Dark Songs

Vera had spent that summer watching and judging. Because she couldn't like anybody that summer, or feel that she was like anybody else, she spent most of her time alone reading history, sitting with her kitten under the willow tree. She was reading and judging, concluding something like: People don't know what they're doing. Things seemed to happen because people made blind judgments. She found an illustration of Blind Justice and tacked it up over her bed. She was going on thirteen and her parents were getting a divorce.

She had decided that her father was emotionally stunted and that her mother was childish. She judged herself harshly, too. She knew she cheated on tests, filched from K-Mart, and glibly told her parents whatever she thought they wanted to hear, hating them for not realizing that she was lying. She studied her mother carefully, thinking, if she's so childish, how can I learn to grow up?

And yet, that was a beautiful summer. The sun shone blandly and it was never too hot. Lilac was followed by roses and day lilies. Magnolia and honeysuckle perfumed the breeze. After each magenta sunset the stars hung in profuse clusters. Mockingbirds sang all night whenever the moon was shining.

When Vera was tired of reading, she lay under the willow counting the birds' nests in its branches. The birds went crazy that summer, raising family after family. In the morning she'd look for eggshells under the willow. Pieces of robin's egg blue lined with white, and delicately speckled brown shells, lay like petals in the grass. Sometimes she'd find a whole egg. She collected them in a box lined with cotton.
Sometimes she'd even find a chick. If it was dead she'd throw it away. If it was alive she'd climb through the willow trying to match it to other chicks in the different nests. If it matched, the parents would let it stay. The chicks weren't nice and downy like baby chickens. They were ugly and helpless with bulging closed eyes, quills sticking out of red skin, gasping beaks, and huge abdomens throbbing hot in her hand while useless feet clutched at her fingers. They seemed to have absolute faith in her. When she lifted them they'd stop squawking and lie patiently in her hand while she climbed one-handed through the tree trying to return them to the right nests.

Although her parents were getting a divorce, her father was around a lot. He seemed to be courting her mother, but Vera thought cynically that he usually turned up at dinner time so he probably just wanted to be fed. He brought gifts. Her mother always accepted hers, but Vera threw hers in the trash without opening them. That upset her mother. She opened Vera's presents and tried to make her look.

Vera looked once, and the gift was a cheap pair of pajamas covered with roses in garish colors. The material was so cheap she knew it would fade, shrink and pucker at the seams when she washed them. "I put trash where it belongs," she said, throwing them back in the garbage can and walking away. She didn't know what her mother did with the pajamas. She was as tall as her mother, and her mother could have worn them herself if they were any good, but she never did. Her father acted as if his feelings were hurt when Vera threw away his presents, but she knew he was merely angry. He never brought her anything because he knew she really wanted it. There were plenty of things he knew she wanted. If he'd been bringing gifts to show that he loved her, he'd have brought something she'd like.

When Vera's parents had broken up the previous summer, they were living in a summer house by the ocean. Vera thought it would be fun to go to school there, so she stayed with her father when her mother left. It wasn't fun. There were plenty of kids her own age during the summer, but they all disappeared when school started. She hadn't realized that there wouldn't be anyone around. She had to walk down a dirt road through the woods to catch a school bus, and she was frightened twice a day walking through them alone. She didn't know anybody at the new school, and her teacher was a drunk who would suddenly stop teaching, put his head on his desk, and fall asleep.

Worse, her father acted as if he thought girls were born knowing how to cook and keep house. He yelled at her demanding that she do it. There wasn't even a cookbook in the house. When she pointed that out, and said she was only twelve, he stopped coming home. Sometimes he didn't come home for days, and sometimes he came back late at night, but he didn't always remember to leave food in the house, or money for food, either.

That was when Vera started to take care of the cat. It was just an alley cat, a tabby with a white bib. She found it sitting patiently by the back door every morning, asking to be fed, so she started feeding it. For the first few weeks the cat ate and ran away. It wouldn't let Vera touch it, and it wouldn't go into the house. Then it began to snow and the cat walked into the house, strolling around as though it had decided to stay. Finally, it let Vera stroke it, and even began to purr occasionally.

Her father was furious when he found out about the cat. "Dammed if I'll have some damned pregnant cat dropping some damned litter in my house!" But Vera didn't care what he said. The cat stayed in the house while he was away, and Vera made a bed in the garage where it could hide if he was home.

The kittens were born in the garage and the cat wouldn't bring them into the house. Vera carried them all in, but the cat dragged them one by one to the back door and stood there screaming to be let out, so Vera carried them all back to the garage again. Whenever her father wasn't there, which was most of the time, Vera sat in the garage in her overcoat watching the kittens. This was the first time she'd had any pets. She couldn't believe the fuss the cat made over her kittens, licking and rubbing them, letting them climb over her while she purred contentedly. As they grew, the kittens began to take an interest in Vera, too, climbing over her, eager to play. She named them all: Cynthia, Penelope, Samantha, Jerry, and Bobbie, but the cat was still just plain Cat. As the kittens got bigger she began to take them into her room, one at a time, to sleep with her. She didn't think her father would notice, and he didn't.

But one morning, when she went out to the garage to feed them, they were gone. Her father was also gone. She'd heard him come home, and she'd heard him go to the garage. She knew at once, in a flash, that he'd done something to them. There was no point running around the yard yelling. There were no fresh cat footprints in the snow for her to follow.

She'd kept Samantha in her room that night. Samantha was the only kitten she had left. She found a suitcase, packed her clothes, punched holes in a paper bag and put Samantha in it. Then she walked to the nearest bus line and went to her mother's house.

Her mother didn't want a kitten, or Vera either, for that matter, but she could handle her mother, so she and the kitten stayed. "You can't keep a pet here," her mother said sharply. "It'll just get run over." But Vera kept Samantha in the house most of the time, only taking her into the yard when she could watch her. Samantha was Vera's only companion all that spring and summer.

Two little terriers lived in the house behind them. Most of the time they behaved themselves and poked around their own yard. Sometimes they'd get out from behind their fence and dash around looking for trouble, running as fast as they could, full of frantic energy. Samantha instinctively hid whenever she saw them, but they finally got her.

Vera had gone to the store for her mother, and when she got back she couldn't find Samantha. "Where is she? Did you let her out?" she asked her mother.
"Cats run away," her mother answered sourly. "She ran away and got hit by a car somewhere." Vera ran through the neighborhood calling Samantha and asking if anyone had seen her. Nobody admitted seeing anything.

It was nearly dark before the neighbors couldn't stand it any longer. Samantha was in a box in the garage of the people who owned the terriers. They showed Vera. The dogs had caught her and shaken her in their teeth. They hadn't broken through her skin -- she was not bleeding -- but they had broken her bones. Samantha lay on her side, nearly dead but conscious, her lung forming a huge bubble between her broken ribs, going in and out every time she breathed. When Vera asked why they hadn't told her before, they said they hadn't wanted to upset her.

Vera carried the cat home in the box and confronted her mother. "I have to take her to a vet. Call a vet."

"It's a waste of money. She'll die anyway. My God, it's just a cat. I can't spend money on a cat."

"You're just going to let her lie there until she dies?"

"If you want to put her to sleep, then you do it. I'm not wasting money on a vet."

Vera had, in the whole world, a dollar and fifty-seven cents. She'd spent most of her money on the expensive history of the world she'd been reading all summer. She knew there was no point calling her father for help. She went into the house, got what money she had, and started walking. "Where do you think you're going?" Her mother called after her. She didn't bother to answer.

She walked to the drugstore down dark, hedged streets. She could look into the houses along the streets. Dozens of lives seemed to be going on happily, simultaneously, without touching each other. The moon was rising through the perfumed night, dimming the stars, and, one by one, the mockingbirds started singing.

When she asked the druggist how much chloroform she could buy for a dollar and fifty-seven cents, he gave her a strange look and asked why she wanted it. When she explained, he gave her the chloroform for nothing, and some cotton, too. He told her how to use it. "If you can wait until I can close up, I'll come and do it," he said, full of sympathy. "But I can't close for a couple of hours. You sure you can do it?"

"Yes."

"You sure? You'd better not wait for me, then. The poor thing. It's suffering."

"I know." Vera walked back, looking at the glowing yellow windows of the houses behind the hedges, houses full of families, full of life. "If someone looked in my house, they'd never know," she thought.

Samantha was struggling when she got back, trying to stand up, trying to cry out. For a minute Vera felt hope, but as the kitten tried to move, she realized that its hind legs were broken, too. She felt sick, but she stroked the kitten, trying to calm her, and had to look away. She looked up at the stars. The big dipper was in front of her, pointing at the pole star. The moon was large in the east. A mockingbird sang indifferently in her willow. "I'm sorry, Samantha," she said to the kitten. "You can go now, Sammy. Go to the stars."

She couldn't watch herself kill the kitten. She got her mother's garbage can, tall and deep and always impeccably clean, and laid the box with the kitten gently on the bottom. She poured the chloroform on the cotton the way the druggist had told her, surprised that it smelled so sweet, and put it over the kitten's face, plunging her arms into the can and staring at the sky. The kitten tried to shake off the cotton but then relaxed with one last, full breath.

When she was sure the kitten's heart wasn't beating, Vera lay on the grass, exhausted. She hadn't believed she could do it. None of the grown-ups had been able to do it. None of them had even cared enough. She didn't hate them, but she felt older than them. Not better, just more responsible.