"I'll use small words so you'll understand." Goldie James paused for effect. Was that an insult? She didn't think so. She was talking to a cat, after all. "The house is pandemonium. Serious pandemonium. Is that a small enough word - pandemonium?"
She patted the cat's back. It wasn't even her cat, she just found him sitting on her porch about five minutes ago when she came out to get away from everything that was going on inside her house.
Goldie's grandpa died three days ago. Today was the funeral. All of her relatives from heaven knows where were crowded together inside the house. She'd forgotten whose house it was. An aunt's, maybe? Aunt Something. Definitely an aunt. Either way, it was much too crowded and much to full of old people to stay in there.
Tomorrow she'd be going home. She hadn't really known him because they'd moved away from California when Goldie was very small and they'd only visited once or twice since. She could remember his face a little, but she tried her hardest not look in the open casket during the service. It was bad enough that her Grandpa's nose extended ever so slightly past the casket walls.
"Death looks boring, Cat. And, that is why I've decided..." She threw her arms into the air and yelled, "I am never going to die!!"
Her scream scared the cat into the bushes beside her aunt's house and a few worried faces of her distant relatives appeared in the kitchen window. Goldie quickly ducked under the porch, so they couldn't watch her anymore. She scanned the bushes for the missing cat. She saw a slight shiver from the bush at the far end of the house, crowching low so as to stay out of the sight of her relatives, she moved toward the bush.
"Cat, is that you?" she whispered. "Caaaat. Cat! Come here."
Goldie crawled through the grass in her aunt's back yard. Thorns from the rose bush caught her skirt and scratched at her tights. The cat had disappeared around the corner of the house.
"Goldie!" Her mom's voice called from the porch.
"Right here, Mom," she answered from below.
Mom looked over the railing.
Only Goldie's little pale pink legs and shoeless feet were visible over the edge of the porch. Her shoes were lying in the middle of the yard and a hole had worn into the heel of the blackened sole of her tights.
Her mom gasped, "Goldie! You're ruining your tights! What are you doing down there?"
Goldie sighed as she dragged herself backwards through the dirt and the grass. She stood and swept both hands down the front of her dress in an effort to clean it off. It didn't help. She crossed her arms behind her and looked up at her mom.
"There was a cat that I was playing with, Mom. I think it went under there," she pointed to the same spot where she'd just been lying.
"OK, well, you need to come inside. It's time to eat." Her mom pointed into the yard. "Get your shoes first."
Goldie walked over to one of her haphazardly discarded shoes and picked it up from the ground and slowly turned in circles trying to pick out the dark green satin shoe in the grass.
She let out a heavy sigh and held her one shoe out toward her mom, who was still standing on the porch. "Mom. I can't see it." Her mom didn't say anything, but pointed. Goldie turned to her left, following her mom's finger and saw the little shoe lying on it's side just three feet from where she was standing.
"Oh," she said, and bent to pick up the shoe.
She slowly climbed the stairs to the porch, dreading the crazy world inside the house. For a girl as small as she (just a little over four feet tall, and proud of it!), walking into such a crowded house was just like drowning in an extremely loud puddle of people. And, it was hot in there. There was hot breath sinking out of every single person's mouth in there and it was just hot, and dank, and a little smelly. Almost every person she walked past patted her head or touched her shoulder as she squeezed by. Sometimes she covered her head as she walked by. And, why in the world was she the only kid here? She'd had met some of her friend's cousins back home... but as far as she could tell, she didn't have any.
"Stop!" Interrupted her reverie and Goldie came to a halt at her mom's outburst.
"Take those tights off before you go inside. You'll get mud on Aunt Wilma's floors."
Aunt Wilma. That's her name. This is Aunt Wilma's house.
Goldie set her shoes down on Aunt Wilma's back porch.
Maybe the cat was Aunt Wilma's, as well?
She slipped her tights down her legs, stepped out of them, and put them into her mom's outstretched palm.
It wasn't so bad going through the crowd this time. Mom's hands were on her shoulders leading her through the kitchen and then the living room and all the way upstairs to the bedroom where Goldie was helped to quickly change out of her dress for dinner. Mom promptly took the dress to the washing machine and started a load. Goldie hadn't thought the dress was that bad. It was already an ugly brown-ish green color. The dirt barely showed up. Most of the clothes Mom packed for her were dark colored. Apparently when a person dies it's respectful to wear dark colors. Goldie wondered why, though, because dark colors are just boring. Well, that must be it. Dark colors are boring, death is boring. In the end, dark colors go well with death. At least she had those pink tights... oh, except she kind of ruined those that afternoon. Shoot! Goldie smoothed out her velvety black shirt and then patted her hair. Atleast she hadn't messed that up. Her mom would have practically ripped her head off as she quickly combed through it before dinner.
Mom burst back through the bedroom door beckoning Goldie with her ever moving arms.
"Come on, lady, it's time to eat."
Elise
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