Isis Knows Her

.... © 1999 Joseph R. Trocino

As she always does, she awakes early, and leaps from her bed, not so much to start her day but to escape the cold that had wrapped her throughout the night. There could never be enough blankets for her, for this cold is of the empty bed sort.

Ann is lean. Wiry. Smart and street wise. "In charge" would be the words most of those who work with her would use to paint her picture. "In charge" even to herself - that is, on the days she doesn’t think too much about it.

Ten percent body fat, and muscles that still ripple, the product of too much tennis and serious exercise, she wears her late forties well.

Thirty sit-ups on the rug, stretching exercises, and soon the big chill that always wraps her in her bed is forgotten for another moment.

She is not quite alone. She shares her life with Isis, an amiable cat who is a patient listener, and, as it turns out, a savvy observer.

Isis has always liked to follow Ann into her bath, the steam from the shower, the lure of Ann’s wet ankles and the bonus of a dropped towel being to her liking.

Ann sings to Isis, following along piano-bar style to the radio’s country sounds - Ann’s weakness. Isis never whines about the flat notes. Ann’s long-in-the-past man often did. He has been gone fifteen years now, and so much of him is forgotten.

But Ann still remembers the bad from this man.

Nowadays, she lives without his hundred little hurts. Without the humiliation. When the spirits of this man come a calling, as they still do, she pens them in by reminding them that she is, of course, her own woman, and needs not to rely on this almost forgotten man for what , and who, she is.

He left - actually he was taken away - those many years ago, and when he was gone, the hurts stopped, and that was good.

But she lost, too. She lost all of the security that she had sought in him as a young woman. Tall men had always provided her with a sense of safety, and he was tall. But he was not tall enough, on the inside, and now, he was gone.

The flow of time had hardened her. There had been another man. But he drank so darn much, that in the end, he was useless. So Ann went about learning her ways, and slowly, the business built from a crazy idea into real money. And it was her money, built on her work.

Ann worked like a miner. The store opened at nine, closed at six, and she was there to open and close, and to send the sales people out into the franchise she had earned. She thought of herself as being a dynamo she once saw on a television show about Hoover Dam: wheels spinning; never stopping; power flowing from her coppery coils. In fact, Ann had come to think of her long curls as actually being those copper coils, spitting out megawatts of power, driving her business acumen.

Worse, Ann had, for quite some time now, convinced herself that her entire body was an engine: Pistons. Spark plugs. It produced power and energy for her survival, and not much else. Perfume? Not for Ann. Why? Machines don’t need to smell good. Dresses? Only for important presentations. Black dresses. Black presentations, for that matter.

There is a Catalpa tree in Ann’s front yard, and this morning, its leaves are reflecting the morning sun in such a way that a mottled shadow pattern finds its way past Ann’s window mullions and onto her bathroom floor.

Lowering her tooth brush and closing the faucet, Ann is taken by the soft shadows of the tree at her feet.

Transcendent shadows, it seems, because Ann is taken up by the patterns at her feet, and lifted into a world where animals speak.

"My love, I know you." Isis purred to Ann. "And I’ve never known a woman to run away so often and with such purpose from a simple bed."

"What do you know, Isis? It’s just a bed." Ann answered.

"Cats know when their loves stop being human, and become machines," Iris said, entwining herself in the leaf shadows.

"Look at you. You are so unlike me," Isis mewed. "Do something you never do any more, my Ann, look in that mirror. Why be a machine?"

The shadow pattern, the shower steam, and the undeniable realization that Isis knows her too well has taken Ann to another place, deeper inside, behind the wall she has built. So, she looks into the mirror, and, for the first time in years, she sees the woman, not the machine.

They really aren’t copper dynamos, she finds, but curls. And so pretty. Ann looks closer. The thinnest of bodies, and eyes so green that even Isis, in her Siamese ways, envies them. Once, years ago, a man (who was he?) had touched her breasts and told her it was like touching velvet pillows. Then, she pushed him away. Suddenly, before the mirror, she touches them with her own hand, as if for the first time, and agrees with the man whose name she can’t quite recall.

"It’s the bed, Ann," Isis said to her, curling into a towel. Machines make it cold. "Cats make them warm. Be a cat!"

Looking into the mirror again, her nose practically touching the glass, Ann sees behind her image, as Isis’ words begin to push their way past the first old bricks of her fifteen year old wall.

In the mirror now, Ann sees again the first videos of the Berlin wall toppling. This time, however, the sledge hammers are being swung by cats of all manner and colors. The cats open a breech, wider at the top, thinner at the bottom, and step aside, on little cat feet.

Through the gap, as a liquid at first, then forming into a solid, is a young farm girl, an Iowan. Ann knows this girl, and knows why she had been sealed up behind the wall these many years.

This girl awakes, a soft awaking at first, then more focused, all by the nurturing of the cats who have reappeared to succor this young woman to awareness.

This woman rises on the thinnest of feet. Naked, with arms at her side, she opens her palms to Ann, an invitation to explore her body. Ann does so, beyond the mirror. She finds it a soft body, muscled, sweet smelling, and sinewy. It is both machine, and woman.

Through the mirror, and past Ann, the girl in the mirror speaks to Isis:

"Speak to Ann, Isis. Tell her to find me."

And then, to Ann: "I’m not living behind this wall any more." "Shall we be us, again?"

With a sudden inhalation of Ann’s breath, the young girl passes through the mirror and joins Ann, again.

As one person, Ann and the young girl struggle to turn the faucet back on and lift the toothbrush, but they manage.

Since then, the world has changed some for Ann. She works as hard as ever and tennis is still fun.

But her bed. It’s never been warmer.

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