Sanctuary

in honor of my own “Birdie” and the strange home she created with her pals. ~1938-2019~

Agatha scrapes open the rusting backyard gate, and a chorus of yips erupts from the inside of the bungalow. The troops emerge from the homemade dog flap in the back door; thirteen chihuahuas, dachshunds, and small mutts veer through the maze of vinca tendrils and tiger lilies to reach her as she walks up the thin path.

“Goddamn slimy devil spawn that girl is!” Agatha’s wrathful smoker’s voice rasps through the open kitchen window. “The audacity to try something this shifty, I just can’t fathom it.”

Myrtle’s face appears in the frame of the shutters, biding her time until Agatha winds herself down a bit. The bony, frail woman paces the yard as several dogs bounce behind, and several more find lush pockets of grass from which they observe her. She slows, dropping into the peeling white wicker lawn chair as two of the dogs scramble to be the first in her lap. She gives them each a loving pat, her hand shaking slightly from being so riled.

                                                    ~ ~ ~

The number of dogs had ebbed and flowed over the last decade and a half, but Agatha never went looking for them. Something about her essence drew these creatures to her: whether they needed her or she needed them, Birdie nor Myrtle could ever suss it out. Aggie and the creatures seemed to help each other somehow, and at some point the other women simply accepted the rotation of small, scraggly mutts as an element of their life together. This is a battle I’m willing to concede for Aggie, Myrtle sighed to Birdie as they watched her idly smoke outside, surrounded by a small herd. It was their sixth year all living together, and Agatha had only ever had eight dogs at once, at that point. We all got our shit; we gotta accept her for hers. The women stayed firm in their resolve over the years.

                                                   ~ ~ ~

“What you been hollerin’ about out here, Ag?” Myrtle decides it’s finally safe to stand in the open screen door. “Neighbors liable to call the sheriff for a visit the way you’re going on.”

“It’s my slimy little step-daughter, that’s what.” Agatha forces out, trying not to grit her teeth. She taps her box of cigarettes against her furrowed left palm, an instinct, pulls out a cigarette and lights it in one quick motion. She takes a long drag and holds it, exhales slowly.

Birdie notices the two women in the yard from the window of her art shed. She turns down the operatic trills of Bizet’s Carmen, listening in for a moment before resigning to disrupt what she felt was a bit of a flow in her current project. –She’s just seeing what she can get out of me, but she’s gone too far! Birdie could take a break with her pals for a bit of drama.

The two women see Birdie swing open her wide shed door and descend the three cinderblock steps into the yard. The building is a rough little shack with a tin roof, and two small windows face the tangled “garden” in the middle of their lawn. The building is painted Georgia Peach Pink. Birdie slapped it on during the summer of ’91—the color inspired a series of peach studies that still shone pink and gold and orange, delicate as youthful girlhood, in the corner of the small, crowded interior.

“What’d that little backwoods hussy do this time?” Birdie prods. She is short and squat in an XXL men’s striped button up. She has rolled the sleeves halfway up her arms, which are dotted with liver spots and cadmium red. Her kinky silver hair is not contained by the small clip on the top of her head. She claims her spot in the swirly metal lawn chair beneath the live oak—no one but her would sit beneath what she had christened Clattertree. She and a neighbor boy she wrangled had hung up her rather large collection of thrift store windchimes; when the wind blew the tree sounded alive—or, perhaps, haunted.

“Did she slink into town to guilt you into giving her more of your savings?” She teases.

                                                        ~ ~ ~

Birdie is always a little amused at the sight of a broad as tough as Agatha giving even an inch to that wisp of a step-daughter. The girl was seventeen, bless her, when her daddy was incarcerated. Some part of Agatha must feel guilty for not taking her in, as far as Birdie and Myrtle can figure. Every six months or so, Rae skulks over needing a little money to get her by. The two lean, rough women will sit in the yard together for perhaps twenty minutes after Ag slips her a check for a couple hundred dollars. Myrtle hears from her gossipy book club that the girl is trouble, but she recognizes the two must do things their own ways. Such is survival.

                                                      ~ ~ ~

Birdie leans back in her seat, legs sprawled out with her bright yellow Crocs glaring in the sun and a dog laying beneath each arm. Agatha snuffs out the butt of her cigarette and gives her usual throat-clearing hack.

“That ungrateful little serpent is threatening to call animal control on me for my dogs. I tell her, I can’t help it that these dogs find me; I just take in what needs a home. I don’t understand why she behaves so much like that no-good father of hers—she claims we ain’t got space for them! As if she’s the expert on what these critters need.”

Agatha begins working herself up again and shakes out another smoke from the box. Her hand trembles slightly and she holds the three dogs that are on her lap at the moment a little closer to her, protective and nearly maternal. She angles her chin upward to blow her smoke away from them as they scramble for her full attention.

“She won’t really—”

“She will too!” Agatha interrupts Myrtle’s placating. “The fool thinks she got dirt on me, and she’s threatening to have all my babes taken away if I don’t give her all I’m worth.”

“Which is what, maybe five hundred dollars in the bank, thirty years of Marlboro miles, and your scruffy little infantry there?” Birdie demands. “What kind of dirt could she possibly have on you, Ag?” She tries to soften—patience is not necessarily her strongest virtue.

“Agatha, what exactly did she say to you?” Myrtle looks over the brood like a worried hen. Agatha hunches in her spot, takes a few breaths. The windchimes tinkle eerily and Myrtle gives Birdie a look.

“I’ll tell y’all, but you gotta take it to your graves, I mean it.” Ag looks at them solemnly. “You got that?”

The old women murmur their agreement, unsure what to expect of this backyard confessional. The moment of anticipatory silence is broken by the high twill of cicadas in the branches above.

“You know Rae’s daddy—Rodney—he didn’t treat me good those last couple years we were married,” she begins—referring to the marriage that, when it went sour, sent Agatha reeling for a place that felt safe; it was what had brought her to the pair of friends fifteen years before. She turns her face so her eyes are no longer visible.

“Him gettin’ put away for that counterfeiting was the chance I needed to leave, and I don’t regret what I did, not too much. But I—I set him up to get busted.”

The women sat in silent awe of their wiry, tenacious friend. Neither had forgotten the fading bruises along Ag’s arms and neck when she first took their spare room. She spoke of him sparingly over the years, and no one pushed the subject. No, they did not suspect she regretted it much.

“He went on his yearly two-week hunting trip, oh, the summer of ’05 I guess it was. Rae was away with her grandmama—I was at his house alone for the first time in so long, and somethin’ just took hold of me.” Myrtle recollects how skittish Agatha was that whole first year they all lived together, recognizing the desperation behind it.  It was difficult to imagine her so vulnerable.

“I dug through all his shit until I found the code to the safe I knew he kept in the basement. He had near a hundred grand in there, as well as some drugs I already knew he was doing. At first, I was just going to take the money and leave, but the second the thought crossed my mind to get him locked up…well, I couldn’t keep myself from trying.”

“Jesus Christ and Mother fucking Mary, Ag.” Birdie whispers in dread and admiration. A mole is making its way through the yard, barely underground, with a trail of three or four dogs close behind and whining with curiosity. One hops off Agatha’s lap to join the throng and she watches them for a moment.

“A cousin of mine down in N’Orleans had been playing around with printing his own cash—nothing too big, just a little here and there to see if he could, he would do all sorts of odd things like that for kicks. He owed me a favor and didn’t much like Rodney anyhow. He agreed to help me out and keep quiet about it for half the real cash. I stuck it in the safe and tipped off the Sherriff before he got back from hunting, and haven’t seen him once since.”

“I don’t understand,” Myrtle ventured slowly, “What is going on with Rae then?”

“She got in touch with her daddy for the first time since his arrest. He told her it was my fault he went away.” She looks away, conflicting feelings evident in the lines around her mouth.

“The girl is dumber than a bump on a stump, and he’s got her believing I’ve cheated her all these years. She won’t listen to me, I don’t think she knows what to believe.”

“Ag, she’s a grown woman, she needs to—”

“Yeah, well. She’s not gonna do anything she don’t want to, and right now, she don’t want to forgive me. I’m afraid she won’t til she’s done her damage.”

Myrtle and Birdie study their friend for a quiet moment, calculating what to say next.

“So what you’re telling me then,” begins Birdie slowly, “is that we just have to have enough room for all these dogs? That’s not so hard.”

                                                         ~ ~ ~

The women conspire at their dining table into the late evening, the warbles of a Loretta Lynn record playing from the shabby Victorian foyer. The musty scent of dog piss that none of them notice anymore mingles with the chicory coffee gurgling in the pot. Birdie plucks a single ceramic cup from their overflowing basket of treasured Goodwill mugs. She slips the coffee pot out mid-brew—a hiss precedes the acrid smell—then drowns her cup in heavy cream.

“So, gals,” she calls into the next room, “What do we envision for this bit of chicanery we’re getting ourselves into?” She tromps through the threshold, sloshing her full cup slightly with every step, and takes a seat opposite the other two women.

“Well now, I wondered if we could fit the place out to be some kind of doggy safehouse,” Myrtle piped.

“How do you suppose we make the space bigger? Smoke and mirrors?” Agatha looked distraught. “I know I let too many follow me home, I know it, but they seem happy here and I give them what I’m able.”

The women mull the question over silently for a moment before the playful barks of the cavorting hoard stirs Myrtle from her spot. She shuffles to the small letter writing desk in the corner of the room and digs around until she finds a musty pad of stationary—pastel yellow with a fading illustration in the lower corner, perhaps a rooster.

“What’s that young man’s name that owns the bit of land behind us called?”

“Family name Dodson,” Agatha chimes, “I’m not certain, but maybe Timothy? Why?”

Myrtle scribbles the name down.

“And we got that old coot Stanley to the left,” Determined scribbling.

“He barely knows who he is half the time, what do you think he’ll be able to do to help?” Agatha asks.

“Oh, and that family next door, William and Jenny,” Birdie interjects, beginning to understand. “I could clean up my art shed a little, Myr. Fix it up like a little doggie hotel, as it were.”

“That’s good, Bee. So then, here’s what I got so far: tomorrow we give a little visit to a few of our neighbors here, and we see if they’re willing to lend us a little of the land around the yard—”

“That’s a mighty strange request, you think anyone will agree to it?” Agatha looks dubious, but willing.

“I may whip up a batch of muffins in the morning to butter them up a little.” Myrtle admits. Agatha thinks for a moment.

“If we add a couple panels to that fence line—which would be cheap, and won’t take us more than an hour or two—and do a little work on Birdie’s shed so the dogs aren’t living in the main house, we’ll be golden! Rae won’t have a leg to stand on.” Agatha looks relieved at last. Birdie lifts her mug—more sloshing as beige stains appear on the crocheted table runner.

“To our true family!” She exalts, gesturing to the content creatures scattered below them.

                                                               ~ ~ ~

“Three knocks is the normal amount, you psychopath,” Agatha struggles to intercept Birdie from delivering an elaborate ten-knock measure to their neighbor’s weathered oak door.

“I’m just being friendly, they have to know we aren’t door-to-door salesmen—or god forbid, Jehovah’s Witness. We’re not Jehovah’s Witness!” She hollers toward the door—not with any real projection, but enough to rile Agatha up a little.

A young man in corduroys and a denim button-up opens the door on the three old women bickering like schoolgirls—Birdie particularly delighting in the squabble. They straighten, composing themselves to greet the plain bachelor who had recently bought the property behind their own.

“Young Timothy, I’m guessin’?” Birdie breaks the brief silence.

“Uh, Tim, yes ma’am. Y’all the ladies over at 112? You’re real well known around here, huh.” He sucks on his teeth. “What can I do for you all?”

“Well, dear,” begins Myrtle with confidence, “We’re hosting a dear friend’s birthday party this weekend and it seems she has quite a few friends coming. We’re afraid our teeny yard just won’t be spacious enough. Would you be so gracious as to let us borrow a little parcel of your land that backs up to ours?”

Agatha pulls out the map of the property lines she had printed that morning in anticipation and indicated with her slender finger the line they planned to extend to. Myrtle holds out the basket of chocolate muffins they brought toward Tim. He ventures a small smile of resignation and gestures for them to come in.

“I’ll make us some coffee and we’ll sort out the details, huh.”

                                                       ~ ~ ~

Birdie sits cross-legged on the floor of her art house, working through the small mountain of books that had been growing on the floor for at least the last three years. She’d been sent to get the shed ready for the dogs after the trio finished at Tim’s. Her large bookshelf is madness—poetry muddled with anatomy texts, art reference with her extensive collection of National Geographic, and encyclopedia series scattered worlds apart from each other. If she looks at a section for long enough, a hole appears and she homes one floor-book at a time. After two hours she squeezes the last one into the shelf like a winning Tetris move. All dangerous material—her solvents, her paints, her cleaning supplies—are tucked away in a filing cabinet. When she runs out of space for her paintings in the rough wooden storage rack on her desk, she begins to hang work on the walls—a strange gallery exhibit of half-finished portraits and still lifes. Nothing at shin-level in the little shack was in any danger of being chewed, humped, or pissed on by her temporary guests.

“What’s the verdict?” Birdie shouts to the two women passing through the garden gate. She hears the hoard echo her query from inside the main house.

“Pretty successful, I think,” Agatha shoots Myrtle a questioning glance. “We encountered a little resistance with Stanley, but I don’t think it hinders us too badly—”

“That old bastard has lost so many of his marbles he’s not going to notice a goddamn thing.” Myrtle assures her.

“How do you like my Chez Chiens, eh?” Birdie gestures to the project that had taken her the better part of the afternoon. All the scattered dog beds from the main house had been collected in the room—fur-coated lily pads plopped aesthetically around the perimeter. Myrtle smirks when she notices the gallery of work along the walls.

“I think they’re really going to enjoy this ambiance, Bee.” She giggles.

Agatha turns to light a smoke on the cinderblock steps, her hand shaking slightly. Birdie gives a shrill whistle through the little gap between her front teeth and the hoard appears, endlessly rebounding from the women’s legs, from each other. The three women move to the yard and sit out the heat of the evening in the shade of the impenetrable magnolia boughs.

                                                          ~ ~ ~

Birdie and Agatha are both roused from their sleep by a strange rustling in the yard, punctuated by the dull thud of what sounded like a rubber mallet. Both pairs of slippered feet shuffle out to the hallway, Agatha’s hair short and standing on end, Birdie’s in a thick silver braid. The digital clock on the oven illuminates 3:26 in burnt orange. Birdie opens the fridge and retrieves a chocolate pudding cup while Agatha pulls back the kitchen curtain, trying to discern the source of the noise. There is a figure in curlers on the other side of their fence to the left—fidgeting, yanking, hammering.

“Goddamn stubborn fool.” Agatha chuckles.

                                                            ~ ~ ~

By sunrise the fence expansion is complete, Myrtle sitting at the dining table with a cup of coffee as if she’d just woken up.

“Don’t try and play like you didn’t pull a crazy stunt last night, we know your comings and goings,” Birdie admonished playfully, “Particularly when those goings include a mallet. You aren’t exceptionally subtle.”

“You know he didn’t hear a thing though,” Myrtle gave a fox-like grin, wrinkles collecting at the corners.

“Rae called me this morning to let me know she’ll be by later,” Agatha says, feigning casual. Birdie is silent, unsure of how to break through the topic none of them want to acknowledge explicitly. She can’t help but think about the countless times any of them have tripped over one of these dogs, or how the smell of undiscovered piss puddles festers within the house in the heat of summer.

“They won’t take them, Aggie.” She promises. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be.”

                                                            ~ ~ ~

The throng works up to their usual din from inside the art shack when Rae creaks open the gate. Agatha sits on the third step, sucking down a smoke to steady herself and hushing the eager critters behind her. Myrtle and Birdie press themselves to the screen door of the main house. They anxiously eavesdrop, watching their friend across the yard for the moment they are needed.

“Mornin’ Ag,” Rae grumbles, shuffling along the stone path. She pauses quizzically, realizes the source of the clammor, and decides not to acknowledge it. It’s not necessary to hide the dogs from her, but she doesn’t mind their absence either.

“Rae.” Agatha grumbles hoarsely. “A’right?”

“Fine. Yourself?”

“Better once you tell me why you’re here, if I’m honest.” Agatha looks at the young woman, hard.

“I decided… he lied.” Rae shuffles uncomfortably. She searches Agatha for any sign of softness and finds nothing.

Ag is sprung tight as a coil. She refuses to move for a cigarette for fear her tremor will give her away. Instead she sits, sprung. Birdie’s tree clangs in a humid breeze.

“I mean to say: what happened to him, he deserved one way or another.” She struggles for the words. “Whatever solace you were able to find, you deserve. I was in the middle, and I’m sorry I tried to pull you back in. I’ll take it to my grave—you know.” Shame and relief and gratitude roll over Ag’s face in waves.

“You do keep too many of them little rat-dogs though, you know.”

“I like them.”

“They stink.”

“I know.”

The two rough women exist like this in a dead heat for a moment, mulling. The small claws tip-tapping impatiently on the other side of the door bring them back to the moment in the yard. Agatha stands and pulls the door open, releasing her flock back into the yard. They bounce to Rae and she takes it as her cue to leave.

“I best be going.” She walks to the gate without another word.

Myrtle and Birdie push through the screen door at last, ready to confront Agatha with the unspeakable: “You can’t keep so many goddamn dogs.” Birdie blurts. Agatha looks anguished for just a moment before she nods in recognition.

“You can’t keep so many dogs,” Myrtle corrected, “at once. Who said you couldn’t do this chez chien thing for real? We’ll figure something out for the little creatures.”

“You know,” Agatha muses, “MaryAnne down at the drugstore has been a mess since her Roger passed. Wonder if she had a little furry thing to cuddle up with, if she’d be a little less of a b-i-t-c-h when I gotta get my prescriptions filled.”

“She’s a b-i-t-c-h to you because you called her fat two Christmases past, you fool,” Myrtle admonishes. Agatha shrugs, unrepentant.

“But a little companion surely would soften her up a bit.”

The women each sit in their favorite chair, listening to the chorus of windchimes and sharp yips. The hot air is damp on their faces, and dense, glossy magnolia leaves fan softly above them. Agatha gives a small smile. To our true family.