Healing Machine for Erika
For the anxiety of people-pleasing.
It’s the one day every twenty years when your cat Eliza is granted a human voice, and you wake up ready with a million questions about animal consciousness. But she’s not having any of it. She demands to get on the phone with everyone who’s ever hurt you so she can fuck them up with words. You tell her that’s not how it works; that’s not what words are for. “Yes it is,” she says. In a huff, you put your phone in the fridge where she’ll never find it, and you spend the rest of the day watching skincare videos side-by-side in a tense silence.
In the wee hours of the night, you wake up to find that Eliza has slipped out of the bedroom. You search the apartment. It does not take long to find her. Crouched over your phone in the yellow light of the open fridge, Eliza meows furiously at someone on the other end of the line. You resist the impulse to stop her.
“Who are you talking to?” you ask.
“Some asshole,” she says with her eyes, continuing her unintelligible racket.
You sit down beside her on the cold tile and wait. When she’s said her piece, she hangs up with a self-satisfied flourish.
“Well?” she says without saying a word.
You hesitate, but then you do it. You place her paw on the next number.
And the next. And the next.