Black Cat (Gemini 2)

I suck in my breath and work on until it is time to Do in to wash up for dinner and help Mama with Baby Celeste. Noble's pleas die down behind me and get carried off in the breeze, carried into the shadows in the forest.

I cannot help him, although it makes my heart ache so. Once again, another night. I leave him buried in his unmarked grave with my name on his lips and his name branded invisibly on my forehead.

2

Mama's Voice

.

I can tell just from the way Mama has prepared

dinner tonight that she is going to declare something important. The spirits have spoken, just as I suspected. She works quietly, hardly saying a word to me, and from time to time she glances at an empty chair or at a doorway and nods slightly. I see nothing, but that doesn't surprise me.

Mama once explained that there were levels and levels of existence in the spiritual world and it took years of devotion and faith to reach them all. It was her way of accounting for why I could still not see spirits and hear spirits she could see and hear and why I did not know things she knew.

Even when I was just a little girl. I realized that Mama travels on different highways. When she plays her piano, the music carries her off. I can see it in her face. She might have her eyes turned toward me, but she doesn't see me. She plays but she is really like someone in a trance, and when she stops playing, she often has new things to tell me. She is truly returning from a journey where she had gone to places inhabited by wise souls.

It is often the same when she works in such deep silence as she is working now. She is there in the room with me. but I don't feel she is really there. She is so distant it is as if she has left her body behind and gone off somewhere. I do not interfere or try to get her attention. I

wait and I keep Baby Celeste occupied so she doesn't disturb Mama.

Baby Celeste helps me set the table. I watch her work and see how serious she is about her

assignments, how carefully and determinedly she folds the napkins, arranges the forks and spoons. It is like looking back through time at myself again and it brings a smile to my lips. I was so like that, so intense, so concerned about doing it all perfectly. I remember how that annoyed Noble, who didn't want to take any of these household chores seriously. He would be satisfied eating right off the table. How many times had he come to the table without washing his hands and been sent back? Dozens if one Mama tried sending him to bed without eating, too, but he was insufferable and stubborn.

Now of course I try not to be so interested in what Noble called sissy things, but I can't help but love handling our old china and running my fingers over the embossed golden design along the edges of each plate, dish, and bowl. They were Mama's greatgrandmother Jordan's dishware and the old, heavy silverware had belonged to Mama's great-greatgrandmother. Heirlooms are important in our home because Mama believes that possessions like that are still tied to the spirit of those who possessed them. When we used them, when we sat in her greatgrandfather's rocking chair or slept in the beds our ancestors slept in, we were more connected with them.

"Everything has spiritual importance," Mama told me. "Think of it as you would think of indelible ink. When someone from our family touched something, his or her prints became forever a part of it, and now we can feel them, see them easier."

She told me these things when I was very young and it left a deep impression on my mind and fostered the belief that our home was a living thing. Everything in it felt and saw and heard. It all breathed and was sacred. The walls ,,vere like sponges absorbing and holding on to the laughter, the words, the cries, of all who lived here or visited. Nothing was lost and forgotten.

"If you put your ear to the wall," Mama once told me and Noble. "you can hear them." Noble did it a few times, heard nothing, and thought it was just a silly story. I did it and I did hear voices, muffled mostly, but voices. Sometimes. I woke to the sound of a laugh or even a scream and my little heart would pound. I would look over to see if Noble had

heard anything, but he was in a deep sleep. undisturbed. I waited and listened and then slowly lowered my head to the pillow, but it wasn't easy falling asleep again. In the morning when I would tell Mama I thought I had heard something, she would nod and say, "Of course you did."

Footsteps above us, shadows that Glided across walls, whispers that flowed in and out of rooms like tiny birds, were all expected and never feared,

"We're loved," Mama would say. "We're surrounded by great love."

Occasionally now, Baby Celeste would stop playing with a doll or her teacup set on the floor of the living room and look at something in the room, usually a chair or the settee. Mama would study her and then smile.

"What. Celeste?" she would ask, "Did you see someone, hear someone?"

I would hold my breath and wait for her response, for I had seen or heard nothing.

Baby Celeste would simply smile and go back to her play. Mama would give me that all-knowing look and nod. and I would stare at my child and wonder, does she really have that vision, and if she does, will all this really make us safer. happier? Where are the three of us going? What do the spirits really intend for us? Perhaps tonight I would learn that and then I would truly beg-in to understand who we were.

We sat at the table and began our dinner. Baby Celeste sat in a booster chair and ate with the quiet concentration of someone far older. I was nervous, but tried to hide it. In the hallway the grandfather clock chimed. The breeze had become a wind and the house began to creak, especially right above us. It sounded more like those footsteps on the roof I often heard. I watched Baby Celeste and saw her eyes lift toward the ceiling and then back to her food. Was I like that when I was her age, so accepting?

Mama ate quietly, once again looking as if she was in a trance.

Toward the end of our dinner, she put down her knife and fork and sat a little forward. I could feel her eyes were on me. When she was like this, it was not good to stare back or blurt out a "What's wrong?" It was better to just wait. I finished eating and put down my fork. Baby Celeste clapped her hands and I smiled at her anticipation.

"As you know, Noble," Mama began. "we cannot keep Baby Celeste hidden from the world forever. It is a strain on us all and I appreciate how well you have done with your share of the

responsibility. I know how hard it is for you to never go anywhere with me because you have to remain behind to care for Baby Celeste.

"Our extended family," she continued, which was another way of including our spiritual ancestors, "believes we are quickly approaching the day when we cannot and should not keep her locked away from the outside world any longer."