A Guide to Being Born: Stories by Ramona Ausubel Page A

for another thing, look at him.” I go down onto my knees. I open the zip and try to dump him out, but he is stuck by his own blood to the walls. My mother and father stand over me, watching. I jam a stick in, try to loose the fur. The stick breaks. My parents do not suggest anything. I tear the bag off. Even when it goes, Houdini is still in the shape of it. His fur is still smoothed flat like something is pushing against it. Houdini cannot push back.
    While dirt goes back in, I remove the worms one by one.
    “You know they are part of the cycle,” my mother says, and I do know, but it is too soon. For now I want to let my cat rest alone without being crawled upon, under the turned earth.
    •   •   •
     
    AFTER THE BURIAL I find Belbog asleep under my kitchen windowsill. He is not wet anymore but is still red. I tap him, wake him up, walk him back to his house.
    “Have you been here all night?” I ask.
    “Is he?” he asks.
    “It’s part of the cycle,” I say. Belbog stands in the doorway and watches me. I right his overturned table and sit at it. Look at the street, at the spot where Houdini landed. The street is steaming with heat, already, even this early in the day.
    “My name means White God, did you know?” Belbog asks.
    “The continent of Europe must be very far away. Are there beautiful women there?”
    “The most beautiful anywhere, my father tells me. I hope we will be friends. Perhaps this summer you can come and together we can sell beverages on the side of the road,” Belbog says, and when he finally closes the door, I hear the lock slip, and then the other lock slip and a chain rattle itself into place.
    •   •   •
     
    WHEN I COME INSIDE, my parents are asleep on the couch, wrapped up in each other, the room full of morning light. I put a blanket over them. I take Houdini’s cookie sheet upstairs. I look out the window at the elm, at the unsmooth patch of ground. I eat scone after scone, hoping that some of the cat was left on the tray. The sun is still a colored sun, not like later when the light will be so bright the particulars of it disappear. I go to sleep too, taking the cookie sheet under the covers. I can hear my father snoring through the floor. The spears of sunlight hit my back. They drill slowly into me, warming up even the deepest insides, and I fall asleep.
    Again, my parents come knocking. “We have to hold a cremation,” they say. “Are you ready? Put on your shorts.” Out the window I see that the hole has been opened. Everything we worked to dig down has been dug up. My mother’s hair is unbrushed. She is still wearing her nightgown and my father has only his underwear on.
    “Dogs,” he says.
    “We can do a cremation here, at the house?” I ask.
    “We build a fire,” my father says.
    “Obviously. And I put the whole cat in the fire?”
    “There isn’t a whole cat,” my mother says.
    “What is there?”
    “Parts of a cat,” they say together.
    “Bones?” I ask.
    “Mostly. And some fur. And some face.”
    The sun is now exactly overhead. The trees are sweating from the undersides of their leaves. The air does not move; it is a single object set in place. I am dripping by the time I leave my doorstep. Belbog is back out with his stand and a new pitcher. He is wearing all black. He waves. I do not wave back. Wood is taken from the shed and formed into a pyramid. I haul the three sun chairs together. My mother makes cucumber sandwiches. I walk across the street to Belbog’s stand.
    “I would like three glasses, please,” I offer, and he pours.
    He looks himself up and down. “We are mourning,” he says. “I am wearing black.”
    “That’s nice of you.”
    “No charge for the beverage,” he says. “It is on my house. What are you doing now?”
    “A cremation,” I tell him. “Don’t come over.”
    “If you need any more beverage, I will be here all day. I invite you to come and help me. We will split the profits fifty–fifty.