did you see what they charge for a Coke?” “Is this really where Jesus was born, or are they just guessing?” “If this is how you are going to behave, next time we’ll leave you home and your Aunt Alice can watch you.” “There’s only so much junk we can pack in the carry-on, and I’m not paying extra for shipping, so get that in your head right now.” “Many beautiful Holy Land souvenirs, right this way.” “Are there toilets over there?”

  I understand the animals, too, just as clearly as if they were speaking English. They’re not any more interesting. They mostly talk about food and the stupid things humans are doing. Dogs on leashes talk about wanting to run away. Cats think they’re better than everybody, so they make fun of everything. Except the birds. The birds make fun of the cats. If they are fast enough.

  Not a single one of them, human or animal, has ever even bothered to ask me how I am doing and if they can do anything to help me. All selfish. All of them.

  Anyway, I figured out, with no help from anyone, that there are only two languages — human and animal. The difference between the two is that animals can’t lie. Or don’t. Really, they have no reason to lie. Humans wouldn’t hear them and other animals wouldn’t believe it. Which is too bad for me because lying is the thing I was best at when I was a girl.

  So when the two soldiers talked in Hebrew, I could understand them. And when the people out in the street spoke Arabic, I could understand them, too.

  I can only make cat noises, though. In my head I’m saying words, but it comes out of my mouth as meows.

  Daylight was beginning to replace the darkness. Aaron spoke occasional updates of “All quiet” into his little voice recorder. The soldiers went through their duffel bags and spread their things out as they settled into the house. I watched them closely.

  I like Things. I did when I was a girl and I still do now that I am a cat.

  I was a pretty good little thief when I was a kid. I kept a shoebox in the back of my closet of little things I stole — an eraser from one classmate, a ruler from another, a red marking pen from the teacher’s desk, my sister’s favorite My Little Pony, a brooch from my mother’s jewelry box, a Pittsburg Penguins hockey puck my father kept on his desk in the den. Later I took things of more value, like a watch out of someone’s gym bag in the school change room, a set of pastels from the art class, and any money I could get my hands on.

  I spent the money, of course, but I kept the Things. I liked to look through my treasure box in the middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep. I thought about people looking for their things and not being able to find them because I had them. It made me feel powerful.

  I guess someone probably went through my closet after I died and found the box. My family should have kept my room the way it was and turned it into a sort of shrine to me. But my mother was way too practical. She probably moved Polly in there and turned Polly’s room into a study for herself so she could work at home without having to share space with my father.

  I hope it was Polly who found my box of Things. I wasn’t very nice to her, but she would never rat on me, not even after I was dead.

  All this is making me s
ound like I was a really bad person, but I wasn’t. There were a ton of things I could have stolen but didn’t. And I wasn’t always mean to Polly. Sometimes we would listen outside the door of my father’s study while he helped a client write a will and we would hear who would get what. That was fun, and I was nice to her then.

  One time we listened in on the parents of one of the boys in my class. They were asking my dad about dividing their estate. “Our daughter is a star but we don’t think our boy will amount to much,” they said. “Do we have to leave them the same amount?”

  I never told that boy what I heard. I could have. But I didn’t, because I knew it would hurt him. So I wasn’t all bad. I think I was pretty normal, actually.

  When the two soldiers opened their bags and started sorting through their stuff, I decided to go down to the floor for a closer look, to see if there was anything I might want.

  I got right inside one of the bags and shoved things around with my nose, looking for something I liked. It was a little bit like shopping.

  “Hey, kitty! Look, kitty’s in the duffel bag!”

  I let the soldier called Aaron run his fingers through the fur on the back of my neck for a moment. I even decided to purr.

  “She likes me,” Aaron said. “Who’s a pretty cat?”

  “That is the ugliest cat I have ever seen,” Simcha said. “And this land is full of ugly cats.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to him, Miss Kitty,” Aaron said in a baby-talk voice. “I think you are the prettiest kitty. Really, you are. My mother would feed you up and have you looking sleek and fine in no time.”

  I heard footsteps outside. The two soldiers jumped to their posts, one at the telescope and one at his rifle.

  The town was awake.

  Five

  —

  I smelled sage. I could tell from the rhythm of the footfalls that the passerby was an old woman heading down to the market with herbs to sell for making tea.