Victoria remembers the first time she read that when we wake up, we should turn to the side of the bed and put both feet flat on the floor. She remembers the yoga video that reminded her to feel the ground beneath her feet and to lift up from the core as you get out of bed and stand in a perfect mountain pose. Victoria remembers the yoga video telling her to root, and every morning, Victoria roots as soon as she wakes up.

As soon as she wakes up, she pulls open the curtains and lets sunbeams hit her eyes. She opens the window and breathes in the fresh air, no matter what time of year it is. Before anything else happens in a day, Victoria roots and breathes. They told her how important those things are for her wellbeing and even though she’s not sure she believes them, the morning has to start like that.

When Victoria walks into the bathroom in the morning, she remembers an older gentleman from her youth. He always wore a utility vest. Cargo pockets on a dark beige vest. As he was leaving her parents’ house one evening, he stuck his head into the bathroom as she was brushing her teeth. The buttons of his utility vest clanked on the door frame.

“That’s not quite right, Victoria,” he had said. “You need to use a circular motion.”

He’d only meant well, he hadn’t know that decades later, he would haunt her. Victoria thinks about that moment every morning when she brushes her teeth. She makes sure she uses a circular motion.

As Victoria puts cream on her face, she sees her stepmother’s face in the mirror.

“Make sure you put cream on your decollate, darling, we don’t want to end up old with a beautiful face and a dragon’s neck.”

Victoria was twenty-four the first time she had put cream on her face. A business associate had offered her some.

“I don’t use face cream, but thank you very much,” Victoria had replied.

But her colleague had scoffed and exclaimed, “Oh my god! How can that even be!? You absolutely have to try this.”

And so she did. Now she needs to put cream on her face twice a day. Victoria is sure her natural body oils would have worked wonders, if she just hadn’t started with the creams in the first place.

When she urinates, Victoria sings a song in her head. Over and over, she sings “pee pee pee on the ladybugs”, faster or slower depending on the speed of her stream. It was a friend at a party who had sung it to her once. Drunk and laughing, she had been trying to get Victoria to hurry up, but the laughter made it even harder for Victoria to let her bladder go. Finding this hilarious, the friend had just kept singing.

During her first year at university, one of Victoria’s professors had told her that all artists have to have their eyes open to the world. He had then described a bowel movement he had that morning and said, “We all turn around to look at our own shit.” Victoria remembers this every day, but she doesn’t turn around to look at her own shit. At least, she tries very hard not to.

Walking out into the hallway, Victoria notices that one of her paintings, a pastel image of an old barn is slightly crooked. She stands looking at it for a moment and thinks about how on April 3rd, 1882 Jesse James was shot in the back of the head when he stood up from his breakfast to straighten the “God Bless Our Home” picture that was askew. She looks behind her before nudging the painting back into its proper place.

Victoria says yes a lot. She agrees to all sorts of requests people put upon her. In fact, Victoria couldn’t remember the last time she said “no” when someone asked her to do something. Because of her inability to draw boundaries, Victoria participated in any number of mind-numbing tasks, which she performed with the mindful care of a Buddhist monk.

She didn’t have children, but baked for the local school fundraiser. She needed her bicycle, but lent it to her neighbour regularly anyway. Victoria hosted community gatherings, worked in the neighbourhood garden – despite having to ignore her own, a piece of Earth that could be something, if she’d only had the time – created spreadsheets on request, and shared her meager savings with everyone from the delivery person to the drunkard who sat in front of the market.

While she certainly felt put upon and irritated by the variety of favours she was asked to do, she didn’t show her frustration, was never late and managed to convince everyone around her that she was more than happy to contribute her time and money to whatever the cause may be.

It was on just such an occasion that Victoria’s left shoe developed a hole. Were it not for a minuscule disintegration on the left side of her left shoe, Victoria might never have had the opportunity to save a cat, defeat a vampire and become a bonafide hero.

The shoe in question was a relatively new trainer that Victoria had neatly tied that morning as she left her flat. She had remembered a primary school teacher showing her how to make bunny-ears from her shoelaces, just as she did every morning. Nothing had been wrong with the shoe when Victoria walked down her street. Nor had the shoe been damaged when she showed up for her voluntary and backbreaking labour helping a local parish build a wooden fence around its old graveyard. For decades the cemetery had been without a fence, and despite the recent discovery that teenagers were using it for whatever nighttime activities teenagers do, Victoria didn’t fully understand why the fence was such a critical piece of neighbourhood infrastructure.

Still, Victoria couldn’t say no or that she didn’t care when Mrs. Beckett, the organist at the parish, had stopped her a week hence to ask if she could help build the fence. Instead, Victoria had sacrificed another of her hard won free days to help complete a project deemed necessary by others in her neighbourhood.

Mrs. Beckett was a noble busy body who inexplicably found socially responsible projects for the community to do that flat out didn’t need to be done. Like the fence that didn’t need to be around the cemetery or the yearly autumn festival that was more work than fun. Everyone in the neighbourhood was pulled into Mrs. Beckett’s projects, and the only person who seemed genuinely pleased by them was the pastor.

Mr. Beckett had died several years back, and Mrs. Beckett had decided that being a widow was akin to being the town organiser. The pastor, a quiet man with quiet sermons and quiet advice, seemed to think that a strong community meant that the spiritual guidance of said community was competent. The fact that Mrs. Beckett sucked the energy from everyone around them didn’t seem to matter. Then again, these were observations that Victoria made and didn’t dare to share with anyone else.

The build site was littered with scraps of wood, and it was one of these scraps of wood that pierced the side of her shoe. Not noticing that she was caught, Victoria had quickly turned, and the wood caused a small rip between the sole of the shoe and its cloth toe. Out loud she said, “Oh darn,” which no one heard. Her internal voice said, “That’s what you get for helping out the stupid church people over and over again.”

God, it seemed to Victoria, didn’t believe in karma.

The tear was small and so Victoria simply sighed and carried her armful of wooden planks to the other side of the small graveyard. She carefully took each step so as not to step on any of the graves, having learned as a small child that stepping on a grave will cause instant paralysis and possibly death. She didn’t believe this, of course, but Victoria was nothing if not thoughtful of her every move and interaction.

The grass grew long next to the final row of headstones, and the morning dew stuck to the bottom of those blades well into early afternoon. The hole in her left shoe called to the dew and by the time she got across the yard, the left side of Victoria’s left sock was damp.

“Here’s more planks,” she called to the men banging in fence posts. “I’ll be back in a bit,” she said to no one in particular.

As she walked away, she heard Mrs. Beckett call out to her. “I’ll be back in a bit,” she said, “I need to change my socks.” Mrs. Beckett raised an eyebrow.

“Victoria, darling,” Mrs. Beckett called after a moment, “would you mind making some lemonade for everyone?” Victoria pretended not to hear her and continued towards her street. Mrs. Beckett wasn’t going to chase her down, her ankles were far too swollen for a run.

The sun wavered in the trees and shadows on the sidewalk danced. Though she hadn’t said “yes” to making lemonade, the fact that she was asked to accompanied her on her walk.

As Victoria rounded a corner, her building now in sight, she heard a tiny and distant meow. She paused and looked around, waiting to hear the call again. When it didn’t come, she walked further and came to the steps of her building.

Victoria’s building was a tasteful, red brick home with three stories. Each floor had two flats, and Victoria’s was on the ground floor to the left. She had a small porch and a small bench to the left of her doorway. A small, circular rug collected dirt in front of the bench and her browning potted plants – a single dahlia, the bloom shrunken and sad, shrivelling basil and an unidentified leaf of a succulent – collected the silky spins of spider webs.

“I really should make this look nice,” Victoria thought as she put her key in the door.

Before she was fully inside her foyer, she heard the tiny meow again only now it was tiny but loud. It sounded as if it were inside her flat. She kicked her shoes off, sighing. Victoria closed the door behind her and walked straight through to the backdoor. She unchained it, opening the door out into the area rug sized garden that was the back lot. There, in the middle of the used-to-be grass, a small grey cat lay struggling inside a tangle of twine.

“Meow,” said the cat.

“Well, aren’t you sweet,” said Victoria.

“Meow” said the cat.

“You did this to yourself,” said Victoria, sighing as she began to untangle the twine. “Where did you come from anyway?”

Victoria tickled the kitty’s head as she looped and unlooped the twine around its neck. The cat wasn’t in danger, just stuck, and it seemed to know that Victoria was trying to help it. The cat started to purr and Victoria pulled a thread that loosened the ball. She pulled the cat through, carefully making space within the tangle for its body. The cat stayed in her arms when it was free, purring loudly and rubbing its head into her elbow.

Her sock was still wet.

She smiled at the cat. “There you go, now perhaps you’d like to go back to wherever you came from?” She set the cat down and turned back to her flat.

As she opened the door, the cat ran inside. “Oh,” she said, “and now what am I supposed to do?”

Instead of chasing the cat, she just closed the door, walked up the three backstairs and paused in the kitchen.

“No reason to freak out about a cat,” she thought. The cat had run towards the front room, but when she opened the refrigerator, the cat came into the kitchen. Victoria, ever the kind soul, poured the cat what little milk she had and got herself a glass of water.

“You can stay for a while, but I have to go back to work in a minute.”

The cat lapped at the milk.

Victoria walked out of the kitchen, down the hallway and into her bedroom. She sat on her grandfather’s old chair, pulled her socks off and threw them into the hamper. Only one sock made it. The other dangled on the side, so Victoria stood up and placed it in the hamper. Then she sat back down.

The cat jumped on her bed. It circled several times around and on top of her pillow and then plopped down right in the middle of it. It curled its purring head and let out a kitty-sized sigh. Victoria smiled.

She patted the cat and then went to her dresser to find a new pair of socks. Choosing a tall pair of argyle socks, she sat back down onto her grandfather’s chair and pulled them on.

“It’s just one of these days, huh, kitty?” She murmured. “One of these days when I’m so, so tired and still I have to go back. Mrs. Beckett would not be happy with me if I didn’t go back. And I should probably bring lemonade,” she sighed.

What a shame it was, indeed, that Victoria was so worried about what anyone would think. What a shame that she didn’t feel like her bag of karma was overflowing. What a shame that Victoria managed to exhaust herself so completely with her participation in the world. What a shame that Victoria was alone and felt so distant from everyone else. For a number of minutes she just stared into the dimly lit bedroom and forgot to move.

Victoria hadn’t felt close to anyone since her grandfather died. Her parents had been too young, too stupid, too selfish. Her grandfather had been the one who cared for her. He’d been the one who showed her things, who helped her grow. He’d also been the one who taught her that women could be strong-minded and independent, but that community always comes first. As a child, Victoria had been shown that civic participation and local community togetherness were the cornerstones to a good life. So when Mrs. Beckett asked, and it was always Mrs. Beckett who asked, Victoria said yes.

She snapped out of it and stood up. She considered taking the cat outside, but decided to let it sleep.

Instead, Victoria went into the kitchen and heated some sugar in water on the stove. She squeezed three large lemons, which she had purchased to make a lemon ricotta pasta for herself, and poured the juice into a pitcher. Victoria thought about her first boyfriend in the fifth grade, with whom she’d broken up with because in a love letter he asked her if he could have a “pitcher” of her to look at. Victoria had been incensed that the boy she thought she liked didn’t know the difference between “picture” and “pitcher”. She remembers him every time she uses a pitcher.

When the lemonade was made, she went back to her foyer and pulled on a pair of waterproof boots, and then she went back outside.

When she returned to the parish cemetery, something was off. Mrs. Beckett wasn’t managing anyone, she was just quietly sitting on a bench behind her self-created management table. The saws had stopped as had the drills, the hammers and the electric screwdrivers. The build site was quiet.

“Where is everyone?” She asked as she approached Mrs. Beckett.

“Bats,” said Mrs. Beckett without looking up.

“Sorry, what?”

“Bats flew out of the ground,” Mrs. Beckett looked pale and pensive, so Victoria decided to leave her in her thoughts and find someone else to talk to. She set the lemonade on the table in front of Mrs. Beckett, who, once again, didn’t look up. She did, however, murmur, “I didn’t think you’d heard me. Thank you, Victoria,” in an off-putting and uncharacteristic voice.

Across the yard a few of the builders were chatting in a small circle next to one of the fence posts, which was crooked and obviously not fully in the ground.

“What I’m saying, Frankie, is that I never saw a bat like that,” one of the men was saying as she approached.

Victoria observed the scene and understood.

As they had been hammering in the fence posts, they’d broken through some sort of an underground cellar or mausoleum. It was just a tiny hole really but, as she gathered, several bats had flown out including one that didn’t look like the others. The commotion was also because without a fence post in this particular place, the aesthetics of the fence were sacrificed, a situation no one was happy with.

“Yeah, well, a bat’s a bat, isn’t it? Now we just gotta figure out how to finish the damn fence,” said another of the men.

“I wonder if we should call someone about the bats too?”

“The bats got in there, they have another way in and out.”

“Yeah, but are bats a thing you call someone about?”

The small circle of men went back and forth prattling about how they might maintain the integrity of their project from a design perspective and debating about whether or not they needed to get the bats out of the tomb.

Victoria listened for some moments, but then realised that there was nothing she could do. She was just a helping hand, she wasn’t the brains of the operation. Plus, despite pretending to, Victoria did not care. She didn’t feel like being “a good neighbour”. She wanted to leave.

Mrs. Beckett didn’t move or look up as she passed. “Are you ok, Mrs. Beckett?” Victoria asked.

“Oh, yes dear, I just…I am just very afraid of bats,” she said. As an afterthought she added, “It’ll be awhile before they get started again. Thank you for your help today and for the lemonade.”

That was clearly a dismissal. Victoria was off the hook! “Feel better Mrs. Beckett, feel better,” and Victoria walked away.

Suddenly free for the rest of the afternoon, Victoria grinned a massive smile. First, she thought, I should check on that cat. Light in her step, Victoria walked away from the cemetery, but didn’t turn towards home.

Instead she went to the small strip mall nearby to visit the pet store.

Far away from a corporate conglomerate for four legged friends, the pet store at the Ashley Park Strip Mall was about as well organised as a forgotten closet on the third floor. Dog items and cat items were mixed together, a stack of glass terrariums were precariously leaning against the far wall, and from the doorway you could see rusty bars to a cage built inside the back wall. Long ago, the owner had acquired a white-faced capuchin monkey. He’d been given the opportunity to acquire two, decided against spending money on more than one, and watched the poor monkey beat its head against the bars day after day until she finally managed to kill herself.

Loneliness is a health hazard.

Victoria hadn’t been inside the store for years. Once, before the monkey died, she’d been sent there to pick up straw bedding for an elderly neighbour’s hamster. At the time, she’d been horrified to see the monkey staring lifelessly at her through the bars. The monkey hadn’t moved when she approached it. It just stared with wide eyes and a bump on its head. When she’d headed to the cash register towards the front of the store, she heard the slow, steady thudding of the head on the bars.

Victoria had had nightmares and started to avoid neighbours with pets as a general rule.

She felt a chill in her spine and decided that today was the last time she would ever come to this store. Come hell or high water, Victoria would be avoiding the Ashley Park Strip Mall in an attempt to forget the capuchin monkey’s blank stare.

She bought cat food and, because it made her smile despite the discomfort she felt in the store and given her day so far, a little bat toy.

Walking home, Victoria took the long way around. She wanted to avoid having to walk within seeing distance of Mrs. Beckett. Although Mrs. Beckett had been momentarily sucked of her usual micromanagement energy, Victoria knew that a fear of bats would dissipate just as soon as the bats were out of sight and out of mind. She didn’t want to risk the rest of her free afternoon and so she took a several block detour.

When she arrived home, the cat was still curled into a ball on her pillow. Victoria started to consider where her camera was, and what she should write on a lost and found flier. In an instant, Victoria decided that she didn’t want to try to find the cat’s owners. She wanted to keep this cat forever. She snuggled in close and as the cat begins to purr, she decided to name it “Karma”.

“Oh little Karma, do you like this name? Can I call you Karma?” The cat purrs loudly at the sound of her voice. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

Victoria stretched out next to the cat and breathes in deeply. She remembers a friend telling her that if she wants to nap and can’t seem to calm her mind, she should feel her breath expand into her belly and count. Victoria should breathe in for six seconds, out for seven seconds and she should feel her breath in her belly. She should just keep counting and breathing into her belly. That will make her fall asleep.

Sometime later, Victoria is awoken by a manic knocking on her door. It’s loud enough that Karma jumped up and scampered into the kitchen. Groggy and irritated – she never was a very good napper – Victoria went to the door. Surely such a knock indicates some sort of emergency, but who would come to her in an emergency?

“Oh,” Victoria says as she opens the door, “Mrs. Beckett, you’re here.”

“Victoria, darling, the boys are back building the fence. They figured out a solution for the hole and the stake and the whole thing, it’s glorious. It’d be a good idea for you to come back now. You can pour the lemonade and help with the wood and maybe in an hour or two you could go to the store and get some cakes or maybe you want to bake something first? Do you have a recipe that is quick to make? If you have peanut butter…”

Mrs. Beckett rambled on about a non-cook peanut butter granola cookie and asks if Victoria has any paper cups for the lemonade. Victoria stared at her.

“Oh! The other thing to get out of the way is about tomorrow,” Mrs. Beckett continues. “It would be a good idea if you came to the churchyard around nine in the morning. I’ve asked some of the other ladies to join and we’re going to organise an impromptu potluck to thank everyone for the fence building. We’ll meet at nine, and I’ll give you a recipe and a job, nothing big just some decorations or getting some music together, and then we’ll all do our little bits and around three pm, we’ll join together with the builders, who will definitely be finished by then, and we’ll have a little neighbourhood potluck and everyone will just love it. So you come at nine. But that’s tomorrow of course. For now, let’s go ahead and get the peanut butter granola balls going, and I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

Victoria blinked as Mrs. Beckett started to turn on her heel.

“Mrs. Beckett,” Victoria called. Mrs. Beckett turned back to her, and Victoria looked directly into her eyes. “No,” she said, and Victoria shut the door.