They Ran Over Your Cat

And remember when they ran over your cat?

The deaf one. The one that always slept under the wheel of the car where it was cool and somehow less humid and seemed so far from that sun which challenged anything daring enough to leave a cool, less humid place. You remember now: Your mother softly telling you as you sat in the car after school. She was quiet when she met you at the gate. Your mother was never quiet. How old were you? Six? Seven? You remember following your brother up the stairs. He told you not to cry. He was annoyed. You were bawling. You were repeating again and again how you wanted your cat. Even now, fifteen years later, you know you weren't even sure if you were crying for the cat. Not even a cat. A kitten. The same tiny kitten that just weeks before you'd thrown through your Slam-Dunk kid's basketball hoop. Time and time again. Until its nose bled and you took it to your mother and she had screamed and cried and you had nursed it back to health. You know now the horror she must have felt. The sheer terror in finding that she had raised a child who harms kittens. Who harmed a kitten. A sadist. A psychopath. You remember holding it, sitting in the chair by the kitchen with ice to its nose. How it had been quiet and small and how it nuzzled you like some sacred protector. With no idea of what you'd done. But you didn't even know it could be hurt until it bled. You didn't even know it could bleed. You didn't know that, perhaps if you had thrown it just a few more times, maybe just once, it might have had no pressure left to bleed. You would have forever unconsciously and irredeemably been a monster. And, if you were smart, you would not be remembering this now. You would know. You would not want to be reminded. But here you are, remembering with the twist in your stomach and the supine lump in your throat that refuses to rise as your eyes water but refuse to tear. Sometimes you squeeze them tight when they water just to force a tear. For all purposes you are weeping, curled in a semi-fetal position, exactly how you fell on your bed as a fully-clothed ragdoll when the memory rose without warning to take your breath. You remember how you used to cry. You used to cry all the time. For no cause, it was just so easy. There was never any reward. You didn't get attention or an embrace or a treat to calm you down. Maybe sometimes you were offered one. But that's not why you cried. You remember this one time and have forgotten many. Don't start remembering now, they aren't important by themselves. After your grandfather had finished cleaning the remains of the small, white, deaf kitten off the pale concrete. The bone fragments, the blood, the purple and white and pink and the ubiquitous red. Hosing it away, burying it in the yard. What you never saw. What you are now equipped to imagine. You remember crying that one time. For once, something had been lost that you knew what was. You knew what to cry for.