The Stray - An Original Short Story

The Stray

It wasn’t about the kitten after all…. The real scrawny one who’d been too dirty even for her, and so she carried him up the five flights of stairs, arms extended awkwardly in front of her, and all the way through the front door, which was thankfully left ajar, and straight into the small bathroom, where she finally set the squirming, shivering creature at the bottom of the tub.

He was flailing and scratching with his paws and she’d let him tire himself out while collecting the good smelling soaps from the special place Mother kept them, the ones she herself used. Not the generic barely smelling of vanilla ones meant for the kids or her dad. She didn’t know what her dad used, but he always smelled like shaving cream and Scotch, and she didn’t want the kitten to smell like that.

The soaps Mother used came in pretty purple papers with the ribbons on them and they felt wonderfully soft under her hands, almost as soft as mounds of flour at Grandma’s house on the rare Sundays when she’d get up early enough to help with the baking.

Sasha filled up a small bucket with warm water and dropped a whole bar of soap into it, swishing the warm liquid around into something resembling milk, creamy and soft and smelling flowery and exotic, unlike anything she'd ever smelled before. She smiled at the thought of how pleasant it would be to cradle the kitten to her chest afterwards, to curl up with him on her lap as she read or maybe, she’d read to him and get him used to hearing her voice, so he’d know who he belonged to.

Everybody had to belong to somebody. That’s why she’d always pick up these strays on her way home from school. And she had hoped that one of these, if pretty enough and soft enough, would be allowed to stay.

*******

The kitten had given up and curled in on itself, still shivering at the cold, but not trying to get out of the bath anymore. She poured the silky, sweet-smelling water over him, gently, and rubbed it all over him. She could feel his ribs through the wet skin, the bones small and sharp as gravel.

She’d used the warmest towel from the radiator afterwards and dried him till he barely felt wet at all, his fur a much lighter color than she’d thought it was. She’d fed him warm milk and a little bit of salami from the sandwich she didn’t finish at school, and she regretted this last bit. She didn’t want him to smell like salami for when Mother came home.

The kitten curled up on her lap as she did her homework, and she’d gotten used to his soft purring as he slept, gotten used to her fingers running through the soft, soft fur on his neck, absently, as if by an old habit. She’d watched his little belly go up and down with each breath, and all of it was making her feel a strange kind of peace; something warm and soft and comforting making a home in the middle of her belly, the way she always thought Father felt after he drank a cupful of Scotch, only without the other things that came with it. Without the anger at her and at Mother for something silly and small. Burnt toast kind of small.

She looked at the clock on the wall, apprehension making the warmth in her belly turn to something colder, darker. Something she always felt at precisely 6:45 p.m. when her parents were due to come home. Mother first, as likely as not, and on one of her good hopeful days, she liked it that way. But she wasn’t sure if today would be one of those. If she had gotten the kitten clean enough and smelling good enough for her to maybe let her keep him.

She got up and put the kitten into a cardboard box, with the towel she’d used earlier–all dry now–as a blanket, and set it outside the door, her heart beating frantically with each tick-tock of the clock. She wished she could make the thing shut up, as if it was the noise itself that made the time move inexorably towards that moment.

Mother wasn’t in one of her hopeful moods when she stormed through the front door, her expensive coat already unbuttoned, her thin leather gloves off and extended toward her in a way that made her want to duck her head.
Maybe she didn’t get it clean enough or pretty enough after all…. She kept herself very still as Mother lashed out at her with the gloves, her face burning, but not so much that she felt like crying over it. She could tell by the way Mother looked at her that it wasn’t about the kitten, not in any real way. That it was about something bigger than that. Scotch in her father’s glass kind of big, the kind where furniture would be broken later, and the supper would be burnt but they’d still be made to eat it kind of big.

It would be years before she’d smell that strange scent again, when a long-legged blonde woman talking to Father would lean too low over the table Mother had set, and he’d introduce her as his assistant and Mother’s whole face would go stark pale and her lips would curve in that mean hard line, and she’d know then, somehow she’d know that it wasn’t about the kitten that day at all.

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