By: johnwike.near
John Wike
The ceiling caving in at night was unexpected. It was barely two months since they had done the renovations before moving into the house. A meticulous and thorough person, MarmaJ was a little upset that she’d not checked properly before moving in. This was one incident that could have caused great harm if it had happened while folks were in the living room.
She called out to her dogs, Miles and Ruby. They were outside, playing on the lawn, and she had taken them there so they wouldn’t injure themselves from playing on the broken ceiling fragments. MarmaJ walked out with her phone in hand, searching for the repairman’s mobile number.
As she searched her phone, she found contacts saved with odd names. The names made her chuckle; she couldn’t remember who they were or why she’d saved their names that way. ‘Man DT 4drive Sqble’: she said it out loud, wondering who had gotten into a squabble and why she had their number.
MarmaJ didn’t think of herself this way, but she was the neighborhood hero. Settling disputes, getting things fixed or making arrangements, even petitioning the city council if the needs of residents were being ignored. She had gotten into her own fair share of skirmishes over her initiatives but she didn’t mind. Someone always has to stand up. Someone has to do it.
Two years ago, she remembered, someone had run to her apartment to call for her help. A man had pounded on the door and explained nearly incomprehensibly that his wife was having contractions and he didn’t have a clue on how to go about it.
MarmaJ remembered how she had sprung up from bed, equally confused as to why she was the one he had come to call and worried about the man’s pregnant wife who was apparently due for delivery. She grabbed a jacket and had run with him back to his building as she scolded him gently: “You should not have left her in the house. You should have put her in the car and called me on phone instead.” The young man had looked confused and scared. It was his first time. MarmaJ sighed, empathizing with the man and understanding his situation. She assured him that everything would be fine. She smiled at the memory as she scrolled through her list of contacts. This was MarmaJ’s life, and she never complained but tried her best to offer help.
She finally found the repair man’s contact – it was clearly saved hurriedly and the abbreviated contact name was a puzzle to sound out. She laughed out loud as she dialed his number, unsure of which particular repairman she’d called.
It had already been thirty minutes since she had called him and he had not yet gotten to the house. At this point MarmaJ, decided to go give her dogs a bath; she could never just sit and do nothing. She stepped through her doorway into the light of day and squinted, looking for Miles and Ruby.
“Good afternoon, ma’am” the repairman waved as he called out to her from his truck. She smiled in relief, escorted him up the path, and showed him his way to the living room so he could start fixing the place up while she went to attend to her dogs.
After a few rounds of fetch, she poked her head inside to see how things were going and explained, “The ceiling was worked on a few months before I moved in. I wanted a complete renovation of the place. We stayed just down the road for a few years.” MarmaJ emphasized how she’d been startled by the collapse and he gave her some explanations as to why it could have happened. He was explaining the situation when MarmaJ heard what she believed was the purring of a cat. She held her hands up for quiet and asked if he heard anything. Before he could answer, they both heard the purr again.
The repairman brought in his ladder and set it up so he could go into the ceiling. The sound had come from there and he knew that the only way the cat had got in there was through the gaping hole from the collapse. How the cat had got into the house, though, was a mystery.
MarmaJ stay down there worried that the cat was in some kind of pain; it sounded like it was. There were soft cries.
She fidgeted anxiously as he ascended the ladder and poked his head into the opening. “Have you found the cat?” she called to the repairman.
“Not yet, ma’am. But I will. Soon”. He was moving carefully for fear that the ceiling could break again and he didn’t want to hurt himself or the cat.
“I found her, she looks like she’s in pain”, Dave — the repairman — said.
He brought her down, worried that the cat might scratch and holding it far from his body, and he placed her gently on MarmaJ’s couch. MarmaJ had run to find a shawl and the first aid kit she kept for her dogs; she wasn’t exactly sure what to do. So, when she got back to the living room she placed the cat on a soft pillow, covered her with a shawl, picked up her phone and called a vet. She was still on her phone when she noticed that the cat had a name tag with a number scribbled on the back. She figured that it had to be the owner’s contact address.
Sitting next to the cat, pieces of ceiling at her feet, MarmaJ waited for the vet to get to the house. She had dialed the number on the tag; it rang but no one picked up.
Within twenty minutes, MarmaJ heard the turn of knob. Opening the door without knocking, the vet called out, “I left the clinic as soon as you called, MarmaJ.” Marma J relaxed in relief.
The vet reached for the cat and gently picked her up for examination. After a few checks, the vet turned to MarmaJ and showed her a cut just under the furry left hind leg of the cat.
“Let’s patch this up and she’ll be fine in no time.” The vet opened her own first aid tool kit that she’d brought while MarmaJ stood there watching very intently. The ceiling repairman had retired to a stool in the corner of the room, content to wait to complete the house call.
A few minutes later, MarmaJ tried the number on the tag again and this time someone answered. The owner was a soft-spoken man – MarmaJ told him that she had his cat and explained what had happened to him. He thanked her and said he had gone out to look for her already and had been so worried. He was a new neighbor and he hadn’t known where to check or whom to ask first. He sounded like he was quite distressed. She calmed him down and gave him her address to come pick up his cat – her house was just down the street. Getting off the phone with him, Marma J saw that the cat was all patched up.
“I am done, MarmaJ. She’s fine now, but the leg still hurts a bit,” the vet said as she handed the cat over to MarmaJ who had a wide smile of relief on her face.
“You are such a neighborhood fairy, MarmaJ,” Dave remarked as he looked at MarmaJ with admiration.