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I remember the first time the Deadman came and Daddy didn’t have what he needed. But only barely. I wasn’t tiny anymore but I was still little. Daddy’d taken me to the thrift shop and bought me a new dress with blue and yellow butterflies on it and a green bow in the back for my first day of school which was in a week. It was the most beautiful dress I’d ever seen. It had green buttons and every butterfly was a little different, just like real life. It was gonna make me pretty for school, and school was gonna make me smart. So I decided to wear it every day until school started so that I could soak up the smart in that dress and then I’d be way ahead of all the other kids on day one. You think funny things when you’re little. You can laugh at me if you want. I’m not ashamed.
Anyway, I was playing with the toy from Happy Meal, which was a princess whose head came off and you could stick it on three different plastic bodies wearing different ballgowns. I took her head off and on and off and on but I got bored with it pretty fast because what can you do with a toy like that? What kind of make-believe can you get going about a girl whose head comes off? All the ones I could think of were scary.
Daddy was all jittery and anxious and biting his fingernails. I don’t think he liked the princess, either. She didn’t even have any shoes to get dirty. She didn’t have any feet. The bottoms of her ballgown-bodies were all flat, smooth plastic like the bottom of a glass. He wasn’t himself. Usually he’d give me plenty of warn
ing. He never wanted the Deadman to see me. He said nobody who loved their baby girl would let the Deadman near her. He’d say:
“Deadman’s here, Badgirl, go up in your treehouse.” And I’d go, even though I didn’t hear anything out on the stoop. I never heard the Deadman coming, never heard a car engine or a bike bell or boots on the sidewalk or anything till he knocked on the door.
But this time he didn’t even seem to remember I was there. The knock happened and I wasn’t safe in my treehouse with the purple sweater and the pirate kisses. I wasn’t turned into a little black cat that never made a sound.
“Daddy!” I whispered, and then he did remember me, and picked me up in his arms and carried me down the hall and put me in his bedroom and shut the door.
But Daddy’s door doesn’t shut all the way. It’s got a bend in the latch. Daddy’s room had a lot of cigarettes put out on things other than ash trays and a TV and a painting of frogs on the wall. I didn’t like the smell but I did like being in there because normally I wasn’t allowed. But even though that part was exciting, I started shaking all over. Deadman’s here. I wasn’t safe. Safe meant my treehouse. Safe meant the drawers turned into a staircase and the smell like a chopped up forest. I watched Daddy go back down the hall. I could make it. Little black cats are fast, too. I slipped out the bedroom door and scrambled up into the pirate kiss closet. I didn’t even pull out the drawers into a staircase, I got up in one jump. I locked the lock and held my breath and turned into a little black cat that doesn’t ever make a sound. I pulled my butterfly dress over my knees and felt the smart ooze out of the fabric and into me. The smart felt big and good, like having your own TV in your bedroom.
The Deadman knocked. I could see him through the crack between the treehouse doors. He had a pinky ring on with a red stone in it. The Deadman had real nice eyebrows and a long, skinny face. His shirt was cut low but he didn’t have any hair on his chest.
“You got what I need?” Daddy said. And the Deadman said back:
“If you got what I need, Mudpuddle, I got the whole world right here in my pocket.”
Only Daddy didn’t. Daddy stared at his shoes. He looked like a princess-body without a princess-head.
“I’m just a little short, D. I started a new job, you know, and with a new job you don’t get paid the first two weeks. But I’m good for it.”
The Deadman didn’t say anything. Daddy’d been short on his sugar a lot lately. And I knew he didn’t have a new job. Or an old one.
“Come on, man. I’m a good person. I know I owe you plenty, but owing doesn’t make a man less needful. I’ll pay you in two weeks, I swear. My word is as good as the lock on a bank. I’m a gentleman. Ask anybody.”
The Deadman looked my Daddy up and down. Then he looked past him, into the living room, at my princess’s three headless bodies lying on the carpet. The Deadman chewed on something. I thought maybe it was bubblegum. Red bubblegum, I supposed. Finally, he twisted his pinky ring around and said:
“Did you ever hear the one about the Devil and the fiddle?”
Daddy sort of fell apart without moving. He was still standing up, but only on the outside. On the inside, he was crumpled up on the ground. “Yeah, I heard that one, D,” he sighed.
“I tell you what,” the Deadman said. “I’ll give you what you need this week—hell, next week, too and the one after—if you give me whatever’s in that armoire back there.”
Arrr. Mwah.
Daddy looked over his shoulder, all frantic. But then, he remembered that he’d put me in his room with his TV and his painting of frogs and I was safe as a fish in a bowl. Only I wasn’t.
“You sure, Deadman? I mean, there’s nothing in there but an old purple sweater and a couple of moths.”
Daddy kept looking on down the hall like he could see me. Did he see me? Did he know? Little black cats have eyes that shine in the dark. Sometimes I think the only important thing in my whole life is knowing whether or not Daddy could see the shine on my eye through the crack between the doors. But I can’t ever know that.
“Then I’ll guess I’ll have something to keep me warm and something to lead me to the light, my man,” laughed the Deadman, and he made a thing with his mouth like a smile. It mostly was a smile. On somebody else it would have definitely been a smile. But it wasn’t a smile, really, and I knew it. It was a scream. No, Daddy. I’m in here. It’s me. But I still didn’t make a sound, because Daddy loved me and didn’t ever want the Deadman to see me.
“Okay, D,” shrugged Daddy like it didn’t matter to him at all. Like he couldn’t see. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he really put his coat down over those mudpuddles.
The Deadman gave him something small. I couldn’t tell what it was. It wasn’t a cup of sugar, for sure. How could something a man needs so much be so small? Daddy started back toward my treehouse, but the Deadman stopped him, grabbed his arm.
“You ever hear the one about the cat who broke his promise?”
Daddy swallowed hard. “Yeah, Deadman. I heard that one a bunch of times.”
Mudpuddle hit the lightswitch in the hall that had all those dead bugs on the inside of it. The Deadman danced on ahead of him and took a big swanky breath like he’d bought those lungs in France. He hauled on the doors of my treehouse but they didn’t come open because of the secret latch on the inside. Daddy Mudpuddle put his hands over his face and sank down on his heels.
“This thing got a key?” the Deadman said but the way he said it was all full of knowing the arrr mwah had more than a moth inside.
