Nameless

Delilah had her litter just the past week, Clara telling him this as they climbed the singular tree in his front yard, the foliage thick around them so they probably couldn’t be seen from the street.

“They’re mewling,” she said.

“What?” Rowan asked.

“That’s what my dad says, ‘mewling’. It’s like…” and then she made the sound.

“Oh.”

He was higher up than her among the thinner branches that would waver and shake each time a gust of wind pushed through, his heart thumping with the imminent fall that never came, but was no less likely to occur. Clara wore a dress as she climbed and he would have to turn away and pretend to look at the next branch up whenever she hooked a leg over and planted the other against the trunk of the tree in order to hoist herself higher. The backs of her knees were all cut up and scabbed. If he happened to see her underpants she would look up at him with a grimace and might even tug his shoelaces as a warning that gravity may be the price of admission to a girl’s under-things.

“Weren’t you worried that Delilah might die?” he asked.

“It was really cool!” Her dress billowed out below her, the paling skin of her legs flashing just at where he wasn’t able to look. “No, I didn’t think she was going to die. You should’ve come over and watched.”

“I didn’t know about it then.”

“Well, I should’ve called you, then. You know what? We should make phones that go to only each other and whenever something important like that happens I can tell you and you can come over.”

He thought about it. “Yeah, that does sound pretty cool.”

They climbed high enough to where the branches shrunk to thick pegs tapering into twigs. He was stranded several feet from the tree’s pointed top with no way to climb any higher and Clara distributing herself across the few scraggly branches below him, blocking the way down. There was at least fifteen feet of air to the grass of his yard, which was a hard impact even from a drop at two feet, and many branches that wouldn’t make the fall any softer.

“Okay, let me down,” he said.

“But we just got up here! Look, we’re higher than your roof!”

“I have to pee,” he explained.

“Well, then, just pull down your pants and go pee.” She held up a hand in scout’s honor. “I promise not to watch. Just don’t pee on me!”

“I can’t pee in front of you.”

“Well that’s too bad, because I’m not getting down.”

“I think I’m slipping. I’m going to fall unless I get down.”

“You’re not going to fall,” she said.

He began making his descent on top of her, urging a “Hey!” as she ducked away from his feet searching for purchase. The thin branches he held onto bent at his and their exertion and might’ve been cracking and coming apart if he wasn’t too scared to look up and see. Instead of forcing her down like he expected, they became entangled and he had to clutch the trunk of the tree in order to keep from toppling on top of her.

“Fine,” she said, “I’ll get down! Just stop stepping all over me!”

He climbed back up a little so she could right herself and begin to move down. In the lower branches there was room enough for her to scurry to the side and let him pass but, instead, she dropped from the tree and tumbled against its exposed roots, leaving a smear that was half dirt and half green across her back. He did the same and she moved to the side so that he wouldn’t tumble into her ankles.

“So, you want to see them?” she asked. “The kittens?”

“Yeah. But I have to go to the bathroom first.”

She huffed at him. “Fine! Go to the bathroom first. Then, let’s go to my house so we can look at the kittens!”

He told his mom that he was going to Clara’s and that he would be back by supper. She called to him from the kitchen to be back no later. Outside, Clara surprised him by jumping from the bushes by his front door, letting out a banshee’s scream that made all the birds and bugs in the yard go quiet for awhile. She threw herself at him and pinned him to the ground. He could only just make her get off of him and turn her over and pin her right back. But, then, she could just do the same. Over and over again.

“Come on, you jitterbug,” she said, letting him up, “let’s go to my house! I’ll race you!”

Clara’s house was at just the other end of the street and the white soles of her high-top sneakers—boys’ sneakers she’d proudly and defensively pointed out to him, sneakers that had belonged to her older brother, which he’d never worn and eventually grew out of—flashed on the pavement that was lit almost just as white by the late afternoon sun. He pulled past her and piled on the speed. She shifted her footfalls into a sprint behind him and his mind dared him not to look back. She stayed close to him the whole way.

“Come on,” she said, “we’ll go through the side door.”

The side door was on the side of the garage and had a window in it, but the sun glared their reflections off of the glass back at them and he couldn’t see anything until she opened the door—and still he couldn’t see anything, too dark inside—and he had to let his eyes adjust.

“It’s just over here,” she said, and she took him to a cardboard box set up amongst the stuff at the garage’s back wall, with its top and one of its walls cut out and an old blanket spilling out onto the concrete floor.

He saw tiny furry bodies in the dim. The kittens all had their eyes closed and were piled into the protection and warmth of their mother’s belly. One had been squeezed and ejected from the pile and was crying as it padded its way back in blindly to suckle. Delilah looked at Rowan and Clara with what might’ve been fatigue and tracked them as they came in sight and settled to the cold concrete on their bare knees.

Clara said, “Look, they can’t even really walk yet.”

The exiled kitten moved by pushing and dragging itself along on its stomach, occasionally pausing and crying in the general direction of its mother. Its mouth seemed to be wider than its entire head.

“That one doesn’t have teeth,” Rowan said.

“Duh! Did you have teeth when you were born?”

“I didn’t know it was the same,” he explained. “Did you name them yet?”

“No. Mom and Dad says we’re giving them all away, anyway, so what’s the use? I’d probably call that one Sunshine if I called him anything.” She pointed to one of the kittens.

“You know that’s a him?”

“No, I assume.”

She made it sound like some sort of superpower.

“You want to hold one?” she asked. “Which one?”

He already had one picked out, “That one,” and she handed him a chocolate-covered body with its paws—as well as the top of its head and the nubs of its ears—dipped in white. She gave it to him in one hand and he took it in both of his, a surge of fear shooting through him. The kitten couldn’t have weighed more than a Wiffle ball and the bones in its body felt like the thin plastic bones of the fake dinosaur fossil he’d spent a week assembling on the desk in his room.

“That one’s yours if you want it,” Clara said

“I think I have to ask my parents first.” His mom and dad might not want him to have it. “Is it a he or a she?”

Clara grabbed the kitten by the hind legs and pulled it around so that she could see beneath its tail.

“Hey! Don’t do that!” But she let go before he could swat her hands away.

“It’s a girl.” Then she looked at him like he was being a baby. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to hurt her! I had to check to make sure. But you can’t have her yet. She has to stay with her mom until she’s eight weeks old.”

“That’s a long time,” he said. He didn’t mean to sound so awed.

“I know.”

They went outside then, and around to her backyard. There was a jungle gym back there—a slide, a swing, monkey bars, even a fireman’s pole—and a tree that wasn’t as good for climbing as his but they sometimes practiced kissing behind. The kisses felt funny and disappointing but it seemed important to practice for future boyfriends and girlfriends. Sometimes she would say that he was her boyfriend and sometimes he would say that she was his girlfriend, but the arrangement was often boring and without any conceivable perks.

She said, “I can get across all the monkey bars now, want to see?”

She showed him and he tried after her, but he only got two-thirds of the way before his hands started to burn and he had to let go.

“I’m going to ask my mom if I can join gymnastics,” she said.

He wasn’t very interested. “I wonder if my mom will let me have that kitten?”

“I dunno. You want to play ‘Astronaut’?”

“Sure.”

She went first, sitting down in the swing, and he began to push her until she was up so high and swinging so fast that he had to step back and let her pump her legs to get herself the rest of the way. She swung so high that she was up above the crossbar and the chains slackened as she hung in the air parallel to the ground, nothing to do but fall. Then she let go and lifted off, flying through the air with her arms outspread.

It was then that Clara’s mom came to the kitchen window and called Clara inside to eat. “I have to go inside.” Then a thought occurred. “Want to eat dinner with us? Hey, Mom!”

“What?” Clara’s mom called back.

“Can Rowan eat with us tonight?”

“He’ll have to ask his parents first. Rowan, call your mom first, okay, honey?”

He nodded and after they went inside he went to the phone in the front hall of Clara’s house and dialed his home number. His mom answered on the second ring and he asked if he could stay and eat there.

“Rowan, I don’t want you to be imposing yourself on those people.”

“I’m not! I promise.” He wasn’t quite sure what ‘imposing’ meant.

“Okay, then. But get home before dark, okay?”

“Okay.”

He hung up the phone and went into the dining room. “My mom said it’s okay,” he said, before Clara’s mom set down a plate in front of him. They had lasagna and green beans and garlic bread sticks. Afterward, he followed Clara into her bedroom, which was the last door at the end of the hall. The sun slanted in through the blinds and cast long shadows on a build-it-yourself marble rollercoaster. She also had a chemistry set with the little bottles of chemicals lined up in one corner of small bookshelf. Sometimes he helped her to make fake snot.

“Let’s look at the kittens again,” he said, “before I leave.”

They went back out to the garage and she flipped the light switch because by then it was too dark inside to see anything. Delilah had moved from her place into a corner of the garage where a bowl of food and bowl of water had been set out. Rowan took this opportunity and scooped the chocolate kitten up in both hands and held her to his chest. Right away something was wrong. The chocolate kitten didn’t cry in his hands when he picked her up and he didn’t feel any futile tensing of the forepaws extending tiny, feather-like claws that might as well have been invisible. The heat was wrong, the chocolate kitten had been so warm before, but now it felt like a cupcake hours after it had been taken out of the oven.

Even as he tried to set it back down he flinched from it, and the kitten spilled from his palms and landed near the edge of the blanket on its side, mouth open and its tongue lolling out. He was crying before he even knew he was crying, and he hated himself because he was crying, especially in front of Clara. She was a few seconds realizing what just happened and her face smoothed as if she were about to start crying, too. But, instead, she leaned over and wrapped her arms around him in an embrace.

“You killed it! You killed my kitten!” he screamed.

He made her let go of him.

“What? When?”

“When you pulled her legs! You killed her!”

She looked at him as if he’d just stuck a safety pin into the meat of her hand.

She screamed back, “I did not! You can’t kill a kitten by pulling its legs! That’s stupid!”

He rubbed the tears from his eyes and wanted to make them stop. Clara stood up and there was floor dirt on the front of her dress where the fabric had been pinned between her knees and the concrete. He refused to look at her and she wanted to kick him, but didn’t.

“You did,” was all he could say.

She stood above him and kept making her hands into fists over and over again. “Go home! I don’t want to see you anymore!”

The garage door slammed as she went inside and he was left there alone. She turned the light off too, so that the kitten disappeared before him.

He ran back and he didn’t want anyone to see. His mom was in the kitchen, at the sink, doing the dinner dishes and she asked him if something was wrong as he passed but he didn’t really hear it and didn’t want to answer. He went into his room and crawled onto his bed and wrapped the covers around his head, breathing in the smell of his tears and snot and the hot air that moistened the material at his face.

He felt his mom sit down and put a hand on his stomach.

“Something wrong?”

He choked back enough of his crying to answer. “No.”

“Did you have a fight with Clara?”

“Maybe.”

“What about?”

“Something stupid.”

She laid down across him, pushing all the air out of him in one long breath into the blanket. “Well it can’t be that stupid if it’s got you so upset.”

“It must be since she got mad at me.”

“Why did she get mad?”

He loosened the blanket on his head.

“Do kittens go to heaven?” he asked.

“I think so. Yeah, I’m sure they do.”

“Even ones without names?”

“Of course.”

“Would you love me even if I killed a kitten?”

“Did you kill a kitten?”

He thought about it. “No.”

“Then I love you.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re worth loving.”

He uncovered his head so he could look at her. “But what if?”

“I think I’d still love you.”

“Why?”

He felt her shrug. “If it was a mistake and you were really sorry I don’t think I should be allowed to stop loving you, do you?”

“I guess not.” Then he added, “It was a hypothetical,” in case she didn’t know. He said it ‘hy-po-thet-i-cal’.

She stretched across him. “Well, if that was all that was bothering you. I still have dishes to do.”

“That’s it.”

She kissed him on the cheek while she still had him pinned, and he wiped it off when she wasn’t looking. She closed the door when she left and he laid in bed watching the wood grain of the door. He felt a weird feeling in his stomach like he was hungry, but he didn’t want to eat anything. It was dark enough, too, that he could sleep, but he didn’t want to do that either. So he stared at the wood grain of the door for a long time until it began to look like nothing at all and he wasn’t aware that his eyes were no longer open to see.