Love Saves the Day

Laura didn’t know what came over her. There was a part of her mind that watched with a kind of bewildered detachment, even as she pushed her head through the open window and screamed, “Leave them alone!” The man must have heard her, even if he couldn’t tell what she was saying, because he looked directly at her (the crazy lady in the apartment across the way) as he kept shouting and flailing his broom. Laura waved her fists in the air and continued to scream, “Leave them alone! Leave them alone!” Over and over she shrieked, “Leave them alone!” until her throat was raw and the man grew tired of his work and disappeared again through the black door. The circles the pigeons made in the air began to tighten and shrink until, finally, a few brave souls were the first to alight. Soon all the pigeons had settled back onto the rooftop, as if nothing had happened to disturb their rest.

Laura pulled her head back through the window and closed it. She discovered small, red half-moons where her fingernails had dug into the flesh of her palms. Her hands were shaking, and she ran them through her hair and took a few deep breaths to steady herself. Prudence was sitting on her haunches in front of Laura, eyeing her steadfastly.

“What are you looking at?” she demanded hoarsely of Prudence, thinking that now she really must be losing her mind. “My mother never yelled in front of you?”

To Laura’s surprise, Prudence purred and bumped her head affectionately against Laura’s ankles. Then she turned and curled the tip of her tail around the bottom of Laura’s leg.

11

Prudence

IT’S BEEN RAINING ALL DAY. ALL THE WAY DOWNSTAIRS ON THE SIDEWALK, humans struggle against the wind with inside-out umbrellas that pull them backward or into the street. Some of them finally give up and throw the umbrellas into trash cans with disgust. In Lower East Side, our apartment was close enough to the street that I could look out the window and see if Sarah was about to walk in. From this high up, though, I can never tell if any of the humans on the sidewalk is Laura or Josh. I don’t know if Laura had any trouble with the little black umbrella she took with her this morning, but she’s sopping when she gets home. “Give me a minute, Prudence,” she says when she sees me waiting for her by the front door. “Let me get out of these wet clothes first.” She leaves little drip-drops of water behind her as she walks toward the stairs.

Somebody left the window open in my upstairs room this morning, and some of the rainwater has spotted the white curtains and dripped inside. I’m pleased to note, though, that while a little water got into one of the boxes Josh moved in here from Home Office, none has gotten into any of the Sarah-boxes, which live farther into the room. It’s more crowded in here than it used to be, but not so crowded that I can’t still throw little things out of the Sarah-boxes for Laura to find and talk to me about.

The air from outside smells like the rolls of new quarters Sarah used to bring home to feed to the laundry machines in Basement, which means there’ll be lightning soon. It also means that the room doesn’t have as much of the fading Sarah-and-me-together smell, but that’s okay. Listening to Laura talk about Sarah is almost as good as breathing in her smell—my own memories of Sarah seem much more real when Laura tells me about hers.

There are times when she doesn’t say much. Once we found a little plastic bag with some old pins—the round, colorful kind that humans occasionally attach to their clothing. Laura picked one out of the bunch and said, “I begged my mother to buy me this Menudo pin after I saw my best friend Maria Elena wearing one.” Then she laughed. “I think I wore it on my backpack for about two weeks before I got tired of it and left it at the store.” That was all she had to say about any of the pins before putting them away again. But other times she’ll tell longer stories, or say things that are more about Sarah than other people Laura remembers, and those are the best times of all.

It bothered me at first, throwing Sarah’s and my old things out of the boxes they’re supposed to be in, because Sarah always said how important it was to keep your past organized. Throwing things on the floor is the opposite of being organized. But if I didn’t show these things to Laura to make her tell me about her memories, then Sarah wouldn’t have a past at all.