The Stardust Lounge_ Stories From a Boy's Adolescence - Deborah Digges [64]
And Rufus? Who could have imagined that the leveret-killing Rufus would so passionately nurture our orphaned kittens? Who could have predicted that he was just the dog for the job? What quality in him was stirred, not only to lick down the kittens, but to climb into the drawer after each feeding and settle among them, providing them with his closeness, warmth?
A new cat has found us. Maybe from the woods she saw our light, or followed the others to see where they retreated each night. For weeks last winter we set food on the sill and kept the kitchen window open, though it was below freezing outside, our fifty-year-old furnace pumping up heat day and night in deference to her, the second floor a balmy eighty degrees.
After a while she came halfway in the window. By moving her food to the counters we got her to come inside. Soon she took up residence behind the couch. She grew fat and healthy fighting with the other cats if they approached her, hissing and striking out if the dogs dared to pass too close.
The boys named her Sybil because one moment she craved affection and in the next batted them away with open claws. Trevor worked hardest at taming her. He'd lie on the floor by the couch, cooing, coaxing her. Opening cans of tuna, he'd mete out treats for her, at the same time tossing chunks to the dogs to keep them at bay.
One day Stephen discovered Sybil preening herself in the loft of our newly converted garage. He called Trevor, Charles, and me to the threshold to see. Stephen took Sybil's picture and developed it. Now it's mounted on our fridge, a trophy for Trevor in honor of what he's made possible.
May, 1996
Stephen Digges
Expository Writing
Prose poem narrative
Body Music
Clouds muted the light that day. Shadows drifted away from their human mirrors, parting companions. Dulled. March rain touched the children's faces in schoolyards. I watched them in passing. The moisture clung to everyone's skin. Wind chimes sounded, like too many navigations into the wet morning air. I walked listening.
My destination was unknown, but it was a path of meander intricately spinning itself while I walked, a giant loom unraveling at my feet. Missouri. In the thawing ponds and lakes carp fed on neurolichen. I felt twisted, ashamed of my existence.
An old man sat in a chair on a white porch in front of his time-dusted, one-story house. He watched me through his “wisdom”: I met his eyes below the brim of his brown mesh baseball cap that read “Smith & Wesson.”
Now beyond his vision, I still felt his eyes judging me. The day was repeating itself.
Missouri had trapped me inside it, trapped me inside my father's home. It was as if I had tripped, my step thrown off, and now I was destined to walk in circles for what felt like the eternity of my thirteenth year.
The past was useless rhetoric. My life in the city had become irrelevant, though like the end of a song sequence, the memory directed my every stride—. My body still moved with it, that period of my life in which I had lived as a dreamer on Boston's streets.
In comparison Columbia, Missouri, was the stopped time of neon malls, golf courses, duplexes, trailer parks, and cow pastures. This was my new residence.
The short time I had already spent in Missouri was miserable. Only two weeks at my new school, West Junior High, had passed before the principal called me into her office. Her voice twanged with a deep southern accent. She spoke sternly through tight lips.
“I know why you're here, Stephen. Your father and I had a long chat about it before I let you into this school…”
My ears would not listen anymore and my eyes became blank windows watching her, while my mind took me to other places, my real home, my mother, and the scent of spray paint freshly drying on the outdoor walls of Boston.
“Are you even listening to me, Stephen?” she