Cat (Wildflowers 4)

"You mean she still hits you?" Jade asked "Sometimes. Usually, it's just a slap; she doesn't hit me hard anymore and always only once."

"Whoopie do," Jade said. "How lucky can you be?" "Next time she goes to slap you, put your fist right in her face," Star advised.

"I couldn't do that. My mother just believes if you spare the rod, you spoil the child."

"You're not a child!" Jade practically yelled at me. She looked at Doctor Marlowe. "The girl's seventeen, isn't she?" Her eyes were bright with anger, like sparklers on July Fourth. "That's the trouble with parents these day

s. They don't know when to stop treating us like children:'

"Amen to that," Star said.

"It's not easy for my mother:' I said in her defense. "The entire burden of raising me has fallen on her shoulders. She doesn't have any family support system. It's really just the two of us:' I explained. "I try to be like she wants me to be. I try not to make her any unhappier."

I looked at Doctor Marlowe because she and I had discussed some of this. She nodded slightly.

"I mean, my mother is a victim, too. She doesn't mean to be cruel or anything. She's just . .."

"What?" Misty asked. "Frightened," I said.

Doctor Marlowe's eyes filled with satisfaction and she relaxed her lips into a soft smile.

"It took me a long time to understand that, to realize it," I said, "but it's true. We're two mice living alone in a world full of predatory cats and lots of traps."

"Is that another one of her expressions?" Jade asked. "No. It's one of mine," I said. She shook her head and looked away.

"Did your father hit you, too?" Misty asked.

"No," I said. "He never touched me in a way that wasn't affectionate or loving," I added.

I glanced at Doctor Marlowe. Should I say it now? Should I begin to talk about the deeper pain? Should I start to explain how those fingers burned through me and touched me in places I was afraid to touch myself?

Should I talk about lips that had become full of thorns? Should I describe the screams I heard in the night, screams that woke me and confused me until I realized they were coming from inside me? Is it time to bid the little girl inside me good-bye forever and ever?

In my dreams Doctor Marlowe was standing off to the side with a stopwatch in her hand. I was bracing to begin my flight. Seconds ticked away. She looked up at me almost as she was looking at me now. Her thumb was on the watch's button.

"Get ready, Cathy. Get set."

"What if my legs don't move?"

"They will; they must. It's time. Five, four, three .. ." She pushed down on the button and shouted, "Go! Go

on, Cathy. Get out of here. Hurry. Run, Cathy. Run!"

I let go of the little hand that 1 held and chafged forward, tears streaming down my face. I looked back only once to see a rag doll staring after me. It was Bones, but its face had become Daddy's face.

I ran faster and faster and harder and harder until I was here in Doctor Marlowe's office, surrounded by my sisters in pain.

3

"Mothers can be a lot tougher than fathers," Misty was saying. "And a lot meaner."

"What?"

I didn't really hear her. It was as if she were

standing behind a glass wall and her voice was muted. "Mothers can't hit as hard, but they can sting

more with their words and their looks sometimes," she