Gotcha Day.
Gotcha Day.
May 7th, 2010 was one of those perfect Spring Days, the first sunburn of the season, the kind of day after the kind of winter that makes doing anything outside seem exquisite. Even cleaning out your old shed. That’s exactly what my mom was doing, cleaning out her old shed, in shorts and a big garden hat, probably humming something from Joni Mitchell’s Blue album, He cooked good omelettes and stew and I might’ve stayed on with him but my heart cried out for youuuuuuu…” as she unearthed the relics of summers past. A blue watering can, a pair of collapsible beach chairs, a dog crate that we used for an optimistic week when trying to train our first ever dog, Josie, a Pomeranian powder puff sweet as a sugar cube, nearly a decade prior. Mom takes the gardening hose and washes the crate down, not because she ever plans to stick Josie in it again, but because it’s May 7th and she wants everything to sparkle.
On May 8th, 2010, she looks outside her front window when she catches a glimpse of four or five men doing some sort of standoff with something on the front porch of our next-door neighbor’s home. I grew up in Valley Stream, NY, which is the first town on Long Island directly after Queens. It’s a 35 minute train ride on the railroad into balmy Penn Station, which spits you out into the action of Hell’s Kitchen. It’s 20 minutes to the Atlantic Ocean, to some of the softest sand beaches in the world. It’s sort of a belly button type of town, not much to do there, but right dab in the center of two much greater parts. Not much interesting happens in Valley Stream, so the neighbors gathered around the porch grabbed my mom’s attention.
She lives at the end of a cul-de-sac. When Hurricane Sandy pummeled the beloved Oak Tree that shaded our house, my mom planted flowers in it’s empty stump. She decorates the house for every holiday she can make a wreath for: Valentine’s Day, Halloween, Christmas, St. Patty’s, the general season of Fall. Our front door is often a different color because she often looks at it and decides it should be red, no, teal, no, black, no––teal again. Inside the house, when we could not afford a Persian rug, she painted one right onto our hardwood floor. She delights in watching plumbers and electricians step around it, careful not to muddy the thing with their boots, when they come in to fix something that is inevitably breaking in a pre-war colonial home. Sometimes she even paints rocks she finds. There’s one particular stone she colored a mustard yellow and wrote “Hi, I’m Rocky” on. When I invite new people over to see the house that I grew up in, to meet my mom, I am saying, This is how you know me. The neighborhood kids call her, Miss Annie.
Miss Annie looks out her window, sees the men, sticks her head out of the red, no, teal, door — What’s going on out there? She watches them in their game-time stance, squatting before a creature on the front porch, trying to help the poor thing who trusted none of them. This smidgeon of a black-furred being whose growl intimidated a muscle of men. My mom stepped outside to see the commotion. We think it’s a dog, they said, unable to distinguish her from a very small fox or very large rat. And my mom remembered May 7th, just the day before. Oh! She said, I have a crate!
Mom put one of Josie’s treats inside the crate, carried it to the scene, opened its metal latch and the not-fox-nor-rat walked right in. The men disbanded. Where are you going? Miss Annie asked. Sorry, Lady, the youngest of them said, Your crate, your dog.
—
On May 8th, 2010, I had taken the Trailways bus down from my college town in New Paltz, New York, to Manhattan to put my name in a hat and try to compete in a poetry slam. It was an hour and a half ride, about $31 bucks roundtrip (more than I had at the time), plus $10 to enter the slam. I hoped someone else would buy my drinks. I met my boyfriend somewhere on Bowery.
My phone rang. Mom. I have one of those…you know…Taco Bell commercial dogs? I have a Taco Bell commercial dog in my house.” I pocketed the $10 for the slam. “Be right there,” I said. I bought a one way ticket on the LIRR bound for Valley Stream.
—
Turns out she was a long-haired chihuahua, but my mom had called her Taco Bell Commercial Dog so many times that the name Taco became her temporary nickname as we tried to find the humans that had loved her enough to give her a proper one. She growled at the men, growled at my mom, but when I walked into my childhood bed room that she was in Josie’s crate inside of, I unhooked the clanging latch, and she walked right into my lap, slept.
I took the rest of the week off from college. I plastered posters of little Taco all over the trees and posts. Mom called the pound, the shelter, the humane society, the police, no luck. We took her to the vet to see if there was a microchip behind her ear, if she belonged to someone, but she did not. No one seemed to be looking for her, and in my mind I started ripping all of the Found: Dog posters down. After five days of this, I was hers. She was mine.
I took her back to college with me to finish out my senior year. I took her on the railroad, and then the subway to Port Authority, and then on the coach bus back to school. When I went to class I daydreamed about her back in my room, raced home just so we could take naps together in the afternoons, her breathing on my chest like a heart outside my body. She lived with me in New Paltz, Valley Stream, Crown Heights, Flatbush. She toured around the country with me. When I couldn’t afford the $100 to fly with her, I snuck her on the airplane in my “personal item”, kept her at my feet, where she slept undisturbed. If she was near me––she was safe. She moved with me to Colorado, where she learned the glory of an off-leash walk, and never let me put a leash on her ever again. When she ran through the flatlands and meadows of this praire-dog peppered place, I called her, Wild Lady.
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Together we had nine perfect years. She was not always an easy dog. She abhorred men, was terrified of eye-contact from strangers. Sometimes I let her nails grow too long because the sound of her having them clipped by the veterinarian was a sound I would leave my own skin to escape. She was a picky eater, impossible to slip pills into, even though her failing health often required them. One day, after dental surgery, I tried all her favorites to get the pain pill down her throat. We took her to Burger King for nuggets, French fries, Whoppers. She’d eat a nibble, notice the capsule, refuse the rest. We zipped around town trying to coax her with pizza, steak, salmon. Eventually I found I could chew (human) food for her, spit it out, ball it up, and stick the pill inside of that. Hallelujah. It disgusted everyone around me, but — what wouldn’t you do for your baby?
This summer, around midnight, we had to put her down in an emergency veterinary hospital, her fur soaked with our sobs, her head kissed with our love, when she went limp like a bouquet of tulips in my arms. I carried her home like that, loving that term — put to sleep — held her as if she had just dozed off like a kid in the car, as if she was only dreaming, and carried her back into the house. We buried her in the front yard where she liked to sit all summer, her head darting back and forth as she watched the shuttlecock in our game out badminton flitter across the sky, as if she was the queen, with a front row seat to Wimbledon. Yes, I am still crying.
—
I knew I would rescue another dog soon. I knew the only medicine for my grief was more love. I knew all of this love I had for sweet Taki was still in my chest, and could be gifted to another abandoned angel.
At first I thought I’d adopt a senior dog. Rather than avoid ache, I should face it, put myself through grief again like a warrior of it. We visited dogs in the Humane Society. There was Penelope who couldn’t keep her tongue in her mouth, it flapped outside her face like a fly strip. There was itchy Zola with alopecia. A dog named Horizon whose eyes said, Get me out of here and I promise I will be so good. We held them close. I loved them all. I dreamed of retiring from touring and starting an animal rescue. I frequented PetFinder.com even more than usual, and amidst hundreds of adoptable dogs, I saw a little tan Chihuahua / Dauschund mix on the site. Her name was Pikit. Her ears were so big she looked like she she could possibly use them to fly. Some grief-knot in my body loosened. I filled out an extensive application to meet her. She was being fostered an hour away.
The day we drove to meet her, we stopped at a PetSmart along route where they were holding a meet and greet for dogs needing homes. It was a heaven of puppies, all sad eyed and sleepy smelled, all deserving of so much. We held a wrinkly white one named either Tater, or Tot, and considered taking her home, forgoing the meeting with Pikit. My partner did not want to leave that potato-namesake pup, knowing she would be snatched up fast if we left, but something outside of me was guiding my hand, putting the flat-faced miracle back down with her litter of sisters, something was drawing me through out of the air-conditioned building through the automatic doors and back into August, into the passenger seat of car, something turning the key in the ignition, and driving down to wherever Pikit was. I called her foster mom from outside the house. I walked in and there she was, top of the stairs, this peanut of a thing, barking her damn head off. And I knew.
We named her Idgie Threadgoode, after one of our favorite queer literary characters, of the book and movie Fried Green Tomatoes. She was three and a half pounds and and three and a half months old when we got her. So tiny I often just called her Bug. The best part of Idgie Threadgoode is everything. She is the happiest dog I’ve ever met. She does not discriminate between the many joys of her life: wrestling her sister Squash, trying to crawl into her friend Willow’s mouth, instigating tug of war, chasing her own tail, catching treats from the Furbo like a puppy Olympian, riding in the convertible with the wind in her ears, transporting socks from one level of the house to the other, befriending grasshoppers, licking a neck. She thinks everything is equally wonderful. I sing to her, Idgerie-Doo-Dah, Idgerie-Day, My oh my what a wonderful day! and that incessantly joyful song captures her essence entirely. Her joy so simple, so present, so boundless, it feels like she might actually be enlightened. She did not make any hole in my heart shrink. She dove into the hole, kept digging, found treasure, broke the whole thing open, showed me there was room for so much more.
Weeks later, I wrote to the rescue to ask if they knew exactly what day Idgie Threadgoode was born. I wanted her to have a birthday to celebrate. While they couldn’t be exact, they guessed: Between the first and second week of May. And I knew it for sure. Idgie Threadgoode was born on May 8th, 2019, a decade after a neighbor said to my mom, Your Crate, Your Dog.
I used to imagine that Taco escaped some sort of traumatizing situation, that she actually poached her next home. That she saw my mom and her “Hi, I’m Rocky” rock, her ever-changing yet welcoming door, the rug indoors that it would be totally acceptable to pee on because it was really just hardwood floor. That she saw the way my mom turned the wreckage of a hurricane into a place where things could bloom. I like to imagine she knew she must have had a daughter that would love her, take her everywhere, assert to others, Please, don’t make eye contact. Give her space. Go slow. And I like to imagine, now, in death, which I hope is an endless Wild Lady run, that it was Taco’s wisdom who brought me to Idgie, my next great big love.
Today I celebrate a life, and a death. Today I wail, and today I laugh. Today I am throwing Idgie a full-day birthday, full of peanut butter-filled frozen Kongs, a long off-leash walk, a party in the yard with some of the dogs she admires most. Today I hid her toys and some stinky socks all over the house. Maybe we’ll even introduce her to badminton. And I will tell her about her sister.
