Wingless

Wingless                                                                  

Mondo stays even after the waters have gone and returned and gone again. He ventures out, climbing through small crevices in the mounds of boulders. Yet he comes back to me and we cuddle together against the shortening days and the dimming light.

He comes back bedraggled, his shiny black coat wet, or muddy. I feed him what I can spare, he attacks what I give him and I know that he is still hungry when he is done. He looks at me with a soulful meow. He has found nothing worth eating outdoors and ten days have passed. I wonder how we will manage.

I keep track of the days now, measuring my supplies against forever. Each day Mondo and I sit in the scrap of a yard the boulders have left us and listen for life. I listen for birds, for insects. I listen for children playing. I listen for horns or sirens or hammers, but there is always relentless silence.

The wind deceives me and sometimes I think I hear a fragment of a song or a child’s laughter, but it is only the wind ruffling the branches. Yet Mondo, my only truth, returns. “Where are those juicy mice you used to bring me?” I ask him, his face turns to me, his gold eyes meeting mine and he meows in his helplessness.

I realize the seriousness of my situation and mine the house for supplies. An old carrot, stringy and grey in the crisper drawer has potential. My remaining fruit and vegetables sit in glasses of water, root end down in  hopes of resurrection. Yesterday I scoured the compost heap for other remnants to propagate.

There are no comforts now to send away the terrors. I look longingly at the darkened screens of the computer and the television. Some word would be nice. I miss words. It’s fall so I fill the living room with half-filled glasses and dregs of water, ready a bag of soil found in the sunroom and fashion waiting beds. My home is a waiting garden.

If we make it to Spring and there is nothing left to eat I will plant these remains of better days. If we make it to Spring. For now Mondo and I eat mostly boiled beans and rice. Jarred food, vegetables and fruits from my canning days are doled out on days especially miserable. I think of the cold coming.

 I begin wearing layers of clothing and fashion something to put on Mondo out of old scarves. He fights at first all my attempts. By January he stands still and lets me dress him, he has stopped fighting me and I am glad. We are almost out of band aids.

He is changing color. His silky black fur is being aggressively overrun by thicker bushy hair of grey. Is it the ash from outdoors that is making him appear grey or some vitamin deficiency?

Radiation poisoning? Perhaps.

But I am greyer too. A crone. All the meat has left my bones and my skin is puckered and pale.

I look for anything we might need in the attic: rope, a ladder, old rusted batteries. Mondo rummages with me in hope of a dead rodent hidden somewhere. For a moment I think I hear children, but realize it is only the wisp of wind in the fallen leaves. I still call the children’s names in case they are hiding. Mondo comes and goes, his cat body slim now. All the birds are long dead. There is a hole where the road used to be.

We weather winter. I have gathered all the wood I could reach. I am an old woman whose body creaks and shivers. Outside, the world, outside my yard is a mountain of boulders. I live in the middle, in a tiny house in a tiny yard. I don’t know what happened that day. A natural disaster or an inhuman one. Everything crashed down and then there were floods. But not voices. No, the voices were gone and the only sound came from a slipping rock or a breaking branch. For three days I called until my throat just emitted a rough sandpapery croak. I explored as much as I could. There was no way out.

Perhaps if I had been a younger woman or a man I might have tried to climb and see if there was anything beyond the highway the avalanche had created. No, we were alone. No power. An aged wood stove, a well. Scraps. No man. Over the days I mourn the men I have lost more and more. I dream of strong shoulders and careful embraces. And sometimes I speak aloud to them. Some were kind. Some were not. Did I chase them away? The last, the writer, wrote me love notes and then vanished one day. Where are they now?

But there is Mondo and I don’t have to face the loneliness alone.

The first scrap has pushed out life from a pot of soil. Leaves follow. There is hope.  But is the earth outside safe to plant? Is there some man-made horror in the soil that will kill the rest of everything? Mondo has turned grey in the ashy wilderness. The earth shifts again and I hear the vague tattoo of a hammer striking. Someone is somewhere. Someone remains. Are the children with him?

Mondo has become a cat of a different color. His velvet gone to ash. There are struggling leaves on the trash garden and then the hammering goes away. I try to climb and see what lives beyond the rising waters and fallen trees, I call out, “Are you there? Anyone?”

Winter is hideous. It is so cold. I am afraid to let Mondo out but he wails by the door for hours. So I let him out and hope the poisons that have killed the birds don’t kill him.  I have closed all the windows, reinforcing them with plastic and old musty comforters. I have taken to wearing doubled over old Covid masks I’d found in a hall closet. By late spring, the sight of stronger rays of sun warms my blood. Instead of self-recriminations I write songs.

I hold a lock of the hair, of the writer, the one I loved best. He sent it to me as a postscript to the end of our celibate affair. I sing about dancing, though we never did.  I obsess over his old letters. My lyrics are strong and as the days grow longer, I feel better.

In May some greenery shows up and there are yellow flowers, strange little twisted things and purple headed stalks that look like wheat,  but aren’t. I take a chance and boil them, adding a bit of curry. They are delicious. I hope very much they don’t kill me.

Mondo has gone alabaster.  His sleek blackness gone completely. His shoulder blades are more

pronounced. I find a collar with a bell in the back of a drawer. Mondo hates collars and I

struggle to put it on him. He is bony now: a shadow of his former self. I attach a note. A Help

Please  with directions to the hole I live in. I set Mondo out and he disappears where there is a

small hole in the rocks. He no longer looks like a cat, but an angel without wings.

He turns to me as if saying “Here goes.” The tinkling of the bell grows faint. He is gone for days

and I feel the burden of my loneliness in a more profound way. It begins to rain. Sheets of rain.

I sleep as much as I can and sometimes in my dreams I am in love with the writer again and

Mondo purrs in my lap. I wake in confusion. The skies are purple and I can’t tell if it is day or

night. There is no time anymore. I hear something. Is it a bell? No. A rhythmic sound. The

staccato of a falling hammer far in the distance. I watch for Mondo.

The earth tumbles and shifts once more. Then the waters return one last time.