Animal Stories

She shouldn't have left me alone. It wasn't the first time. I had seen those videos where the mother has to leave her baby foxes, um they're called kits, I think, to find food. Then a big old badger comes around to scoop them up.

You know, to play with them. And I'm thinking about how hungry I am. So hungry that you forget what a full tummy feels like. Those poor kits. They think their mother is coming. They get all excited, thinking food is arriving. Then they get scooped up.

And I'm all cooped up in this hole in the ground, near this traffic light that keeps blinking and blinking. Jeremy finally fell asleep. I pulled this dirty blanket over him. He finally stopped shivering and complaining when I did that. Which made giving him the blanket so worth it.

I'm the older sister. My mother keeps saying it's up to me. To be brave. And caring. To be the one who doesn't complain.

And I really try. I do. I try to explain to Jeremy that the blanket shouldn't be dirty and that there was a time when we had clean blankets we used to give away. We had a whole closet full ot them, all fleesy and wonderfully warm.

Mom only gave away the older, faded ones. Though there was one she gave away that made me bawl my eyes out. It was "threadbare," she said. Which made me think about threads and needles and fixing what can't be fixed. Her, giving away my baby blankie.

She said she had given it away, but I found it later. In the garbage. That was after the 'mergency started. I thought I kept it hidden, under my bed. But when I last went looking for it, the bed and our whole house were gone.

Which shouldn't have happened. But try to explain this to Jeremy, and all he can do is look back up at me with his dreamy eyes, so content when we can feed him milk and "cookies," as mom would laughingly say. When she could find food, that is.

And mostly she can't. Find food. Even with the stack of silver coins, we let Jeremy play with. The prices keep going up until Mom gives up going out with coins. She has to get "lucky." Or so she says. I don't know the half of it.

Only about midnight, when the moon is shining, do I think about a future with food and warm lodgings, as Mom calls it. She doesn't dream of a home anymore. A lodging is a place in a subway or in a burned-out basement where you are accepted and protected.

Which only happens for those who have skills to offer. Not like my mom, who only took care of us. Which she did when Dad went off to war, doing his "patriotic duty." To protect us from what happened. A war that no one talks about anymore.

I can't imagine what a war is. Except to think of what happens afterward. Which I never want to think about. So I read the books that we took with us. All dirty and "dog-eared," as mom says. Oh, what I would give for a puppy! With dreamy eyes like Jeremy. All happy and playful and not afraid!

#

So it was morning when I woke up. And I peeped out from under the green umbrella that covered our hole in the ground. It made me think about how Mom called us the "hole in the wall" gang, even though we were buried underground. Where we had to be as "quiet as the grave."

I understood the quiet part. But I had never seen a grave. Just these big holes everywhere. And mom would put her hands over my eyes. Telling me not to look. That was in the early days. Not like it is now.

Now the big holes are all filled in. Only the little ones for us to hide in are left.

I thought I would play with Jeremy this morning. You know that game of hide and seek? Jeremy would be the "bad man," and I would hide from him. He loved this game. We'd only play when I gave the "all clear." Like it was this morning. Bright and sunny. Without a cloud in the sky.

Jeremy was raring to go. He would let me hide, and then he'd run straight at me, like he had X-ray eyes. But it was just me making it easy for him. Oh, I would make a silly noise or let some loose rocks fall. Otherwise, he'd probably wander off and fall into some other hole down the way.

Or he would run into old Razzy, who would try to scare him. For his own good, "Mind not playing, you little rascals," she'd say. Mom told us to be polite when we saw her coming. For it was best to avoid other people. Especially since we didn't have anything to offer. Except for those silver coins.

Which were the holiest of secrets. Mom told us that every time we used one, it was like sending an invitation for someone to steal from us. Each silver coin was a crumb that made a "crumb trail" back to us, she said. Now she hardly used them at all.

And I thought I was dreaming when, this morning, I saw, very far away, two men with what looked like my mother. It was near noon when the sun burned up all the wet stuff, the rags we used, even the umbrella, when I saw her. I wanted to yell, to run to her. But something was wrong. She was stumbling and looked hurt.

And the men were calling to us. They told us it wasn't safe.

"Bring everything with you!" they yelled. "And meet us here."

I looked at Jeremy, who looked so happy holding onto a toy he found in some rocks, a shiny dump truck with broken wheels. He was standing near Razzy, out of sight of the men. I crouched down and hid myself.

Razzy got this look on her face. "You can't hide from them!" she hissed. "Run away!"

I was confused. But Razzy took me by the arm. She was so rough, and it hurt so much that I wanted to cry. Then she grabbed Jeremy and did the same to him. His new toy fell, and he screamed for it. One man near my mother started to run towards us. The other hit my mother. Hitting her so hard that she fell down. Razzy ran off, down the street, leaving us both.

It was then that I remembered one of those animal stories. About the happy mice in the barbecue. The one that had been left out all winter, providing a warm home. Until the owner took the cover off and started it up. The baby mice ran in every direction, all over the place.

I scooped up Jeremy and ran for my life.