Francie

I did something to that cat, I admit it. But that cat did something to me first. All year we’ve been washing clothes every weekend at Miss Beach’s Boarding House for Colored-Mama and I. All year that cat’s had something against me. Saturday morning, we went there to wash the linens. I could see Miss Beach sitting on her porch glider as we came up the hill toward her large white three-story house. She had that cat on her lap. Treasure. He’d scratched me four times already.
There he sat with his fat orange caterpillar tail swishing slowly back and forth as if he was fanning flies, his mouth stretching in a wide yawn so that I could see all the way down his pink little throat, past that pink spade tongue and mouth full of tiny razor teeth. Miss Beach nodded at us, then rose and let him spill from her lap. “Hurry and round up the linens, Francie,” she said, squinting at the sky. “I feel a storm coming up.”
Mama and I headed out back, Mama to get the tubs ready and me to take the back stairs up to the rooms. I started with Mr. Ivory’s room, gathered his sheets, sniffed some of his colognes and hair ointments, and then made my way to my teacher Miss Lafayette’s room. I liked her. Sometimes she left books on her bed for me to borrow and then discuss with her later. Sometimes she left a cologne packet from her beauty order. She’d had to go down to Louisiana Friday night for two weeks to take care of some mysterious business, so I knew I wouldn’t be seeing her that day-or Monday neither. I frowned, thinking of having Miss Lattimore, the principal, who always substituted for Miss Lafayette.