their bedroom. Unlike the older boy, he didnât mind being wet. He stood with his towel drooping below his dimpled belly and a puddle of water gathering on the floor between his feet. His denial wasnât convincing; it held a note of secret pride.
âListen,â I told him. âYou donât pee in the tub, thatâs just gross.â
âBut I didnât pee, man!â
âIâm not saying you did pee. But you donât do it.â I saw the illogic of this. âYou cannot pee in the tub.â
âYou pee, Wilfredo,â Cedric insisted. His disgust, if it had been real to begin with, had given way to triumph. âI saw you pee, man. You nasty! You a nasty, ugly bighead.â
That was when Wilfredo threatened to fuck him up.
âHey!â I barked. Where had I learned to bark like that? Wilfredo was taller than Cedric and probably outweighed him by thirty pounds, but there was no way of predicting how a fight between them might end. As I later learned, when I had to wrestle Cedric off the golf cart of a security guy whoâd brought us home from the county fair after the kid had a tantrum outside the tent where the Jack Russell agility trials were supposed to happen, he had a grasping, clawing, elastic strength that was wholly out of proportion to his size.
For most of the day, the cats had avoided the boys, but now Bitey entered the room. She brushed against me and then approached the children, staying just out of reach. Most cats approach kids this way, and itâs easy to mistake it for teasing until you reflect that even a small child is ten times the size of a cat. Bitey didnât look fearful. Her tail was up, and her underslung jaw gave her the air of something looking for a fight, or at least not shying away from one. âDonât grab her,â F. warned. âJust put out your hand like this.â She demonstrated, holding hers at catâs eye level, then scratching the upraised chin. âHello, Bitus, you noble creature. Let her come to you.â
I donât remember if either boy was able to pet her. Bitey could be affectionate, but on her own terms. A year before, sheâd disappeared for a month before showing up at a house on the other side of town. During that time, I did little but look for her, putting up flyers, riding my bike for miles in every direction
while imploringly shouting her name to the winds, stopping every so often to rattle the container of dry food I kept in my knapsack. But when I came to be reunited with her at her rescuersâ, my heart so swollen with love I might only have been its caddy, the flunky whose job it was to carry a heart around while it throbbed and felt, she barely gave me a glance and sauntered past me to inspect a flower in the yard. When I picked her up, she struggled. Maybe sheâd forgotten whose cat she was, or maybe I was being reminded of the futility of the phrase âwhose cat.â The woman whoâd found her had grown attached to her, and I invited her to come by our house the next day. Stoically, Iâd decided that if Bitey wasnât happy with F. and me, maybe sheâd be better off with her. I think the woman had the same idea. She showed up looking hopeful. But now, Bitey ignored her while coiling and coiling around my ankles, grinning so widely you could see the pale pink washboard of her palate and purring cynically.
I left the room while F. read to the boys from a book about a farting dog. When I came back, Bitey was lying at the foot of Wilfredoâs bed; it was really a folding cot weâd borrowed from someone. She lay facing away from him with her paws straight out before her, like a little sphinx, her eyes slitted. âWhatâs that catâs name?â Wilfredo asked. F. told him, and he announced, âBitey loves me.â His mother hadnât packed pajamas for him (later weâd learn he didnât own any); he was wearing underpants and some
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