The child sat on
the cold floor beside the tatty cardboard box, her eyes fixed on the sleek
still form stretched out inside. Icy tendrils formed glittering patterns on the
inside windowpanes where the moisture had collected as the evening warmth of
the room had been sucked into the chill of the dawn.
Many hours had passed
since she had heard the yowling at the door. How far had her childhood
companion dragged its useless back legs in a last effort to seek the comfort of
home and its bed by the fire? Agitation, and then distress had overtaken the
child as she picked up the broken body and gently laid it in its favourite
spot.
The fire then had still
burned brightly and the heat hung heavy in the room. But still the small form
shivered and she had hastily removed her cardigan and wrapped it around the
trembling bundle. She had stroked the cat’s ears, rubbed its chin and nose -
even in its pain, a soft purring had erupted from its throat, appreciation of
the affection it had previously taken as its due.
“Come to bed, Kate” said
her mother softly. “There’s nothing we can do for poor Tiggy tonight. Tomorrow
we’ll take him to the vet.”
“No, let me stay,” she
had pleaded. “I don’t want him to get cold and he may want some milk later.”
Turning to the box, her
childish voice had cooed, “There’s a good Tiggy-Winkle. You lay still till you
feel better and I’ll keep you warm. Tomorrow we’ll get you some nice chopped
liver ‘cos
you‘ll be really hungry
when you wake up.”
She had settled down
beside the box, convinced that sheer willpower would make everything right in
the morning. “I’m not going to let anything bad happen. I’m going to make you
better.”
Her
aimless chatter continued - what they would do together when he was better,
recollections of other scrapes he had survived, happy times which would be
repeated. Her childish mind was reassured by this one-sided conversation~
fending off the unthinkable vision of a future without him.
Her hand
resting on the soft head she curled her body around the box on the hearthrug.
The cat blinked slowly and attempted a mewling response. Night crept on and
shadows darkened in the corners of the room as the firelight diminished.
The
parents admonished the child to go to bed but she stubbornly refused to
relinquish her nightwatch role. In dozing, her dreams had been laced with
visions of her pet fleeing before a relentless train of thundering wheels. In
wakeful moments, she would squeeze her eyes shut to stop the tears seeping out
and endlessly repeat, “Please don’t die, please don’t die”.
She had
finally been shaken out of a fitful sleep by the trembling of her body in the
chill of the dawn and now she searched for the signs of life she so desperately
wanted to see in the box.
The cat’s
half-open eyes lacked reflection and depth, gave off no spark of light. Its
mouth was frozen in an unnatural grin, the little pink tongue peeping out,
almost impudently, between the sharp white picket fence of teeth. Rejecting
what she feared, the child tucked the cardigan tighter around the body, feeling
in that touch the cold stiffness of death but murmuring still, “I’ll keep you
warm and we’ll take you to the vet soon”.
Her own
body was cold and stiff from the long vigil and this in itself was a comfort.
After all, she would soon get warm again -wouldn’t the cat too? Childish logic
was her weapon against the unacceptable reality lapping at the edges of her
subconscious.
More
competently than could have been thought just the day before, she raked the
ashes from the cold grate and with a confidence born of inner desperation, laid
a new fire, piling sticks upon paper in unconscious mimicry of a funeral pyre.
Her fingers clumsy from the cold, she drew out a match and pulling back her sleeve
and stretching out her arms, struck it along the box, remembering to direct it
away from her as she had been taught.
She
quickly applied the flame to the paper in several places, dropping the match as
it blackened and curled towards her fingers. The flames licked the wood
greedily and the wood itself began to respond, crackling and spitting, blue and
yellow sparks exploding into the air as if in mocking celebration of the event.
With a
mature assessment of the right moment to encourage and not discourage the
flames, she threw small lumps of coal onto the blaze and watched the fire feed
and settle into its shifting pattern.
Satisfied
with this success, and somewhat self-satisfied with her own ability at this
first attempt, she turned once more to the box. If she stared very hard she was
sure she could discern the shallow rise and fall which signified breath, and
life.
The harsh
electric light mellowed as the natural daylight filtered through the misted
windows, and shifting shadows seemed to emphasise the illusion of shallow
breathing. She rubbed warmth into her hands and fearfully reached out once more
to stroke the cat and to reassure herself that the breath still flowed in its
shattered body.
With a
child’s ability to make-believe and create a reality of its own, she persisted
in her belief that life still existed in the grotesque unyielding shell which
had once been soft and warm to her touch.
Convinced,
as only a child can be, that life - and God - cannot be so cruel, she lifted
the creature into her arms, clutching it to her chest in an attempt to infuse
it with the warmth and life of her own body.
But her
warmth could not relax the stiffness even though she wrapped the cardigan
tighter around it. She rocked and crooned as if to a baby, instinctive actions
which are never taught but surface unbidden from deep-seated memory.
And thus
she was found by the awaking family, comforting a cold corpse, in a cold room,
in the fierce cold light of early morning. Quickly assessing the situation, her
mother knelt and put her arms around the child, encompassing both cat and child
in the hug. “Look, Tiggy’s gone now. We can’t help him anymore. Let me take
him”. And gently but positively she lifted the bundle away and stood up. The
child relinquished it without resistance, the tears sliding down her cheeks.
Her shoulders slumped in acceptance of her own powerlessness to influence
events, and her eyes reflected a new maturity.
The child
within had died a little death and the developing adult had seized just a
little more space in the battle for survival.
© Brenda
El-Leithy 2008
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