Little Cat

‘Your mother teaches “all kinds” of religion? You think there’s “all kinds”?’

I was glad he was hacking. What did he really want to know about my family? How much money we made? How I was sheltered from life? Did he want to know how my mother taught kids the Hebrew alphabet? Gio knew I was Jewish! Adi told me that he kn

ew.

‘We have a long way to go,’ Gio said abruptly. ‘Why don’t you sleep now.’

Sleep? For fuck’s sake. I was too anxious to sleep.

‘Adi told me you were from Russia too.’

‘I said go to sleep!’

Who did he think he was talking to me like that? Like I was dumb? In a way, I felt more Jewish than I’d ever felt in my life. I felt fucking persecuted!

I stared out the window. The clouds were all withered. I felt myself getting tired, even though I didn’t want to. My grandfather who’d died when I was ten used to sing me this song in Yiddish when I sat on his lap. I was trying to remember it, something about names and rhyming names, when my chin dropped onto my chest. Then my eyes popped open. I mean, I felt like I was dreaming but my eyes were wide open. I saw me and Gio still driving on the highway, but in the distance I saw all these people running toward the car. There were fifty of them or hundreds of them, coming closer, throwing rocks at us, plates at us, garbage, rats … The highway got narrower and the people smashed their faces on the glass.

They were flat-lipped, screaming, Let us in!

I was trying to scream too, Keep driving! Keep driving! But nothing came out. We must’ve run over something. There was a dragging sound. I turned and I saw there was blood on the road printed behind the tires. Air bubbles started popping in my chest. I knew there was someone dying underneath us. God, get away! I was trying to wake up. Get away! Get away!

‘Shhh!’ Gio was gripping my shoulder.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Calm down. You’re okay.’

Gio took his hand off me and slowly rubbed his face and chin. I was trying to focus on his face, the hairy outline of a man. He reminded me of John, of Ezrah, of Michael, my dad – the way all men’s cheeks are rough and black.

‘I sent the children out a few months ago,’ Gio said. ‘I knew it was going to get worse in the city.’

‘What?’

Gio glanced over at me. ‘I have a woman at the house who takes care of them when I’m not there.’

I realized that Gio had draped a coat around me while I was sleeping. The coat had slipped down to my waist. Gio kept turning his head to look at my tits. I stared straight ahead and slit my eyes. I felt my nipples through my shirt. I wanted to make myself feel them even more. His staring was making heat flash through my tits.

‘I had to take my children from the city. Their mother left them alone in this wasteland.’

I just wanted him to keep staring at me, I wanted these feelings in my breasts to continue. I wanted liquid to spurt out of them. I was with a man who had come to my bed twice. A man I didn’t make pay. The man who fucked Adi up. Who brought her here. Who sold her here. God, what exactly was I trying to find out about a man? I felt like a man myself, a compartment – amoral.

The trees beside the road were getting thicker, all the trunks stacked in the same darkened lines.

‘She was a little like you, their mother.’

I didn’t know why I thought I was in love with this fuck!

‘Relax, Mira,’ Gio said softly.

I closed my eyes. My stomach was made of soft shit. We drove on in silence, the trucks, the trains and us.

I started thinking about Ezrah. It was his birthday soon, the tenth of October. I thought I might call him. I just wanted him to know that I remembered. But I was too embarrassed to call or too mad to call, maybe too gone, too amoral to call. I didn’t even know which thing I was more.

Why couldn’t Ezrah like me no matter what I did? What if I cleaned trash from the streets for a living? What if I was legless, leprous, contagious? Why couldn’t he love me just because I worked at the club? Just because I had sex with strange men, is that a reason he shouldn’t love me? I could say it over and over, every which way: Why don’t you love me with come on my hands? Why don’t you love me legs spread for the crowd?

I don’t love you, Ezrah would say to me, because this isn’t you.

Yeah? Who am I? You tell me who I am.