2 Written by Melanny Cowley

    Marshmallow never bit anybody. She was the one cat that didn’t try to crowd the bowl. She was mostly white, with black tips on her ears. Someone hit her on the highway near our little yellow house. Maggie found her first. She busted through the front door one night after running out for the paper, her breath louder than the television. Her black hair fell in her eyes and her large, eight-year-old teeth poked out, gapped and pointy, dwarfing the rest of her face.“Marshmallow got runned over! I think she’s dead!”
    We ran out in our nightgowns and pajamas. Nana was wearing a light blue nightgown that draped over her great, spherical middle. The sun sunk orange over everything in the dusk. It was a chilly October and all of us but Nana shivered as we huddled in the street directly in front of the house.  Marshmallow, in essence, was broken. Her body lay flattened down the center, her head cocked oddly towards the sky, bearing teeth in a grimace, eyes narrowed to two blue slivers. 
    “Sweet Jesus,” Nana said, and she scooped her up.The cat came up in one piece, already stiff. Blood like gel toothpaste dripped onto the asphalt.  Nana pulled the cat to the blue rayon of her bodice. It flopped towards her like a dinner plate. “Quick, inside!” Nana said.
    We all ran inside, as though we anticipated help, as though running would somehow undo what had been done. Nana grabbed a dishtowel off the stove and placed it on the square kitchen table, then laid Marshmallow down. Nana’s eyelids were naturally puffy, but they seemed even more now, the pale gray of her eyes lining with red as she brushed off the sprouting of tears. Her damp gray hair (it was always damp) frizzed on her forehead, and her fair skin flushed in the warmth of the house.
    “We need to pray,” Nana said, “We need to pray for Jesus to heal her.” We all held hands and prayed. Nana did the praying and we squeezed our eyes shut as though God didn’t answer if we peeked. We prayed and prayed until the sides of our legs hurt. “Nana,” Jesse said tentatively, “I think Marshmallow’s dead.” I had been thinking this for a long time. Impressed, I placed a hand under his elbow.  I was only nine years old. He was the oldest, at ten.  Maybe she would listen to him.  Nana grabbed his shoulders with her puffy hands, like two fingery pillows, and shook him a bit. His elbow rammed my chest.
    “You don’t have the faith! That’s what you need. If you have the faith, Jesus will heal this cat, just like He healed me when I broke my back. If we had the faith, He wouldn’t have taken your parents. Oh God, that’s why your mother’s gone.”Nana slumped to the floor in a mess of tears, sobbing loudly. “That’s why she’s gone, that’s why she’s gone…”Finally, Jesse stepped towards the table and scooped the cat up in the towel.
    “I’m taking her out back. Jesus can heal her out there,” he said. Nana’s head snapped up and her eyes dried like they had been vacuumed.
    “Don’t you be smart,” she said as he slammed the back door.

Posted on November 7th, 2008 in Fiction