Holding the kitten carefully in both hands, he offers it to her. She puts out a finger to scratch behind its ear. It closes its eyes and purrs, and butts her finger with its head when she stops. She laughs and his heart leaps. But then her face fades and she shakes her head. “We don’t have enough room,” she says. “And Marvin doesn’t like pets.”
All his pent up resentment comes out in a rush. “Why do we have to do what he says? This isn’t his place. Why does he even have to live with us?”
She’s angry, he can tell that by the way her nostrils flare and little blotches of red appear on her cheeks. But then her shoulders sag. “He pays part of the rent,” she says. “He watches you in the afternoon in case there’s a problem or something.” He’s about to protest hotly, but she goes on. “This way I don’t have to get a babysitter. Plus-” She shakes her head. “Oh, you won’t understand.”
He wants to tell her she’s the one who doesn’t understand that things were so much better when there were only the two of them, snuggled in their whale quilt. Her raspy, lovely morning voice reading to him on Saturdays is only a memory now. Instead, at night, wriggling around on the lumpy couch, he hears noises from the other room that make it hard for him to look her in the eye the next morning.
The door swings open, banging against a chair, and the possibility of telling her anything ends. Marvin throws a fit when he sees the kitten, going on and on about how he’s allergic to cats, and is the boy trying to kill him. Scared by the noise, the kitten pees on the boy’s hand. He doesn’t care, but some of the pee drips onto his mom’s uniform and now she’s shouting, too. He’s forced to take the kitten out on the porch, where he puts it into the drawer, tells it to stay, and covers the drawer as best he can with a cardboard box. The box is too small and he’s afraid the kitten (already scrabbling madly inside) will escape. He hunches beside the box, trying not to cry, shivering, hating Marvin, wishing he would die. Alongside Marvin, he hates his mother-this is a first-and wants her to die, too. Then he can go and live with a different family, one that will let him keep his kitten. He hates them even more when she yells at him to get inside before he catches a cold and when Marvin stomps out and yanks him into the apartment, telling him to mind his ma. His hatred swells through the broken dreams of a night he will never forget.
In the morning, he runs out to discover the kitten gone. In school he is unable to pay attention-even to math. He rushes from the school bus to the junkyard, searches frantically through piles of garbage, and finally discovers the kitten shivering under a bush. Even when he hugs it hard against his thumping chest, hatred simmers inside him.
HE WILL REMEMBER THIS HATRED THE DAY HIS MOTHER DIES. Guilt will press down like a ball of iron on his chest no matter how much he rationalizes it, telling himself that he wasn’t responsible, because look at Marvin, wasn’t he still walking around hale and hearty in spite of all the boy’s wishing?
He will be sent to live with foster parents. They’ll turn out to be an older, childless couple, a bit strict but clean and organized. They will not get him a pet-and that’s good, because surely then the iron ball would crack his chest. They will make sure he gets to school on time and does his homework and has nutritious meals. They will take him to art museums and classical music concerts and will not upbraid his indifference to such things. They will recognize his talent and enter him in math contests-regional, then state, then national-and winning these contests will begin to change the way he feels about himself.
He knows his mother would have done none of this. Why then, lying in a bedroom all his own, the wallpaper of flying dragons that he picked himself lit ghostly blue by the night-light-a room he couldn’t have imagined when he lived in the old apartment-should he give in to tears?
FOR A WHILE AFTER THAT TRAUMATIC NIGHT, THINGS GO WELL. The boy cleans out the abandoned freezer in the junkyard and lines it with his old clothes. He keeps inside it a bowl of water and a dish of cat food bought with money he has stolen from his mother’s purse and Marvin’s wallet, a couple of cautious dollars at a time. After school each day, he takes Shere to the other end of the junkyard and plays with him, keeping a wary eye out for his mother and Marvin, because he doesn’t want them to know what he’s doing. When it’s time for him to go in, he reluctantly puts Shere in the freezer, bids him good night, and wedges a stick under the lid-enough to allow the kitten to breathe without letting it escape. This way, the raccoons and wild dogs that roam the junkyard at night can’t get to it. The kitten learns to recognize the boy. It launches itself at his chest as soon as he opens the freezer lid, purring so loudly that its whole body vibrates. The boy steals more money-what else can he do when his mother will not give him an allowance?-to buy Shere a catnip ball and can’t stop grinning as he watches the kitten go crazy over it. Then one day he returns from school to find the stick with which he had wedged the lid open lying on the ground. The freezer lid is shut, and when he opens it, he discovers that the kitten has suffocated.
He does not tell his mother. From this time on, he speaks to her as little as possible. She tries at first to engage him in conversation; then she gets angry. She doesn’t have time for this nonsense, this sulking without a reason when she’s knocking herself out to provide for him. He finds a pie server in a bottom drawer, digs a hole in the junkyard, and buries the stiff kitten-body though he can hardly bear to touch it. He can’t eat anything the rest of the day or the next, but no one notices because he fixes his own meals. At night he lies in bed, going over the moment when he had last wedged the stick in the freezer door. How could it have fallen out? Had he been in a hurry? Had he been careless? Had someone followed him and pulled the stick out on purpose? Who would do something like that? There are no answers, and perhaps that’s why the questions keep replaying in his head. Sometimes when people are talking to him, the questions come back, very loud, and he is unable to hear anything else. He gets in trouble at school for this; a couple of his teachers wonder if he’s mentally handicapped. But they’re overworked; since he doesn’t cause trouble like the others, they let him be. At home he gets clouted on the head when he blanks out while Marvin is talking to him. Once his mother sees this and it leads to a huge fight between her and Marvin. Earlier, such a development would have pleased the boy. Now he hardly notices.
The only time he can forget the feel of the kitten’s fur under his palm, or the way it butted its head against his shins, is when he’s doing math. So he does more and more of it, asking his teacher for extra worksheets that he brings home, fractions and decimals, and word problems about Aunt Anna who’s driving from Boston to Philadelphia at a certain speed, or a bathtub where the stopper doesn’t quite fit, and how long would it take to fill. The words transform themselves into numbers that line up like acrobats, numbers that can be trusted to perform the way they’re supposed to. He begins to understand their nature. They are ancient and immortal, not frail and easily broken. As long as he offers them his full attention, they will never abandon him. They sing their answers to him, and the inside of his head fills with light as he writes them down.
THERE HAD BEEN A NAKEDNESS ABOUT MR. PRITCHETT’S STORY, the feeling of a wound not yet healed. Perhaps that was why no one said anything, Uma thought. Or were they hoarding energy and oxygen for their own tales?
The noise of water had grown louder, more uneven, a chug-chug followed by a silence, then a gurgling, swallowing noise. Uma tried to visualize what might be happening. Cameron told them to roll up their pants legs or hitch up their skirts and remove their shoes and socks before getting off their chairs.