Cat's eye полностью

This chant is menacing to me. It hints at an obscure dirtiness. Something is not understood: the robbers and their strange commands, the lady and her gyrations, the tricks she’s compelled to perform, like a trained dog. And what does “twenty-four skiddoo” mean, at the end of it? Is she scooted out the door of her house while the robbers remain inside, free to take anything they like, break anything, do whatever they want? Or is it the end of her altogether? I see her dangling from the crab apple tree, the skipping rope noosed around her neck. I am not sorry for her.

The sun shines, the marbles return, from wherever they’ve been all winter. The voices of the children rise in the schoolyard: purie, purie, bowlie, bowlie, two for one. They sound to me like ghosts, or like animals caught in a trap: thin wails of exhausted pain.

We cross the wooden bridge on the way home from school. I am walking behind the others. Through the broken boards I can see the ground below. I remember my brother burying his jar full of puries, of waterbabies and cat’s eyes, a long time ago, down there somewhere under the bridge. The jar is still there in the earth, shining in the dark, in secret. I think about myself going down there alone despite the sinister unseen men, digging up the treasure, having all that mystery in my hands. I could never find the jar, because I don’t have the map. But I like to think about things the others know nothing about. I retrieve my blue cat’s eye from where it’s been lying all winter in the corner of my bureau drawer. I examine it, holding it up so the sunlight burns through it. The eye part of it, inside its crystal sphere, is so blue, so pure. It’s like something frozen in the ice. I take it to school with me, in my pocket, but I don’t set it up to be shot at. I hold on to it, rolling it between my fingers.

“What’s that in your pocket?” says Cordelia.

“Nothing,” I say. “It’s only a marble.”

It’s marble season; everyone has marbles in their pockets. Cordelia lets it pass. She doesn’t know what power this cat’s eye has, to protect me. Sometimes when I have it with me I can see the way it sees. I can see people moving like bright animated dolls, their mouths opening and closing but no real words coming out. I can look at their shapes and sizes, their colors, without feeling anything else about them. I am alive in my eyes only.

We stay in the city later than we’ve ever stayed before. We stay until school ends for the summer and the daylight lasts past bedtime and wet heat descends over the streets like a steaming blanket. I drink grape Freshie, which does not taste like grapes but like something you might use to kill insects, and wonder when we’re going to leave for the north. I tell myself it will be never, so I won’t be disappointed. But despite my cat’s eye I know I can’t stand to be here in this place much longer. I will burst inward. I’ve read in the National Geographic about deepsea diving and why you have to wear a thick metal suit or the invisible pressure of the heavy undersea water will crush you like mud in a fist, until you implode. This is the word: implode. It has a dull final sound to it, like a lead door closing. I sit in the car, packed into the back seat like a parcel. Grace and Cordelia and Carol are standing among the apple trees, watching. I hunch down, avoiding them. I don’t want to pretend, to undergo goodbyes. As the car moves away they wave.

We drive north. Toronto is behind us, a smear of brownish air on the horizon, like smoke from a distant burning. Only now do I turn and look.

The leaves get smaller and yellower, folding back toward the bud, and the air crisps. I see a raven by the side of the road, picking at a porcupine that’s been run over by a car, its quills like a huge burr, its guts pink and scrambled like eggs. I see the northern granite rock rising straight up out of the ground with the road cut through it. I see a raggedy lake with dead trees stuck into the marsh around the edges. A sawdust burner, a fire tower.