Cleoma Breaux turned away from the gas burners of her stove to wash six large potatos in a chipped blue colander. Water sprayed over her wrinkled hands onto the faded stripes of her apron. Her hands, as old as they were, were still strong enough to wring a chicken's neck. Grit and sprouting buds on the potato fell through the large rusted holes in the bottom of the colander. She watched them tumble into the sink and wondered how many hundreds, or thousands, of potatos she had washed in that colander in the past sixty years. It had served her well because she took care of it. She always dried it by hand or in the sun after use, and she always hung it above the right side of the sink next to the window overlooking her garden.

Once the potatos were free of dirt she patted them dry with a tattered hand towel and dropped them in a pot. Before she could finish drying it, the last potato fell out of the towel and onto the lip of the empty colander. The colander flipped off of the edge of the sink and onto the floor.

Cleoma's cat, Beau, crouched a few feet away and stared into his glass bowl at the ripples in the milk formed when the refrigerator condenser hummed. When the colendar fell into the hardwood floor Beau bolted from his milk bowl and clawed his way across Cleoma's legs on his way to the open door leading to the rest of the house. Milk sloshed out of the bowl and onto the floor below Cleoma's feet.

"Beau, arrete ca!"

The colandar rolled to a stop in front of the door. Pinpoints of blood formed where the cat clawed his way across her skin. She did not mind Beau's scratches, she had been clawed by him too many times for her to care. The damage to the colander was what worried her. She took two steps and bent over slowly to pick it up. Blood rushed to her head. Her vision blurred. The room spun. She grabbed at the counter to stabilize herself and caught, instead, the potato that fell from her towel. It rolled over, leaving her with nothing to hold. She fell. Her body turned sideways. She heard and felt something near her waist crack when she hit the floor. She tried to sit up. The shards of bone in her hip ground together sending a wave of pain through her that she passed out.

Four hours later she woke up when Beau began pushing at her face to lap up the spilled milk puddling at her neck. Drool that seeped out of the corner of Cleoma's mouth while she was unconscious pooled under her face and collected around her ear. She lifted her head and began crawling toward the telephone. Pain returned. She moaned loud enough to scare Beau out of the kitchen.

The eight feet she needed to crawl to reach the phone seemed to stretch to the horizon. Enhaling air made the chips of crushed bone shift. She knew if she crawled straight ahead she could yank the phone down and call for help. Thirty minutes later she was half way to it. She lifted her head twice to see if she was still crawling the right deriction. An hour later she was close enough to grab the phone cord and tug it to the floor. When she reached to pull it down the pain in her waist overwhelmed her. She passed out again. Two hours later she woke up groaning, the receiver was next to her elbow. She dialed 911. Beau sat with his back against the screen door at the front of the house until a paramedic opened it. He clawed between the paramedics legs and ran to a bush by the driveway where he hid until the ambulance left. Once it was gone he meowed at the door for it to open again.

Beau gave up after two days and walked to the nieghbor's house, a quarter mile down the road.

Cleoma never went into her house again. She spent the last year of her life groaning incomprehensibly to the nurses at the Nevils Rest Home in Eunice, Louisiana.

"Ouvrez la porte. Il a faim."

  They put things in our drinks...