My Friend the Dog

Brent slips his tongue into my ear, warm and moist. Mmm. Too moist--is he drooling on me? Hot saliva runs down my cheek and onto my nose. I wake up.

Cat pee splashes onto my ear. I jump up roaring and Ermine the three-legged cat falls off my head, hits the floor, rolls over once and hump-runs out of the bedroom. I should be up feeding my friends the animals, and Ermine is angry.

I lurch for the master bathroom, holding my head sideways to keep the pee from running all over me. The big Oriental rug is covered with pet toys that give and squeak under my bare feet or skitter away from my toes. The other six cats glide back and forth like sharks, crossing in front of my ankles and jumping out from underfoot at the last second. I start for the sink with its white marble bowl and gold taps. Then I walk into the huge shower stall instead and start lush jets of hot water from four shower heads flowing down me. I'll wash everything. It's been a long time since I did that.

Brent liked that I don't wash every day. He liked my smell. I liked his smell too, like sunlight and hair and dryer sheets and just a little like sweat. Sometimes like me. I liked him curled around me in bed at night and I liked him inside me where nobody else has been. But he's gone. Last night he said he wasn't coming back. He took his backpack and left and I threw my empty beer can at him and said I didn't care.

Ermine wails outside the stall.

I'm still wearing a T-shirt. It gets heavy and hangs down me. I peel it off and drop it on the floor, kicking it away from the center drain. My underwear too.

My skull wants to burst through the skin of my head and my eyes throb in their sockets. I wash my hair, turn off the jets, and dry myself with one of the thick fluffy towels. Then I take a robe and slippers from the cabinet.

Ermine brushes against my damp legs, meowing and smearing loose white hairs on my calves. "Three-legged" doesn't say all that's wrong with this cat. Her ears are short and rounded like a teddy bear's. Once she was an outside cat, and the sun grew cancer on the tips of her ears. Dr. Samuels cut the bad places off. She stayed indoors after that, but the bad places had to be cut off her ears twice more. I assisted with the third operation, the one that made her look Chinese. There wasn't much left of her ears. Dr. Samuels pulled the skin of her face up to cover the stubs. Her blue eyes look crazy in an uneven, slanted way. I don't know what happened to her right hind leg.

I hear dog toenails clicking up and down the hallway. "I'm coming," I yell, and then I'm sorry. Now Stentor will yell. A harsh, grating scream bounces off the walls. It feels like he screams inside my head. He won't stop until he gets his egg.

I open the bedroom door (screams much louder). Laughing Gravy ticks up and down gingerly. He doesn't trust the hall floor. He needs to go outside. Laughing Gravy is an ex-racing greyhound, the closest thing to a normal pet in the house. It's because of him I live in a mansion.

I've been here almost two years and Mrs. Gareth's will says I can stay here until all the animals die or I die as long as I treat them right. I get up every morning and cook an egg for an African gray parrot, give a Shar-Pei insulin, feed two dogs, seven cats and an iguana, scoop four catboxes, and I get paid five thousand dollars a month. That's a lot more than I got to be animal caretaker for Dr. Samuels at Park Road Animal Hospital. I spend the rest of my time drinking, watching TV, and talking to the animals. There are lots of rooms I haven't been in yet. I don't feel like going in a new one every day. Some of them, I open the door and they're so fancy and still I know they don't want me inside them so I don't go.

Mrs. Gareth boarded her dogs at Dr. Samuels' whenever she left town. Li Po needed his shots twice a day and Laughing Gravy came to keep him company. Mrs. Gareth liked the way I talked to Laughing Gravy, like he's the same kind of creature I am, so she picked me to look after her animals after she died. I didn't know she was rich. I just treat all the animals that way. It's easy for me. I don't say Here Kitty or No no down. The people tell me I have a way with animals.

They don't know why. They don't know I am the Dog Girl. That's what they called me when I started school after I came here to live with my Aunt Joyce, because my friend the dog was with me when they found me.

My friend the dog found me under the bed. When I came out he licked me and lay down next to me. I hugged him tight and he moved closer and curled his body around me. Nobody else came for a long time. My family went to the cabin early that year. When someone finally came the dog stood up between me and the people and he waved his tail real slow and low until he was sure his job was done. I was six years old.

At the hospital they said I was dehydrated. So was my friend the dog, I bet. I remember his looks and think he was a Border collie-shepherd mix. I went to a hospital but I don't know what happened to my friend the dog.

I let Gravy through the master bedroom and out the French doors. I don't have to pick up after him or Li Po--the grounds crew does that on Thursdays.

In the kitchen I break an egg into Stentor's treat cup and put it in the microwave. Li Po's insulin waits in the door of the gleaming steel refrigerator. There's nothing else in there but beer, bottled water (for the pets; I drink out of the tap), microwave meals and a lot of empty space. I draw up Li Po's daily dose in a tuberculin syringe and cap off the needle before putting it in my robe pocket.

"Li Po Li Po-o, where are you?" I call as I take Stentor his egg. Li Po is mean in a sneaky way, like Chow Chows are. He smells like old dusty grapes because of his bad skin. He will be backed into a corner or hiding under a piece of furniture. He likes to arrange things so I have to reach for him and get snapped at. He never bites, but he always pretends to.

I look all over the big house, opening closets I never noticed were there. No wrinkly ankles in the sunroom, no swollen-looking nose in the library, no Li Po anywhere. I'm sure I let him in last night, but I put on some clothes to check outside anyway. Laughing Gravy trots up, smiling his long smile, and leans against my thighs.

"Hey, Skinny Fast. Where's The Mean One?" But Laughing Gravy doesn't know. He slept inside all night. It's so much easier to talk to animals.

He pads around the grounds with me in his dignified way; nobody could guess he is such a goofy dog. We don't find Li Po in the iris garden, his favorite place. No Li Po in the gazebo or the poolhouse. The back gate hangs open. It's a good thing Laughing Gravy didn't want to go exploring too. Li Po's gone. He's two hours overdue for his shot.

I close the gate and go back inside and feed the others, Laughing Gravy, Stentor, the seven cats and Tennessee the iguana, who has his own room. I decide to write up a Lost Dog flyer, with "Chinese Wrinkle Dog" and "Shar-Pei" and "REWARD." I find a pen and paper and I stand there. I don't write anything for a long time because my spelling is so bad it's hard to even begin. I write SHARPAY CHINEESE WRINKLE DOG and then LOST REWORD.

I take the piece of paper, the syringe, and the bottle of Karo syrup in case Li Po is crashing when I find him. If I don't find him soon I'll go to the copy shop and staple the copies up on the light poles. I don't want to talk to the copy shop people if I don't have to. I walk all the way out to the street and turn left.

"Po Li Po Li Po Li Po," I call just the way she did.

Then I know. He's with Brent. Brent took him and when I find them together everything will be all right. They're just out for a walk. He always said I should take the dogs on more walks. I'll call and he'll turn his head and wave. When I get up to them he'll look at me with his round brown eyes and say, "I know we can work it out," and I'll say I'm sorry I threw the beer can and I'll stop all the drinking, what do I care? What good does it do me to drink so much? They say people drink to forget but I don't have to forget.

I don't remember a thing, not even after nineteen years, which they tell me is good and normal. The man told them what he did, so I didn't have to remember. I remember one thing, the smell. I smelled stale blood for days after they took me to the hospital, like it was painted on the inside of my nose.

Once at Dr. Samuels' clinic an emergency came in. A dog had been HBC, that's hit by car, and its leg almost taken off, and Dr. Samuels did emergency surgery to stop the bleeding and take the leg the rest of the way off because it couldn't be saved. Right when he got done another emergency came, a big mastiff dog with the bloat, and the assistant and I both had to run help hold it for X-rays.

They needed the assistant longer than me. I took the mop and bucket into surgery and that same smell was all over the room. Like normal blood, but heavier and rotten, less metallic. Blood had dried on everything. I took the drape clips off the leg and wrapped it up in the blue paper surgical drape. I remember it was a front leg. They get along a lot better without a hind leg. I threw away the sponges and wiped the suture cassette clean and put the surgical gown, cap and mask in the bathtub in cold water. I put the instruments and the sponge tray in the sink. I used a fingernail brush to get the blood off the table and wall and I mopped the floor. It took me awhile to remember where I'd smelled it before. As soon as I was done I punched out because it was already two hours past closing time. At the clinic I never let people know stuff gets to me. I bought two quarts of beer on my way home.

I didn't cry for my mother and father and brother because things you cry for never come back. I didn't talk to anyone. I was saving my words for the people that mattered, for my family when they came back. When my body was healthy I was transferred to a mental hospital. The doctors thought I was crazy.

There was a lady there at night, Nurse Gage, who liked me because I didn't cry. All of us, all the children who had things to cry about slept in one big room and if one cried Nurse Gage came and slammed that kid into the mattress and said Stop it stop that noise because she didn't want everyone to start.

They thought it might be good for me to be around animals because I never said anything unless someone asked me about my friend the dog. They brought a dog to the hospital, a big yellow Labrador named Max who brought back whatever I threw. I started to talk to people about Max and it turns out I'm not crazy. I just like animals better. I still don't like to talk to people.

By the time I came to live with Aunt Joyce the story got all mixed up and the kids at school said I was some kind of Dog Girl. They said I couldn't talk, only bark, and when the police found me in the cabin I bit people and they had to teach me to walk on just my feet. None of it's true, but you try telling third-graders that.

I never told Brent about it. How would I? I kept telling myself Be fair, a person wants to know he's dating the Dog Girl from the haunted cabin. I couldn't think of any way to tell him but every night when I got home I'd promise myself Next time. After the first night he stayed over I stopped promising. I got more and more used to talking to Brent. I didn't want him to go away.

That was when I had my own apartment. I went to school until the eighth grade and then they let me quit and I got the GED later. When I was sixteen my caseworker Mrs. Tolliver got me the job at Dr. Samuels' looking after the animals, putting them outside and cleaning their cages and feeding them and telling the doctors or technicians when they didn't eat or didn't feel good. When I turned eighteen Mrs. Tolliver helped me get an apartment.

Brent had a cat named Sid who used to stay with us when Brent left town to go on retreats. We were both twenty when he asked me out. We're twenty-five now. We had lunch and walked around the Botanical Gardens. Brent told me I had a good heart. He said I practiced right action all the time. I never told him I helped kill so many animals. And I didn't tell him I drank. I already drank a lot.

When I drink I'm not the Dog Girl whose whole family got chopped up except her. Not Ellen Cooper who helped kill all those animals either. Just nobody. I don't have any name and I don't have to talk to anybody.

I get to the end of the block and there's Li Po in the middle of Buena Vista Avenue, lying at the base of the pretty median with its row of pink dogwood trees. He's been HBC. He lies on his side with his big fat sand-colored nose stretched toward me and his feet reaching out. He has that flattened look that means all the air has gone out of him. People say bodies weigh a little less after death because the soul gets free, but it's only air, the last breath something ever took going out and never coming in again, like the tide at the end of the world.

I run to Li Po and feel for his heartbeat. Nothing. He's still warm. I push on his side but he doesn't inhale. He's gone. There's not a mark on him. It happens that way sometimes.

Very quietly I say, "I'm sorry Li Po, poor Li Po." I should have checked the gate. I always check the gate when Brent leaves.

He's gone. Sometimes when we put one down and the owner wanted to be there--which I think is what people owe their pet, but not many of them want to do it--sometimes when we did this, the owner didn't realize because it happens so fast and they kept patting the animal and talking to it and after a few seconds they said something awful like, Is he dead? or Already? and Dr. Samuels slid the stethoscope into place like there was some question about this, but there wasn't because the animal was flattened and breathless and a child could see it was dead, and Dr. Samuels said He's gone or She's gone and the person cried right out.

So I got in this habit of telling them before the doc came in that this thing they arranged for would happen very fast, faster than they think, and that their pet wouldn't feel any pain but I just wanted them to be ready for how fast it would happen. They never were, but at least they gasped instead of crying and then they hugged the little body and I slunk away feeling like a criminal, or a little teary myself, or sometimes angry at the owner because they made me do it they made me stand there stroking the dog's head with my arm around it so I could hold off the vein in its front leg and tell it what a good dog it was and feel it sag against my body and lay it gently gently over on its side.

The scary part is when we did this without the owner around, when there was nobody to cry, sometimes I didn't feel a thing. I just picked up the body and hoped the animal hadn't recently had a drink or a meal because everything relaxes when they die.

I can't go back to that. I don't want another job and that's the only job I know, I did it for seven years and then I came here. It comes to me I can get another Shar-Pei because these dogs all look alike, monkey-butt ugly as Dr. Samuels said, and I'll keep ordering the insulin but in the night I'll throw it down the sink and replace it with sterile water and I'll inject the other dog with that. Nobody will know. Because I don't want to move. I want this job and my friends and the shower with four jets in it. I want to eat lunch in the Japanese garden while Brent sits under the cherry tree with his legs folded up not saying Om. Buddhists don't say Om when they meditate.

Brent bowed to roadkill on the highway. He said Li Po was named after a Chinese poet who got drunk and drowned trying to kiss the reflection of the moon in a lake. I used to think that was a nice way to go, but now that I think about it with my ugly friend Li Po beside me on the pavement, it's the stupidest thing I ever heard. It makes me think somebody ought to be paid just to walk around this world and whenever they find a person mooning over the moon or some girl or sitting up late at night writing and sighing or whatever poets do, this person ought to hit them. He could use a stick like the Zen guys Brent talked about or just slap them, I don't care. And this person should say, Stop that noise. Maybe that could be my next job. Instead of being the person who has to help kill the animals.

I wouldn't yell or sound mean or anything. I'd say it real gently and then I'd go away. They could blame me for everything. People would rather be angry than sad. It's easier.

A car stops and a man presses the button that rolls down his window and asks if I want to call the vet. He dangles his cell phone out the window to me like he's offering me his business card.

Brent would say he's been talking about the things he doesn't see because he's too busy describing them to the phone. "Hello? What are you doing?...Nothing, I'm on my way to work. Woah, there's a dead dog in the road, call you back."

I say, "It's too late."

"You sure?" He looks at me like I'm crazy, like he can't see this dog lying here not breathing with his heart not winking in his chest. Why don't people know things are dead when they see it?

"I'm sure!" I say, but it comes out a little scream and I put my hands over my face. There are two kinds of people in the world, the kind who have to touch and pat crying people and the kind who leave them alone. This guy is a leaver aloner, thank God. If I don't talk I won't really cry. After a few breaths I hear the car glide away and I put my hands down and stand up.

It's a hot day and the pavement is warm. Who knows how long Li Po's been dead? He hasn't stiffened yet. I pick him up like he's still alive. He's heavy--I know his soul's supposed to be gone, but dead things always weigh more. I pick him up like he's alive with his head drooping over my elbow and my arms folded around his body and my fingers laced together around him in front and I carry him home. His legs hang down in a neat bundle. A vet I knew always called this a calf carry. Didn't I see a picture once where a shepherd carried a lamb this way? Maybe Jesus the Good Shepherd, maybe some real shepherd. On a postcard.

I could really do it. I carry Li Po down the block and inside. I lay him on the kitchen floor and rummage in my cabinet, the one where I keep booze and Vienna sausages and crackers, because this calls for more than beer. I find a little bottle of vodka, Banzai brand. I bought it because I thought Brent would think it was funny, but he didn't. I tip it up for as long as my stomach can stand. When I bring it down again I'm ready. I'll go to the shelter and find some other ugly dog and I'll give it shots with water every morning and I'll live here with the animals and be the Dog Girl forever.

I set the bottle on the counter and fold my arms there and put my head down on them. I don't want to do this. I'm fighting it so hard a long little squeal comes out of me. I should be out back looking for a shovel, not crying. Anyway, I'm not crying. As long as no crying sound comes out I'm not. Tears flowing doesn't count, I can't help that, it's a thing my body wants to do like going to the bathroom. I drum my forehead against my arms to keep the noise in, bump bump bump squeak squeak squeak and I say No stop that noise stop it as fiercely as I can. It comes out in that same squeal like a dog's whine.

The doctors said it was good for me to cry. When I got to Aunt Joyce's she said crying would make me feel better, but I didn't do it.

An ice cube grazes my calf. My body throws itself sideways. I fall on the floor, mostly on my right hip and leg.

Li Po walks toward me on his wrinkly ankles. They wobble now the way they always looked like they should. He trembles and moves like the floor is made of ice. He wags his tail in a jerky way and blinks like if he could he'd say, "Am I awake now? I just had the weirdest dream." He licks his lips and snuffles.

I reach my hand toward him thinking No way no way and Li Po falls straight down like a marionette with its strings cut. The tags on his collar jingle and he grunts as the air comes out of him again. His forelimbs stretch forward and his hind ones back a little as his body flattens, like he's flying somewhere.

He's gone. Farther back in the house Laughing Gravy howls. They're gone your mother and father are gone. Your little brother is gone. They aren't coming back.

I don't even remember Darryl. I ought to, I was six. I know I had a little brother the way I know the earth revolves around the sun and the sun is in the Milky Way Galaxy, as a thing I know is true even though I can't see it or prove it. I've only seen his photo. He was blonde and my aunt tells me he was afraid of the vacuum cleaner. That's all I know.

I take the syringe out of my jeans pocket and give Li Po his last shot. I want him to turn his head and snap at my hand, but he doesn't. Before I know it I'm hugging his ugly hog-bristly neck so tight if he were alive I'd be choking him. My cheek and neck and arms itch. Shar-Peis make me break out in a rash. I feel someone watching and look up. One of the cats, Baby Jane or maybe Sweet Charlotte, stands in the kitchen doorway. I can't tell with all the water in my eyes.

I say Here Baby Jane, here Kitty. I wish she'd walk over here and bump me with her head.

Aunt Joyce had the articles in a scrapbook but she didn't want me reading them. A few weeks after I came to live at Mrs. Gareth's I decided to read them. First I thought I just wanted to see a picture of my friend the dog to see if he looked the way I remember. Then I thought I might want to read all the articles one day. The man at the library found them for me on microfilm. He smelled like pine trees and soap. The man made Photostats for me and I took them all home in an envelope.

I don't want to look at a new room of the house every day and I don't want to read these articles every day. I can't decide. Mostly I think it's good I forgot. I put the envelope on a closet shelf and tried to forget about it.

Yesterday I read the first one Family Brutally Murdered Girl Survives Unharmed and it took me a long time and I couldn't even finish it. I read how the man came in with Mr. Martin's woodchopping axe. How he killed Mommy and how Daddy heard the screams and ran in and how there was a hunting rifle but Daddy didn't get to it in time. How the man cut Darryl almost in half. I read until I wanted to drink and than I drank. I never got to the part about the dog. I felt sick and I lay down and drank til I passed out.

Then Brent came home and woke me up. "Ellen, why are you doing this to yourself?" I'd left the stupid articles out on the coffee table. He said, "Do you feel guilty about not dying?" and I said "Shut up, leave me alone," and when he said, "Is it because he was nice to you?" I pushed him away and I sat up and growled at him. That always worked in school. When people wanted to talk to me or make fun of me it made them go away, but Brent didn't go away until I screamed the worst words I knew at him and told him to get out.

Because he was the same way, he was too nice to me, I wonder who he killed. I know Brent didn't kill anyone, but still, he should have just left me alone in the first place like everyone else. Brent thought I was OK just like I am, I didn't have to cry or not cry, talk or not talk, be the Dog Girl or be Ellen who killed things and he had to go, that's why he had to go.

They asked the man why he didn't kill me too. "I pulled her out from under that bed and she was such a cute little girl," he said. "We had us a nice talk waiting for you to come and find us, didn't we?" and then he said his arms were tired and he let them handcuff him.

I want my friend the dog but there wasn't any dog, just him. He put me in his lap with his legs curled around me and there was the stale blood smell and he stroked my hair. "Don't cry, little girl," he said. "Things you cry for never come back."

I say Here Kitty again and I start crying really sobbing and I hear myself actually make a sound like Ooh hoo hooo and I curl up in a ball on the floor around Li Po's head thinking Shut up shut up shut up now he'll never come back. That's what I'm doing when Anya from the maid service comes in and puts her purse down on the kitchen counter.