Ramona Ausubel - A Guide to Being Born - Stories

Ben brushed Annie’s hair with his fingers, which came away wrapped in a few golden strands. Annie pulled them off and laid them in a drawer already populated by brown and pink babies. The glisten of her hair disappeared into the dark of Ben’s body.

“Can I keep those?” he asked.

“Those are yours,” she said.

Annie stuck the tips of her fingers into Ben’s new moons. Her arms hung like two sturdy bridges across the space between them.

I DO NOT FIND HOUDINI downstairs. Upstairs, my room smells like cat but has no cat in it. My bed is covered in the soft gray hairs. My parents’ bed is also ashy-gray, the fur hovering and landing when I sweep my hand over it. I find my father and mother lying on the slanted roof outside their window, what they call the Veranda. They are squinting against the sun, shielding their faces. Their shirts are pulled up to make way for the darkening of skin. They glisten with sweat.

“Did you sell your lunch ticket?” my father wants to know.

“Fifty cents.”

“What were they serving?”

“Sloppy Joes.”

“You could have gotten a dollar.”

“Have you seen Houdini?”

“You could have gotten seventy-five at least.”

My mother says, “We aren’t any fun up here. Why don’t you go and play with Belbog, next door? He’s come all the way from the continent of Europe.”

“And can’t you see we are tanning?” my father adds.

“I’m already nice to him on the bus,” I tell my mother, and sit down on the roof’s slanted face. I pull my shirt up too and reveal the stunning whiteness of my stomach.

“You can blame your father for that skin tone,” my mother says. “Good luck getting any dates with any babes.” She reaches out and takes my father’s hand. She rubs each finger individually, gets her own into the crevices between them. Those canyons are completely explored.

Were the roof not covered in something like sandpaper, if it were slick—say, metal—we would all three slide to our probable deaths.

My mother lights a cigarette from the pack at her side and my father picks up his constant companions: a knife and stick. He whittles. My father is making another letter opener to be added to the drawers already filled with them. My mother’s cigarette ashes get caught in the wind and circle all our heads.

“The best thing,” my father says, “will be for you to save up for a trip to a country where they have beautiful women and you can marry one.”

“What if I don’t love any of the beautiful women when I get there?” I ask.

“By the time you got there, you’d see. The hard thing would be knowing which one you loved best. The world is just waiting for you, son,” he tells me, looking up at the expansive heavens, shaking their rattles of sunlight down on us.

My mother says, “It doesn’t have to wait—you’re already here. Welcome to your life.”

I see flat-faced Belbog, all the way from the continent of Europe, walk out of his house and set up a card table and a chair on the sidewalk. He makes another trip and returns with three mugs and a pitcher of something red. He tapes a sign to his table, Beverage For Sale . He sits, his hands folded on his lap and his legs crossed, wearing a pair of large white women’s sunglasses very long out of fashion.

Cars pass, not slowing for refreshment. They send wind Belbog’s way, spread his hair out in the gusts. It is at this moment and from this incredible vantage point that I see Belbog’s hair blowing, and in front of him I see Houdini cross the street toward home, looking like a ghost in the white light. And then I see a car, a red car, come around the corner and not even slow down for my cat, and not even stop after the noise that we all hear.

“Houdini?” I ask of the air. The cat is a pile in the street. Belbog jumps up and knocks the pitcher off the table, covers himself, soaks himself red. My parents jump inside through the window first, pushing me aside. And the long journey down from the roof begins. There are stairs I must go down. I must go through the living room and the dining room and the back hall and the front hall before I can emerge from the door, screaming the name of my cat. When I get down to the street, Belbog has the cat in his arms, legs loose and swinging, and says, “The car! The cat! The car!”

I try to hug Houdini away from him, to take him to my chest. But Belbog has him tight, so I hug both of them, Houdini pressed between the two of us, all our lungs pumping together.

“That cat’s not going to make it,” my father says. My mother has the portable phone and starts to dial, but he stops her. “That cat’s not going to make it,” he repeats.

“Call the vet! Call 9-1-1! Call the vet!” I yell.

“We shouldn’t try?” my mother asks.

“It is hit!” Belbog says.

“He’s old,” my father says. “It would cost a fortune. It’s better to let him die.” The phone in my mother’s hand is quiet and no numbers are pushed. I go for it but she holds it tight and I cannot get it free. “Let’s take him inside,” my father says, already walking, “where we can say goodbye properly.”

“The cat will be dead from us?” Belbog asks, following behind the three of us until we reach the front door and I close it in his face. He stands there on the stoop, dripping onto the threshold of my home.

MY MOTHER PUTS a cookie sheet out on the kitchen table and I turn on the lamp above it, a spotlight. Houdini is matted with blood. He is not a gray cat anymore, he is a red cat.

“You have had him longer than you have had me,” I say.

“We have had each other longer than either of you,” my mother says, looking at my father. “The cat just showed up one day and I fed him.”

“It would cost thousands of dollars, and even then,” my father answers, “a new cat doesn’t cost anything. The price of a ball-chopping, or not. If we don’t chop the balls, we’d get kittens maybe. You’d like kittens, wouldn’t you?”

“Honey,” she scolds, “please.” My mother holds the cat’s two front paws in her own, she tips her head down to wipe her cheeks on her shoulder. “We would have kept putting food out for you. Milk. Leftovers.”

“I have my savings,” I offer.

“No amount of savings would be enough. He is going to go sooner or later. Sooner,” my father says. The light swings just slightly, its halo shifting over the cat, who is less and less alive. I put my ear to his chest and listen.

“Hush-a-hush-a-hush-a,” I whisper to him. When I come up, I can feel that my cheek is sticky wet. I rub the blood around. Rub it all over my face. This makes my mother cry harder. Flat-faced Belbog has his flat face pressed against the window, watching us. His snot drips out of his nose and down the glass.

“That’s enough,” my father says. “You are upsetting your mother. Goodbye, cat. Now is the time.” He holds Houdini up above his head, and again the four legs swing and hang. “A freezer bag, honey,” he says to my mother. Both of us follow him down the basement stairs. “Everybody needs to keep it together,” he says. “If you try anything, I will kick you out of the ceremony.”

“Can we at least sit?” my mother asks.

“Get comfortable,” he tells her. We lower ourselves onto the bottom stair. She takes my head onto her chest. I can hear her heart going through its beats. My snot drips down out of my nose, it seeps into my mother’s shirt, and I make no motion to stop it. My tears too drain from my eyes and soak through to her skin. Houdini’s blood rubs from my cheek onto her chest. My face is stuck to her shirt is stuck to her skin. She says, “Hush-a-hush-a-hush-a,” while I try to drench her, to soak her through, to drown her.