The birds and heterochromia

It was really crappy for me to walk away from her while she buried herself in the filth and corpse that was that mess but I…

You have no reason not to be there. I told myself, You’re not supporting her by being out here.

My conscience and thoughts fought savagely in my head while I walked the narrow streets calling for Bowie just loud enough to ease my guilt but not loud enough that anyone would stare at me from their windows with a perplexed gaze. It didn’t matter that these were people I’d likely never see again, something small inside me only asked that I not embarrass myself to myself.

After five minutes and walking around the small block of condos I arrived back near almost-auntie’s corner. I stayed far from the door and windows to not catch the blood boiling leer that would be leveled at me. Best saved for the car ride home in my opinion, when my death will have consequences.

I briskly walked past the door and window then slowed as I approached the neighbor’s door. This one was kept in shape, it retained its murky black paint on the gate and the wood on the door looked to have been recently washed with a hose. Not a huge step up but a moderate one. A wind chime depicting birds hung from the ceiling of the porch and the door had a knocker with what I can only assume must be a robin carved out of wood.

The knocker looked to be fragile or at least that’s the reason I thought when I knocked instead. A woman of some advanced age and curled figure opened and peered up at me through curled purplish gray hair. The lines were etched softly on her face, the age suited her and she looked to have gracefully stepped into it.

“CAT!” she cried. An incriminating and gnarled finger rose to aim its leather self at my chest. Gracefully aged may have been generous. “Get that fucking cat out of my house.”

“Bowie?” My words came quietly and meek having suffered the ear pain and mental distress of having an old woman bark fuck at me.

“No, the cat.” The bony finger swung round and pointed into her home. “Get him now.”

Obeying the decrepit digit more than the threat of further verbal abuse I slipped past her and into the house. The door slammed shut behind me and gave me pause as I turned to see her eyes narrow and the finger still hovering angry and trembling at me.

I followed the trajectory made by her wrath and saw Bowie happily perched upon a shelf laden with wooden depictions of birds. His tail swished back and forth as he watched me with a grin on his face and mirth in his brown and blue eyes. “Just like Bowie.” I muttered as I shuffled slowly across the tile.

“Just like the devil himself!” The woman shrieked from behind me.

Bowie looked up at her with his eyes; clearly he was bothered by her boisterous rage. The cat visibly sighed and leaped off the shelf onto her television set leaving teetering figurines in his wake. A howl erupted as she sped past me with speed no one that old should have. Her leather hands enveloped the miniature birds and her eyes softened with concern. Immediately though she turned and bared her teeth at the cat. I resolved to end this quickly.

Bowie sat upright on the television and whipped his tail along its screen like an inverse windshield wiper. Stretching his leg, he looked at me with a resigned sigh and dropped to the floor. Curling around my leg he walked past with a slight limp to his back right leg and stood at the door. He looked back over his shoulder and seemed at a loss for how inept I was to leave the door shut. He sat and waited, the tail flicking this way and that on the tile.

Slowly I walked over to him, waiting for him to come to his senses and make a dash for a kitchen cabinet or laundry hamper. Instead Bowie sat there and watched me, his mismatched eyes rolling at my sluggish approach. A wide yawn escaped him and he licked his lips and allowed his eyes to go to half mast. The cat was becoming impatient with me.

I opened the door slowly; as the sunlight streamed in he pushed himself between the small opening and rushed from the house before I could completely open the door.

The old woman was at the shelf tidying up the spots where Bowie had stood. She whispered things to herself, probably things that cats would find offensive and considered slander. Looking over at me while I stared at the slit of light in the doorway she asked, “Do you know what that beast did?”

Shaken from my stupor I looked back at her. Suddenly the room came into focus and I felt a tinge of awkwardness from bearing witness to someone’s clear perversion and psychosis. The room was cluttered with avian things and devices. If something was not clearly bird related it bore images of birds through stickers, magnets or colorful and tasteless sheaths. I mention the last one because I was transfixed by the bluebird sheath she had around her remote control and the parrot cosie gently embracing her drink. I looked for a place to sit but was unable to because of the expression of a clearly perturbed toucan staring back at me on the face of a throw cushion. I imagine he was molested by many an ass seeking cushion on him. So instead I stood and answered her question which seemed odd considering what she did to her home. “Something about a canary.”

“Something about a canary.” She echoed back to me. I wondered if she was mocking me or losing her already slipping grasp on reality. “Just a canary?” Her head turned slowly with the question making me anxious. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and found it less comfortable than the first but remained there. I feared she would sense my apprehension.

“Yes ma’am.” I felt like I was back in kindergarten starring up glassy eyed at some domineering woman who demanded we call her ma’am. Somehow this old woman’s tone and ire were causing me to regress back.

“Let me tell you a story.”

I gingerly moved the toucan to the side of the chair and sat. Folding my hands and placing them between my knees. Eyeing the toucan I reconsidered and turned him so that he could lay his hate into the armrest, then refolded my hands. Yes definitely regressing.

               “That cat use to sit on the shared fence between my and Samantha’s backyard.” I wondered if the small patch of patio they had was considered a backyard. “He use to sit there and stare at my birds.”

“You had canaries?” My voice sounded childish in my ears. I wondered if my testicles had rescinded into my body. In the same thought I wondered if my voice would begin cracking again.

“I had many birds. Some you would not know about.” She said this with an incredulous voice that made me feel ashamed for not having been better prepared for this trip. “Among them all I had an African Grey named Sweetie.”

“So it wasn’t a canary.”

“No!”

My hands curled to my chest in reflex, balling up into fists. I took a deep breath and tried to remember that I could possibly out run her. Then I remembered her rushing to the shelf and quivered.

“That cat would stare at all my lovely birds and wave his bladed tail. Each day that I caught him I chased him from my fence with an old racket of mine.”

The thought occurred to me of a racket circumscribed with feathers to appear as a turkey if oriented correctly.

“One day though he struck the cages and tried to eat my loves. He tore at the cages with his claws and tried to take them from me. I heard the whole thing from inside.” She began visibly shaking and not the old person shake this was either angry shake or sad shake. “I rushed out and tried to get him away from them.”

               I imagined her with a kitchen knife rushing to her sliding door and out into the yard brandishing it against the cats.

               Her story was filled with very vivid emotions. I found myself frightened and worried that I may not be permitted to leave. The cat had teased her. Dancing around her yard as she tried to harry him away but he nimbly dodged her movements and continued his siege upon the cages, many of them clattering to the floor from their hanging or standing positions. The birds went wild with frenzy of fear and panic. The woman stepping around them, trying not to fall and to evict Bowie from her yard as they chirped and screeched their terror.

Bowie was enlivened by the sounds and became all the more ferocious. The woman must have envisioned him with several heads and cleft hooves, hissing fire between purrs of damnation. In any case he landed on the cage containing Sweetie and licked his nine fangs while his serpentine eyes drank the soulful final wails of the bird. With a flick of his paw he managed the cage door open. The bird cried loudly and Bowie sank his head through the cage frame.

At this moment the woman’s foot caught bowie by his backside and launched him into the fence. Injured from this blow, he collected his wits and scaled the fence, disappearing back into his yard. Sadly the madness and tension in the air took Sweetie’s life. The woman found him dead on his back in the toppled cage lying on the floor, abject fear in his wide grey eyes.

She told me that she held a tasteful ceremony for him with his brethren in attendance. The words she spoke were apparently beautiful and an albatross soared overhead while the birds sang a dirge at their companions passing.

From that day forward when Bowie did escape from his owners home and made his way onto the fence the woman hurled things at him. Screws, cups or whatever was at hand was lobbed at the feline with malicious intent. Suddenly the story of neighborhood cats beating on him took on a whole new meaning.

“Well thank you for ridding me of the cat. I called you over an hour ago but you did well removing him from the house.” She swept her hand around which I took as the cue to stand and prepare to depart. “I called you well over thirty minutes ago but I won’t complain.” Her face grew dark, “Though I will express my displeasure that you did not…” She let the words hang.

She showed me to the door and closed it behind me, her mad eyes and smile covered by the wood and robin knocker. I shook myself and walked back to almost-aunt’s house.

The door stood open and presented me with an aroma of bleach and lemon freshness. My woman was on the porch absently stroking Bowie’s back. “Found the cat.”

She did not mean me.

“Good.” Was all I could say as I sat beside her. My head dropped and I closed my eyes. The heavy cloud of Clorox hanging over the two of us, making me dizzy.

               Bowie purred softly, looking up at me with his mismatched eyes, half lidded, and showing me his indifference to my suffering.

               She did not say a word to me while we sat there waiting for the air to clear. The words were locked away inside her head, the anger suffused over her weariness. I would bear it soon enough. We sat there smelling like a public pool as the sun began to set.

I moved my hand to stroke Bowie’s back. He leered at me but allowed it, the warning having been issued. I caught hers midway and held it. After a few moments she squeezed mine. That her teeth were clenched as she did it didn’t bother me in the slightest. It was just nice to be normal for a moment.

Almost-Aunt and a crime scene

               My phone spasmed in my pocket sending a tingling sensation up my spine and alerting me to its urgency, of course this had to happen while I’m  driving home from work. Gingerly, while keeping my left hand affixed to the wheel I worked to withdraw the device from my left pocket. This is of course contradictory but I favor my right hand greatly, if asked directly I will say it is my favorite with my left hanging forlornly at my side. The phone was not difficult to extract. Pressing on the bottom portion of my pocket to draw it to the surface like you would a tenacious pimple or a willful roll of toothpaste. Eventually it slid from its nest and ceased demanding. Grumbling to myself, I flipped it open and squeezed the keys til a dial tone murmured through the ear piece.

               The excited and always encouraging voice of my woman caressed my ear, that tart way she can say hello that would discourage relatives from remaining long on the line. “Hello dear.” I respond as honey-dipped as I can muster while wrestling the contraption to form to my face.

               She softens, “Hi there.” A great weight rolling off her shoulders with a soundless crash to the floor. “I was just calling you.”

               “Seemed like you were expecting someone else?” It sounded like a statement but I toned it to fit either scenario.

               “My aunt,” Her voice quieting with a sigh, “she’s been calling all day about her place.”

               I concentrate and try to either read her mind or recall enough details about the aunt she may be speaking of to seem involved. Neither comes through. “Family aunt or one of the…” I trail off seeking the kindest way to place it, “one of those family friend, almost-aunts?”

Hope I did well enough. I think to myself.

“Almost-aunt.”

“What about her place?” The cars around me don’t understand my need for concentration, they veer and turn aggressively forcing my hand back to the wheel and my neck to contort in efforts to seize the phone.

“She left to go see her family and has some neighbor checking her place.”

I can feel the length of tale about to be spun and try to head it off. “So what does she need from you?” Grinning to myself for my maneuver.

“Well apparently she doesn’t trust the lady and there’s some bad blood over the neighbor’s bird being killed or lost and having to do with my aunt’s cat...”

“Almost-aunt.” Even with the correction my smile still faded.

“…Almost-aunt’s cat. So there’s no trust and it ends up that she wants me to go and check on the house and make sure that the canary woman isn’t duping her.”

“It was a canary?” My mind slowly returns to concentrating on the road. The question fires without my knowing.

“It doesn’t matter what it was or is. We have to go check the house.” Her anger begins to simmer.

My mind works out the logistics but my mouth replies dumbly, “Is? To imply that it’s not dead? What’s this about ‘we’?” I know that the questions are dumb but that doesn’t stop them from feeding the flames of her fury, they begin to leap and lash at me.

“Are you going to pick me up or am I meeting you at my aunt’s house?”

Her fury and the coming arguments are beyond my control now; my mouth decides to go for it. “Almost-aunt and I’m on my way to get you.” I can feel her trying to focus on not hanging up and throwing her phone. I mutter a quick goodbye before she growls her farewell.

The phone call ends and I nestle the phone between my thighs to prevent having to retrieve it again from my pocket.

I will say that I love this girl, what I will not say is how much her family bothers me. Right now though, I have to deal with her dealing with them dealing with their crap. So I guess from what I learned in math about transitive relationships, that whole a equals b and b equals c so whatever equals whatever, means that I’m dealing with her family’s crap.

* * * * *

The car ride from picking up Rebecca to her ‘almost-aunt’s’ ensues in silence. I know how mad she is at them and how mad she will be at me for it that I enjoy the passing tranquility. The quiet washes over me, cleaning me, marinating and preparing me to be presented as the feast for my woman’s scorn. If it wasn’t for the ambiance of traffic and radio static it would almost be Buddhist.

I look over to her from time to time, her shoulders droop each time her family calls and this time is no different. Her eyes stare blankly at the glove compartment and her hair is a mess, probably from grabbing at it in frustration. I do hope that the hair thing is over her family and not my aggravatingly cute nature or so it’s been called.

 My hand seeks hers like a blind pig digging for truffles. It roots around the edge of her seat then makes its way onto her thigh and searches high and low. Finally she grabs my hand and squeezes. I look over for a second to asses if the squeeze is bad or good. Her eyes look at me weakly and she fabricates a smile. I squeeze back and can only imagine the level of insanity that her family wrought this day.

After half an hour of driving I exclaim, “How fucking far does she live?”

Rebecca smiles and looks out the window at what I can only imagine must now be farmstead and cattle herds or possibly Canadian wilderness and overly friendly bears.

Because my sanity demands it and I’ve lost my zen nature with this particular ride I ask, “So who called first?”

In her reflection I see the smile vanish, the shoulders descending into her ribs. “My mom.”

“Of course.” I mutter to no one.

Her distance from me grows, our words are scripted by now, we’re just playing our parts. I try to change the subject to bring her back to me. “So what’s the story with Mistress Finch and the supposed homicide?”

“My aunt’s cat…” it pained me to sit by without cutting in, “use to free roam at night. Mix it up with the other cats I guess. Came home every morning before God and my grandmother woke just in time for her to wake herself and feed it.”

“Is it just the one cat? Typically crazy aunts travel in packs or prides I think they’re called, with many cats.”

“No just the one anyways…”

The drive continued for 10 minutes while I heard some story about a cat that killed and probably ate a bird was accosted by an old, angry and emotionally shaken woman with a broom. He was called oh so many names but was never charged with avicide. Eventually he was placed under house arrest on suspicion alone. The cat’s street reputation apparently never recovered and when he does escape he typically returns with an assortment of cuts and bites that require tending by an oh so lonely and out of touch, almost-aunt.

* * * * *

               Apparently this woman lives in a condo located in the middle of no way out and good luck finding me. When we arrived, couldn’t believe that we were checking in on the place.

               The windows were all but sealed shut and curtained from the inside. The door had seen better days and should probably stand besides a warning about splinters not to mention the iron gate which should also have a sign but instead that reads “Seek immediate medical attention if jaw begins to lock after opening.” Vines limply held onto similar iron bars protecting the kitchen window. I wondered if the almost-aunt lived like this or had left on vacation some decades prior.

                I let Rebecca out while I circled the lot looking for some faintly painted visitor spaces. Finding them and walking around the neighborhood back to the house I found the gate open but had to risk my gentle skin to pressing to wooden door open.

“Bowie.” Rebecca’s voice sounded pleading as she called for the cat to show itself.

“David Bowie?” I called in after her.

“Different colored eyes.” Then she continued, “Bowie.”

I walked through the house noting how squarely this woman fell into the spinster category. Although there was an aroma to the air that was not the musty smell of an attic long forgot. I followed it.

“Bowie.” Rebecca continued to call as I followed the smell that was becoming a stench.

It peaked in power and repulsion in the kitchen. My mind began to hum as it numbered the possibilities. Dead body, dead bodies, dead cat, possibly long dead bird. As my brain rounded on more logical ideas I shouted back, “Did your almost-aunt cut the power?”

“Bowie! Yeah she did. BOWIE!”

I stared at the refrigerator the same way I imagine Pandora must have stared at that box. That feeling curling tight inside me knowing that I should not  while the desire arrested me with the need to know what. Unlike Pandora I did not believe that once the evil within was let out that there would be hope left alive inside the refrigerator much less within me.

My fingers curled around the handle as Rebecca poked out from the stairwell. “I can’t find…” Her statement paused while she watched me ignore her and satiate my dark curiosity.

The door peeled open with a wet and sticky sound and burped a bubble of sick revolting gas into my face. My throat contracted to prevent the vile air from entering my lungs or stomach. That I could both taste and smell it set my stomach upon itself, attempting to implode and leave me with its contents.

The jars along the door were leaking and gelling with their various sauces and condiments. The milk stood resolute and stern daring anyone to try and stir it from its vigil. The contents of tupperware on tupperware had been claimed by a teal organism that I swore winked at me with its cheekiness at having stolen leftovers. But none of these were the culprits of the lurching my stomach was doing.

Along the sides of the refrigerator and down the edges of the door frame, hardened blood streaked down the walls. Crimson claws had raked down this interior and left this ruby remainder. Down it went into a pool upon the bottom shelf. It had been too much for the subtly depressed shelf to hold. It had slipped down into the crisper drawers where it lingered with the vegetables that I could only imagine had gained the ability to sing and fruits the skills to dance. In the blood soaked drawer a single potato watched me with one of its many eyes through the tinted plastic. Its demeanor begged for death.

Rebecca was slowly walking towards me, staring at the contents of the refrigerator and approaching slowly. She made little noise as to not startle me or the refrigerator but I think it was more the refrigerator.

My eyes traced the bloodied lines up to the freezer door. Having come this far and still holding my breath I reached for the handle. Rebecca mouthed quiet protest from behind me in vain. This door also came open with a slick and wet crackle.

The true nature of the odor was revealed to me like an epiphany. Enlightening and humbling. My fascination alone kept me from dropping to my knees in grotesque worship then doubling over and adding my own liquids and smells to the mix.

Within the freezer lay a chicken waiting its judgment. Several steaks and a pound of ground beef were beginning to collect and reform the shape of a cow. Sausages lounged in their intestinal casings conversing about the pleasant shift to a warmer climate. The water that must have once filled the ice trays had long since left, leaving flys to hop between trenches as their children crawled over each of the meats present at this corrupt council.

Tearing myself away from the sight and smell, I ran to the door. When I next occupied my head I found myself staring at the porch ceiling. My back was sweat soaked and pressed against the hot brick tile porch. Inside I could hear scrubbing. Not bathtub cleaning scrubbing, industrial machine maintenance and sanitization scrubbing.

I rolled up onto my feet and held steady against the wall as my body reoriented itself with, well, itself. Staggering in I found Rebecca elbow deep in the refrigerator with a cloth tied round her face like a bandit and thick yellow gloves on her hands. The gloves were already splotched with blood, it looked like I had walked in on the cleanup for a nasty homicide. The blood that once dripped down the walls was now smeared across the sides tinting them pink. Nearby a garbage can sat unhappily with contents that did not require my inspection.

“Sweetie,” My stomach felt as though it had already vomited even though I saw no evidence of where and threatened to do so again, “why don’t we just leave this and agree to tell no one.”

She ignored me and continued to grind at the walls with a towel wrapped around steel wool.

“Baby, we can drag this fridge out and set it on fire. No one will know.”

Still scrubbing.

“Beccy please just walk away from this.”

Her eyes darted up to mine then as quickly as they had risen they fell back to their work. In that moment I felt that she would have no problems cleaning up my murder if I persisted.

“I’m going to go look for the cat then?” I smiled in hopes of drawing some mirth out of this dismal situation.

She continued scrubbing.

I walked away before sighing and started looking for this almost-aunt’s acquitted bird murderer.