James, Jimmy to His Friends

The nurse, making her rounds, peeks into the dimly lit room and gasps. She turns away and pads as silently down the hallway in her crepe-soled shoes as the cat. Seeing the cat always gives her a little start though by now you’d think she’d be used to seeing him in the hospice care facility.

The warm yellowy light emitting from the nightlight by the bed was no match for the crisp white moonglow beaming through the curtains framing the open window. Gertie was one of the old-timers who welcomed the cat’s final visit so she always slept with her window open, fretting that the door to the hallway would be blown shut by one of the mysterious drafts that most people there---including the nurses---believed were precursors to the cat’s visit.

“Who’s there?” the old woman whispered.

“Mweeowr,” whispered the cat. He was purring; she was smiling like the Mona Lisa.

The cat, whose name was James (though no one knew that) turned his face towards Gertie’s, the moonlight alive in his pale green eyes. Gertie’s breaths rattled and hissed with great effort; James opened his mouth and leaned forward, inhaling the very last one. The breath was wispy and the delicate peachy pink of a conch shell. He exited the window, leaving Gertie with a smile on her peaceful, thankful face.

James (who would have been Jimmy to any friends) trotted along the sidewalk, headed for his last retrieval of the pre-dawn hours. As he passed through moonlit patches his grey fur shone brilliant blue.

James quite liked humans, especially the elderly and young children, both tending to be irresistibly taken by his cuteness, the former feeding him, the latter playing with him. He may be a reaper, but he was still a cat at heart, unable to resist the tiny bright bouncing light from the wand or the intoxicating delights of catnip. The next young man scheduled to pass was suffering from cirrhosis, James had little remorse for his kind. After all, the man had been slowly killing himself since he’d first picked up the bottle…the cat felt that alcoholism was slow suicide. This one would die with James on his chest while he bled out from his anus. So nasty this retrieval was, he just wanted to get it over with. The young man’s aurabreath would be tinged with a sickly green color.

The next night he would visit a little girl.

“Don’t you let that filthy cat in here young lady,” Sibil’s mother called from the den down the hall.

“Aw mom…” cried Sibil. “He’s so cuuute!” Her mother’s footsteps stomped towards her open door.

She peeked in and said, “What have I told you about cats?”

“I know, I know. But I don’t believe those dumb stories.”

“So, you think your mother’s dumb?”

“No. Of course not…but I do think her mother was crazy.”

Jackie sighed. She went to the window, opened it and glared at the grey cat in the tree; the branch was just fifteen feet from the house. She took off a pink terry slipper and threw it.

“Meeeerooowwrrrr!” shrieked the cat indignantly as it leapt out of reach then away on the top rail of the fence.

“Mom! Don’t hurt him!”

“Maybe it’ll stay away for good this time. I got him on the head.” Jackie shut the window and turned to her daughter propped up in the pink frilly bed. With softened voice, she said, “How you feeling sweetheart? You be able to sleep tonight?”

Sibil let out a long sigh. She was tired. Exhausted to the point of frustration. “Yeah, mom, I’ll sleep tonight.” She lied a lot to her mother. About sleeping. About the pain level. About her moods. She rarely slept well. The ache in her bones a constant source of angst and depression…only when the pain was so intense she vomited was she unable to hide it from her mother.

***

The man in tree salivated as he touched himself. He had crept into the yard every night for glimpses of her. From the tree he could only see into the brat’s bedroom. The best watching was done at the kitchen window, with the bright lights on, he was invisible in the shadow of the oak. He was able to watch for two hours at a time. That was at the beginning of the month. For this last week, He watched his soulmate prepare dinner, but that too had gone from an hour or so preparing an entrée, a salad or veggie, a starch, a desert. He saw himself sitting at the table drinking wine or a martini, engaged in conversation or simple rapt by her angel-like presence. Gradually the meal prep time grew shorter. Packaged foods prevailed…often just a can of soup, or, even worse, a take-out pizza or burgers. There were nights she was in his kitchen view merely seconds. From his perch in the tree, he was able to watch her bring a tray to the brat and stay as the kid ate.

The brat didn’t eat much anymore. Gads, she looked terrible. She’d be dead soon and he’d have Nurse Jackie all to himself.

The cat on the fence watched the man in the tree and glared as if he could read the man’s mind. He smelled bad. Like his brain was rotting.

***

Sibil suspected her mom knew she was lying about these things. What her mom didn’t suspect was that her daughter thought she was literally, crazy in the head---brain damaged from decades of abuse.

At age two, Sibil’s grandmother had moved in. Bill had lost his job---again---and Jackie, being only eighteen, needed help financially and with everything else in general. She’d been going to night school for her GED and then nursing school. Bill took off six months later. By the time Sibil was four she didn’t blame him anymore. If she was bigger, she’d leave too. Ms. Eloise was insane. She was cruel and domineering, scary mean and scary looking.

When her grandmother had first arrived, Sibil had lifted her arms up to be picked up from in her crib, and gurgled happily, “Gramelly!”

“Stop that!” the old witch had hissed. “You will call me by my name, Miz Eloise. And look at you. You’re filthy.”

Sibil had started crying and Eloise said “Pah!” as she fled the tiny yellow nursery in bat wings of black dress. In the kitchen downstairs, she’d said to Jackie, “Bathe your child. She’s got peas in her hair.”

For the next seven years, Sibil was to her grandmother, that child or the girl.

“Once I get a full-time nursing gig, I’ll be able to take care of you…without her.” Jackie had told Sibil this when she was four. She then repeated it in the years following…it was her mantra.

When Sibil was five, Jackie brought a cat home. She knew the girl was lonely. Kids in her preschool were not allowed over. Sibil knew that they would not want to come over anyways. Eloise had screamed and put a hand to her bony, black-frocked chest.

“Get rid of it!” she’d screamed. “It’s death! Oh, my lord in heaven. I’ll do it! I’ll kill it!” She came at the small orange cat---just a kitten really---with hands curled like claws.

Jackie had screamed too and raced after the frightened animal. Sibil was horrified, she knew her mean old grandmother would indeed kill the kitten with her bare hands. She dove in front of Eloise, who tripped over the girl and went sprawling on her belly, her black skirt flying up over her skeletal thighs. Sibil crawled to the sofa where the poor creature was shaking and mewling underneath it.

Jackie had hissed under her breath, “Take it outside. To the park. Let it go.”

Sibil couldn’t just abandon it. With tears streaming down her small face, she ran all the way to her preschool with the kitten in a shoebox wrapped in a towel. She knew one of the kids would take it home the next day.

Eloise had locked her in the basement for three days. Under the kitchen, beneath the plywood and rafters and myriads of webs---certain to contain ginormous hairy deadly spiders---Sibil had been able to hear every word of their fight. It was not much of a fight really, more of a tirade. As usual, Eloise’s sharp, high-pitched voice---a witch’s voice---berated her daughter as if she were a small and stupid toddler.

“…the cat. The damned cat killed my Franklin! Sucked his life, his soul, right out from his body! I SAW it with my own eyes. Wipe that look off your face…you look like a Mormon.”

Years later, Sibil realized how ironic that jibe had been. At the time, she’d thought her grandmother had meant to say moron. But over the years, she'd used that putdown often, believing the two were synonyms. The irony was that Eloise looked and acted like the people she thought of as religious nutballs. Over the years, even with all talk of cats banished from the home, Eloise hopped up on that pulpit and preached her death-cat woes.

After eight years of Eloise’s evil presence shadowing over their lives, Sibil’s mother had become quiet and withdrawn, she suffered migraines frequently and panic attacks akin to agoraphobia. Sibil herself suffered similar attacks and loneliness. She was allowed to have friends…but they all stayed away. In school they whispered about the witch who rode her bicycle around town, swearing she was the witch from Oz. They picked up their pets and ran when she rode onto their blocks. Sibil was bullied ceaselessly. Until…

One day she stood up in class and shouted, “Shut up! All of you! If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll have my grandmother curse you! Maybe take away your mouths…maybe turn you into mushrooms…”

Instead of the terrible headaches her mother was inflicted by, Sibil's bones began aching. She thought she was developing childhood arthritis or something. Caused by her of course.

Then Eloise died. Not by cat but simply a stroke in her sleep. Jackie’s migraines diminished and with the help of a shrink, she conquered the mental disorders as well. Sibil, however, continued to get worse. One evening Jackie was awoken by a thudding in the hallway. She got up and saw the bathroom light on. Sibil was curled on the floor, her legs kicking, her arms punching, her mouth contorted into a horrifying rictus like the remorseful face of a thespian mask. The toilet was filled with vomit; it smeared the seat and dripped to the floor in slimy chunks.

In the hospital, Jackie was given the news by a young black doctor with large sad puppy dog eyes. Cancer. Leukemia to be exact. Stage four. And although Jackie felt the lead curtain of depression behind her back, pressing into her like an icy iron wall, she refused to succumb. Sibil needed her to be healthy. She was a nurse, damnit, and would care for her daughter in their home until the end. ‘Damn that woman,’ she thought. ‘Still inflicting pain and suffering from the grave.’ One look at her daughter indicated she was thinking the same thing. Eloise hadn’t believed in doctors or hospitals. Jackie’s career was just a job that paid the bills.

Sibil sighed again as her mother left the room. As usual, she left the tray of barely picked-at food---McDonald’s chicken McNuggets and fries, her favorite---just in case she felt a rare hunger pain. She’d checked the morphine drip on the IV with tears in her eyes then looked out into the yard making sure the cat was gone. ‘Hmm. Odd,” she thought. ‘Don’t see that slipper anywhere.’

***

The man in the tree pressed the pink slipper to his face. The scent of his beloved’s foot sweat was the sweetest heavenly nectar that only an angel in a nurse’s uniform could produce.

Creeper Dave was a hypochondriac. All the staff at Elvin Babtist Memorial Hospital believed this to be true, including Nurse Jackie.

Creeper didn’t care what anyone thought. As long as he got to spend time with the love of his life, the center of his universe, the coal in the cockles of his heart---Nurse Jackie. That she was in his dreams every night proved that she was his soulmate. In his dreams her long dark hair was like silk against his bare chest as her bottomless indigo eyes stared longingly into his. They picnicked, they rode horses, they played tennis in the nude…he dreaded his waking hours when she wasn’t at his side. So, he went to her workplace as often as he could. If every affliction he’d described were actually real…he’d be dead.

A month earlier, as he had walked across the large parking lot, he had gone through his next spiel in his head. ‘Bitten by a mosquito. Need a test for malaria.’ He had halted. There she was. ‘Getting off early?’ At first, he felt deflated. Then, on second thought, he felt that had been his lucky day. He would find out where she lived.

***

Sibil sat up in the bed and slowly and painfully swung her legs over the side. Though pleasantly woozy, warm and drug-fuzzy, the pain was still in her bones and the nausea in her gut. She dragged the IV stand to the window and with all the strength she had in her arms, she opened it.

The cool spring air felt heavenly on her gaunt cheeks, easing the irritation of the sores that populated the delicate ivory skin of her face and chest. The air was scented with the jasmine blooming in vines up the old tree and redolent of the neighbor’s fireplace exhalations. She giggled a bit at the irony---she felt she’d surely be in heaven soon.

“Here kitty, kitty…” she softly called.

She smiled for the first time since seeing the cat earlier when she heard a tentative, “Meow.”

James came through the window.

***

Creeper Dave sat at the kitchen table in the dark. He caressed the polished pine tabletop where she’d be placing his drinks and his suppers. He opened the fridge and made mental notes of what needed stocking for his culinary tastes. He checked the freezer as well, wincing as the suction noise filled the stillness of the silence.

It’d been two hours since Nurse Jackie had switched off her bedroom light. She was surely deeply asleep…and dreaming about him. He grinned as he went up the stairs, willing his heartbeat to slow down, telling it to savor the seconds. In the hall, faint light emitted from under the brat’s closed door. He knew that she always slept with it open a foot or so but was glad tonight for the extra darkness.

The door suddenly opened. Creeper ducked into the den across the hall. But he had been seen. Sibil screamed and backed into her room so swiftly she stumbled and fell onto her back. The door at the end of the hallway flew open as Creeper leapt at the girl, intending to silence her…permanently.

“Sibil!” screamed Jackie. She didn’t hesitate to pull the trigger of the revolver in her hand as soon as she knew her daughter was safely out of range. (one small thanks to her mother’s paranoia were the guns in the house) The man went down, landing on Sibil. Jackie cried out in anguish and raced forward to drag the limp form off her child. She placed the gun within reach and gently patted Sibil’s cheeks. She appeared to be dead.

“No no no no,” she moaned. A strong hand clamped to her ankle and she cried out and kicked with her other leg.

Sibil moaned and sat up. She saw her mother struggling with the man from the hallway. Instead of rushing forward ineffectually, she scooched back into her bedroom...

She came out seconds later with a large grey cat in her arms. The man was on his side, pulling her mother to him and saying, “…my love, my angel…”

‘Ew. Weird,’ Sibil thought.

With every ounce of willful energy she had, she shoved the man’s shoulder with her foot. He fell onto his back crying out in pain. She saw his black tee shirt was torn and wet with his blood, the exit wound under his ribcage was a gaping gory hole. He was breathing heavily though the hand was still like a bear trap on her mother’s ankle.

Sibil dropped the cat onto his chest. The cat slunk low and close to the man’s face. The cat inhaled every exhalation. They were wispy dark smoke, black as charcoal--- until the man’s eyes went wide, and his chest stopped moving. He did not die with a smile on his face.

***

Jackie opened her daughter’s window every night. The cat came in and gave her daughter comfort and silent friendship.

Jackie was happy that Sibil seemed to no longer be in pain. She ate at least half her suppers now.

One night after finishing the dish of cherry cobbler with ice cream, Sibil said, “Don’t cry mom. It’s my time. I’m not afraid…Jimmy is here.” The cat was cuddled against her side purring like a diesel engine as she wove her thin fingers through his thick neck fur.

Jackie nodded and held her daughter’s hand as the cat crept up onto the small chest.

***

Sibil had made her mother promise to turn her bedroom into a sewing-art studio-library and not keep it a cenotaph in her memory.

Jackie put the newly hemmed slacks in a wicker basket and stood to exit the sunny room. In the doorway, she turned and said, “Well, you comin or what?”

James leapt from his perch at the windowsill and followed her downstairs…followed by five adopted wee kitties.