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It’s ok, I thought and squeezed my eyes tight. I sank down in my blue and yellow butterfly dress. I’m a little black cat. Little black cats can be invisible if they want.
Daddy looked sick. His face was like the skin on old soup. I’m a little black cat and I have magic. He flicked out his pen-knife and stuck it in the crack between the doors. The latch lifted up. I’m a little black cat and little black cats can do anything. The Deadman opened the doors like a window on his best morning.
The Deadman didn’t say anything for a good while. He looked right at me, smiling and shining and thinking Deadman thoughts. His eyes had blue flecks in them, like someone had spilled paint on his insides. I’m a little black cat and no one can see me. He pulled down the purple sweater and shut the doors again.
“I’ll come back for the moths, Mudpuddle. It’s such a cold day out. I’m shivering already. You stay in and enjoy yourself. Have a hot drink.”
The Deadman took his red and disappeared back out the door.
After that, the Deadman came around a lot more often. I didn’t have to hide anymore, though sometimes I did anyway. Mostly I played with my toys and thought about who came up with the names for all the colors in the 64-color crayon box or whether or not rhinoceroses were friendly to girls who really liked rhinoceroses or how much 3 times 4 was because those are the kind of things you think about when you’ve soaked up all the smart in your dress and some of the smart in your school, too. Deadman and Daddy got to be best friends. They didn’t talk about the day of the closet, ever. They’d lay around and drink and eat plain tortillas out of the bag and watch game shows on the living room TV. The Deadman always knew all the answers. The first thing I ever said to him was:
“Why don’t you go on one of those shows? You’d make a million dollars and you could move to a nice house that’s really far away.”
I popped my princess’s head off and stuck it on the blue ballgown body. The Deadman turned his head and looked at me like I was a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk with no one around.
“Wouldn’t be fair to all those other contestants, Badgirl.” He glanced back toward the TV. “What is plutonium?” he said to the game show man in the grey suit. Then back to me: “Why don’t you come and sit by me? I’ll let you have a sip of my…what are we drinking, Muddy? My vodka’n OJ.”
“Don’t want it.”
“Come on, it’s just like water. It’ll make you grow up fierce and bright.”
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But I didn’t want his nasty vodka in his dirty mug that had a cartoon cactus on it saying GOOD MORNING ALBUQUERQUE. I didn’t know where Albuquerque was but I hated it because the Deadman had a mug from there.
“Don’t be rude, Badgirl,” my Daddy said, because he loved me but he’d heard the one about the cat who broke his promise and he didn’t want to hear it again.
So I sat down between them and I hated them both and I drank out of the Albuquerque mug while the man in the grey suit told us that the dollar values had doubled. The Deadman touched my hair but after awhile he stopped because little black cats bite when strangers pet them. Everyone knows that.
The Deadman started showing up in the mornings and saying he’d walk me to school so Daddy could get to his work on time. Daddy didn’t have a work, but he made me promise never to tell the Deadman that, so I didn’t tell, even though nobody who has a work lives where we do and eats powdered mashed potatoes without un-powdering them. I said I didn’t need to be walked anywhere because I wasn’t a baby, but the Deadman just stared down the hall at the pirate kiss closet till Daddy looked too and then nobody said anything but I had to walk to school with the Deadman.
I didn’t like walking with the Deadman. His hands were clammy even when he wore gloves and he always took the long way. He talked a lot but I could never remember what he said after. One time I thought I should ask him questions about himself because that’s what nice girls do, so I asked him where he was from. Grown-ups asked each other that all the time. The Deadman swept out his arm all grand for no reason.
“Paris, France!”
“That’s a lie. You’re a liar.”
“You got me, Badgirl. You’re too good for the likes of me. The truth is, I’m from the continent of Atlantis. My parents had a squat on the banks of the river Styx.”
“Is that in the Bronx?”
“Yeah, Badgirl. That’s just where it is. You’re smarter than a sack of owls, you are.”
“It’s ’cause of my dress,” I said proudly.
A little while after that, the Deadman started walking me home from school, too. He slicked up his hair fancy and told my teacher he was my uncle. Had a signed slip from Daddy and everything. But we never made it all the way home. He’d stand me on a corner and give me a box that had pills inside it, so bright they looked like Skittles. And he said:
“You’re so good, Badgirl. Nobody’ll mess with you on account of how good you are. You’re just as clean and bright as New Year’s Day.”
“I wanna go home.”
“Naw, you can’t yet. This here is medicine. Lots of people need medicine. You know how you hate it when you get sick. You don’t want people to get sick when you could make them better, do you? Just stand here and keep the box in your backpack and when sick people come asking, take their money and give them a couple of whatever color they ask for. If you do a good job, I’ll buy you a new dress.”
I sniffled. It was fall and the damp came with fall. I had a wet leaf stuck to my show. “I don’t want a new dress,” I whispered.
“Well, a new doll then. God knows a girl needs more than that ratty headless thing you got. I’ll come back for you and we’ll get back before your Daddy finishes his work.”
I didn’t have mittens so my hands got tingly and cold and then I couldn’t feel them anymore. I waited on the corner and all kinds of strangers came up talking to me like we were friends and I did what the Deadman said I had to. My fingers felt like they were made out of silver so I pretended that was the truth, that I had beautiful silver hands with pictures scratched onto them like the fancy dishes on TV. And every time I had to touch somebody strange to me so I could give over their medicine I pretended my beautiful silver hands turned them into game show contestants with perfect teeth and fluffy hair and nametags the color of luck.
