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reya was 14 when she disappeared, and I am the only one who knows what happened to her. It was Halloween night and had it not been for the soggy weather, I wonder if others would have seen it, giving me the privilege of speaking the truth. I was 17 at the time, old enough to tell my tale, but no one person could speak of that night and hope to have anyone believe him.
Freya was notorious before she ever came to live with us. The story of the beautiful little girl found wandering on the side of a highway, able to speak only her name and little else, sold many papers. Her family could not be located and no one came forward to identify her. Her story was so compelling that reporters would have cheerfully cut their colleagues’ throats to get Freya’s social worker to talk on the record. Almost needless to say, her adoption made national news. My family, the trio of Tolers, became her family and for a decade we dealt with the media on the anniversary of her discovery and her adoption, in those “where are they now” pieces that the public seem to like so much.
The media had a feeding frenzy when she disappeared. Speculation was rife. Many thought a sex fiend had taken her, and this remained the top theory since some of the events that evening hinted at violence. Others thought her natural parents came to reclaim her. Still another theory is that troubled about her past, she ran away with a secret boyfriend. They are all wrong. Not even their wildest guesses could come close to the truth. She’s been gone for over five years now and the speculations still have not ended. My family closed ranks and told a tale that Freya had been a lovely, quiet girl who was happy at home and would have never run away. We were only half lying.
During the last two weeks before she disappeared, Dad’s hatred for Freya was palpable, and while he did his best to keep his rage in check, he was still quite angry. He resented having to use the upstairs bathroom Freya and I shared and he was annoyed that my mother refused to punish Freya for the destruction she had wreaked. Me? I really didn’t seem like I existed to him, and that was fine with me as far as it went. I wondered if I could take him in a physical confrontation, because once I knew what he was capable of doing, if he ever tried anything like that again I wanted to be able to kill him. I started taking martial arts classes a week before Freya left us and continue in Judo to this day, though I should mention that I have yet to strike my father.
After Dad’s act of violence, the cats that lived around our house—already omnipresent—grew in numbers. Instead of glowing eyes appearing from the tree branches and the occasional cat in one’s peripheral vision, they were obvious, especially the black pair, which had taken to sleeping quite ostentatiously on the front porch. Dad never said a word. His foul act meant he could not speak of the cats because of the shame, even if that shame was feigned.
Halloween fell on a Thursday that year, and the Monday before, when Freya and I returned home from school, we witnessed five of the cats engaged in a bizarre ritual. We had not even walked up to the front porch when we realized something was going on. It appeared even stranger once we climbed up the steps. I put down my book bag and leaned against the porch railing, Freya by my side, her head on my shoulder as we watched the cats.
Freya’s red-blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail and she wore the plaid skirt, white oxford and penny loafers that were the uniform for girls at our private school. Only 14, she looked older, mainly because she was so tall for her age. It never stopped annoying me when men stared at her when she walked by in her school uniform. Of course I know now the power such an outfit worn by a beautiful woman has on men, but Freya wasn’t a woman. She was a girl and men who knew her should have known better. I noticed our neighbor, an older man, was transfixed by her as he walked past the house. He didn’t notice the cats or even me—his eyes stayed on Freya the whole time he shuffled by on a walk he seemed to take every day, right around the time school got out. He worked from home and I sometimes saw him in the morning, peeking around his blinds to catch a glimpse of Freya as we walked to school. Increasingly I noticed more and more male eyes focused on my sister.
“This is strange,” Freya murmured and I said nothing, as I had been so lost in thought that I hadn’t paid close attention. Luckily, whatever the cats were doing seemed to be on a loop, and they kept repeating and repeating their actions. The two black cats trotted from the side of the porch to the front door. Together, each put their front right paw on the screen door and hooked it with their claws. They hopped to their left, opening the screen door, and then quickly unhooked their claws. Aided by the spring on the door, it slammed closed. They did this in rapid succession several times, and then ran back to the side of the porch.
As if on cue, an orange kitten walked onto the middle of the sidewalk, about three yards away from the bottom porch step. He sat down on his haunches and began clumsily grooming his face. Then two gray tabbies that had been lurking next to the jack-o-lanterns on the third porch step began to run back and forth. They did this for several seconds, and then stopped.
The cats did this a few more times, and then the five of them came up onto the porch, as if to hold a meeting to discuss their strange routine. The black pair weaved in and out of Freya’s legs. “What’s going on, Freya?”
“I don’t know,” she said. She tried to pick up the little orange cat but his high spirits made it difficult for her to pet him. I wondered if she was trying to determine if it was the same orange kitten from that horrible Saturday, but I could not bring myself to ask. We were still standing outside, watching the cats, when Mom drove up. When they heard her car door slam, the cats scattered. Mom was laughing as she walked to the porch. “Did you both lock yourselves out? I should get some yarn and tie your door keys around your necks.” That was the first time in days she had smiled.
I was only 6 when Freya came to live with us, so I don’t have very clear memories of what life was like before her. I read accounts of people who can remember things from the time they were toddlers, but I’m not like that. I can barely recall anything before the second grade. I see old photographs but they don’t really jog memories and I am vigilant against creating memories to accompany visual records. I want to make sure that what I know is truly what I know. My memories of Freya are all I have of her and I do not want them tainted with anything that is not the complete truth.
Mom says Dad was not so crazed before they adopted Freya, and I have to think she is telling the truth. Mom, despite all appearances, is no doormat. People look at her and think that she is meek because she is so quiet, a grade school teacher and a member of the ladies’ committee at church. She isn’t meek, and I cannot think she would have married Dad had he always been like this. She will stand by him in a marriage, but she would never have entered into one if Dad had been so . . .
He’s the reason Freya’s no longer with us. He became so demented over the cats that were drawn to Freya that his obsession became frightening. He also had other obsessions but despite the fact that I dislike my father, I don’t want to think of that. It’s easier to focus on his hatred of cats. The day after Freya came to live with us, two large black cats showed up at our house. Mom took pictures of them when they first appeared, and they are clearly the same cats that stayed near the house for a decade, though many may think one black cat looks very much like another. They were large, sleek, pretty cats, so black they were almost blue, and had green, luminescent eyes. Actually, all the cats seemed to have luminescent eyes that glowed eerily even during the day. The black cats were at the core of the cat presence, and many more came and went, but there were generally around 10-12 cats on the property at any given time.
I can recall one night when I was ten and Freya was seven. She had awakened in the night, afraid of something, and had crept into my bed. She always came to me when she was troubled, almost from her first day with us. She nestled up to me so carefully and quietly that I didn’t notice her until I stirred because my arm had gone to sleep. She was breathing deeply, her head on my shoulder. Her hair had not yet darkened to the strawberry blonde it later became and was silvery in the moonlight, changing colors in the half-dark. I later saw a piece of mother of pearl jewelry and it reminded me of Freya’s hair that night. Unaccustomed to sharing my bed, I became uncomfortable and I turned over carefully so as not to wake her. Once facing my window, I could see dozens of pairs of eyes glowing from the tree outside. The cats were all peering into my room, keeping watch over her. It may sound creepy, but at the time I felt incredibly comforted. I smiled, and most of the eyes became half-slitted, the way cats’ eyes do when they are being scratched on the head. I fell back asleep, Freya’s warm body next to me, the cats looking in on us.
Freya was not permitted to make a pet of any of the cats because I suffer from asthma. I later found out that my asthma is largely aggravated by dust. I wonder if my father didn’t know that all along and decided to use me as an excuse to keep the cats he so hated out of the house. If I ever have a daughter of my own, I will tell her to avoid any man with an unreasoning hatred of cats, because more often than not, such men hate women. Cats are sleek and clean and pretty and often unfathomable, just the way a lot of men see women, and cats become proxies for their loathing. I don’t know if my dad hated women before or after Freya came to live with us, but it doesn’t really matter because he hates them now. Dad calmed a bit once Freya was gone. We hoped he would stay that way but the rage she inspired is always there under the surface.
Two weeks before Halloween, his anger exploded in a way that forever changed how all of us viewed him. A small orange kitten, he claimed, had been peeing on the car and scratching the paint when it clambered up onto the hood. The kitten was far too young to be marking territory yet, let alone scaling cars, and it is notable that no one but Dad ever saw the kitten anywhere near the car. But he became focused on that small cat to an alarming degree.
Catching the cats proved impossible. Dad had called the city to come get them but when animal control arrived time and time again, the cats hid effectively. Also, despite Dad’s tales of toms marking their territory as well as the assumed end of many cats living in a yard, the fact was aside from fur on Freya’s clothes when she handled the cats, there was no sign they were there. No cat poop, no smell of urine. Animal control eventually stopped coming out—they clearly thought Dad was insane.
Only Freya could catch them and hold them. They ran from everyone, even me, though they would sit and groom in my presence. It was like they knew I did not mind them and that as a kid and later a teenager, I would do them no harm. But still they kept their distance.
Dad tried to poison them once, putting antifreeze out in bowls, but all that did was sicken the Maine Coon that lived up the street. When Mrs. Abercrombie found out her cat had been poisoned, a neighborhood association meeting was called so everyone could be on the lookout for the cat poisoner in our midst. Everyone in the neighborhood knew it was Dad who was responsible—his rants at the meetings about the city’s refusal to come get the strays cost him the Treasurer position he had held for years. People were so tired of hearing about it that he was unanimously defeated in the biannual election. Of course, Mom had not heard of it until the meeting itself, and when they got home, they went straight into their bedroom. Freya and I could hear them arguing, mainly Mom shouting. Like I said, my mom is no doormat.
So in spite of neighborhood censure and his own wife’s anger, Dad still found it in himself to do harm to a kitten when he got the chance. I never learned how he caught that little orange tabby cat, but two weeks before Halloween, he managed to do it. It was a typical fall afternoon, the sort where after 3:00 the light starts to fade and you begin waiting for nightfall, but find yourself waiting for hours, unable to enjoy the afternoon and impatient when night finally comes. When it happened, I was upstairs reading. I spent most of my weekends by myself, reading or instant-messaging friends with whom I played role-playing games online. Freya was in her bedroom, doing what I don’t know, but was probably just sitting in the chair next to her bed, looking outside her window. Despite her beauty and sweet nature, Freya had few friends, but unlike me, she did not seem to care. Most people bored her, she said.
I heard the pipes groan as they often did when someone ran water downstairs, but thought nothing of it. It wasn’t until I heard Dad shout very clearly, “YOU LITTLE BASTARD!” that I knew something was amiss. Ours was a family in which there was no cursing. To hear an expletive meant something was terribly wrong. Freya heard it, too. Our house was old and not well insulated—noise traveled easily. We met on the landing outside our rooms and looked at each other with fear. I wondered what to do, but then my feet started moving before my brain really kicked in and I began running down the stairs, Freya right behind me.
I made it downstairs and turned just in time to see Dad’s back as he was walking from the hallway to the kitchen. I ran into the kitchen entryway and stopped cold. Dad had tossed the soaked, dead kitten on the kitchen table with all the care and significance of the day’s mail. I didn’t speak, though he had to have heard us. There was no way he could not hear us both running down the old, creaky stairs. Of course, he didn’t care if we saw him. He wanted Freya to see what he had done.
I was overweight then, and taller than Freya, but I could not prevent her from squeezing between me and the doorjamb. Dad was calmly spreading Friday’s newspaper on the table. He had a series of long scratches running down his left cheek. The kitten had not gone down without a fight. Freya squirmed past me just in time to see Dad picking up the kitten and roughly setting it down on the newspaper. Its head lolled in a way that showed that even if his first intent was to drown the kitten, Dad broke its neck, probably as a vicious reaction when the kitten scratched his face.
Dad leered at Freya when he saw her reaction. He grinned as he wrapped up the dead, wet kitten like a burrito in the old newspaper. Freya started to cry, but she took it all in—the broken neck, the soaked fur, the scratch on Dad’s face, his wet shirt but a dry kitchen sink. She missed no detail. After Dad was finished wrapping the kitten, she raced to the backdoor. Dad smirked, thinking Freya had run off to cry alone. He took the small bundle of newspaper and kitten and dropped it in the trashcan. He then sauntered past me and walked up the short hallway that led to the master bedroom.
In less than a minute, Freya returned with a shovel she had retrieved from the garden shed in the backyard. I said, “Freya, let’s wait for Mom to get home before we try to bury the kitten.” Without so much as even looking at me, she rushed past and moved quickly into the master bedroom. It took me a second to react, but I caught up to her and followed behind until she reached the doorway to the en suite master bathroom.
Dad was standing in front of the medicine cabinet mirror, putting peroxide on the scratches on his face. He barely had time to respond before Freya swung the shovel, ducking just before it struck the medicine cabinet, shattering the glass and causing the contents behind the mirrored door to go flying. Dad dropped to his knees and covered his head, coward that he was, awaiting the next swing of the shovel because as soon as Freya sent the medicine cabinet reeling, she raised the shovel over her head again.
As I watched her raise and then lower the shovel, the thought of stopping her never entered my mind. As the shovel came down in an arc, Freya turned and slammed it into the sink, an old-fashioned pedestal model, and took it out in one blow. It was old and easily crumbled into large pieces. Water started flowing from the wall where the sink had been mounted, and Freya pummeled the large ceramic pieces with the under side of the shovel until they were near pulverized. Dad didn’t move the entire time. Even though it seemed pretty clear she was not going to hurt him, if he had moved, the shovel could have struck him.
Once she was satisfied with the destruction of the sink, she moved on to the toilet, striking the tank and then the bowl until it too was smashed to bits and even more water covered the floor. Water flowed out of the bathroom into the bedroom but I didn’t even feel it as it traveled over my bare feet. Freya then turned to the bathtub where the kitten had died. There was still water in it when she began hitting it with the shovel. It took several blows before a crack formed in the surface of the ceramic, but once that crack appeared, it was smooth sailing destroying the rest of the tub. She slammed and hacked and then turned her attention to the shower curtain rod, the showerhead, the faucet and the handles, shearing them off with the side of the shovel. Water began to spray furiously from the severed tap.
It was then that Mom came home from the monthly ladies’ luncheon at church. I didn’t know she was home until I heard her gasp behind me. “What on earth? Freya, what are you doing?” she yelled. I didn’t notice it then, but in retrospect I realize she didn’t seem that concerned by her husband cowering on the floor, soaking wet and covered in glass, ceramic chunks and other bits of debris. If it was because she knew Freya would not hurt him or if it was because she didn’t care, I don’t know, but I suspect it could have been both.
Freya, hearing Mom’s voice, turned around to face her. Dad stood up quickly and as he did, Freya raised the shovel again. I was sure that she was finally about to hit him, but rather she smashed the lighting fixture in the ceiling to bits. It was the last intact item in the bathroom, an afterthought to the destruction. She then dropped the shovel and stood there, out of breath, panting. Her blue eyes were nearly clear and her face was twisted, almost unrecognizable.
Freya had always been so docile, so lovely and well behaved. Behavior like this was so far out of the norm that it seemed like she was possessed. But Mom didn’t falter. “Freya, honey. Come out of there,” Mom said. Freya complied and Mother held her close to try to calm her down. “What on earth happened?” she asked, almost rhetorically.
“Dad killed that orange kitten,” I said, looking at him standing blank-faced in the middle of his bedroom.
Mom looked at me over Freya’s shoulder. “What?” she asked in disbelief.
“He caught that orange kitten and he killed it.”
“Where? In here?”
“Yes. He tried to drown it but he ended up breaking its neck.”
Mom looked over at Dad. If he didn’t feel any true remorse, he at least had the intelligence to look shamefaced at that particular moment.
“You’d better call a plumber to see about this before the water gets any worse.” Dad just stood there, his face changing from ashamed to enraged. He had clearly expected her to be angry with Freya, but Mom just ushered Freya out of the room and took her upstairs.
Dad turned to me and said, “Go get some towels to put down to keep the water from spreading out into the hallway.”
I just looked at him. I was an obedient kid. I always did what I was told and never back talked. I was raised on the Bible and the Commandments, but I knew even in God’s eyes there were limits to what one was expected to do. It seemed like now was a time that the notion of honoring one’s father didn’t apply. “No,” I said in a dead voice and walked out of the room.
I sat down at the kitchen table, a still moist spot marking where the kitten had rested only moments before. I felt numb. Dad ignored me when he came into the kitchen to get the phone book and the portable phone. He went into the living room, sat down on the couch, still in his wet, debris-covered clothing, and began calling until he found a plumber willing to come to the house on a Saturday afternoon. In turn, Mom ignored him when she came back downstairs after cleaning up Freya and putting her to bed.
“Where is it?” she asked me when she came into the kitchen.
“In the trash, wrapped in newspaper.”
Mom pulled the wrapped kitten out of the garbage and said, “Go get the shovel. Let’s bury the poor baby.”
I grabbed the shovel from the bathroom, hastily pulled on a pair of sneakers, and followed Mom out into the front yard. She pointed to a place right next to the mailbox and said, “Let’s bury him here.” I began to ask why we were burying the cat in the front and in the most highly trafficked place in the yard, but before I said a word it came to me. Dad got the mail every day and until the grass grew back over the place where we buried the kitten, she wanted him to see that little mound each time he went to the mailbox. I wondered how Freya would handle seeing the little grave each day, but I suspect it would have been on her mind constantly regardless.
After we buried the kitten, I leaned the shovel near the front door so the wooden handle could dry before I put it away. After that, I went to my room and spent the rest of the night in a state of fuzzy-minded agitation. I wondered if Freya would come crawl in my bed again the way she did when she was younger. I almost hoped she would. I needed comfort as much as I suspected she did, but she stayed in her room. I tossed and turned all night and didn’t sleep well. When I heard the Sunday paper delivered just after dawn, I pulled on my jeans and went outside to fetch it.
The paperboy always left it right next to the mailbox, and I approached it with trepidation. It was hard, having to see that tiny grave so soon after digging it. As I walked closer, I felt the hairs on my arms and on the back of my neck stand up. I tried to tell myself that what I was seeing was just leaves artfully arranged by the wind, but when I stood over the grave, I shuddered. The grave had been dug up and was empty, the dirt scattered all around the hole. I dropped to my knees and dug a little with my hands but I knew how far I had dug the day before. The kitten was no longer in there.
I felt my heart race with fury. Dad! He dug up the kitten! I figured Dad didn’t want a daily reminder of what he had done. I pushed all the dirt back into the hole and wondered if I should tell Mom. I put the paper under my arm, walked up the seven steps that led to our porch, and saw something move out of the corner of my eye.
I did a double take. Next to the shovel used to dig his grave sat the little orange kitten. No, it can’t be. It’s a different kitten. A litter mate perhaps. I looked over my shoulder at the grave, the now refilled hole next to the mailbox. He wasn’t dead when we buried him. He clawed his way out. I remembered the angle of his neck. He was definitely dead when I buried him. I turned to look at the kitten again. He winked at me.
Halloween night was miserable. It started misting around 5:30 p.m. and didn’t stop. It was not quite rain so parents could not deny their children the right to go trick or treating, but it cast a pall over the night’s festivities. Aside from the murdered kitten, our household was grim because my maternal grandfather had suffered a heart attack the day before and my mother had gone out of town to be with him. I needed to escape from it all and decided to go to a small party of assorted geeks like me and spent the evening watching slasher flicks. I asked Freya to go with me but she saw no point to such gory films and stayed home. When I left she was ensconced in her bedroom, where she spent even more of her time since the orange kitten’s death.
I left the party earlier than I planned. I wasn’t really enjoying the scenes of young women fleeing mad men with knives. I marveled at how quiet the streets were. The cold mist had really driven people inside. There were a few stragglers here and there, hastening home, but aside from them, the street was quiet. When I reached my house, I was shocked to find the candles in the pumpkins already blown out and the porch light off.
When I entered the house, I saw Dad sitting in his recliner with the lights off, watching a horror movie on television, a few empty beer cans on the end table next to him. Dad was not a drinker so it did not take much to ensure he was completely drunk. The candy bowl was on the coffee table and was full. Clearly beer took precedence over handing out candy, and that explained the porch light. He had turned it off to deter trick or treaters. I started to say something to him but before I spoke, I saw Freya sitting on the couch. The light from the television was dim and though I knew she was looking at me, I couldn’t see her eyes.
“Get to bed son,” Dad muttered as soon as he realized I was there.
I ignored him as I had been doing for two weeks. “Freya, what are you doing watching a movie like that?” I asked. “You don’t like slasher flicks.”
I could not see her face clearly. My father snapped, “It isn’t any of your business what Freya does. Now get to bed!” Still, I did not move. I couldn’t until I ascertained what was going on with Freya.
When a commercial for a shower cleaner came on, the screen lit the room enough for me to see Freya’s face. She looked tired. I raised an eyebrow and she gave a little shrug. I wondered if Dad had demanded she sit there with him and I decided to be strong and ask her outright if she needed help getting away from him. Freya had been extremely docile ever since she trashed the bathroom, as if that act of violent rebellion never happened or had taken from her all the energy for resistance she would ever have. But before I could say anything, she shook her head slightly, and while I don’t know now what that meant, I took it at the time to be an answer to my unasked question: Do you need help?
When she shook her head, I nodded back and went upstairs. The hall light was off and I didn’t see the cracked wood on Freya’s door, cracked wood that told clearly why Freya was downstairs. Had I seen it I would have gone back down there immediately and led her back up with me, taken her into my own room and locked the door. When I finally saw Freya’s door, my mind went immediately to the worst explanation. A door kicked in, my mother out of town, and I was not expected home early . . .
But that was not the case. When I had time to think about it, I remembered how much Dad antagonized Freya, displayed his hate for her, and shunned her. I don’t like my father much, but I can say that rather than become a man who preyed on a child, he made himself hate her and he kept her at arm’s length. His hate was how he fought against the lust that captivated other men.
What likely happened was this: Full of beer, Dad had to use the upstairs bathroom frequently and resented Freya for every step he had to climb. Seeing her door closed, then realizing it was locked, likely sent him into another rage and he kicked it in, forcing Freya to come downstairs so he could make her as miserable as he felt.
Once inside my room, I immediately went online. I had recently met a girl in an RPG chat room and spent many hours instant-messaging her. She was as close to a girlfriend as I would ever get in high school. About 15 minutes passed before I heard something crash downstairs. It was followed by another series of crashes and I leapt up mid message, not even able to risk the time to type BRB and hit enter. When I reached the bottom of the stairs, I saw Freya in the middle of the living room, the television light bouncing off her long hair, clutching the Halloween candy bowl. Her drinking glass was shattered on the hardwood floor and Dad’s beer cans had tumbled off from the side table. My father was also standing now, his fists balled up.
“What’s going on,” I asked, hoping to shout imposingly but ended up squeaking instead.
“Nothing for you to stick your nose into, Peter. You better get upstairs now!” With my father’s attention distracted, Freya tried to lunge to her left and get to the staircase, but Dad, his inebriation notwithstanding, was too fast for her. He caught her by the shoulder and shoved her back. He grabbed some of her hair when he did this and pulled some strands out when he pushed her. The hairs dangled from his fist. “You little bitch,” he sneered.
I have no idea how long we stood like that, Dad glowering at Freya, Freya caught like a deer in headlights, and me staring at them both, unable to move or speak. Then Dad suddenly rushed towards Freya and she flung the candy bowl at him. The hard plastic bowl bounced off my father’s head, scattering candy everywhere.
Before Dad could reach Freya, a series of knocks came at the door. “Go away! We’re out of candy!” Dad yelled. Seeing me on the stair case, Dad said, “I thought I told you to go to bed, Peter! Or have you come to protect your little sister? Get back upstairs before I punch you in that flabby gut of yours!”
I was still silent. I wanted to protect Freya but it was impossible for me to move. “Don’t think I don’t see the way you look at her, you pervert. You disgust me! Do you think you’re going to be her knight in shining armor, Petey?” Dad was completely out of control. I wondered if I should call Mom but what could she do hundreds of miles away? I decided I would call the police if he made one more threatening move. I knew I could not take him. I had only attended two martial arts classes. I had not expected the confrontation to come so soon. It also bothered me because the truth was, I didn’t look at Freya with lust. I was probably the only male who knew her who didn’t.
While Dad stood, deciding whom to attack first, someone knocked at the door again. “NO CANDY!” he shouted. But whoever was outside knocked a third time and finally Dad strode to the door, no less forceful for his blood alcohol content, and swung it open, switching on the porch light. “NO CANDY!” he shouted again.
Still standing on the bottom stair, I was elevated enough to see that there was no one there. “Stupid kids!” Dad went to close the door but something caught his eye and his hand dropped from the doorknob. “Mother of God,” he muttered and against all good judgment, I left the bottom step and walked behind him to see what was out there. It was the little orange kitten. He was sitting in the middle of the sidewalk that bisected the yard and led to the front porch steps.
“It can’t be,” he muttered. Dad swung open the screen door and stood outside on the porch, watching as the kitten cleaned its face. “No . . . No, it must be another kitten.” After hearing Dad speak of a kitten, Freya slid over to the door and stood close to me, watching as Dad looked at the kitten in disbelief. “You’re dead, you can’t be the same one,” he argued with himself.
Then the kitten winked at Dad. There was no mistaking it. The kitten winked at him.
Dad inhaled and let out a low roar and rushed after the kitten. The street was quiet and dark and I was surprised every light on the block didn’t come on in response to the noise he was making. He went running down the steps, but on the third step he lost his footing and began to fall forward. Two gray tabbies came rushing up the steps to the porch when it was clear he was losing his balance. Then what happened next occurred so quickly that to this day I know I never really saw it, that I am just filling in the blanks to make sense of what happened in the end. About a dozen cats fell from the trees above the porch and from the roof and landed on Dad, ensuring he fell with more force and velocity. The shock of it caused Dad to raise his arms and he did nothing to break his fall, crashing full on his face onto the sidewalk.
Freya ran past me, rushed down the steps and picked up the orange kitten. “It’s him, Peter! Did you see him wink? I didn’t know for sure it was him until I saw him wink!”
I was stunned, and was even more so when I felt something on my feet. It was the two black cats, rubbing against me in a manner they never did to anyone but Freya. They rubbed their faces against my shins and then ran down the steps to her. The two tabbies left the porch and joined in. I realized they were the two tabbies from the bizarre tableaux I had witnessed the cats engaged in earlier that week. As stupid as it may sound, I did not put it together then, not even the next day, what the cats had done. It took me several days to process what I had seen and fit the pieces together.
Freya stood cuddling the orange kitten for a minute, whispering softly to it, as the black cats pranced from sheer excitement. The tabbies disappeared into the dark on the edge of the yard. The cats that had fallen on Dad joined them and they rested there, eyes glowing.
The black cats, their purring audible even to me, stopped prancing about and also ran to the side of the house. I heard the sound of rustling leaves and the cats emerged pulling a silver sleigh. Freya saw the sleigh and smiled and set the kitten onto the sidewalk. It quickly ran to the side of the house to join its brethren. She began walking towards the sleigh, but hesitated, and then walked back to me.
She walked calmly, stepping over my father’s prone body and climbed up the steps. “Goodbye, my brother,” she said, and kissed me lightly on the lips. She then turned, walked back the way she came and settled into the sleigh. She leaned forward, took the reins, and as soon as she had them securely in hand, the two black cats, so black they looked blue, began to run, pulling the sleigh as if they were horses. The sleigh made a scraping sound when it left the grass and entered into the street, but not for long. It became airborne as the cats ran in the air, carrying Freya away.
Sometimes, when I remember that night, I recall Freya’s hair riding the wind, reflecting the moonlight like nacre, iridescent and fluid. That’s a false memory as there was no moon that night. It was so dark that when the sleigh truly took off, it was a matter of seconds before I no longer saw her at all.
I staggered to the porch steps and sat down, looking at the sky, looking to see Freya and couldn’t. The cats all came over to sniff me, almost like dogs, and I picked up the little orange one and pet him until he squirmed. When I put him down, he and the other cats raced to the side of the house once more and I never saw any of them again.
Eventually, I called an ambulance for my father and the police for good measure. I would need to explain why my sister was gone eventually, so why not deal with it and get it over with. As I waited for the ambulance to show up, I knew I would not be able to tell them the truth. I went outside and examined Dad’s clothing. There was no sign that the cats had been on him—no claw marks on the back of his shirt and no muddy paw prints. I decided then to tell everyone I had been upstairs chatting online and had heard a commotion. I rushed out on the landing and I saw Freya’s door kicked in. I went into her room to look for her. When I could not find her, I went downstairs, saw the front door open and found Dad outside, unconscious on the sidewalk.
I had no idea when I cobbled that story together that it was the best possible one I could tell. The log from my chat session helped prove I was indeed upstairs and had been interrupted by something. It served as an alibi, sad to say, because family members are always the first questioned when a child disappears. But Freya’s kicked-in door, the broken glass, the scattered beer cans, the furniture in disarray, candy all over the floor and strands of her long hair near the stairs—these helped the intruder theory. A sex fiend had entered the house, slipped by Dad who was drunk and asleep in his chair, and taken Freya by force. Awakened by the noise Freya made when she struggled, Dad had run after the offender, slipping on the wet steps, knocking himself unconscious. I, a doughy and weak boy, had been of little to use to Freya in the struggle.
Of course, there were all sorts of holes in the story, but the police never truly considered us suspects. They attributed my timeline lapses to shock and an inability to remember clearly. Dad never confirmed my story because he claimed he had no memory of much that happened before he fell and he may be telling the truth. He had been extremely drunk or his head injury could have caused memory loss. I always wondered what caused that final confrontation between him and Freya but even had he been able to remember, I know he would not have told me.
Mom came home the following afternoon and had to take the rest of the semester off from school to nurse Dad, take care of her own father when she could and to deal with the media fallout from Freya’s disappearance. Mom always knew that I had seen more that night than I told the police but she never asked. I don’t think she wants to know.
On a very basic level I forgive Dad. He was not in his right mind. Being mortal in the presence of the divine can drive a person mad, so mad that they have to drive the magical out of their life.
To this day, I have a sort of hope she will return for me. The mythical Freya married her brother and I would marry her if it meant I could have her in my life again. My most fervent hope is that my life will not be denied of her forever. But I also know my hope is pointless. I am not her real brother and I am not a god. I will never see her again.
Increasingly, my memories of her, less than six years after the event, are becoming hazy. It bothers me that my memories of her are fading and may one day become filled with false remembrances, but I try not to think of it. Even though I do not know for certain why she came or where she went, I know the ironclad truth of what Freya, my sister from the Heavens, was to me. |
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