He said he was going to take it to the landlord.
“Do that,” I said. “He don’t care. Saves him the cost of hiring an exterminator.”
Then I shut the door and gave Dizzy and Gillespie good ear rubs.
Mama wanted to know what was going on.
“I thought you said he was a nice man,” she said when I told her.
I shrugged. “Seemed like it.”
She sighed. “If he’s the type of folks moving up to Harlem these days, then …” Her voice trailed away.
“Then what? You wouldn’t be saying you want to move, would you?”
“No,” she said. “It’s them I’m talking about. They the ones gonna have to go.”
Two days later, Milford was back at our door. Mama was the one who answered.
I watched from down the hall as he bowed and handed her a bouquet of flowers. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know what was wrong with me. I had no right to say what I said.”
Mama accepted the apology, and the flowers. After he left, she turned to me and said, “Well, well, well. I guess he’s not so bad after all.”
“C’mon, Mama. You know what happened as much as I do.”
“The landlord gave him a piece of his mind?”
“Of course, he did.”
The next few days were quiet. I put Milford out of my mind and went back to worrying about work. For the time being, my concerns about Mama were eased. Her health had stabilized. Her depression had lifted. She talked about Dizzy and Gillespie all the time, about how sweet they were, how smart they were, how they were just about the best cats of all time.
Then one day I came home from another useless interview and found Mama sitting in the living room, holding Dizzy. I knew right away that something was wrong. Dizzy was real still and, Gillespie was sitting at Mama’s feet, meowing.
“Mama?” I put a hand on her shoulder.
“She’s gone,” Mama said.
Dizzy’s little mouth was open and her body twisted. She must’ve died in agony.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know.” She looked up at me, and the grief in her eyes made my heart constrict. “One minute she was healthy and happy, as frisky as you please. The next, she was having a fit of some kind. Then she started vomiting, and before I could do anything, she was … like this.”
Dizzy was still so small she fit into a boot box.
“Don’t put her in the garbage,” Mama said.
“I wouldn’t do that. I’ll take her to the vet tomorrow.”
“We’ll go together.”
“Okay.”
But the next day when I came home to pick up Mama, she was in no state to go anywhere. She was sitting in her bedroom, and this time it was Gillespie she held.
Mama had taken Dizzy’s death hard enough, but Gillespie’s really floored her. She was heartbroken.
I couldn’t understand it. “Two healthy cats don’t just up and die like that.” I asked her if she wanted the vet to do a necropsy, but she said not to. “Leave well enough alone.”
I said I would, but I couldn’t. I asked the vet what had gone wrong. She had a one-word answer.
“Strychnine.”
In other words, rat poison.
I was stricken. This was my fault. I told Mama, “They must’ve gotten ahold of what I bought. I’m so sorry. I thought I put it all away. But I guess I didn’t.”
I hoped for a scolding word, but she said nothing, just sat there wrapped with grief. Over the next two days, she went back to sitting in the dark. “This is twice this has happened to me,” she said. “I ain’t never gonna let it happen again.”
She wouldn’t say what she meant by that. Just told me to clear out everything belonging to the cats.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said. “Even if Dizzy and Gillespie are gone, their smell might keep the mice away, at least for a little while.”
But her mind was made up.
“Get rid of it. All of it. Then scrub the place clean.”
So I did.
Within days the mice were back. Mama’s depression deepened and her blood pressure soared.
The doctor was worried. “If we don’t do something, then …” He let silence fill the blank. “And it could happen soon, real soon.”
I tried to talk to her about getting another pair of cats, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
“No,” she shook her head. “Never again.”
I didn’t know what to do, so I put my arms around her and hugged her. “It’s gonna be okay, Mama. It’s gonna be okay.”
For a several seconds, we just held each other, sitting in her room. Then she said something.
“What?” I asked.
Her voice was hoarse. “It was my fault,” she whispered, “my fault they died.”
“What?”
“It was me.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
She didn’t answer.
Then understanding dawned. I covered my mouth in shock. She had killed them. She had killed Dizzy and Gillespie. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. But then I searched her eyes, and saw not just the grief, but the guilt.