I took the hint and looked out the truck window, taking in Sugar Hill in all its squalor, no sweetness in sight. Mama and I’d lived in a dozen towns just like it, towns that except for a couple of fast-food places or a car dealership didn’t look like part of the twenty-first century. Block after block, storefronts stood empty, with dusty For Rent signs hanging crooked in the windows or doors. Here and there, a laundromat or pawnshop or liquor store struggled between the ramshackle houses and dusty yards of the dirt poor and always tired. There were little markets or tiendas with handwritten specials in the windows. Kids ran through sprinklers to keep cool or played in the street after the cars passed, and older folks gathered on corners or porches waiting for the sun to go down and take the heat with it. More than a few people smiled and waved happily at the sight of Henry, but Henry was too inside his own head to see. Put out as I was at Henry, I liked that he was friendly with the have-not side of town.
We passed the lawyers’ offices that divided the poor and rich neighborhoods. Beyond them, bigger houses had shady patios and screened porches. Flowers spilled from hanging baskets, and the shrubbery was shorn into perfect rounds or squares. A mile later we were in the country, headed back to Henry’s.
Thank the Lord the phone rang as we were putting away the groceries, and Henry stormed down the hall to his study to answer it. I climbed the kitchen stepladder and took down two bowls, then filled one with cat food and one with water. I slipped an aluminum pie plate under my arm like a Frisbee and carried it and the bowls outside. The heavy summer darkness oozed over the yard like molasses. I welcomed the end of this particular day.
I set the bowls on the stoop and filled the pie plate with water from the spigot on the house. I carried it carefully to a low, wooden crate I’d set sideways at the edge of the yard and put it inside. Then I went back for the two bowls and placed the food bowl inside the pie plate the way Mrs. King had taught me. The water in the pie plate made a moat around the food bowl and kept the ants out.
“If you don’t like that kind, I’ll get you something else,” I said in the direction of the weeds. “Just don’t eat it and I’ll know.” I kept my voice soft and moved slowly. If I spooked or startled him now, he might never trust me. I felt him watching me, but I couldn’t pick him out in the darkness. “You’re a good hider. That’s important.”
“Zoë!”
Henry’s heavy boots clomped on the porch floorboards. The porch bulb snapped on, flooding the yard with light. Henry Royster, one-man herd of rhinos. He stood on the steps, hands on his hips, shouting that there were sandwiches in the refrigerator. I adjusted my eyes to the glaring brightness, then stepped into the light, waving both arms over my head so he’d know I was all right. I didn’t want him thundering out here, scaring the wildlife for twenty miles. The phone rang again, and I was glad he headed back inside.
“Don’t worry, I’m working on him,” I whispered to the weeds, and walked back to the house to turn off that obnoxious light.
I flipped the switch, and the night came back, soft and restful. Once my eyes readjusted to the dark, I looked up to see stars burning bright overhead. Stargazing would be one good thing about living out here in the country with Henry, I thought, imagining Orion buckling on his sparkly belt before the night’s hunt and the big and little bear swimming together around the planets.
As I came in, I heard Henry talking on the phone in his study.
“She’s outside taking food to an imaginary cat she bet me fifty dollars is living out there in the grass…. Don’t you think I’d know if a cat was living out there? … What do you mean by that?… Well, Fred, I never knew you thought I was such a dimwitted old fool….”
I smiled at this as I climbed the stairs, catching a glimpse of Henry surrounded by a desk littered with papers and floor-to-ceiling walls of books. Next to animals, I loved books more than anything, and for a minute I imagined myself staying in this place, so big and different from the stuffy apartments, cramped houses, and tin-can trailers I’d lived in before. I imagined having my very own room instead of a sleeping bag or a made-up sofa, a book I could keep longer than two weeks if I wanted, and a grown-up smarter than I was in the house. I imagined having all that for a whole minute before I remembered what it felt like to hope for things I’d never get. I pushed the wanting away as hard as I could.
“Night, Uncle Henry,” I called.
I got into my new bed with my clothes on, too tired to undress. I took my spiral notebook from the table drawer and made a few notes for my memoir. Too weary for fine words, I wrote, “Uncle Henry’s got a big bug up his butt, but it’s a more interesting bug than most.”
A second later, Henry knocked.
“Come on in,” I called, slipping the notebook under the covers. It was strange to have my very own door and a grown-up, however bad-tempered, with the manners to knock.
“I came to say good night,” he said from the doorway. I recognized the heaviness in his voice. Weight crept into all their voices once they’d had a taste of parenting
