Bethany Grows Up
“I’m going to be LAAAAAATTTTEEEEE!!!! WHERE THE FUCK IS MY SHIRT!!!!!”
Bethany yells into the void of her home. No one is listening. Her siblings are fighting in the living room, and Bethany is, once again, running late to work.
“Why do I always do this?!?” she thinks to herself. She should have left five minutes ago, but she waited till the last minute, again, and her clean work shirt is missing.
She’s not just frustrated about the shirt, which was still sitting in the washing machine soaking wet. Bethany (never Beth) was 17 and mad at the whole world. Her parents, Debbie and Seth are in the middle of a nasty divorce. Her and her mother are now living in a duplex apartment with her two siblings. She went from her own bedroom, to sharing a room with her 12 year old sister, Megan.
Toys are everywhere! Trash is everywhere! No one cooked dinner! Nothing is how it’s suppose to be! She’s frustrated at how she’s being “punished” when she hasn’t done anything wrong in her life! She doesn’t really think or understand how this is going to be the best for her and her family in the long run.
She doesn’t know that one day very soon, her mother will go on her first date with Bob: the repair man. His sweet, gentle nature (more than likely influenced by the scar on his face) will eventually make the world better for Debbie. She doesn’t yet know that together Bob and Debbie would be able to build a new life together, a happier life for Bethany and her two siblings.
In her mind, her family’s future doesn’t matter to her now. She’s 17 and the world is against her. She wants to go to school for art and her parents are pushing her towards nursing school.
“It’s better to be an employed nurse, than an unemployed artist!” Her mother had told her the week earlier. It could have easily turned into a blowout of a fight, god knows both of them had explosive tempers, but on this day, they were just so tired from living their everyday life. That day the fight would end with Bethany slamming the door to her room and Debbie opening a bottle of pinot she kept for just these sort of afternoons.
But on this October evening, Debbie was at one of her two jobs. She had been working extra shifts to help pay for their every day life. Debbie had encouraged Bethany to get a job, to save up for college and to help pay for things around the house. She was almost an adult and had to slowly start learning how to take care of herself. “I’m not always going to be there, you know…” a message Debbie had been trying to get through Bethany’s thick skull, since they moved into their duplex home.
Bethany was convinced she was going to move out the day she turned 18 and become the person she always dreamed she could be. She would be free of her nagging mother, her siblings who she always had to take care of. Bethany could go wherever she wanted, whenever she wanted. The world had not yet told her the cruel joke of adulthood, she had not learned that paying rent, car loans, school took money and money took time and soon she wouldn’t have much of either. Like many of us in our teenage years, Bethany just didn’t know just how easy she had it.
Bethany was running late for her closing shift at Shaver’s Sandwiches, family owned deli/bar just down the street from the family’s old house. Shaver’s was owned by the family of her one time middle school best friend and Girl Scout Brownie, Ashley.
Ashley had the perfect life and the quintessential All American Family. Her family were successful, had a great house. Ashley’s brother Jake was handsome and Bethany always enjoyed his attention. They had a two-story home, something Bethany would attribute to success. Successful people owned two story houses, not the poor and the struggling. They had an above ground pool in the backyard and a trampoline that, when the parents were not looking, they would jump from one into the other.
That was a long time ago, since Bethany had been invited over to the Shaver’s family home. Her and Ashley had drifted apart, as teenagers do. It was just a lucky chance that when Debbie had been pestering Bethany to get a job, that Mr. Shaver called to invite Bethany to work for the small family business. (She wouldn’t find out till years later that Debbie had mentioned to Mr. Shaver that Bethany needed a job.)
Bethany didn’t mind the work. It wasn’t hard, but she had already gotten in trouble for her tardiness. Her boss, Bryan, was hard on her. She thought he wanted more from her, but he was 25 and she was only 17. She liked the attention he gave her,and might have had a crush on Bryan, but with their age gap, she never gave him much thought. She just didn’t want to let down The Shavers. She was tired of letting people down. Tired of being on the offensive. Tired of fighting. She just wanted a nice easy night at work, and as she stormed around the house, looking for her clean shirt (which was in the washing machine) she knew that a nice, easy night was probably not in her future.
“Get out of my way!” She screamed at little Ray, her 7 year old brother. He was playing with his Star Wars toys in the exact center of the living room. She didn’t really mean to yell at him. Sure she was a little miffed that he got his own bedroom in the cramped apartment, and she didn’t think it was fair she had to share her room with her littlest sister. But that wasn’t Ray’s fault. Ray just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.
“Hey! Don’t be mean!” yelled Ray as Bethany kicked a Storm Trooper across the room.
“AAARRRRGGGGHHH!!!!” She yelled to not just release her frustration, but as a warning to those who might get into her way.
“Where the hell is my shirt?!?!” She ran back into her room to rummage through the clean clothes pile that lived at the end of the bed, waiting for her mother to finally put away. Bethany was still a long way away from becoming the adult she imagined.
She should have left eight minutes ago. She doesn’t have the time or the choice anymore, and she grabs the dirty shirt she wore the night before. It has a mustard stain going down the front, but she hoped no one would notice once she put her apron on and clocked in. It could pass. It would have to do.
Bethany grabbed the last of her things and stormed out the door, yelling behind her, “BE GOOD YOU LITTLE SHITS! Mom will be home in an hour! Call Mrs. Harris next door if you need anything!” and slammed the door behind her.
She fumbled in her backpack for her car keys. She had inherited her aunt’s old Ford Taurus. Even though her Aunt had only been 54 when she gave the car to her sister’s family, Bethany thought of her aunt’s car as a little old lady’s car.
She wasn’t the biggest fan of the light blue Taurus, but for now, it was HER car. She had plastered band stickers all over the rear windshield and had a Sailor Moon medallion hanging from her rear-view mirror. It had a dent in the side, from where she hit that yellow pole, the last time she had been in a hurry. It irked her every time she noticed it, so she tried to avoid the passenger side of her car as much as possible.
After today, she would not make that mistake again. She would remember these next few moments for the rest of her life. She will look back and wonder in the years to come, as she thinks back to this moment in her life and wonder, “Had I just been more responsible…. had I just helped out around the house more… had I just been a better person at that time…. Would it have even happened?”
Bethany jumped into her car. She was rushed. She was flustered. How much shit was Bryan going to give her tonight for coming in late? Should she call and warn them? No time. She’s better off just being the 10 minutes late and hoping that no one will notice. But she knows Ryan will. She can see his shit eating grin now, sure to be accompanied by a smart ass remark. He always had one prepared.
Frantically she jumps in the car.
She turns the key.
The engine turns over.
She doesn’t wait.
She throws the car into reverse and hits the gas.
There was a strange bump that should not have happened in their short driveway. A bump, a thud and a squeal. She turns her head around and sees the sight that will follow her until the day Alzheimer’s will release her of this memory.
Where was Ray and Samantha when she left? What did she hit? Who did she hit? She’s paralyzed with fear, but has to look forward. She has to look. She turns in her seat to face her new life.
What she sees will live with her forever. Her art will always have a hint of sadness, that many will equate to her parents painful divorce, or her father’s death that will occur the next two years, but the real moment she always turns back to, where the sadness really lives in her heart is this moment. Right here. Right now.
She turns around and she screams. It’s a quiet scream, but in her head it is deafening.
There in front of her she sees a large cat laying in her driveway, right underneath where her car had just been moments before.
I can’t breathe.
Bethany no longer cares about being late. She feels foolish now that she was so mad, so frustrated. So awful. She can’t breathe and the confines of the car start to close in around her. She opens up the door and starts to step out, but the car screams back at her. She’s still in reverse. She throws the car into park and collapses on the steering wheel. She doesn’t want to look up, she can’t look up.
I can’t breathe.
But she has to look up. She has to look at what has happened before her. She sits there for only seconds, but it will feel like a millennia when she thinks back upon this night.
I can’t breathe.
She crawls herself out of the Taurus. Bethany digs down deep inside herself and finds the courage to make those few short steps to the body laying on the driveway. She looks down and see’s its the alley cat that has been raiding the family’s trashcans.
I can’t breathe.
Her mother had always called the cat Rumples, because it reminder her of the mangy cat from the musical she loved so much as a child. Ray loved the cat and called it his own, but the family had not ever seriously thought about adopting the cat. Instead it roamed the streets, wild and feral, very befitting of the name their mother had given it.
I can’t breathe.
The family had always imagined the little grey cat as this great, mythical Tom Cat, who had lived in the alley and went on many late night adventures. Looking down upon it’s dying body, Bethany realizes with horror, that Rumples was a female cat. Bethany realized this by looking down and realizing the cat had not been fat, as much as it had been pregnant.
I can’t breathe.
She could not longer fight back the tears as she looked down to discover Rumples had been nursing four little kittens underneath her pale blue Taurus.
I can’t breathe.
She doesn’t remember yelling, or screaming, or crying, but she must have. Something got the attention of her little brother.
“What’s wrong?” cried Ray from a crack in the front door.
“GO BACK INSIDE NOW,” Bethany yelled back at the scared boy.
“What happened?” He took a few steps down the front steps and stopped cold in his tracks when he saw the desperation on his sister’s face. She had been crying hard. Snot ran from her nose. Her face was red, and not from her temper tantrum in the house.
He didn’t know it then, and would barely remember this moment in the years to come, but little Ray, only seven years old watched as his sister changed from the little brat she had once been, into the woman she would someday become.
He saw her in that moment and knew she was different and that she needed help. This was something real. Something wrong. He turned and walked back in the door to look for his other sister. She was older. She could help.
Bethany stood there in horror and looked at the tiny kittens and Rumples who was twitching in agony, fighting a loosing battle to hold onto the world of the living.
She didn’t know what to do. Her brother would return, and with him he would most likely bring Megan with him. She did not want her siblings to witness this horror, so she did the only thing she could think of. She ran to her car and grabbed that dirty, mustard stained shirt and used it to cover up Rumples.
She could hear the kittens crying out for their mother. She could see them moving underneath her filthy shirt. She was no longer thinking about work, about college, or moving out. She was only thinking of her siblings, and making sure they did not witness this horror that she created.
Bethany did the only thing she knew how to do. She called her father. If she was lucky, he would be at home and would be drunk. If he was sober, somehow he would find a way to blame this all on her mother, who was still working.
She could feel his voice and it made her cringe. “Where is your mother? What do you mean she’s still at work? Who was going to watch the kids?!?” She hoped he was drunk, that way he would be much easier to manage.
But she was not so lucky, as Dad didn’t answer the phone. She did not leave a message. She was alone in this moment. She had thought she was a grown up adult, just an hour earlier, but now she knew that she still had a long way to go.
Megan and Ray peaked out from the front door together now. They stayed back to quietly survey what was going on. They had never seen Bethany this distraught before. Not even when Mom and Dad decided to get a divorce and she had to share a room with Megan. No, they had never seen her like this before and kept their distance. They were scared. They wanted to help the sister they didn’t always like, but always loved.
“Bethany?” cried out Megan from just inside the door, “Are you okay?”
Bethany just sat there and quietly cried. She didn’t bother to wipe the snot from her face. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want her siblings to see the mess she had made in her hurry to leave.
“God damn it. Why couldn’t I have found my shirt?!?” She mutter to herself. In the months and years that past, she would realize that if she had stepped up to help the family more, cooked dinner, helped with the dishes and laundry, maybe she would have known where the shirt had been. If only she hadn’t been such a little fucking brat. She would punish herself for the rest of her life with guilt and regret, but right now in this moment she just cried and cried and cried.
Ray and Megan slowly moved from the door and down the walkway to Bethany. They still did not know what was wrong, but wanted to comfort their sister. Ray hugged Bethany first, with Megan right behind him. They had not hugged their sister in years, and they held on as long as they could. They loved her, even if she was kind of a monster.
Megan quietly asked, “Are you okay?”
Bethany didn’t answer. She sat there on the cool concrete and cried. She cried even more because in this moment she didn’t feel like she deserved the love of her siblings. She had been such a terror to them these last few months of exile. She had yelled, screamed, punched and terrorized them and in this moment, she didn’t think she deserved their love.
“Please [sob]… Please go back [sob]… inside. Something happened.” She couldn’t find her words.
They stayed outside and held onto their sister for a few moments longer, the sun was going down now and the street lights in the neighborhood were kicking on.
A quiet “Please…..” was all she could eek out.
This time the children listened. They left their sister in the driveway and clunk back inside. Ray watched quietly from the door, holding the same Star Wars toy that just minutes ago Bethany had kicked across the living room. Megan, not knowing what else to do, followed her older sister’s advice. She picked up the phone and called Mrs. Harris from next door.
Mrs. Harris was a widower and retired librarian. She sat on her back porch, drinking tea and reading book after book all day long. She had great grand kids who come to visit every once in a while. Sometime they will even play Star Wars with Ray. She had a quiet happy life. She enjoyed talking to Debbie in the backyard, but the children could be a bit much. They were much louder than she was use to in her sunset years. Still, it was nice to have some life in the duplex, after the years she had spent next door to the previous tenant, who she never met and was never home. So Mrs. Harris often stopped by to leave the family treats, books and flowers from their shared garden.
Mrs. Harris was wiping down her kitchen after finishing her dinner for one. She had heard some kind of commotion from the front of the duplex, but with two little kids and a hormonal teenager, she didn’t think much of the sounds. She was getting more and more use to the yelling every day.
When the phone suddenly rang, it startled her. She rarely received phone calls from her family anymore. So she almost let it go to voice mail. “Damned telemarketers,” she thought. They had scammed her friend Betty-Louise a few years earlier and she would be damned if she would fall for their scams. But in the end, she felt a scratch at the back of her head and went against her best laid plans and answered the phone to find little Megan in tears on the other end of the line.
“Mrs. Harris? This is Megan from next door. Our mom isn’t home and something happened…” Megan trailed off, unsure of what to say. She didn’t really know what had been happening in the front yard herself.
“Megan! My dear! Is everything alright?”
“I don’t know…. Bethany is in the front yard crying. Like really crying. I… I don’t know…”
Mrs. Harris took a deep breath. Bethany was nice enough, but the walls were thin and Mrs. Harris had heard Bethany’s rants towards her mother through the paper thin walls. She wasn’t sure she liked Bethany, but the child was young. “She’d up grow in to a fine young, respectable woman or or she wouldn’t,” was what Mrs. Harris had thought of the child.
“Alright Ms. Megan, I’ll be right over.”
She hung the phone up, dried her hands and took inventory of the kitchen. Perhaps she needed another glass of chardonnay before heading out to the front yard. “The teenager is probably dealing with a break up or other such nonsense.” Mrs. Harris decided to forgo the wine and walked around to the front of the duplex.
She could hear the sobbing almost as soon as she stepped outside her door.
“Bethany? Are you okay, dear?”
More sobbing, this time more uncontrollable.
“What’s happened, my dear? Are you okay?”
“I…I….[sobs]…I didn’t mean too…”
“Didn’t mean to what, my dear?”
“I killed…… her…..” and Bethany wobbled like the weeble she felt like. She couldn’t fall down, she didn’t think she had the strength to get back up, so she just rolled in her spot. Not quite falling, not quite sitting. She was something in between.
That’s when Mrs. Harris noticed the shirt. She noticed the squeaks. The Crying.
“Bethany…. What happened?” But Mrs. Harris had seen something like this before. She didn’t have to look, She knew instinctively that the cat she had been quietly feeding for years on the back stoop of her retirement duplex was underneath the dirty shirt. She had buried many deceased pets of her own. She looked at the sobbing child before her and knew with that magical sense that a mother has, she knew what to do.
Mrs. Harris didn’t wait for an answer. She peeked beneath the mustard stained work shirt and saw the animal she had always thought of as Salem, lying dead on the concrete. She gasped, but not for the dead animal, but for the girl who’s innocence would forever be lost in this moment. Mrs. Harris hoped that the little girl had not allowed her siblings to see, and more importantly, Mrs. Harris hoped that the little girl had not watched the light disappear from the little animal’s eyes.
Four kittens lay there with their mother, known to some as both Salem and Mr. Rumples. The kittens crowded around their mother, knowing something was wrong, but not knowing that she would never nurse them, clean them, or cuddle with them ever again.
Mrs. Harris pulled the shirt back over the animals and sat down next to Bethany. She looked at the driveway, at the still running car and understood what had happened. She shook her head and thought again, “what a shame.”
She had loved that cat. It had brought her great joy in her aging years. Salem was a friend to Mrs. Harris when she didn’t know she needed one. She would come around uninvited to her house and make herself at home around the duplex’s back porch. She would feed the cat from time to time to thank it for it’s friendship. Nothing too extraordinary. Dry cat food and the occasional treat of tuna, if Mrs. Harris had been eating tuna salad for lunch. She loved that cat with all her heart, but knew it did not belong to her. Salem had belonged to the world.
Mrs. Harris put her hand on the girl’s shoulder. She didn’t feel right hugging the bratty child, but knew the child needed some comfort.
“Bethany,” Mrs. Harris whispered, “I’m so sorry.” And with that Mrs. Harris let out a cry of her own. She let it out, not for the animal, but for the child. For her own lost loves, and for the kittens who would never know their mother.
“It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay….”
Bethany sobbed, while Mrs. Harris sat there holding her hand. Trying to console her. Ray came out of the apartment and sat on the steps and watched, while Megan watched from the window. Both of them too young to understand what is happening. They wanted to help, but they didn’t know how to help. Instead, they watched and waited.
“Ray,” hollered Mrs. Harris, “Would you bring your sister a glass of water, please?”
“Listen child, we have to be strong for the next few minutes. We have to get it together and hold it together for just a few minutes more, okay? You with me? We have to get this cleaned up before your brother and sister see what’s happened. Can you do that for me?”
Still sobbing uncontrollably, Bethany manages a nod. She understands. She’s only 17, but in this moment she feels old. She feels tired.
Mrs. Harris reaches into the car and turns off the engine. Ray returns with the water and Mrs. Harris sends him inside with his sister. Mrs. Harris knows Debbie should be home soon, but she doesn’t want to leave her neighbor, who has been having a tough time in the divorce, with this on her plate. Mrs. Harris has lived a long life and buried many things she’s loved. She can bury this animal as well. And what to do with the kittens?
“Come on girl, drink up! You need to replace all the tears you’re shedding! You don’t want to dehydrate yourself, do you?” Mrs. Harris was herself thinking of the Chardonnay she left in the kitchen. She was earning more than a single glass now. She might treat herself to the rest of the bottle, once she had helped the family.
They both sat huddled in the driveway, as the sun set around them. Mrs. Harris just let the girl sit there and cry. She knew it was good for the girl to let it out of her. Perhaps Mrs. Harris had judged her too harshly. Perhaps she wasn’t such a bad kid after all.
After what felt like hours, the two of them found the strength to get up from the concrete. Bethany had forgotten to drag the recycling to the curb, and the can was overflowing with boxes. She had selected a box that her mother had brought home from Costco. The box had sat on the front porch waiting for someone to take it to the can. Unknown to the two of them, while the box had sat on the porch, Rumple-Salem had used that box to sunbathe in, while getting ready to give birth to her litter.
It wasn’t a fancy box, but it just felt right in Bethany’s hands. Mrs. Harris wrapped the cat in the mustard stained shirt, and they gently placed Rumple-Salem into the her new home.
Bethany chose a much smaller box for her next task at hand. Together they wrangled up the kittens and place them inside the small shoe box, that had once carried Ray’s Spider-man shoes.
“What’s going to happen to them?”
“I don’t know, but I know we can try to take care of them. They need to be kept warm. They will need milk.”
“Oh my god……… [sobs]…. What have I done?”
Mrs. Harris sighs a deep sigh. “Bethany, accidents happen. Life happens. Let’s get you inside and clean you up….”
Bethany screams through the sobs, “Oh my god! I have to go to work!,” as she remembers she should have been at work thirty minutes ago and remembering just how this terrible night began.
Mrs. Harris walked young Bethany inside. They brought the four kittens inside with them. Megan and Ray were silent as the two women went into the bathroom, taking with them a Spider-man shoe-box of squeaks.
“You’re not going to work tonight my dear. You are in no way, shape or form to go out in public. I’ll call Shaver’s myself and let them know.”
“But…..”
“No ‘buts’ young lady. I’ll handle it for you. You just take a few moments in here. Breathe. Try to relax. Wash your face with warm water. It will do you some good. You’ve had a hard night.”
Bethany can hear Mrs. Harris on the phone in the kitchen. Bethany had never liked Mrs. Harris. Thought of her as a “judgmental old hag” that lived next door. But the truth is, Bethany never knew Mrs. Harris. She was just the woman always reading on the porch.
But right now, Mrs. Harris had become her hero. She would later remember just how strong and decisive Mrs. Harris was in those moments, when Bethany needed her the most. They would become friends and in the years that past, they stayed in touch. The next time Bethany would would remember crying this hard would be twelve years later at Mrs. Harris memorial service. She would die peacefully in the rocking chair in her living room, with her favorite book in her lap, and a half drunk glass of chardonnay sitting beside her. It would be cardiac arrest, but the paramedics and the neighbors who would find her, would comment that she had a smile on her face when she passed.
On that day, many years in the future, Bethany would once again cry for Mr. Rumples & the kittens who would grow up without a mother. She would cry for the little girl that died that day on the day Bethany became a woman and she would cry because the world would feel just a little bit…. “less” without Mrs. Harris in the world.
Debbie came home not long afterwards and was surprised to find Kathy, Mrs. Harris in her dirty duplex apartment. The two ladies talked outside about the events of that night. Debbie cried on Mrs. Harris’s shoulder. She was ashamed she could not have been there with them, but…. so thankful that Kathy had been there for her family.
They would bury Rumple-Salem the next morning. No one would be going to school. Mrs. Harris would take the kittens to the vet first thing in the morning. She didn’t mind, and she would take care of the costs. Salem had been the cat she had looked after for all these years, and she would continue to look after the kittens as long as she could.
Megan and Ray were introduced to the squeaks that came from inside the Spider-man shoe box. Debbie told the children not to name the kittens. “Don’t get attached!” But they children would do it regardless
The four kittens were named, Ray named the runt of the little, Luke, while Megan would name the little grey kitten Ghost. The two of them would decide Penelope for the black cat with white spots and Debbie thought the pure black cat looked like a Charlie.
Luke would not make it through the night. Did he die of a broken heart or was he just cold and hungry in his shoe box home?
Bethany would stay up all night watching the kittens. She held little Luke in her hand as he passed away. “What have I done?” would run through her head all night long as she tried her best to take care of the kittens. She would quietly cry the night away, silently as her family around her slept.
The family, including Mrs. Kathy Harris, would bury Rumple-Salem & Luke first thing in the morning. They buried the cats in the flower bed next to the beloved porch they had made for their home. Flowers would one day grow out of that garden and would always remind Mrs. Harris of that day oh so long ago in October.
Everyone cried, except for Bethany. She had cried enough tears. She had cried so many tears that she didn’t know if she could ever cry again. She vowed to make sure she was never the cause of something so gruesome ever again.
The other three kittens were taken to the Vet first thing in the morning, and that’s where they stayed for another six weeks. The kittens were lucky to find a mother cat who took them into her breast like they were her own. Penelope, Ghost and Charlie would all find homes in the next few weeks.
Megan and Ray pleaded with Debbie let them keep the kittens, but life had been too loud for the small little family. So much drama in such a short amount of time. Debbie knew that the kittens would long remind the family of what and how much they have lost.
But there was a small ray of sunshine. Mrs. Harris took a liking to old Charlie. She saw something within that black fur and brought him home to live with her. Charlie wasn’t Salem, but she saw that same loving look in Charlies eyes. She took him into her home, and in doing so, kept the animal in the lives of everyone in that small duplex home.
Bethany did eventually find her work shirt. She talked to Amanda and the Shavers and they gave her a week off from the shop. Bryan would be gone by the time she returned. It turned out he had been drinking on the job and Ashley, covering for Bethany caught him.
It was a small victory for Bethany, who would not longer have to put up with his shit. One good thing to come out of all the bad she had caused. But she couldn’t enjoy it. It felt hollow.
Bethany took that week off. She would go to school to become a nurse like her mother wanted for her. She wanted to help give life, after she saw what she could do taking it.
She would not put her art career on hold though. Her mother was right, of course. Mothers are usually right. But Bethany would find a way to make art and help people. She would find a way to do both. She had to find a way to do both.
That week off from work, Bethany pulled her easel out of the garage and into the driveway. She would work through the pain. Her first painting would be a portrait of Rumple-Salem. She wanted to capture the fun loving adventures the family had long through the cat must have had, before meeting the passenger side tire of Bethany’s Ford Taurus.
She didn’t move out at 18 as she had planned. She stayed home and helped her mother pay the bills. She cooked and cleaned around the house when she could. She always, ALWAYS made sure she did her laundry. She never left clothes in the washing machine for days at a time any longer. She no longer waited for her mother to come home tired and take care of the house.
Her first official art showcase would be some years later, in the lobby of a local coffee shop where she studied for her nursing exams. She had titled her show, “Bastet,” after the Egyptian god of Cats. She would sit in the coffee shop studying and both dread and enjoy hearing the customers talk about her artwork.
“Cats, eh?”
“Sad cats.”
“I like this one with the black cat.”
“Black cats are bad luck.”
“I dunno. I had a black cat as a kid. We called him Jazz. Thought he was a girl cat. Named her Jasmine. Imagine our surprise when we found out she had a penis!” the customer laughed. “I always thought Jazz brought me good luck.”
That first portrait she created in her driveway hung in a small corner of the coffee shop, the same corner she would spend hours toiling away over her text books. She would sit in her corner thinking about medicine and how she could help people and she would gaze into Rumples eyes and remember that afternoon that Bethany “grew up.”
