Marisol slept in the storage area of the Howey Bay Pet Shop; the owners, Sharla and Harold, had become good friends. They could hardly refuse the woman who’d taken in so many of their outcasts. Secretly they wondered how long it would take her to get on her own two feet, but never did they say it aloud.
“As long as you need,” they said kindly.
The storage area contained a small kitchen and bathroom, several metal shelving units, numerous caged animals, and a pullout couch. Although the walls consisted of cinderblock, Marisol felt safe and liberated in her new accommodations. It was her place, dusty and cluttered, but her own. Her blanket was on the pullout. There was none of Georgie’s dark red anger.
In the evenings, she would feed the runts, cook herself an instant soup, and read a novel. She phoned the children and had long conversations with each one of them. If ever Georgie answered the phone, he launched into a tirade about how stupid and immature . . . So Marisol urged Bonnie and Ellen to pick up, should the phone ring at night. Her days alternated between helping Sharla in the store and rushing to see her children when she knew Georgie would not be home. Before falling asleep, she prayed to me for their safety.
The new house was considerably colder without Marisol. The dusty rose carpet lay drab and flat, the dried flower arrangements collected dust, the lace curtains rippled in the picture window. All these decorous elements echoed a mother’s love, but a stark absence of warmth prevailed. Blue light filtered into the rooms and cast deep shadows everywhere.
The children crept around like little ghosts. True, the father allowed them to watch television whenever they wanted, and they could eat handfuls of sugar for all he cared. But he also roared when he was mad, and sometimes he chased them around to hit their hands or their bottoms.
Being the eldest girl, Bonnie received the bulk of what Georgie wanted to direct toward his wife. She was shaken, cussed at, slapped around in the kitchen when the father thought no one was looking. She became a very morose and sullen teenager, cowering in corners and snapping at anyone who came near.
He took them to the Pentecostal church every Sunday, where people spoke babbly words that only I could understand, and the children called every adult Uncle or Auntie. Sometimes a ritual of crying, moaning, and laying-on-of-hands ensued. There was a bright-eyed, aggressive edge to the congeniality of the group. Georgie’s kids thought he looked odd with his hands in the air, his eyes closed, and his head down, lost in some other emotional world.
Ellen stayed far away from him, always remembering his beefy hand with the knife in it. She went to school and tormented her teachers. She clung to a t-shirt the mother had left behind; cuddled Leander at every opportunity, even when he nibbled at her homework; rocked in her rocking chair; tried to sleep at night.
But her sleeps were disturbed.
At night, she dreamt of a white panther with red, filmy eyes that came wandering upstairs. His eyes glowed in the dark and his hot tongue hung out of his mouth, touching the dim air. Softly the panther entered the parents’ bedroom, where he saw Georgie sleeping, the big black head pressed into the pillow. Beside Georgie there was Marisol’s empty pillow.
The panther leaned over the mother’s pillow and breathed in, silently. A peach-powdery soft scent. The panther missed Marisol. He imagined her as a beautiful, slender bird.
But the beautiful bird had flown away and left her feathers behind. She must be cold. The panther wanted to collect the feathers to give them back. Where had she hidden them? Sometimes he saw them floating, little pieces of light and beauty, around the house. When they landed on Bonnie, she cried and cried. But when they floated around Ellen, she looked like a wild whirling dervish, a tantalizing mess.
Maybe the bird has hidden her feathers in my little sister’s room, thought the panther. I’ll find those feathers. My little sister is a bird, and birds flock with birds. I used to play with my sister’s beak when she’d let me. But then she stopped – she knows I’m a panther; she’s afraid of my teeth and claws and even my long tail. She was afraid I’d break her beak. And I would have, since I’m so strong.
The panther stood in front of Ellen’s bed. She tried to pretend she was asleep, but he could smell her awakeness. He lifted the covers with one claw, checking for feathers. There they were!
She pushed him away. He scooped out bunches and bunches of feathers; she didn’t like it, she was always trying to hide them.
But the panther liked the game.
Except it stopped when he tried to reach for her beak. Then Ellen jumped up and shook him, squeaking, “Charlie! Wake up, Charlie! Wake up!”
She took his shoulders and turned him around, pushing him toward the stairs. The panther allowed her to direct him, so she’d think he was sleepwalking, even though he could pounce on her and eat her. She thought sleeping panthers were less scary than awake ones. Maybe they were; maybe not.
Ellen took to wearing a bathrobe to bed, and loaded on more blankets. She didn’t know what she should say to Marisol; if she told about the sleepwalking nightmares, it was possible the secrets of many years would need to come out. Then, she could hardly blame him for scaring her. After all, she had been such a willing participant for so long; she’d even been an initiator at times.
Finally, during one phone call, Ellen confessed: “Charlie sleepwalks at night.”
The mother suggested, “Lock your door at night.”
After doing so, Ellen began to wake up in time to see the silvery light of the doorknob curving to the right, as the panther picked the lock with his claw. If she wasn’t lying tense and breathless for that part, she opened her eyes to see his long tail dangling in front of her face. He stood very still, until she woke up. Then he was very strong.
The problem of the sleepwalking became an undercurrent within the family. For several months it continued, while everyone knew.
Marisol finally phoned Georgie and said with a sigh, “You have got to do something about your son’s sleepwalking.”
“What do you want me to do, attach a ball and chain to his leg?”
“Put a lock on the outside of his door.”
“Yeah, that would be real smart. What if there was an emergency?”
“He’s frightening Ellen, Georgie.”
“Why doesn’t she just wake him up?”
“She tries to. He doesn’t wake easily. Sometimes he has come in twice or more.”
“Oh, come on.”
“It scares her, Georgie.”
“I don’t see why it should scare her. And I definitely don’t see how talking to Charlie is going to make it go away. It’s just a phase. Lots of people sleepwalk during their childhood. Especially under stress.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Do you think the kids don’t notice that their mother is missing?”
“I see them more than you think, Georgie.”
“I’m sure you do. What else do you do with your days in that critter hotel?”
“Work. Enjoy my own space,” she huffed.
“Well, I hope you’re enjoying it a lot. ‘Cause your kids are suffering a lot.”
Georgie did make a few awkward comments to Charlie, who stopped sleepwalking long enough to push it back under the radar. Then, just as Ellen had begun to sleep tight, she’d hear the panther’s hot breath on the other side of her door and bolt awake to watch the doorknob turn.
In spring, with the weather growing warmer and the parents’ bodies growing lonelier, it was decided that Marisol would try moving back home. Nothing had panned out for her, except that she’d decided to continue working at the Howey Bay Pet Shop. Her time away had been a nice vacation, that’s all. She felt she could breathe again, and bring the breath to her family.
I was pleased with how Marisol livened up the place, upon her return. The children, even Keanan, didn’t take long to respond to her authority. Things became cleaner, brighter. The food tasted better. The children didn’t get away with much.
In an effort to confuse the sleepwalker, whose footsteps always led toward Ellen, the two girls switched bedrooms. At Marisol’s insistence, Georgie padlocked each of their doors. Now, Ellen was safely ensconced in a large bedroom in the basement, with a double bed and her white desk. It was only ten steps from Charlie’s room, but when she clicked the padlock closed at night, her anxiety uncoiled within her and she went to sleep quickly.
In her dreams, she lived in a very tiny place, set apart from the main house. Everything in the house was miniature, and the ceilings were so low she had to crawl around. Candles burned everywhere with throbbing red-orange flames. She felt intensely happy inside, safe and apart. Rodents roamed everywhere, rats, rabbits, hamsters, mice, and one special black guinea pig. The animals ran freely around the house while my Ellen tended to their needs. She never went out unless summoned by her parents.
Finally, in one dream, she opened the door and looked out in answer to their call, and the black guinea pig ran out into the yard. She bent and tried to grab it by the hind legs as it escaped. The guinea pig shook her off with one kick and scuttled out. Only now, Ellen noticed that a tall forest surrounded the tiny house. The bush quickly swallowed the figure of the guinea pig, which became just a shadow flitting among the trees. Ellen ran after it, leaving the tiny door open. Little creatures began to pour forth from the mouth of the entryway. Squeaking rats and mice, thumping rabbits, every manner of rodent came running out into the forest behind Ellen.
Crying in horror, she chased them all around, grasping at them with her fingers and trying to hug them to her chest. But as soon as she caught hold of one, another would run past. When she tried to grab it, both animals wriggled away, shrieking. They all ran away. Even the special black guinea pig did not return.
Ellen returned to her little house, which now stood empty.