The Cat at the Wall (9 page)

Twenty

—

I got
too sad sitting next to the boy, knowing that his parents were dead and it might be a while before anybody figured it out to tell him. I wanted to forget about him so I went back to the window to see if anything new was going on.

Big mistake. When I got there, Abdullah was standing off to the side, leaning against a lamp post with his hands in his pockets. He was smiling, but I knew it was a mean smile, not a happy smile. While I was watching, he got a call on his cell. It was very short. As soon as he hung up and put the phone back in his pocket, he went to his gang of rock-throwers and got them to move away from the house.

Seconds later, the first bullet hit the house.

It was loud and it was sudden.

In the instant after it hit, the crowd outside the house froze. Then everything and everyone started to panic. The sheep bolted in all directions. The kids screamed and dropped to the ground, covering their heads and rolling up into little balls like those bugs that live in the basement and roll in on themselves when you touch them. The adults tried to cover as many children as they could.

Some of the stone-throwing boys looked scared but excited. Abdullah, who seemed to be the ring-leader, looked defiant. He even looked over at Ms. Fahima and sneered at her the way I used to sneer at Ms. Zero when I made some clever comment about her to my friends.

Inside the house, Omar started rocking back and forth like a rocking horse in a hurricane, wailing the stupid punishment poem at the top of his lungs. Aaron and Simcha had their rifles out. One pointed his gun at the window, the other at the door.

Bang!
A second shot hit the house. This one came very close to the door. The third shot came soon after. It hit the door smack at head level.

“I can’t see the shooter!” Simcha shouted.

“Are you crazy? Get away from the window!”

The rifle shots excited the stone-throwing boys. They picked up more stones and started heaving them at the house.

Ms. Fahima ran right over to them and pulled on their arms, trying to take the stones away.

“I know all of your parents! I know your teachers and I know your Scout leaders. This is not helping!”

“Out of the way, old woman!” Abdullah said. “If you had done your job right when you were younger and kicked the Israelis out, we would not still be under occupation today!”

“You need to listen,” Ms. Fahima said, trying to grab the rock out of Abdullah’s hand. He pushed her away. She fell to the ground.

“Hey! Don’t push my old teacher!” One of Abdullah’s friends knelt down to help her up. Other boys joined him. Ms. Fahima got back to her feet. She was not hurt.

“I’m disappointed in you,” she said to Abdullah. “You can make better choices. Think about the long term.”

“There is no long term,” Abdullah said. “There is no tomorrow. There is only today — and fighting back!”

“I’m going to see if I can see the shooter,” Simcha said. “If I can see him, I can get him. Cover me.”

“Don’t!” shouted Aaron. “You’ll make things worse!”

Simcha started to open the door. Omar saw his chance and ran toward the opening. Aaron caught him and put him down on the rug. He put his boot on Omar’s back. Not roughly, but with enough pressure to keep the boy there. Omar was a scrawny little thing. It did not take much effort.

Simcha threw open the door and unleashed a volley of bullets from his automatic rifle up in the direction of the sniper fire. Then he backed away and Aaron slammed the door shut.

For a very long moment, everyone played statues.

Then another bullet hit the door.

Nothing had been gained. Everyone was stuck exactly where they were.

The gunfire attracted more attention. The sound of the riots came closer. It was accompanied by the sound of tanks and helicopters and army boots stomping the ground.

“Our guys are here,” Simcha said. “About time.”

Whatever was going to happen, I would have a front row seat.

Twenty-one

—

We’re coming
up to the moment of my death.

I blame a lot of it on my sister.

Polly’s handwriting looked a lot like mine. I went to her and asked her to help me write out the punishment poems.

“No,” she said.

“Come on! If you don’t help me, I won’t be able to go on the trip.”

“I don’t care.”

“I’ll pay you,” I said, even though I didn’t have any money, and if I did, I sure wouldn’t give it to her.

“I don’t need your money,” Polly said.

Which, unfortunately, was true. After her furniture store radio commercial, other local businesses hired her, too. She did a radio ad for the health food store and one for Dollar Days, the annual sidewalk sale the downtown business association put on.

“Help me or I’ll make your life miserable.”

“I’m not afraid of you,” she said.

My friends wouldn’t help me, either. I wasted lot of time trying to make them.

“You should have done them as you got them,” Josie said. “Everybody else did.”

I almost hit her.

As the date of the class trip came nearer, I was forced to make a decision. I had to tell my parents about the detentions or I had to do the detentions myself. They already knew about the trip — Polly the rat told them — so they would know something was up if I wasn’t on it.

I decided to tell them about the detentions.

“Ms. Sealand has it in for me,” I said. “Really, she’s been terrible to me all year. I didn’t tell you because I wanted to deal with it myself. But she’s being really unfair!”

My mother ended up in a meeting with the teacher and the principal during a lunch hour. My father couldn’t be there. One of his clients had died and the family was fighting over the will. But I had to attend.

“This is about more than the class trip,” my mother said. “I don’t care whether Clare goes to Washington with her class or goes with us sometime on a family vacation, or doesn’t go at all, for that matter. This is about what appears to be systematic bullying by your teacher of my child.”

The principal looked at Ms. Zero.

“You are right that this is about more than the class trip,” she said. “The detentions are part of Clare’s assignments. If she does not complete them, the incomplete work will bring down her overall average.”

“Now, hang on a second,” Mom said, getting up on her lawyer legs. “Are you telling me that you might lower my daughter’s grades if she doesn’t write out some poem you arbitrarily assigned for detention?”

I had a very good feeling about the way the meeting was going, and I was right. The principal did not want a hassle with my mother. He directed Ms. Zero to wipe out the crushing load of punishment poems (he didn’t say “crushing load,” but that’s what it was) and to find another, more reasonable detention for me to do.

Ms. Zero just nodded and said, “All right.” She didn’t argue. She did not look ashamed. She looked exactly as I imagine she would have looked if she had won.

When I went back to class after lunch, my name was off the board. I got a lot of looks from the other kids, and a lot of questions at recess.

I thought about bragging but I just didn’t feel like it.

I think I felt shame. I’m not sure. It’s not something I was used to feeling, so I could be wrong.

Twenty-two

—

An army
helicopter hovered right over the little house.

I heard it come lower. It stirred up dust and blew off people’s hats and headscarves. It sent people scurrying into doorways and gutters. There was a volley of machine-gun fire from above.

Were they shooting at the shooters? Nobody told me. There was a lot of shouting but no one seemed to be talking to anyone.

The helicopter rose up again, out of the range of the sniper’s rifle fire. That didn’t stop all the noise.

My hearing as a cat is very sensitive, something people don’t ever think about when they are making loud noises. They never check to see if there is a cat around before they light a firecracker or shoot a gun.

I was small compared to all the people and buildings, but a bullet could easily still find its way to me. I’m sure many cats have been killed in war, not that you ever hear about them on the news. Maybe, if I ever become a human again, I could give speeches in schools about this, and make people more aware of how war is bad for cats.

Some of the boys who had been Ms. Fahima’s students helped her round up the little kids and get them and the knitting lady into the old lady’s house. They left the kids with the lady and returned to the street.

There seemed to be shots coming from all directions now. I couldn’t tell who was shooting. Was the Israeli army shooting at the snipers? Were the snipers trying to kill Aaron and Simcha? Did anyone really know what the heck was going on?

Behind me, Omar wailed with fear and would not shut up. Aaron and Simcha were running around the little house, one moment at the window with their rifles, the next ducking down to take cover. Each time they ducked, they pulled Omar to the ground with them so he would be out of the line of fire. Each time they popped up again, he popped up, too.

I did not want to see him killed.

Some of the people in the streets called out for quiet.

“This demonstration solves nothing!” they said. “Let’s calm down and keep everyone safe.”

Others called for blood. “Death to Israel! Kill the Jews! Push them into the sea!”

The whole thing was a colossal mess.

One of the rioters brought out a megaphone. He must have been some sort of bigwig rioter because he climbed up on a rock and the others paid attention to him.

“The Israeli army is holding a Palestinian boy hostage!” he shouted in Arabic. “They have killed his parents at a checkpoint, and now they want to kill him. They won’t be happy until every last Palestinian is dead in the streets. We say no more! No more!”

Rioters took up the chant and the noise got worse.

“What did he say?” Simcha asked.

“He said the army killed the boy’s parents at a checkpoint,” Aaron told him.

Ms. Fahima, with fear all over her face, tried again to open the door.

“Let me inside!” she cried out in Hebrew. “Let Omar go and take me in his place!”

“Do you think it’s true?” Simcha asked. “Do you think his parents got killed by our soldiers?”

“If it’s true, they’ll tear us apart if we go out there,” said Aaron. “Get away!” he shouted at Ms. Fahima.

Next came the tear gas, the small black canisters hitting the ground and spewing out bad-smelling fog. Rioters picked up the canisters and threw them back at the Israeli troops, but more kept coming.

The window I was sitting in had a lot of cracks around the windowpane. Cats have a strong sense of smell and tiny lungs. But no one cared about that.

“Back away from the house! Let the soldiers leave and no one will get hurt!” came an order from the army over a loudspeaker.

The rioters ignored it. They started to pound on the door. It was not a strong door. It would not take them very long to break through.

I was thinking of sliding under the sofa to try to stay safe, when a rock broke through the window. I was covered in shattered glass.

In the same instant, some rioter plunged an ax into the door.

They were going to get in. People were going to die.

Twenty-three

—

Which brings
me to the day I died.

The day my detentions were erased, Ms. Zero asked me to stay behind at the end of school.

I have to admit, I was curious to see what she would do. I swaggered a bit as I walked up to her desk.

She put down her pen, sat back in her chair and looked up at me. She smiled her vampire smile.

“It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it?” she said.

I didn’t reply. She went on talking.

“And it’s almost over. I wonder what the takeaway will be for you. When you’re an old woman and you look back on your time in the eighth grade, I wonder what you will remember.”

She stood up.

“One last detention,” she said. “Come with me.”

I figured she was going to make me clean out some cupboard or storage room, so I followed her. But she stopped at the classroom door.

Right beside the poster of the punishment poem.

I looked at her.

“I’m not copying it out,” I said. “The principal said I didn’t have to.”

“I don’t want you to copy it out,” she said. “I just want you to read it. One time. Out loud.”

I was sure it was a trick.

“I just read it and then I’m done?”

“That’s right,” she said.

“You can’t make me read it.”

“You are correct,” she said. “I am asking you to read it. You can choose to do it or not. But I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t. It’s simple enough.”

I stared at her. Then I stared at the poster. My fingers started to curl into fists.

“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll read it with you. We’ll alternate verses. I’ll start us off.
Go placidly amid the noise and the haste and remember what peace there may be in silence.”

She looked at me and waited. I wanted to smash her.

Instead, I read the next line. No, that’s not true. I didn’t read it. I recited it. Somehow, the poem had worked its way into my brain even though I did not want it there.

“As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.”

“Speak your truth quietly and clearly
; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story,”
said Ms. Zero. She wasn’t reading, either.

“If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter,”
I spat out. My voice got louder.
“… for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself
.
”

“Be yourself
,
”
Zero said calmly.

“Take kindly the counsel of the years …”
You old cow, I thought.

“Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.”

“… be gentle with yourself
,
”
I said. The damn thing was almost over. My eyes were starting to sting.

Ms. Sealand took a step toward me. Her face looked kind and concerned. She looked the way my grandmother looked when some ratty old, smelly old drunk came into the soup kitchen in the winter without shoes.

“You are a child of the universe,”
she said, putting her hand gently on my arm.
“… no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.”

I backed away.
“And whether or not it is clear to you …”

I knew the rest of the words in that line. Of course I knew them. They just wouldn’t come out of my mouth.

I felt a tear dripping down my cheek. Ms. Zero wasn’t exactly blocking the door, but she wasn’t making it easy for me to run through it, either.

I wasn’t going to let her win. I wiped my cheek with the back of my hand and tried again.

“And whether or not it is clear to you …”

Ms. Zero finished the line for me.

“… no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.”

That was it. I’d had enough.

I pushed my way passed Zero and out into the empty hall. I swung out at open locker doors and kicked a stray gym shoe out of my way.

Stupid school, I thought. Stupid poem. The universe was
not
unfolding as it should. The universe was a big freaking mess where good people got killed and where people like me were able to keep on living.

I went to my locker and I gathered up all my stuff. I was finished with that school and I was finished with Ms. Zero. I didn’t know what kind of lie I’d tell my parents to keep from having to go back, but I’d figure something out. I was going to walk out of that school and never walk back into it again.

Which is exactly what happened.

Loaded down with binders, gym bag, books and jackets, I took out my phone and texted mean things about Ms. Zero as I left the school.

I kept sending messages when I got outside, messages slamming her stupid lectures and her ugly smile and the way she dressed like a prison guard. I walked fast, wanting to get far away from that terrible school and all the people in it.

I approached the street. I kept walking, texting furiously with every step.

Ms. Zero was standing across the street, talking with some dumb student from the sixth grade. I saw her look up and see me.

And she started to wave.

She was waving at me to cross over to her.

Stupid poem
, I texted as I stepped out into the road.
Stupid poem from a stupid teacher.

And that’s when the truck hit me.

And that’s when I died.

It was all her fault. She waved me over. She killed me.