KITTENS
THE COOL GREEN WATER SLIPPED ALONG THE STREAMBED, BUBbling around smooth brown stones, reflecting the melancholy willows that lined the bank. Marnie sat on the grass, tossing stones into a deep pool, watching the ripples spread in ever-widening circles and lap at the muddy banks. She was thinking about the kittens. This year's kittens, not last year's. A year ago, her parents had told her that the kittens had gone to Heaven. Pinkie's litter had disappeared the third day after their squealing birth.
Marnie's father had said, "God took them away to Heaven to live with Him."
She didn't exactly doubt her father. After all, he was a religious man. He taught Sunday school every week and was an officer or something in the church, whose duty it was to count collection money and mark it down in a little red book. He was always picked to give the sermon on Laymen's Sunday. And every evening, he read passages to them from the Bible. She had been late for the reading last night and had been spanked. "Spare the rod and spoil the child," her father always said. No, she didn't actually doubt her father, for if anyone would know about God and kittens, it was he.
But she continued to wonder. Why, when there were hundreds upon thousands of kittens in the world, did God have to take all four of hers? Was God selfish?
This was the first that she had thought of those kittens for some time. In the past twelve months, much had happened to make her forget. There was her first year in school, the furor of getting ready for the first day — the buying of paper, pencils, and books. And the first few weeks had been interesting, meeting Mr. Alphabet and Mr. Numbers. When school began to bore her, Christmas rushed in on polished runners and glistening ice: the shopping, the green and yellow and red and blue lights, the Santa Claus on the corner who staggered when he walked, the candlelit church on Christmas Eve when she had had to go to the bathroom and her father had made her wait until the service was over. When things began to lose momentum again in March, her mother had given birth to twins. Marnie had been surprised at how small they were and at how slowly they seemed to grow in the following weeks.
Here it was June again. The twins were three months old, finally beginning to grow a great deal heavier; school was out, and Christmas was an eternity away, and everything was getting dull again. Therefore, when she heard her father telling her mother that Pinkie was going to have another litter, she grasped at the news and wrenched every drop of excitement from it. She busied herself in the kitchen, preparing rags and cotton for the birth and a fancy box for the kittens' home when they arrived.
As events ran their natural course, Pinkie slunk away and had the kittens during the night in a dark corner of the barn. There was no need for sterilized rags or cotton, but the box came in handy. There were six in this litter, all gray with black spots that looked like ink hastily blotted.
She liked the kittens, and she was worried about them. What if God was watching again like last year?
"What are you doing, Marnie?"
She didn't have to look; she knew who was behind her. She turned anyway, out of deference, and saw her father glaring down at her, dark irregular splotches of perspiration discoloring the underarms of his faded blue work coveralls, dirt smeared on his chin and caked to the beard on his left cheek.
"Throwing stones," she answered quietly.
"At the fish?"
"Oh, no, sir. Just throwing stones."
"Do we remember who was the victim of stone throwing?" He smiled a patronizing smile.
"Saint Stephen," she answered.
"Very good." The smile faded. "Supper's ready."
She sat ramrod stiff in the old maroon easy chair, looking attentive as her father read to them from the ancient family Bible that was bound in black leather, all scuffed and with several torn pages. Her mother sat next to her father on the dark blue corduroy couch, hands folded in her lap, an isn't-it-wonderful-what-God-has-given-us smile painted on her plain but pretty face.
"Suffer the little children to come to me, and forbid them not; for such is the kingdom of God." Her father closed the book with a gentle slap that seemed to leap into the stale air and hang there, holding up a thick curtain of silence. No one spoke for several minutes. Then: "What chapter of what book did we just read, Marnie?"
"Saint Mark, chapter ten," she said dutifully.
"Fine," he said. Turning to his wife, whose smile had changed to a we've-done-what-a-Christian-family-should-do expression, he said, "Mary, how about coffee for us and a glass of milk for Marnie?"
"Right," said her mother, getting up and pacing into the kitchen.
Her father sat there, examining the inside covers of the old holy book, running his fingers along the cracks in the yellow paper, scrutinizing the ghostly stains embedded forever in the title page where some great-uncle had accidentally spilled wine a million-billion years ago.
"Father," she said tentatively.
He looked up from the book, not smiling, not frowning.
"What about the kittens?"
"What about them?" he countered.
"Will God take them again this year?"
The half-smile that had crept onto his face evaporated into the thick air of the living room. "Perhaps," was all that he said.
"He can't," she almost sobbed.
"Are you saying what God can and cannot do, young lady?"
"No, sir."
"God can do anything."
"Yes, sir." She fidgeted in her chair, pushing herself deeper into its rough, worn folds. "But why would he want my kittens again? Why always mine?"
"I've had quite enough of this, Marnie. Now be quiet."
"But why mine?" she persisted.
He stood suddenly, crossed to the chair, and slapped her delicate face. A thin trickle of blood slipped from the corner of her mouth. She wiped it away with the palm of her hand.
"You must not doubt God's motives!" her father insisted. "You are far too young to doubt." The saliva glistened on his lips. He grabbed her by the arm and brought her to her feet. "Now you get up those stairs and into bed."
She didn't argue. On the way to the staircase, she wiped away the re-forming stream of blood. She walked slowly up the steps, allowing her hand to run along the smooth, polished wood railing.
"Here's the milk," she heard her mother saying below.
"We won't be needing it," her father answered curtly.
In her room, she lay in the semidarkness that came when the full moon shone through her window, its orange-yellow light glinting from a row of religious plaques that lined one wall. In her parents' room, her mother was cooing to the twins, changing their diapers. "God's little angels," she heard her mother say. Her father was tickling them, and she could hear the "angels" chuckling — a deep gurgle that rippled from down in their fat throats.
Neither her father nor her mother came to say good night. She was being punished.
Marnie was sitting in the barn, petting one of the gray kittens, postponing an errand her mother had sent her on ten minutes earlier. The rich smell of dry, golden hay filled the air. Straw covered the floor and crackled underfoot. In the far end of the building, the cows were lowing to each other — only two of them, whose legs had been sliced by barbed wire and who were being made to convalesce. The kitten mewed and pawed the air below her chin.
"Where's Marnie?" her father's voice boomed from somewhere in the yard between the house and the barn.
She was about to answer when she heard her mother call from the house: "I sent her to Brown's for a recipe of Helen's. She'll be gone another twenty minutes."
"That's plenty of time," her father answered. The crunch of his heavy shoes on the cinder path echoed in military rhythm.