The Future Is Blue

Badgirl, the Deadman, and the Wheel of Fortune

THE DEADMAN ALWAYS wore red when he came calling. Not all over red. Just a flash, like Mars in the night time. A coat, a long scarf, socks, a leather belt. An old sucked-dry rose in his buttonhole. A woolen cap with two little holes in it like bite marks. A fake ruby chip in his ear. One time, he wore lipstick and I cried in my hiding place. I always cried when the Deadman came, but that time I cried right away and I didn’t stop. Real quiet with my hands over my mouth. I can be a little black cat when I want, so he didn’t hear.

Daddy always used to say the Deadman came to bring him a cup of sugar and when I was a tiny dumb thing I thought that meant he was gonna make me cookies or blue Kool-Aid or a cake with yellow frosting even though it wasn’t usually my birthday. I liked yellow frosting best because it looked like all the lights in our apartment turned on at one time and nothing can be scary when all the lights are turned on at one time. I liked blue Kool-Aid best because it turned my tongue the color of outside.

So I hid from the Deadman in my treehouse and thought real hard about blue Kool-Aid with ice knocking around in it and a cake all for me with so much frosting it looked like an ice cream cone. My treehouse wasn’t a treehouse, though. It was the big closet in the hallway between the two bedrooms, the special kind of closet that has four legs like a chair and doors that swing out and drawers under the swinging doors. I heard the Deadman call it something French-sounding but he said it like a pirate kiss. Arrrr. Mwah. Daddy called it my treehouse because it’s made of trees nailed together so what’s the difference when you think about it. Whenever the Deadman came with his cup of sugar, I pulled out the drawers like a staircase, climbed in, shut the swinging doors tight behind me, and closed the latch Daddy screwed onto the inside of the pirate kiss closet. It was nice in there. Nothing much in it but me and a purple sweater half-falling off a wire hanger that might’ve been my mom’s, but might not’ve just as easy. It smelled like a mostly chopped down forest and crusty pennies. I tucked up my knees under my chin and held my breath, and turned into a little black cat that didn’t make one single sound.

“You got what I need?” my Daddy said to the Deadman. And the Deadman said back:

“If you got what I need, Mudpuddle, I got the whole world right here in my pocket.”

And then there was a bunch of rustling and coughing and little words that don’t mean anything except filling up the quiet, and in the middle of those funny soft nothing-noises the Deadman would start telling a joke, but a dumb joke, like the kind you read on Laffy Taffy wrappers. Nobody likes those jokes but the Deadman.

“Hey, did you hear the one about the horse and the submarine?”

“Yeah, I heard that one, D,” my Daddy always said, even though I never heard him tell a joke ever in my whole life and I don’t think he really knew the one about the horse and the submarine at all. But after that the Deadman would laugh a laugh that sounded like a swear word even though it didn’t have any words in it and he’d leave and I could breathe again.

Everybody called my Daddy Mudpuddle just like everybody called the Deadman the Deadman and everybody called me Badgirl even though my name is Loula which is pretty nice and feels good to say, like raindrops in your mouth. Where I live, we don’t call anybody by the name they got at the hospital.

“It’s ’cause I’m a real honest-to-Jesus old-timey gentleman, Badgirl,” Daddy told me, and clinked our mugs together. His had a lot of whiskey and mine had a very little whiskey, only enough to make me feel grown up and stop asking for cocoa. “Almost a prince, like that cat who went around sniffing all those girls’ feet back when. So when I’m escorting a lady friend and I see a big nasty mudpuddle in our way, I always take off my coat and lay it down so my girl can walk across without getting her shoes dirty.”

“Daddy, that’s the stupidest thing I ever heard. Who cares if her shoes get dirty when your coat gets ruined? Why can’t she just walk around the puddle? What’s wrong with her?”

Daddy Mudpuddle laughed and laughed even though what I said was way smarter than what he said. I thought people called him Mudpuddle because his clothes usually weren’t too clean, and the cuffs of all his pants were all ripped up and stained like he’d walked through the mud. But I didn’t say so. It’s not a nice thing to say. I liked the story where my Daddy’s almost a prince better, so I let that one stay, like a really good finger painting hung up on the refrigerator. Besides, I’ve never done anything very bad except get born and one time swallow a toy car and have to go to the hospital which Daddy couldn’t afford, but I still get called Badgirl. One time Daddy tucked me into bed and kissed my nose and whispered:

“It’s ’cause you were so good your Mama and I had to call you Badgirl so the angels wouldn’t come and take you away for their own.”

And that’s stupider than putting your coat down on a mudpuddle, so I figure names don’t really have any reasons or stories hiding inside them. I wasn’t good enough to still have a Mama now. I wasn’t good enough not to swallow a toy car and cost all that money. Names just happen to you and then you go on living with them on your shoulder like an ugly old parrot.

I remember the first time the Deadman came and Daddy didn’t have what he needed. But only barely. I wasn’t tiny anymore but I was still little. Daddy’d taken me to the thrift shop and bought me a new dress with blue and yellow butterflies on it and a green bow in the back for my first day of school which was in a week. It was the most beautiful dress I’d ever seen. It had green buttons and every butterfly was a little different, just like real life. It was gonna make me pretty for school, and school was gonna make me smart. So I decided to wear it every day until school started so that I could soak up the smart in that dress and then I’d be way ahead of all the other kids on day one. You think funny things when you’re little. You can laugh at me if you want. I’m not ashamed.

Anyway, I was playing with the toy from Happy Meal, which was a princess whose head came off and you could stick it on three different plastic bodies wearing different ballgowns. I took her head off and on and off and on but I got bored with it pretty fast because what can you do with a toy like that? What kind of make-believe can you get going about a girl whose head comes off? All the ones I could think of were scary.

Daddy was all jittery and anxious and biting his fingernails. I don’t think he liked the princess, either. She didn’t even have any shoes to get dirty. She didn’t have any feet. The bottoms of her ballgown-bodies were all flat, smooth plastic like the bottom of a glass. He wasn’t himself. Usually he’d give me plenty of warning. He never wanted the Deadman to see me. He said nobody who loved their baby girl would let the Deadman near her. He’d say:

“Deadman’s here, Badgirl, go up in your treehouse.” And I’d go, even though I didn’t hear anything out on the stoop. I never heard the Deadman coming, never heard a car engine or a bike bell or boots on the sidewalk or anything till he knocked on the door.

But this time he didn’t even seem to remember I was there. The knock happened and I wasn’t safe in my treehouse with the purple sweater and the pirate kisses. I wasn’t turned into a little black cat that never made a sound.

“Daddy!” I whispered, and then he did remember me, and picked me up in his arms and carried me down the hall and put me in his bedroom and shut the door.

But Daddy’s door doesn’t shut all the way. It’s got a bend in the latch. Daddy’s room had a lot of cigarettes put out on things other than ash trays and a TV and a painting of frogs on the wall. I didn’t like the smell but I did like being in there because normally I wasn’t allowed. But even though that part was exciting, I started shaking all over. Deadman’s here. I wasn’t safe. Safe meant my treehouse. Safe meant the drawers turned into a staircase and the smell like a chopped up forest. I watched Daddy go back down the hall. I could make it. Little black cats are fast, too. I slipped out the bedroom door and scrambled up into the pirate kiss closet. I didn’t even pull out the drawers into a staircase, I got up in one jump. I locked the lock and held my breath and turned into a little black cat that doesn’t ever make a sound. I pulled my butterfly dress over my knees and felt the smart ooze out of the fabric and into me. The smart felt big and good, like having your own TV in your bedroom.

The Deadman knocked. I could see him through the crack between the treehouse doors. He had a pinky ring on with a red stone in it. The Deadman had real nice eyebrows and a long, skinny face. His shirt was cut low but he didn’t have any hair on his chest.

“You got what I need?” Daddy said. And the Deadman said back:

“If you got what I need, Mudpuddle, I got the whole world right here in my pocket.”

Only Daddy didn’t. Daddy stared at his shoes. He looked like a princess-body without a princess-head.

“I’m just a little short, D. I started a new job, you know, and with a new job you don’t get paid the first two weeks. But I’m good for it.”

The Deadman didn’t say anything. Daddy’d been short on his sugar a lot lately. And I knew he didn’t have a new job. Or an old one.

“Come on, man. I’m a good person. I know I owe you plenty, but owing doesn’t make a man less needful. I’ll pay you in two weeks, I swear. My word is as good as the lock on a bank. I’m a gentleman. Ask anybody.”

The Deadman looked my Daddy up and down. Then he looked past him, into the living room, at my princess’s three headless bodies lying on the carpet. The Deadman chewed on something. I thought maybe it was bubblegum. Red bubblegum, I supposed. Finally, he twisted his pinky ring around and said:

“Did you ever hear the one about the Devil and the fiddle?”

Daddy sort of fell apart without moving. He was still standing up, but only on the outside. On the inside, he was crumpled up on the ground. “Yeah, I heard that one, D,” he sighed.

“I tell you what,” the Deadman said. “I’ll give you what you need this week—hell, next week, too and the one after—if you give me whatever’s in that armoire back there.”

Arrr. Mwah.

Daddy looked over his shoulder, all frantic. But then, he remembered that he’d put me in his room with his TV and his painting of frogs and I was safe as a fish in a bowl. Only I wasn’t.

“You sure, Deadman? I mean, there’s nothing in there but an old purple sweater and a couple of moths.”

Daddy kept looking on down the hall like he could see me. Did he see me? Did he know? Little black cats have eyes that shine in the dark. Sometimes I think the only important thing in my whole life is knowing whether or not Daddy could see the shine on my eye through the crack between the doors. But I can’t ever know that.

“Then I’ll guess I’ll have something to keep me warm and something to lead me to the light, my man,” laughed the Deadman, and he made a thing with his mouth like a smile. It mostly was a smile. On somebody else it would have definitely been a smile. But it wasn’t a smile, really, and I knew it. It was a scream. No, Daddy. I’m in here. It’s me. But I still didn’t make a sound, because Daddy loved me and didn’t ever want the Deadman to see me.

“Okay, D,” shrugged Daddy like it didn’t matter to him at all. Like he couldn’t see. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he really put his coat down over those mudpuddles.

The Deadman gave him something small. I couldn’t tell what it was. It wasn’t a cup of sugar, for sure. How could something a man needs so much be so small? Daddy started back toward my treehouse, but the Deadman stopped him, grabbed his arm.

“You ever hear the one about the cat who broke his promise?”

Daddy swallowed hard. “Yeah, Deadman. I heard that one a bunch of times.”

Mudpuddle hit the lightswitch in the hall that had all those dead bugs on the inside of it. The Deadman danced on ahead of him and took a big swanky breath like he’d bought those lungs in France. He hauled on the doors of my treehouse but they didn’t come open because of the secret latch on the inside. Daddy Mudpuddle put his hands over his face and sank down on his heels.

“This thing got a key?” the Deadman said but the way he said it was all full of knowing the arrr mwah had more than a moth inside.

It’s ok, I thought and squeezed my eyes tight. I sank down in my blue and yellow butterfly dress. I’m a little black cat. Little black cats can be invisible if they want.

Daddy looked sick. His face was like the skin on old soup. I’m a little black cat and I have magic. He flicked out his pen-knife and stuck it in the crack between the doors. The latch lifted up. I’m a little black cat and little black cats can do anything. The Deadman opened the doors like a window on his best morning.

The Deadman didn’t say anything for a good while. He looked right at me, smiling and shining and thinking Deadman thoughts. His eyes had blue flecks in them, like someone had spilled paint on his insides. I’m a little black cat and no one can see me. He pulled down the purple sweater and shut the doors again.

“I’ll come back for the moths, Mudpuddle. It’s such a cold day out. I’m shivering already. You stay in and enjoy yourself. Have a hot drink.”

The Deadman took his red and disappeared back out the door.

AFTER THAT, THE Deadman came around a lot more often. I didn’t have to hide anymore, though sometimes I did anyway. Mostly I played with my toys and thought about who came up with the names for all the colors in the 64-color crayon box or whether or not rhinoceroses were friendly to girls who really liked rhinoceroses or how much 3 times 4 was because those are the kind of things you think about when you’ve soaked up all the smart in your dress and some of the smart in your school, too. Deadman and Daddy got to be best friends. They didn’t talk about the day of the closet, ever. They’d lay around and drink and eat plain tortillas out of the bag and watch game shows on the living room TV. The Deadman always knew all the answers. The first thing I ever said to him was:

“Why don’t you go on one of those shows? You’d make a million dollars and you could move to a nice house that’s really far away.”

I popped my princess’s head off and stuck it on the blue ballgown body. The Deadman turned his head and looked at me like I was a $20 bill lying on the sidewalk with no one around.

“Wouldn’t be fair to all those other contestants, Badgirl.” He glanced back toward the TV. “What is plutonium?” he said to the game show man in the grey suit. Then back to me: “Why don’t you come and sit by me? I’ll let you have a sip of my… what are we drinking, Muddy? My vodka’n OJ.”

“Don’t want it.”

“Come on, it’s just like water. It’ll make you grow up fierce and bright.”

But I didn’t want his nasty vodka in his dirty mug that had a cartoon cactus on it saying GOOD MORNING ALBUQUERQUE. I didn’t know where Albuquerque was but I hated it because the Deadman had a mug from there.

“Don’t be rude, Badgirl,” my Daddy said, because he loved me but he’d heard the one about the cat who broke his promise and he didn’t want to hear it again.

So I sat down between them and I hated them both and I drank out of the Albuquerque mug while the man in the grey suit told us that the dollar values had doubled. The Deadman touched my hair but after awhile he stopped because little black cats bite when strangers pet them. Everyone knows that.

The Deadman started showing up in the mornings and saying he’d walk me to school so Daddy could get to his work on time. Daddy didn’t have a work, but he made me promise never to tell the Deadman that, so I didn’t tell, even though nobody who has a work lives where we do and eats powdered mashed potatoes without un-powdering them. I said I didn’t need to be walked anywhere because I wasn’t a baby, but the Deadman just stared down the hall at the pirate kiss closet till Daddy looked too and then nobody said anything but I had to walk to school with the Deadman.

I didn’t like walking with the Deadman. His hands were clammy even when he wore gloves and he always took the long way. He talked a lot but I could never remember what he said after. One time I thought I should ask him questions about himself because that’s what nice girls do, so I asked him where he was from. Grown-ups asked each other that all the time. The Deadman swept out his arm all grand for no reason.

“Paris, France!”

“That’s a lie. You’re a liar.”

“You got me, Badgirl. You’re too good for the likes of me. The truth is, I’m from the continent of Atlantis. My parents had a squat on the banks of the river Styx.”

“Is that in the Bronx?”

“Yeah, Badgirl. That’s just where it is. You’re smarter than a sack of owls, you are.”

“It’s ’cause of my dress,” I said proudly.

A little while after that, the Deadman started walking me home from school, too. He slicked up his hair fancy and told my teacher he was my uncle. Had a signed slip from Daddy and everything. But we never made it all the way home. He’d stand me on a corner and give me a box that had pills inside it, so bright they looked like Skittles. And he said:

“You’re so good, Badgirl. Nobody’ll mess with you on account of how good you are. You’re just as clean and bright as New Year’s Day.”

“I wanna go home.”

“Naw, you can’t yet. This here is medicine. Lots of people need medicine. You know how you hate it when you get sick. You don’t want people to get sick when you could make them better, do you? Just stand here and keep the box in your backpack and when sick people come asking, take their money and give them a couple of whatever color they ask for. If you do a good job, I’ll buy you a new dress.”

I sniffled. It was fall and the damp came with fall. I had a wet leaf stuck to my show. “I don’t want a new dress,” I whispered.

“Well, a new doll then. God knows a girl needs more than that ratty headless thing you got. I’ll come back for you and we’ll get back before your Daddy finishes his work.”

I didn’t have mittens so my hands got tingly and cold and then I couldn’t feel them anymore. I waited on the corner and all kinds of strangers came up talking to me like we were friends and I did what the Deadman said I had to. My fingers felt like they were made out of silver so I pretended that was the truth, that I had beautiful silver hands with pictures scratched onto them like the fancy dishes on TV. And every time I had to touch somebody strange to me so I could give over their medicine I pretended my beautiful silver hands turned them into game show contestants with perfect teeth and fluffy hair and nametags the color of luck.

AT CHRISTMAS TIME the Deadman brought over a tree with one red ball on it and a strand of lights with only three bulbs working. He had on red velvet elf shoes like the kind Santa’s helpers wear at the mall, only his were old and dark and the bells didn’t make any sound. He also brought a bottle of brandy and some cheeseburgers and a cake from the grocery store with HAPPY BIRTHDAY ALEXIS written on it in hot pink frosting. I could read it by myself by then, even though I’d had to stop wearing my smart dress because it got holes in it and all the buttons fell off. The Deadman set it all out like he was Santa but he was not Santa, and I bet Santa never came to his house when he was little, if the Deadman ever had been little. He never did bring me a new doll or a new dress. Daddy put on that show where they play part of a song and you have to guess what it’s called.

Daddy and the Deadman had gotten so used to having me around they didn’t bother hiding anything anymore.

“Bennie and the Jets,” the Deadman said. It took the blonde lady on TV forever to get it. She squealed when she did and jumped up and down. Her earrings glittered in the stage lights like fire.

They ate some cake. It was red velvet on the inside but I didn’t feel right eating Alexis’s birthday cake. I ate half a cheeseburger but it was cold and the ketchup tasted like glue. The Deadman gave Daddy his Christmas present. Daddy didn’t say thank you. He didn’t say very much anymore. He just took the little small lump wrapped in red tissue paper from the Deadman and shook some out into a spoon. It did look like sugar after all. He flicked a lighter under the spoon and held it there until the sugar got all melted and brown and gluggy. It was sort of oily on top, too, like spilled gas.

Like a mudpuddle.

Then the Deadman handed him a needle, like the kind at the doctor’s office when you have to get your shots because otherwise you’ll get sick. I pulled the head off my princess and stuck it on the body with the pink ballgown. Daddy tied one of my hair ribbons around his arm and the Deadman stuck the needle in the mudpuddle first, and into Daddy second. Then he did it all over again on himself. Daddy smiled and his face got round and happy. It got to be his own face again. Daddy has a good face. He patted his lap for me to come sit with him and I did and it was Christmas for a minute.

“How Deep Is Your Love,” the Deadman said. Another blonde lady frowned on the TV. She couldn’t think of the song. Poor lady. I didn’t know that song, either. But I knew the next one because it was Michael Jackson and I knew all his songs.

“Billie Jean,” I whispered. Daddy was asleep.

“C’mere, Badgirl,” said the Deadman.

“Don’t want to.”

“Why you afraid of me?”

“I’m not afraid. Little black cats aren’t afraid of anything.”

“Come on, Badgirl. I’m not gonna hurt you. I got you a present. Make you grow up quick and sharp.”

“Don’t want to.”

The Deadman lit himself a cigarette. He had the same don’t-get-sick shot Daddy had so how come he didn’t just go to sleep and leave me alone? I’d have cleaned up the dishes and made sure the TV got turned off. I did it all the time.

“Your dad promised me whatever was in the armoire. You were in there. So you have to do what I say. I own you. I’ve been nice about it, because you’re such a little thing, but it’s hard for a man like me to keep being nice.” The Deadman started doing his trick with the mudpuddle and the spoon again. “I gotta carry that nice all day and Badgirl, I tell you what, it is heavy. I wanna put it down. My shoulders are aching. So you better come when I call or else I’m liable to just drop my nice right on the ground and break it into a hundred pieces.”

“Don’t be rude, Badgirl,” Daddy murmured in his sleep. I looked up at his scruffy chin and something popped and spat inside me like grease and it made a stain on my insides that spelled out I hate my Daddy and I felt ashamed. He wasn’t even awake. He didn’t know anything. But I still hated him because little black cats don’t know how to forgive anybody.

I think it’s against the law for a person to own another person but maybe he did own me because in a flash minute I was sitting down next to the Deadman even though I didn’t want to be. But not on his lap. On TV, a man with red hair was listening to the first few notes of a song I almost knew but couldn’t quite remember. The Deadman reached for my arm and Daddy woke up then, coughing like his breath got stolen.

“What the fuck, man! Don’t do that,” Daddy said. “She’s my kid.”

“Lighten up, Muddy! It’s just a little Christmas fun. She’s such a sour little thing. Always scowling at us like she’s our mother. You gotta nip that in the bud when they’re young. A lady should always be smiling.” The Deadman looked my Daddy in the eye. “You ever hear the one about the cat who broke his promise?” And he stuck the needle in my arm.

After that I didn’t have hands anymore.

I felt like I was all filled up with yellow, the yellow that looks like all the lights turned on at once. I could hardly see with all that yellow swimming around in me. The TV changed to another show, the one where the beautiful lady in a glittery dress turns giant glowing letters around and everyone tries to guess the sentence. She was wearing my smart dress with the butterflies on it. She reached up and turned over a B but I don’t like B because B is for Badgirl so I reached up to turn it back around and that’s when I knew I didn’t have hands anymore.

My arms just ended all smooth and neat, no thumbs, no pinkie, no ring finger, like the plastic bottoms on the ballgown bodies. The stumps dripped yellow and blue butterflies onto the carpet. They flapped their wings there, grazing the rug with their antennae to see if it was flowers. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t anything. I looked around but I couldn’t see them lying anywhere, not even under the sofa. I couldn’t feel anything when I touched the letter B on TV with my stump, or the beautiful lady’s hair, or the wall of the living room. When I gave up and dropped my arm back down I must have knocked over a bottle or something because there was glass everywhere but I didn’t feel that either. The Deadman grabbed me to keep me from falling in the mess but I couldn’t make my fingers close around anything, not his sleeve or the corner of the table or anything. My fingers wouldn’t listen. They weren’t fingers anymore.

I had so much yellow in me it was coming out, coming out all over, washing over everything and making it clean like the dancing lemons on the shaker of powdered soap. I twisted out of the Deadman’s grip and crawled away from him back into Daddy’s lap.

“Daddy, my hands are gone. Fix it, please? I don’t know how to be a girl without hands. All girls have hands. No one will play with me at school.”

But Daddy was asleep in his mudpuddle world again and when I tried to pat his face to wake him up I just clobbered him because stumps are so heavy, so much heavier than fingers. But he didn’t wake up. Someone on TV in Giant Letter World spun a big wheel and it came up gold, too. The beautiful lady in my smart dress clapped her hands. See? All girls have hands. Except me. Another blue butterfly flew out of my stump and landed on the window. It was night outside. The butterfly glowed so blue it turned into the moon.

The Deadman pulled a deck of cards out of his back pocket and started dealing himself a hand of solitaire at our kitchen table. He was real good at shuffling. I took my eyes back from the butterfly moon and put them on the Deadman. He put his cigarette in his mouth and dragged on it good and ragged.

He was shuffling cards with my hands.

I knew my own hands and those were it. My pinkie still had green fingernail polish on it from my friend’s mom’s house and a scratch where I fell playing hopscotch last week. My wrist had my lucky yarn bracelet on it. He’d popped them off me like a princess’s head and stuck them on his body. My hands should have been way too small for the Deadman to wear but somehow they weren’t, either he got little to match them or they got big to match him. I decided he got little, because my hands should be loyal to me and not him. My hand put down an ace of hearts and waved at me. Then words started coming out of me like blue butterflies and I couldn’t stop them and they came out without permission, without me even thinking them before they turned into words.

“Are you a person?”

The Deadman chewed on one of my fingernails which he had no right to do.

“Used to be.”

“In Paris, France? With the river?”

The Deadman snorted. “Yeah.”

“How do you stop being a person?”

“Lots of ways. It’s far harder to keep on being a person than to stop. I do think about starting up again sometimes, though. I do think about that. But once you been to that river, it fills you up forever. You need something real good to turn your heart back to red.”

“Why do you keep coming back here? Do you even like my Daddy? Are you really his friend?”

“I think he’s a worthless piece of shit, Badgirl. But he has cable. And he has you.”

The blue butterfly moon got bigger and bigger in the window. It was gonna take up our whole apartment. “Did he know I was in the… the… arrr-mwah?”

The Deadman sighed. He put down a quick 2-3-4 on his ace. “It wouldn’t have gone different if he did or didn’t, kid. The thing about having the whole world in your back pocket is that every day is nothing but wall to wall bargains. I don’t have to dicker. They keep upping the price. Everyone wants the world. I just want everyone.”

“I want my hands back.”

The beautiful lady turned around six or seven letters quick, one after the other. She was still wearing my smart dress, which I guess is why she always knows the answer to the puzzle. But now my dress had gotten long like a wedding dress. It glittered all over. The green bow and green buttons were all emeralds falling down her back and all over the stage. Her chest looked like the sun and she had stars all up and down her arms and the blue butterfly moon was rising in the studio, too, right behind her head like a crown. Everyone had stolen my things. I wanted her to come out of the TV and save me and turn me around like the letter B. But she wasn’t going to. She had my dress. She had what she wanted.

I’m a little black cat, I thought. Little black cats run away. Little black cats don’t need hands. The blue butterfly moon had gotten so big it bulged up against my treehouse and the front door at the same time. Little black cats can climb up on the moon and ride it far, far away. To Paris, France and the Bronx and the continent of Atlantis.

The Deadman glanced at the game show. For once, he didn’t solve it before the contestants did. He just touched his lips with my fingers and said quietly:

“I need them.”

Little black cats don’t need anyone. Little black cats have magic no one can steal. Little black cats run faster than dead men.

“Why?”

All the letters lit up at once and the lady in my dress touched them all, smiling, buttons and bows and butterflies sparkling everywhere, until they spelled out: HELL IS EMPTY AND ALL THE DEVILS ARE HERE.

“With clean hands, Badgirl, you can start all over.”

Little black cats run right out, just as soon as you open the door.