Fern's Touch

They say she's touched. Not a lot, just enough to keep people distanced. Perhaps it's the way she waddles, pigeon-toed, eyes toward the ground, or the way she talks, stuttering and murmuring in her flat voice. Perhaps it's the way she sits on porch steps with a book clutched in a grubby hand. Perhaps it's the way she speaks about Billy, as though he were still alive.

"Billy will come with me on the bus," she says. "Oh, that Billy."

Fern looks like her name caught in a windstorm. Her scraggly hair frizzes about her doughy face, her cheeks fresh with scratches and stray whiskers. If people see her coming, they scurry quickly away, sliding their gaze down. If they don't, she tells them of Billy. "Mmm, of course," they say, "Well, I'm running late," or "Yes, a very nice dog," and hustle away.

Fern took Billy on walks, on the bus, to the store. When Billy died, old and deaf, Fern's shuffles became slower, her gaze emptier. Her sister, with whom she lives, won't let her buy another dog: "Pets are hard to take care of, and Fern just isn't capable anymore."

But Fern has pets. She has more pets than anyone in the city. Though people veer away when Fern walks by, all the cats come out to greet her, meowing in soft tones. They arch their backs against her stubby legs, waiting to be picked up and cuddled. Squirrels scramble down from oak trees, chattering and racing around her. Dogs bark and whine from behind gates, wiggling their furry, fat bodies. Sometimes, when out for walks, my dogs spot Fern on a porch step and begin yanking and biting their leashes. Plodding over to us and smiling buoyantly, Fern picks up their squirming bodies. They yelp and jump and wag their stumpy tails like propellers and lick, lick, lick her face. Whenever I walk by her sitting on a porch, she is scratching a cat or murmuring to a squirrel or holding out her hand to a bird.

Fern isn't touched. She has a touch.