I remember Maggie.
Ingrid Wiemer
I poured the cereal into a bowl and took out the milk. I heard echoes from the other room. I glanced up, and I saw her grey and blonde fur. She was tap-tapping her toes onto the floor. One moment, they were all the way up by her face. The next, she was slamming them down on the shiny wooden floor.
She raised her paws so abnormally high and she slammed them down so unusually hard. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked her. She didn’t answer. She raised her paws again and banged them against the floor.
I called my mother down the stairs, and I asked her what was going on. I stared at Maggie. She nuzzled her face in her paws for a moment and raised and slammed her paws. I didn’t want to close my eyes and they started to sting. “Did the vet call back?” I said.
“Maybe tomorrow he’ll call,” my mom said. “We’ll find out what’s going on.”
He called. He tested Maggie’s blood. She has a brain tumor, he said. He said we could put her to sleep. We didn’t want to put her to sleep. We decided to put her on medication. The alternative.
Maggie took medicine for four days, but we didn’t see any improvement. She smacked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She slammed her paws on the floor. She couldn’t hold herself up at a stand. Her weak legs still shook under her thin body.
The night before Maggie died, I fell asleep with her on the rug. Crying. I stroked her soft ears and she fell asleep fast. I was still awake, alone.
I stared at her. She had long grey fur. We said that it was blond, too, but it really wasn’t. When the light shined on her fur, it made the tips of her fur bright and shiny. It looked like it was blond.
I pet her back and ran my hand down her tail. The hair on her tail was short and brittle. I started to cry and then, right then, she then threw up. She threw up right there, and I yelled for my mom.
She put her hand on the base of my back. “Ingrid,” she said, “We’re going to have to take her straight to the vet.” She looked down. She looked down at the floor and she didn’t look up.
Maggie jumped up and went out to the back door. She went out the door. She went out the door that leads to the staircase and she tried to jump down. She jumped over the bar and she fell down to next floor. I yelled at my brother. “You let her run past you! She ran right past you!”
I ran down the steps to pick her up. She was tense and tight. I climbed down the stairs and outside. My mom put bath towels on the back seats. I sat in the back and held her. My brother stared at his feet.
I sobbed. I put my head on Maggie and my tears made her fur wet.
Her legs were trembling. Her jaw shook. She tried to leap out of my arms and hit her head on the car lock on the edge of the car door. She started bleeding.
The vet was down the block.
We were waiting in the waiting room. They called us inside, and I stared at Maggie. The vetexplained that the medicine would put her to sleep. The vet was going to inject two different medicines. The first one was to calm her down, and the second was to quickly end her life.
He injected the first shot. She was soft and still.
“Are you ready?” He asked.
My mother paused, taking a deep breath, and nodded her head slowly. I put my hands on the table. It was cold and metal, and the vet put the long needle in her fur and pushed down on the syringe. Maggie didn’t notice. She was purified, I guess.
Her eyes fell. They fell down.
A patch of her fur jumped.
Then, she was dead. I had seen her sleep. But she was dead. We stayed there, alone. Then we left. I was crying and we were all crying and trembling with each other. I couldn’t believe it was over. After my whole life.