
The Persian Cat
I wrote shorts during my morning commute. This is the last one.
She didn’t mind that it took her longer to do most things, that it took her full minutes to make her way down the platform with the weight of her small body pushing off her right foot as her left leg trolled behind resentfully; it didn’t bother her that sometimes the doors closed on her before she could maneuver out of the elevator when it opened up at the mezzanine. None of that really bothered her; it was her lot in life, she’d always said. It was the snickers she hated.
Those Cristo Rey kids in their plaid skirts and high socks — that one with the fat, flat face like her aunt’s Persian cat — they were the worst. She sat in the seat close to the door, and they piled in front of her like swarming fish. Not holding on, daring to fall into each other as the train swayed and staggered.
“Oh flip off!” She snarled, waving a hand of swollen knuckles much too big for her body. The kids giggled as they darted fluidly into a new formation.
Except the Persian Cat. She batted her paw into the swarm, emerging with a skinny arm in her clutches. She whispered into the ear attached to the arm, and the braided head shook, the amber eyes widened. A gasp, a laugh. As the skinny girl was about to reply, the train lurched hard, and the whole group toppled towards the handicapped seats. Even the Persian Cat shrieked and ran up the car to the door on the far end, where the group camouflaged themselves in another circle of pink backpacks and plaid skirts.
She was glad to be rid of them.
“But they are, both sides are despicable!” Her father had ranted the night before. “I won’t be bullied into adopting some mainstream PC narrative… it’s just as damaging. You’re only allowed to have an opinion if it’s the right opinion.”
“Why does it kill you to qualify that sentence and say, ‘White supremacists are more despicable than Black Lives Matter?’”
“Have you seen the marches, the protests where they chant that they’re gonna kill cops?!”
“Even if that happened, which I need to see proof, even so — if that happened, Black Lives Matter leadership condemns those actions, they don’t see violence as a means to an end. White supremacists champion it!”
“They are just as violent and hateful!”
Her mother’s face had trembled, but she’d said nothing. She passed the field peas to her husband.
“You can’t say, ‘It’s more nuanced than that!’ and then conveniently drop nuance so you can stereotype all Black Lives Matter protestors.”
Forks had scraped plates, had ripped apart the deboned fish filets.
Yes. From where she was sitting, she was glad to be rid of them.