‘I think there are more than three,’ she says. ‘I hear them sometimes, when I’m very deep down. I try not to. I don’t like it when the little ones cry.’
Deep down?
‘There are other levels. I need to show you all that.’
Fear strokes me, a dark feather. I purr anxiously to make the feeling stop.
‘Don’t you think, Olivia,’ and I can hear the wet catch in her voice, ‘that it would be better if none of us had been born?’
No, I say.I think we’re lucky to have been born. And we’re luckier still to be alive. But I don’t know what being born or being alive means any more. What am I? It seems like everything I knew is wrong. I thought I saw theLORD, once. He spoke to me. Did that happen?
‘There are no gods except Ted’s gods,’ she says. ‘The ones he makes in the forest.’ The cold feather strokes on, up my tail, down my spine.
We won’t let that happen, I say.We are going to get out of here.
‘You keep saying that,’ she snaps. For a moment she sounds like the old Lauren, shrill and unkind. Then she softens again. ‘What will you do when we’re free? I’m going to wear a skirt and pink barrettes in my hair. He never lets me.’
I want to eat real fish.(Privately, to myself, I think,I will go and find my tabby love.)What about your family?I ask Lauren.Maybe you can find them.
After a pause she says, ‘I don’t want them to see me like this. It’s better if they keep thinking I’m dead.’
But where will you live?
‘Here, I guess.’ Her voice sounds like it doesn’t matter. ‘I can manage without Ted. I want to be alone.’
Everyone needs someone, Lauren, I say sternly.Even I know that. Aperson to stroke you and tell you nice things and get annoyed with you sometimes.
‘I have you.’
That’s true, I say, in surprise.I hadn’t thought.I tickle her strongly with my tail and she laughs. Luckily, I am an optimist and I think we’re going to need that.
Lauren sighs, the way she does when she’s about to say something I won’t like. ‘It has to be you,’ she says. ‘When the time comes. You know that, right, Olivia? You have to do it. I can’t use the body.’
Do what?But I know.
She doesn’t answer.
I won’t, I say.I can’t.
‘You have to,’ she says sadly. ‘Or Ted will put us under the ground like the other kittens.’
I think about all those little girls. They must have sung songs too, and had pink barrettes and played games. They must have had families and pets and ideas and they either liked swimming, or didn’t; maybe they were afraid of the dark; maybe they cried when they fell off their bikes. Maybe they were really good at math or art. They would have grown up to do other things – have jobs and dislike apples and get tired of their own children and go on long car rides and read books and paint pictures. Later they would have died in car wrecks or at home with their families or in a distant desert war. But that will never happen, now. They are not even stories with endings, those girls. They are just abandoned under the earth.
I say,I know where he keeps the big knife. He thinks no one knows, but I do.
She holds me tight. ‘Thank you,’ she whispers, and I feel her breath in my fur.
Suddenly I cannot bear to wait.I’ll do it now, today, I say.Enough.
I leap up onto the counter and stand on my hind legs. I open thecupboard. At first I can’t believe my senses.It’s not here, I say. But it must be. I nose in and search the dusty interior. But the knife is gone.
‘Oh.’ I hear the deep wound of disappointment in her voice and I would do anything to make it better. ‘Don’t worry about it, Olivia.’
I’ll find it, I tell her.I swear, I’ll find it…
She gives a little sound, and I can tell she’s trying not to cry. But I feel her tears running hot through the fur on my cheeks.
What can I do to make it better?I whisper to her.I’ll do anything.
