The poor thing tried to scramble away from me, extending its tiny claws to catch hold of the glass, but the inside of the jar was slick, and it fell out onto my waiting palm.
The sweet little girl (and yes, I checked, she was a girl) mewed plaintively at me, her tiny little eyes never leaving mine.
“Sweet thing…” I whispered, petting her shivering body, then tucking her close to me.
She snagged her itty bitty claws in my t-shirt, then a tiny little motor inside her began vibrating. She mewed again.
“Shhh! Poor little thing! Sweet baby! I’ve got you!” I whispered, saying all the nonsense words and sounds you said to babies and animals. She was shivering, so I tucked her inside my t-shirt and snuggled her up next to my skin, hoping my body heat would be enough to help. I wrapped the jacket around us both and hoped it would warm her. It wasn’t that cool out, but the wind around the bridge was pretty strong. I was already shivering myself, so I couldn’t imagine how this poor baby was feeling.
I made my way to door of the gas station. I debated whether I should try heading back downtown and trying to find my car, but thought better of it. I wasn’t sure where I was, and something told me the kitten in my coat wouldn’t last very long without help. I took a deep breath and looked at my phone.
When my parents had given my brothers and I the underage drinking talk, they had told us that if we ever needed them to help us out of an unsafe situation, all we had to do was call. There would be no judgment, no punishment, as long as we called. This… this wasn’t underage drinking, but for me, I thought it was just as much of an emergency.
I dialed my parents’ number and it rang a few times before I heard Mama D answer the phone, sleep and confusion in her voice.
“Hello?” she asked quietly. She must have looked at the caller ID, because she asked, “Kaine? Are you okay, sweetheart?”
I couldn’t talk for a minute as her concern washed over me. Tears began rolling down my face as I just listened to her voice.
“Di?” I heard Mama K ask sleepily in the background. “Is everything okay?”
Cars flew by the intersection, their noisy passage making it difficult to hear. I thought again how easy it would be to end everything, just to step out into traffic. I didn’t want to hurt them anymore, or make them feel like any of this was their fault. I just wanted it to end. If I just took that step, it would be over so quickly—
I must have made some kind of movement, because tiny little claws dug into my neck and I felt the rumble of the little kitten’s motor start back up. That tiny touch, that trusting little vibration broke through the walls I’d been trying to build around my heart and the crying began in earnest.
“Mama…” I began, then started sobbing. “Mama, I need you.”
“Baby boy, what’s wrong? Where are you?” she asked, the fatigue fogging her brain evaporated under the adrenaline rush of one of her boys in trouble. I sobbed for a minute as I stood there, phone pressed to my ear and tears running down my face. I tried to explain what had happened, and she listened quietly as I babbled until I was able to tell her my location. I could almost hear the gears of her mind slide into overdrive as she understood where I was at, both literally and figuratively.
“Kaine… Kaine are you on the bridge?” she whispered. Despite her efforts to remain calm, I could hear the fear in her voice, and I heard Mama K gasp in the background.
“No, Mama. Not— not anymore. I just… I just need someone to come get me,” I managed to sob out.
Mama D stayed on the phone with me while Mama K and Lee drove out to pick me up. She kept me talking the whole time, asking me to tell her what I saw, who was around. At one point, I shifted the kitten because her claws were digging into my neck. She mewed at me in complaint. Mama D heard her and started asking me about her. A part of me understood she was just trying to keep me from thinking too much until help arrived, but the rest of me welcomed the distraction.
As I talked to Mama D, I heard a car pull up and saw Lee behind the wheel of his new Jeep. His jaw was clenched, and I could see his white-knuckled grip on the wheel of his SUV. I knew it was dark green, but it looked almost black in the dim light. He’d nicknamed the car “Hound” after an Autobot in the Transformers universe.
Before the car was even in park, Mama K was out of the vehicle and wrapping me in her arms as if she could physically reach through time and space and drag me away from the precipice and make it so I never even considered ending it all.
“Kaine,mijo, are you okay? What happened? Why are you here?” she asked, question after question rolling out of her as she pulled me to her. I could see her looking around the parking lot fiercely. “Did someone try to hurt you? Who—”
“Mama! No, I’m okay, now! Really!” I sniffed. Lee had parked the car and was standing next to us by then. He took the phone from me and started talking to Mama D. Then the plaintive mew began again. I saw the consternation on Mama K’s face as she registered the noise but didn’t immediately understand where it was coming from.
“What the—” she began, then saw the tiny little head peek out of my shirt. “Awww! Who is thispequeña dama?” Mama K asked, her Spanish sneaking in, as it always did when her emotions ran high. She caressed the silky soft fur of the kitten.
“Bottles,” I said, almost without thinking. “I mean, that’s what I would name her if I was going to keep her, because she was in this bottle, and it almost fell off the bridge…” My voice trailed off. Our parents had always said they didn’t want any pets in the house, because with six children in the household, that way lay chaos.
“It did, hmm?” she asked, her dark eyes considering the animal, then me.“Botellitas. I think the name for our newest addition isperfect.”
Bottles and I had been best friends ever since. She was fiercely protective of me, and her favorite pastimes were sitting in sunbeams and hissing at the squirrels outside my window.
I didn’t like to think about the next week I’d stayed in the psych ward of the local children’s hospital. It hadn’t been fun, but it had, at least, set me on the road to recovery. I’d gotten a jump start on counseling and had started taking anti-depressants and anti-anxiety meds. I knew medication didn’t necessarily work for everyone, but for me it had been a lifesaver.
My family had taken care of Bottles for me until I got out of the psych ward. Just knowing she was waiting for me gave me the encouragement I needed to start working through some of my issues. The hospital had connected me with a fantastic counselor who I still saw every now and again. Kelly had really helped me start dealing with my abandonment issues.
The alarm on my clock beeped at me and I jumped. It was after 1 p.m. I wanted to check in with the twins to see how the second day of the Grand Opening was going.
ME: Hey twinkies! How’s biz?
