A writing exercise and some crying

In the bathroom of my first New Orleans apartment, I’m sitting on the toilet, doubled over with my head resting on the rim of the claw-foot bathtub. I am crying because D.S. doesn’t love me. The floor is dirty putty-colored tile with a matted navy blue cotton rug.

That was my second claw-foot tub. The first was in the haunted house in Memphis, where I slept in the front room with the door closed and was afraid to get out of bed in the dark. I laid awake and listened to the ghosts dance in the attic.

I resented that the house didn’t belong to me. At night it belonged to the ghosts. By day it belonged to the glamourous wreck of a landlady, who had left all of her furniture and furnishings behind to go live with her boyfriend. Her gutter punk daughters still had keys and would sometimes stay there with their grungy boyfriends, or use the kitchen to cook for Food Not Bombs.

It was the last home of Miss Martha, my smoky moody tortoiseshell cat. She had cancer, and I could only afford so much chemo. But I felt unforgivably guilty when I gave up. At the end she spent most of her time curled up on the dining room chair. One day she wouldn’t come eat and that was the day I knew I had to take her to the vet, to put her “to sleep.” In the car, she livened up enough to cry and fuss, and I felt even more guilty and almost turned around. I held her when she died, and I never was so close to death before, or since. It was ten years ago and I’m still crying as I write this.

My ex-husband came over to help me bury her in the backyard because I couldn’t afford to have her cremated. He had to open the box and look at her stiff, fake-looking corpse.

Within six months, both Hank and Petunia were running around that same house all young and sassy in their puppy- and kittenhood. I don’t know why I did it. I just set myself up for twice the pain.