Beatrice from Downey Street

The gloomy drizzle that kept her neighbors tucked inside, sniffling by their fireplaces, was the same gloomy drizzle that put Beatrice in the mood for a long walk. 

Approaching her closet like an old friend, she carefully plucked out a sweater that would do nicely for the occasion.

It was an exceptionally chunky sweater with a high neckline cut like a tea cozy. She shrugged it on and slipped into a faded pair of gingham pants that looked just like the pants she wore yesterday. 

Holding on tightly to the frilly cuffs of her sweater, she squeezed her arms into the stiff sleeves of her orange raincoat until her hands shot out the other sides.

She tugged the drooping ankles of her socks upward and stepped into her rain boots. They were still a little wet from yesterday so they put up a fight.

She topped it all off with a purple hat, the placement of which she adjusted in the mirror to a dashing arrangement that would also keep the rain from gathering in droplets on her bushy eyebrows. 

From her tiptoes, she reached into the closet and grasped for her favorite basket. It rested on the highest shelf above a row of neatly hung sweaters, coats, cardigans, and long-sleeves. Her second favorite basket was on the lower shelf, and easier to reach. But today was wet and mucky so she needed the special basket coated in a water-wicking serum of some sort. 

She stretched her arm out past where her eyes could see. Her hand patted around curiously in the dark, scoping left and right like the arm of a submarine. Nothing. She’d need to get a better look. And so she stepped over to her writing table and lifted her wooden chair from where it nestled peacefully into her desk. She placed it carefully below the curtain of color-coded sweaters and climbed until she was two feet above where she normally stood. Her rain boots squelched below her in anticipation.

Ah, now she could see where the basket was hiding. It was tipped over on its side in the corner of the shelf just out of reach from where she was before she brilliantly thought of stepping onto the chair to get a better look.

But how did it get over there? 

Questions immediately clamored into her head. 

Confusing thoughts took turns clearing their throats to say “ahem, did you think of this?” 

But she nudged them away with the image of herself happily trotting up and down her hilly neighborhood in the early mist and drizzle. In the vision, her charming french basket hung from her arm, overflowing with fresh basil, tomatoes still on the vine, and just cut pasta from Luciana’s. 

‘A sharp gust from the window must have blown in and knocked it over,’ she reasoned. 

The skin around her dark, round eyes, creased into a smile. The confusion of a moment ago disappeared like candlelight, leaving only a subtle smokey fragrance behind to suggest that something was once burning.

And good thing she had regained her composure because had she not, she surely would have toppled over at the shock of what she was about to see.

Well, she would soon in fact topple over. But it would be for something else. And not just for the mere shock of it.

She pushed her booted toes into the chair, clutched a burgundy cardigan for balance, and stretched for the basket handle. She gave it a tug, light but precise from muscle memory.

But the handle slipped through her fingers and the basket, unwilling to budge, stayed put. 

‘Well, I must have left a few things in it the last time I used it,’ she reasoned. 

This was reasonable. It had been a while, at least 6 months. It would be reasonable to forget something from yesterday let alone 6 months ago.

Starting to feel unsettled and beginning to question if she actually could remember what happened yesterday, Beatrice again brought to mind her walk and her basket that would soon be full of ingredients for dinner. 

Maybe she would also stop by the pharmacy and pick up another tube of her favorite strawberry lip balm. She liked the creamy way it glided on and the waxy film it left behind. 

Yes, these thoughts helped. 

At this point, she had been standing on her chair for over a minute and realized she had better hurry. She didn’t know just how sturdy this chair was or for how long the sky intended to drizzle. 

So she reached for the handle one last time and gripped it firmly. She gave it a bold yank but nothing that could tear a muscle. It was still just a basket, and the heaviest item it could possibly be hiding was a coin purse. 

Except that it was hiding something heavier than a coin purse. 

At last, the basket acquiesced, she pulled the handle down and toward herself so the bowl of the basket swiveled to face her and revealed, not a coin purse, but rather, a family of ruddy, pale white and tan, field mice.

Beatrice was a little startled but not disgusted. The sight of four mice living in her closet was certainly a surprise but she mostly had questions. Questions such as these. ‘How long had they been living there? What have they been eating? How did they get there?’

The mice were unwilling to disclose any information. Not because they were secretive but because Beatrice only thought these questions, she didn’t say them out loud or address the mice directly.

Beatrice is fond of animals. Which isn’t very remarkable because many people make such a claim. But Beatrice truly loved animals. What other explanation could there be for her unexpected lack of reaction? She loved all of them. Big ones, hairy ones, somewhat smelly ones, tiny ones, slimy ones that lurked in caves, ones with many eyes or only a few. She liked bugs and insects and knew the difference between the two. To the disgruntlement of her mother, she often left all the windows in the house open to let in the fresh breeze along with anything or anyone who flew in with it. 

Turning over rocks to see what lived underneath gave her a thrill. But she only allowed herself the treat on rare occasions when curiosity got the best of her. Unless invited, it’s rude to lift the roof off of someone’s house. 

So this is why when she discovered the mice, she didn’t squeal or squawk. Her first thought was not, how do I get rid of them. The word “vermin” never even crossed her mind. She simply had questions. Questions she could never get the answers to because, as we clarified earlier, she didn’t say them out loud.

The mice, on the other paw, did not know Beatrice's intentions. 

The mother mouse realized, quite astutely, that her family may be in danger. Her devoted children smelled their mother’s terror and the beating of their small hearts quickened and drummed deafeningly in their furry little ears. And so they all lay impossibly still. A defense mechanism that came to them as naturally as breathing. If you simply don’t move, you’ll blend in with your surroundings and the predator will carry on. It’s brilliant. Only, these mice were not made of willow twigs like the basket. They were regular field mice and they stood out perfectly clear before Beatrice. 

And so this is what Beatrice saw. 

Four small field mice. One of which was about the same size you would imagine a mouse might be followed by three smaller mice with large, lovable eyes and clean whiskers. 

All of them were frozen in time in various poses. The first, unblinking with one back paw in the air, the second hunched over in mid-sniff, the third on its hind legs with its rump up against the snout of the second, and the fourth in a precarious position that it could only hold for a few more moments before it would betray them all. 

The fourth mouse tried its best to maintain balance in the unlucky position it found itself in. But after an applauded effort to remain still (Beatrice applauded in her mind), the plucky mouse lost its holding and tumbled into the third mouse which tipped over and struck the second in the ear who flopped onto its side and rolled over the edge in slow motion into Beatrice’s small, waiting hands. 

A scuttle ensued.

The mother mouse squeaked and then lurched from her haunches to sink her claws into Beatrice’s chest.

Beatrice then squeaked too and fell backward from her chair.

She landed, her bottom bearing the brunt of the fall, onto her plush rug. The landing making a dull sound like this: “fuff.”

Beatrice blinked away the stars from her eyes and looked down into her lap. Between her crossed legs sat the mother mouse and a smaller mouse. Each staring up at her with sparkling black eyes.

She looked at them warmly and they looked at her with facial expressions that no human could discern emotion from. Not even Beatrice. But she could see the rapid drumming of their little hearts lifting and lowering the glittering fur on their chests. She thought it best to calm them through conversation.

She asked them more questions such as: “Would you like to go on a walk?” and, “How will you all fare out in the drizzle?” as well as, “Will you be cold?”

The two mice had no idea what the sounds coming from her face meant. But to their befuddlement, they could tell by her tone and demeanor that she wasn’t a threat.

With everyone now relaxed, Beatrice gently placed the two mice back in the basket with the others, and the five of them went out for a stroll.

......

Beatrice’s house was the third red door on Downey street somewhat across from The Cathedral of the Whispering Lady. Just a few bricks to the north and it would have been exactly across. But any matter, Beatrice liked being somewhat across from The Cathedral. 

Every Sunday morning, a chorus of nuns from The Cathedral sang morose lullabies to a sleepy crowd of 15 or 20. Their songs swam on the breeze that blew in through her bay windows. Their rich oos, throaty ahhs, and reverent ahlalas stirred sweetly into her morning cup of coffee. 

On this particular Sunday morning, the youngest nun in the choir, sister Izzy, prepared her lungs for her favorite song in their repertoire: He Who is Without Socks Carries Stones in his Shoes. She parted her chapped lips and filled her body with oxygen.

But the air on this day was uncommonly humid and creamy. 

Not soupy, but creamy. 

As she inhaled, her lungs filled with sweet, rich air and she belted forth a note never before heard by humans and hardly understood by the ones around her. The choir pianist would later claim that it was “like hearing the great pearly gates of heaven opening to receive him.”

At the precise moment that sister Izzy sang the most other-worldly note ever surrendered from the human body, Beatrice with her basket full of mice, stepped from her red door on Downey Street. The note swam out of Izzy, reverberated through The Cathedral halls, burst out of the grand entrance doors, bounced off of Beatrice's closed window, flew back to the chimney of The Cathedral where it gathered steam and swooped downward, knocked over the cap of a nearby garden gnome, and finally swept under the heels of Beatrice’s feet just as she was stepping from her doorstep.

The tone carried her 8 inches above the ground for about 15 steps until she glided back onto the pavement.

But Beatrice didn’t notice. Humans never notice such things. But the mice watched with stunned expressions from their respective perches in Beatrice’s basket.

Years later, the smallest mouse would tell the story of what happened that day to her babies. And those little mice would go on to tell their babies, and so on and so forth until the story became so grand and impossible that 300 years from now, every mouse throughout the country would know a story that was similar in rhythm but nowhere near the truth.

Depending on who told the story, Beatrice transformed into anything from a stork named Guffrey to a rocketship named Determine, and the note carried on the breeze could be anything from the blast of a grenade to a 20 mile swim across one of the great lakes. 

......

Beatrice's home sat on a street that wound its way up a large hill. If you went down the hill you’d find flat sidewalks and eventually another hill. But if you walked to the very top you’d find a forest. And once you got to the top of the forest, your view would show you all that laid below. Which seemed like everything. 

It was a small forest. But it was slowly expanding and sprawling its way around Conical Hill, a hill that seemed more like a mountain from the bottom and which sat nearly in the very center of town. It was speckled with houses that crawled up the winding streets in a circling manner and got fancier the higher up the hill they were.

The houses nearest the top were luxurious and resplendent with shiny things and very intentional gardens that looked both whimsical and orderly in a way that suggested someone who knew a lot about gardening was procuring all of their gardens. Like perhaps a gardener.

They were lovely houses, but the forest was continuously making attempts to take back the hill and it frustrated the people who lived there. They knew it was just a matter of time before the forest overwhelmed them or they left this house and the vines and grasses moved in. But must it be right this very second?

At the very top of the hill, far above the houses and people, an eagle sat perched on a weathered branch of an old eucalyptus. Its brilliant feathers were tipped in gold and finely threaded with shimmering crimson. From its seat high on the hill, the eagle surveyed what lay below with piercing mud-colored eyes. The irises of which were tipped in the same gold as its feathers. 

The eagle had an unobstructed view of Beatrice as she swayed down the hill with her basket brimming with mice. 

When the eagle spotted Beatrice it immediately recognized her as interesting. The eagle was well aware that delicious things like picnic spreads, groceries, and rustic breads usually rested inside finely woven baskets. It’s common knowledge in the eagle community. 

With its finely tuned eyes expertly designed to spot the merest of faraway details, the eagle next noticed rustling in the basket. 

It immediately left its perch and took flight towards her.

For the briefest of moments, as the eagle spread its wings, the trees stiffened up and the sun shone through a break in the clouds. The eagles' brilliant golden feather’s caught the light of the sun and reflected it into Beatrice’s left eye.

Beatrice blinked. 

…

Beatrice walked and rummaged through her thoughts while five rather excited mice stood in her basket attentively scoping out the world under the protection of her and her basket. 

Three of the mice stood on their haunches. The mother stood the tallest and used her height to raise the hood of the basket. This created a discreet crack for her and two of the medium-sized mice to peer out of. The two smallest mice made-do peeking through a small hole in the bottom of the basket. They could just make out Beatrice's left, and then right foot marching down below. The hole was situated right where a little nob used to be. There also used to be a piece of twine attached to the hood that Beatrice wrapped around the nob to keep the hood of the basket secure. But the mice had chewed them both off days ago.

As she continued her walk to the street with the stores and shops, Beatrice thought about how she might fit the ingredients for dinner into her basket alongside the mice. If she bought a wedge of cheese, would the mice eat it all or save some for her? Would they trample on the basil or would the herb’s strong scent keep them away?

“Yes, probably,” she decided. “Mice don’t like basil. Or at least they don’t prefer it.”

And so she would get a hard cheese like parmesan instead of something soft. Mice probably didn’t like parmesan.

But while the mice in Beatrice's basket can’t speak for all mice, they were confident that they did in fact like parmesan. Cheese in general was a great favorite of theirs along with delicacies like popcorn and strawberry greens. And while it was true that they didn’t prefer basil, they would happily trample all over it if given the opportunity. 

One of the smaller mice was even doing a little trampling at this very moment. To get a better look, it stepped on the bewildered head of the smallest mouse and did a sort of dance to maintain its balance.

The soft sounds of something being squished lifted Beatrice’s head from her thoughts. She looked into the basket for the source of the commotion to find one little mouse squeaking for air and another pretending not to notice it was standing on someone’s sternum. 

Beatrice separated the two, shushed them, and strode into the shop overly confident to compensate for her basket full of secrets.