LOSS

I’m intruding on the night, the stench of it all. I can smell the skunk, cat’s piss, wet dog,
and spider webs catching my knees going down the stairs. The mosquitos fly away from me, and
I am unwanted in their domain. I beg for a decent bite to swell my flesh and turn me into
something else. The old Coach purse I had gotten from a girl I worked with and hated, written
inside its satin border, was the name, Kate, although it was Jackie who’d given it to me, and my
name was Kim. The purse was too old to use and too embarrassing to wear, but it was too
expensive to throw away. I took the bag and threw it over the fence where the cats had their
kittens and where they peed more than it rained.
It was my apartment, yet I was outside, sitting on the concrete stairs, looking at the 3 am
moon to escape Josh. I gave away the orange Tabby’s kittens, and now she stalks me, walking up
and down the balcony’s ledge, screaming at me nightly, her piercing green eyes aglow, shooting
arrows at me with every glance.
She sat down in the chair, which, many years before her, had been an executive seat.
Now, a chair written off as a company expense was rickety, squealing, and its pockets bursting
forth from once-prominent leather. The chair, now a corporate hand-me-down, was perfect for
the lowly paid customer service representatives who sat upon it. She was grateful. She was grateful she had a job even if she did make slightly above minimum wage, and her breast leaked
milk and ran down her blouse. She discreetly repositioned the pads covering her breast. She
knew they leaked for the baby less than 6 months old, and in her soul, she could hear the pang of
the baby’s cry with each leak, the pads now soaked.
I think they could smell the milk on me. My leaky breasts engorged, hardened, needing to
be pumped. The men in the office had ridiculous conversations with me to get a whiff and stare
down my blouse. Buyer remorse sets in instantly, the smell of sweet milk arousing their
manhood while reminding them of their mothers. They are, at the exact moment, flirty and
disgusted. This was the first day I had met Josh, a young intern who couldn’t stop staring at me.
The office manager sat him right next to me, a young engineering intern who is no more than 22
years old, me, myself, 9 years his senior. I could always feel his eyes on me, the weight of his
gaze on my body, the sounds of air going through sucked teeth, the spit in his mouth.
An argument while Josh was folding clothes led her outside: socks with no matches, her
daughter’s unicorn shirts and sweet pink cotton dresses, Josh’s undershirts, wife beaters, and
plaid blue boxers. She had one t-shirt in the pile and a neon green ankle sock that had no match.
“We need to talk about something, “she says.
Josh stopped folding the clothes, her tone alarming him to the seriousness of her sentence. Josh
didn’t want to have a serious conversation with her; he wanted to leave. What was he doing there
folding clothes and playing stepfather to a 4-year-old? And look at her; she was so much older
than he was.
He loved her in the beginning. She had long, shiny black hair covering her arms while
she typed at her desk. Her red lipstick made him want to kiss her. He couldn’t get his work done back then, and several colleagues remarked how lovesick he was—a joke to them but a challenge
to him. Everyone wanted to kiss her, and she had let him kiss her. But now things are different.
Her hair is just hair, and many women wear that shade of red lipstick.
“Don’t tell me you’re pregnant.”
“What if I am?”
“Are you?”
She is silent. Josh knows her answer now. A wave of heat fills his body, and beads of
sweat form on his forehead and upper lip.
The tabby cat is back again; she screams at me in a rage, looking for her kittens,
demanding I bring them to her, her claws ripping the paint off the wooden ledge, her back in an
arch. I’m pleading with a cat I’ve wronged. I tell her that I gave them away. I plead with her to
forgive me. I scream at her to get the hell off my balcony! Josh yells from inside the apartment
that I’m crazier than the cat if I think she can understand me. Just then, she leaped from the ledge
onto me, digging her claws down the right side of my face. She runs away, screeching into the
night, and I can hear her cry for several blocks. I go back into the apartment, bleeding, soaking
the carpet with large drops of blood, holding my hand to my cheek.
“She does understand me.”
There’s a frosted sliding door at the clinic’s reception desk. I signed my name on the clipboard
and what time I’d arrived, and yes, I had an appointment circled. The sliding door opens, and I
see my long-time friend Kenya at the desk. Her eyes bulge when she sees me, and my stomach drops when I see her. I am ashamed that I never cared enough to ask where she worked and even
more embarrassed that this is how we discovered something secret about each other.
“I didn’t see you, and you didn’t see me. “Kenya says, taking the clipboard from my hand.
I nod and sit beside Josh, watching a football game on his phone. I’m the oldest woman in the
waiting room. Even older than the mothers with their daughters. My white streak of hair
glimmered down the right side of my face; it had never gleamed so brightly. Today, it flowed
like a river of white stars spilling over my clavicle. The nurse calls my name at the door and
takes my hand. Kenya gives me a wink of reassurance of forgiveness and love.
I was alone that night, and my friend took my daughter out for the evening. Josh says he
can’t stay because he needs to get his hair cut in the morning, and the blood is soaking through
the maxi pads like water with debris. I no longer hear the Tabby, and my eyes fill with tears. I
went to the balcony, but she had not come tonight. She has left me alone like she is, wondering
where and what if. I never wanted anything more than for Tabby to come back and scream at me
again. I’d tell her I do understand. I’d say to her I’m sorry.