Do You Know Where Your Kids Are?

There were maybe three reasons this might not work. First, he hadn’t been fasting like each book strictly recommended. That day, Jason had a large breakfast and lunch, all without any worry. Secondly, it wasn’t midnight. In fact, it was 3:00 in the afternoon, the sun was out after a morning of heavy rain, and everyone was either at work or indoors. And third, the black cat wasn’t alive when he boiled it, mostly whole, in the heavy red stock pot, on the front burner of his mother’s stove. He knew all of this but tried anyway. He even knew of another reason this might not work. No one, in any of the books he had read at the library, ever knew which boiled black cat bone to put in their mouth to make it all work. That afternoon, he could feel this ancient spell’s opportunities all around him, but they hovered at his fingertips, just out of reach.

Jason wanted to become invisible, intangible, or “totally free” he had told himself as he walked down the gravel alley that snaked behind the tight-knit homes and which by now had been completely cleared of the morning’s trash. On these walks he would often daydream. He would picture himself slipping in and out of closets, doorways, windows and bank vaults like an unseeable mist. In these fantasies the boy spied on his neighbors while they slept, walked through traffic and maybe, just maybe, ran away from home completely, totally out of sight, in broad daylight. That afternoon, his mind swam as he pondered the limitless possibilities of an invisible boy. At 12, Jason had walked this particular alley many times to get home from school. But today instead of seeing neatly pushed back trash bins, he saw a circle of crows, their cackles and caws echoing towards him as they effortlessly attended to something on the ground. They were gathered and rowdy, jerking their feathered heads back, beaks filled with a black cat which was now outstretched next to the deep, waterlogged pothole. Clusters of fur and sinew sat like confetti on the afternoon gravel, thrown here and there by one crow, in particular. It was this very crow Jason had to fend off just to pick up the cat, sticky from time spent flattened. It was also this crow, that followed him home, arms bulging with the carcass of the all-black cat wrapped in his all-blue raincoat. The flurry of birds mostly dissipated, whirring around his head in their departure in chaotic frustration. But, as he rushed home with excitement, he was followed by the sound of his own hurried steps and the caws of that one lingering crow.

This opportunity had presented itself, he thought, at the perfect time and he wasn’t about to miss it. Ever since he read the Spell of Invisibility, he had been waiting for a pure black cat to come into his life. He had repeatedly asked his mother for one on birthdays, Christmases, and even the occasional Easter. But every time he asked, she would simply shake her head and remind him: “you can’t keep your room clean, how could you care for a pet”.

To this, he would nod softly and let the whole subject go for the time being. It was today that he didn’t have to do any asking he thought as he entered the kitchen and placed the cat on a counter nearest the stove.

Outside, the lone crow had made itself noisy and comfortable against the lip of a windowsill planter, clattering and digging its beak into the rain-softened soil. Occasionally it would pull out a rock or clod of dirt and drop it, then resume its squawking. Despite this increasing distraction, Jason hauled out the heavy stock pot his mother kept in the lowest cabinet. He filled it with water and lifted it, with extreme effort, hoisting it onto the top of his mother’s gas-range stove with a massive clamor. Before it had reached a rolling boil, while the water was still cool to the touch, he dropped in the entire cat, then turned up the heat and waited. On the windowsill, the crow began to knock its face into the glass in succinct, hefty slaps. While the water boiled, the flesh removed itself from the bones in a lazy drift, like kelp divorcing the shore at rising tide.

This was when he became concerned. There were so many parts of the plan that weren’t right. He had eaten twice, it wasn’t night at all, the cat was dead when he lowered it, with two arms, into the water, and he still did not know how to find the right bone, out of the 230 he would soon have. But more than any of that, what sent his mind racing toward panic, was the stench and steam billowing from the pot that had begun to fill the room and was making him sick. It was then that he decided to take the still hot and not fully clean bones out to a table on the deck.

The crow was now thrashing against the window frame in aggressive thrusts of flight as he rushed from the door and out onto the deck. In deep swoops the bird began to lunge at what he held in his hands, abandoning its post on the planter. Protectively, Jason placed the steaming mess onto the tabletop and began to feverishly pick the leftover tissue from the bones. After counting out exactly 230, all ranging in size and fragility, he began the task of placing them in his mouth and chewing for a moment. The crow squawked from the far corner of the table, landing in a windstorm of flapping and hasty adjustments.

At first, he worked slowly over the stack of bones, putting them one by one into his mouth. But with each thin rib or jagged vertebrae, his dread began to worsen. None of these bones worked. He had once read of someone that was able to do it by putting all 230 in their mouth, in different handfuls. He had also read that each black cat had its own unique invisibility bone. It was never the same bone from one cat to the next. Though he had only come across these stories once or twice, in the sea of repeating lore he devoured, he now found them to be his only beacon of hope. The spell’s variability crashed around his ears like bells.

So, with spit spindling from his now overcrammed lips, he began to push bones into his mouth at a quickening pace, hoping that if he put in enough, or the right one by accident, he would become invisible. It was then that the bird made its way closer and closer to the drooling boy and his pile of bones. The bird wanted what he had, that stench from the kitchen which was still clinging to each of the bones on the table and in Jason’s mouth. The bird quickly took up three small bones into its beak and proceeded to drop them onto the wooden deck. With a flush of fear, Jason desperately fell to his knees, hands outstretched, mouth still full, searching for the now scattered bones. Once he was able to finger them out from a space between the deck slats, he placed them into his mouth which by now was bulging and foaming at the corners, his chin rapidly quivering.

The bird began to pick up more bones in its slender black beak and moved them around the table. It picked at bones he hadn’t even had a chance to chew. Jason attempted to scare the bird away by feverishly waving one hand, as he continued to try chewing new combinations of skeletal remains with the other hand. Sweat was pouring from his forehead and palms, his heart beat heavily behind his ribs like a bell. Jason knew he was getting close. He could feel it. He would find exactly what he needed; he was sure. Then, he would be gone. He would become invisible and free from sight; then he could do anything he wanted.

Finally, Jason was faced with the one last pile of bones to chew. As he continued the reckless gnawing, the bird took up its squawking once again. It was now swooping around his head and the bones on the table. With quickening pace and spittle rushing a torrent down his chin, Jason kept trying bones, all while the bird kept lunging down with hungry ferocity. The bird landed, again, at the corner of the table, adjacent the final stack of bones. Jason worked with haste to finish trying each one, his mouth now bleeding from the sharp edges he had gnashed. With each attempt he fought the feeling of his opportunity slipping away. His determination set him into a frenzy. Jason’s mind flashed with his desires, an open window and an unseen boy creeping to the foot of a bed, his hands dipping into a river with no reflection looking back at him. He wanted the whole world to open itself to him like a yawn and he would be the invisible breath passing through. His pace became frantic as he conjured these images.

There were only five bones left when almost all at once he looked up, jarred to awareness by a swift clatter of wings as the bird juggled, in its beak, one small bone. As it tilted back its slick feathered head, Jason gasped, frozen in place. Quickly the bird disappeared the bone into its gape in excited haste. As the bone slid deep into its beak and down its throat, the bird perched in place on that wooden tabletop began to vanish from sight completely.

***

Tanya L. Young is a BIPOC writer and visual artist. Her work has been featured in publications such as Salt Hill Journal, The Amistad, New York Quarterly and others. She is a VONA alum. Currently, she is a staff reader for TriQuarterly. She has also read for publications such as Frontier Poetry and Tupelo Press. www.tanyasroom.com