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“RAWR!”
“SHIT!” I yelled, flinging the shovel so I could catch the cat jumping into my arms. The shovel clanked to the floor with enough volume that it sounded like a boulder had fallen from the sky and bounced on the old, splintered wood. I twirled in a circle, not sure why, before I stopped and took a deep breath.
Hoffa. She was Ava’s psychotic cat. Sometimes she (yes, she) played nice, but sometimes she pretended the entire world was a rodent for her to stalk and kill. Including the people who fed her.
Tonight, though, I could tell something had her on edge. When I shone the light on her, she looked up at me, and I noticed blood on some of her fur. It made paw prints on my white shirt.
I dropped her to the floor, picked up the shovel, and went running through the house. My feet almost skidded to a stop when I reached the kitchen. Two men were down. Sonny and a neighborhood guy who went by the name of Mo. Some said it was because he always wanted mo(re) money. He was a known loan shark.
A whining noise, different from the whistling, had me sweeping the flashlight from the center of the kitchen to the wall. Minnie huddled in the corner. The poker was clutched in her fist.
“Minnie,” I said, dropping my bag to the floor, taking a knee in front of her. I ran my hands over her head. “Are you okay?”
She nodded. “I okay,” she whispered, her eyes wide and her pupils dilated. “He was going to kill him.”
Minnie was mentally impaired. She also had a different mother than me and Ava. Actually, we had no idea who her mother was. We found Minnie on the doorstep one day. She’d been left in a car seat along with one pack of diapers. At the time, Ava and I were barely teens, and I was just excited to have a baby around. Sonny took her inside and only told us that we had to help him take care of her.
There were rumors, though. A neighbor had claimed that Minnie’s mother was, or had been, a prostitute.
Janis, my mom, took off when I was seven and Ava was six, and just like I’d done with Ava, I had taken care of Minnie ever since.
I shook my head, bringing myself back to the moment, making sense of it. “You hit Mo with the poker, Min?”
“Had to.” She wiped her nose on her hand, then went to grab for Hoffa as she stalked past her. Minnie wasn’t fast enough, though, and Hoffa took off toward the room I shared with Ava.
“Ava?” I said, panic hitting me hard. She would have fought him, too.
“Not home,” Min said.
I fixed her hair and wiped the sweat from her forehead, trying to buy some time. I needed a plan.
“He—” Min sniffed and pointed to Sonny, who lay on the floor next to Mo, bleeding from his head. I couldn’t tell what Mo had done to him, but I could see that Minnie had made a nice hole in Mo’s head.
Even though I loved Sonny, simply because we were related, anger swelled up in me. I was tempted to hit him on his back with the metal shovel to wake him up. He could never hold a job, not after our mom left, and he mostly drank. He stayed in his little room, with his ancient little TV, always wearing white tank tops and khaki pants and smelling of old Spice. He ate his meals in his room and barely said a word to any of us. I knew the back of his head better than I knew him.
Sonny groaned, almost like a bear waking up from hibernation, and it seemed to stir Mo next to him.
Minnie’s eyes went wide and she sucked in air. She held the poker tighter in her grip. I held a finger to my pursed lips, letting her know to be quiet. She nodded. Her eyes were full of tears, but she refused to blink so they couldn’t fall.
I used my flashlight to highlight the scene. Mo had to use something to knock Sonny out. Mo wasn’t that big, but Sonny was. A light tapping noise made me turn around again. Minnie pointed under the kitchen island with the poker. I bent down, swinging the light back and forth. It hit something black and shiny, the barrel facing me. I snatched the gun just as Mo sat up, cursing as he touched the back of his head.
“Whoa.” He lifted his hands when he noticed I had his gun. “Where the fuck did you come from? Who the fuck hit me?”
“I did,” I said. “You didn’t see me coming in from work. I used this—” I lifted the shovel, hitting him with the flashlight straight in his eyes.
He blinked, narrowed his eyes, then held up a bloodied hand. “Lower that shit, will ya? My fucking head is killing me!”
“How was I supposed to know what was going on?” I placed both hands on the gun again. “I came in and you were—” I motioned to Sonny.
“Sonny got what he deserved.”
“You going to kill him?”
He shrugged. “I’m thinking about killing all of you.” He said all of you like, all of yuse. He touched the back of his head and winced.
“How much does he owe?”
“Why? You gonna pay his debt?”
