Ramona Ausubel - A Guide to Being Born - Stories

Houdini is still alive when he goes in the freezer. My father says he figures zipping the plastic bag plus the cold will do it. He does not want to hit the cat with a hard object. He does not own any guns, and a knife is out of the question. When he zips the bag, he says, “I’m sorry, cat. You are about to feel less air in your lungs. The cold will work to numb you.”

My father sits on the floor with the freezer door open in the otherwise dark room. The only other things in there are some tubs of ground beef marinara sauce and the wool baby blanket my mother knit for me when I was born. She won a prize for it at the county fair and now it lives here to keep from getting eaten by moths. It is also zip-locked and its hair, like the cat’s, is pressed against the plastic, smashed flat.

My father, his tools still upstairs, pretends to whittle—one index finger shaving the other index finger down. He looks like he is preparing to survive in the wilderness. The blue light from inside the freezer cleans him up and makes him shine.

“Should we say something?” my mother asks.

“Houdini was a good cat,” my father tries.

“Houdini is in cat heaven, where there are rivers of milk and mountains of cheese,” my mother adds, looking at me, watching for the happiness she hopes I feel.

“Houdini is in the freezer,” I say, “and he is still alive.”

My mother whispers to me, “We’ll bury him in the morning. It will be a beautiful ceremony. When he is dead.” She takes me by the arm, both of us crying, to the bathtub. I am too big to be washed this way and I say so.

“I want to be covered,” I tell her.

“You will be, by water.”

But it does not hide the few new hairs growing on my body. Even if I hunker down as low as I can, the water does nothing but magnify. Our falling tears cannot make this a sea deep enough for me to hide in.

“I wouldn’t fit in the freezer,” I say to her.

“You are not going anywhere,” she says, and pours a bowl of the blood-pinked water onto my head. It rushes down heavy over my eyes.

EARLY IN THE MORNING when the light doesn’t look like it is coming from anywhere in particular, my parents come to my door knocking. “Time to bury the cat,” they say, like what they mean is “Happy birthday.” In the kitchen there are scones, homemade. My mother must have been up for hours. They are browned and perfect, sitting in rows.

“Are those scones on Houdini’s cookie sheet?” I ask.

“Houdini doesn’t have his own cookie sheet,” my father says. He has the shovel and he has a brown grocery bag. When I look at it, he answers a question I do not have.

“He’s cold. I couldn’t hold him.”

“He’s frozen,” my mother reminds him.

THE EARTH IS FULL OF STONES. Every shovelful turns up more of them. They leave round crevices behind. When my father takes a break, resting his hands on the long wooden handle, I kneel down and put my fist into one of the stone’s old homes. It feels warmed, like a just-left chair. Who knows how long that rock was there, sneaked down into the dirt, covered on all its ragged sides.

“The earth will digest him,” my mother says. “He’s free of his body now.”

“That’s enough hole touching,” my father tells me. “Come on, son,” he says, “let’s get this show on the road.” He returns to work. A pinecone comes up. A shoelace. Dirt, heavy and dark and wormy, comes up. When there is enough room for Houdini plus some, my father leans the shovel against the tree and turns the brown sack over. The cat is still in the plastic bag.

“We have to take him out of the bag,” I say.

“It’s OK. He’s bloody,” my mother says.

“For one thing, he won’t disintegrate, for another thing, look at him.” I go down onto my knees. I open the zip and try to dump him out, but he is stuck by his own blood to the walls. My mother and father stand over me, watching. I jam a stick in, try to loose the fur. The stick breaks. My parents do not suggest anything. I tear the bag off. Even when it goes, Houdini is still in the shape of it. His fur is still smoothed flat like something is pushing against it. Houdini cannot push back.

While dirt goes back in, I remove the worms one by one.

“You know they are part of the cycle,” my mother says, and I do know, but it is too soon. For now I want to let my cat rest alone without being crawled upon, under the turned earth.

AFTER THE BURIAL I find Belbog asleep under my kitchen windowsill. He is not wet anymore but is still red. I tap him, wake him up, walk him back to his house.

“Have you been here all night?” I ask.

“Is he?” he asks.

“It’s part of the cycle,” I say. Belbog stands in the doorway and watches me. I right his overturned table and sit at it. Look at the street, at the spot where Houdini landed. The street is steaming with heat, already, even this early in the day.

“My name means White God, did you know?” Belbog asks.

“The continent of Europe must be very far away. Are there beautiful women there?”

“The most beautiful anywhere, my father tells me. I hope we will be friends. Perhaps this summer you can come and together we can sell beverages on the side of the road,” Belbog says, and when he finally closes the door, I hear the lock slip, and then the other lock slip and a chain rattle itself into place.

WHEN I COME INSIDE, my parents are asleep on the couch, wrapped up in each other, the room full of morning light. I put a blanket over them. I take Houdini’s cookie sheet upstairs. I look out the window at the elm, at the unsmooth patch of ground. I eat scone after scone, hoping that some of the cat was left on the tray. The sun is still a colored sun, not like later when the light will be so bright the particulars of it disappear. I go to sleep too, taking the cookie sheet under the covers. I can hear my father snoring through the floor. The spears of sunlight hit my back. They drill slowly into me, warming up even the deepest insides, and I fall asleep.

Again, my parents come knocking. “We have to hold a cremation,” they say. “Are you ready? Put on your shorts.” Out the window I see that the hole has been opened. Everything we worked to dig down has been dug up. My mother’s hair is unbrushed. She is still wearing her nightgown and my father has only his underwear on.

“Dogs,” he says.

“We can do a cremation here, at the house?” I ask.

“We build a fire,” my father says.

“Obviously. And I put the whole cat in the fire?”

“There isn’t a whole cat,” my mother says.

“What is there?”

“Parts of a cat,” they say together.

“Bones?” I ask.

“Mostly. And some fur. And some face.”

The sun is now exactly overhead. The trees are sweating from the undersides of their leaves. The air does not move; it is a single object set in place. I am dripping by the time I leave my doorstep. Belbog is back out with his stand and a new pitcher. He is wearing all black. He waves. I do not wave back. Wood is taken from the shed and formed into a pyramid. I haul the three sun chairs together. My mother makes cucumber sandwiches. I walk across the street to Belbog’s stand.

“I would like three glasses, please,” I offer, and he pours.

He looks himself up and down. “We are mourning,” he says. “I am wearing black.”

“That’s nice of you.”

“No charge for the beverage,” he says. “It is on my house. What are you doing now?”

“A cremation,” I tell him. “Don’t come over.”

“If you need any more beverage, I will be here all day. I invite you to come and help me. We will split the profits fifty–fifty. Everything fair and even.”