Five(22)

So they ate their meals in silence and sat next to each other after dinner reading, Gerald the newspaper, and she one of her books, while listening to the radio. And every now and then, perhaps three times a year, when she brought home a good school report or won the class prize, he would put a hand on her shoulder and say, “Well done,” and his large hand on her small frame was heavy, almost painful, but she did not complain, she did not shrug him off, she waited and bore the weight of him, because she understood that it was his love.

When she had just turned ten, Gerald said to her one evening, “Come here, Matilda girl, I have something to show you,” with something cheerful and bright she had never before heard in his voice, and she ran to Gerald. She saw a light in his eyes. He’d brought her something, and he was happy, and she could not wait to know what it was that made him that way. Whatever it was could not be better than her father calling to her with that sound in his voice and the sparkle in his gaze.

“What is it, Papa?” she asked, a joyful, nervous feeling in her stomach. Sweets? A book? Hair ribbons?

“Go sit down,” he said, “And close your eyes,” and little Matilda ran to the kitchen table, put her hands over her face and her head down. She was petite for her age, and her legs, still not quite long enough to touch the floor, were swinging back and forth under her chair in excitement. She could hear some rustling, shuffling, and then, “All right, you can look!” Gerald exclaimed.

Matilda uncovered her face and looked down at what he had put in front of her. Her legs stopped swinging. She held her breath. She stayed very, very still. Whatever this was, whatever the reason he had for bringing it to her, it made him happy. So she would be happy. She must pretend to be happy.

Matilda looked at the tiny body, its striped, matted fur, its minute o-shaped mouth, its sealed eyes that had never opened in its time on earth.

“What is it, Papa?” she managed to say, lifting her voice at the end of the question deliberately, so he would not hear her heart breaking.

“What do you mean? It’s a kitten, silly girl,” Gerald said, still in high spirits. “Born a few days ago, maybe a week. I mean, it’s dead now, but you’re going to learn so much from this, Matilda. I have so much to teach you.”

A house fly landed on the miniscule corpse, rubbing its hands together as it stood on a dried open wound. The kitten looked as though a rat had gotten to it before Gerald did. The dark red matting its fur was blood, she realized. She wanted to retch but didn’t.

“But where did you get it, Papa?” she said, feeling sick, swallowing the lump in her throat, trying desperately to sound excited.

“What’s the matter, don’t you like it?” Gerald said, something like an incipient hurt in his tone, something that could easily turn to anger or sadness, that could take him away from her. So she had to like it, she had to love it, because if she didn’t he would go silent, he would stop looking at her. He would be so hurt if she didn’t love it.

“No, Papa, it’s wonderful, I’m just asking how, how did you…” She did not look at the kitten while she said this, but then, when she glanced down again, she could not finish the thought.

“Well, there’s a stray cat over in the alley by the butcher’s on my route. I heard the whining under a pile of rubbish. She had a whole litter trying to feed, but this one was off to the side, dead. The runt. Never had a chance, the poor little soul. So I just slipped it in my pocket. It’s an excellent first specimen for you to learn from, although we will have to be quite delicate with it,” he said, waving away the fly and coming behind her chair, leaning over, putting his big man’s hand on her shoulder. It weighed a ton.

“What’s a specimen, Papa?” she said, with a squeak in her voice that she hoped he did not detect.

“All in good time, Matilda. You’ll see,” he said. “Now go find the old cutting board and put some water on to boil. We’re going to have to learn to sterilize my instruments first. The first rule of surgery, girl—scrupulous hygiene. And we’ll need your mother’s sewing kit for the pins.”

When her father mentioned the sewing kit of the mother she did not remember, Matilda thought, for just a sliver of a moment, that perhaps this was not so bad, perhaps they would be making a little dress for the kitten. In an old valise that was also once her mother’s, she had a tiny dress that her aunt had told her was once hers when she was a baby, that Jo had made for her. She could not imagine what else her father could need the pins for. When she saw, a few minutes later, how he would use them, she understood that something had happened to her life that she would not be able to change.

And then another thought came to Matilda that she had never thought before, now that she had her first encounter with a dead body: that her mother had had a body once too, which also must have gone stiff and sad and quiet like the kitten. Matilda hoped that there had not been any flies on her when she died. And she wished that her mother were here with her now, a real person in a live body that she could touch, with a hand that she could reach for to hold.



* * *





Matilda survived the dissection of the kitten that first time on the kitchen table, the pinning of its splayed limbs to the old cutting board, and the abdominal incision. She did not vomit until Gerald removed the viscera and presented her with the tiny heart.