The Painted Ponies of Partequineus and The Summer of the Kittens (19 page)

“Want to play a game?” Jimmy asked, and we agreed on Scrabble, even though I almost always win, except if there was a math Scrabble game I bet he'd beat me every time. We only played for about fifteen minutes, though, because Jimmy got this real vague look in his eyes, like he couldn't see the board, and he put down a word that didn't make any sense, no vowels, t-r-k-n-p, only he insisted it was a real word, and we almost got into an argument until I realized that something was wrong with him, and I let him keep the score. I spelled my next word - “quiet” - and put the “q” on a triple letter space for thirty points, only when it was Jimmy's turn he just sat there, and a tiger came out of his closet and walked all around his wheelchair. It opened its mouth and growled sort of soft and rumbly, and sat down beside Jimmy and put one huge paw up on his knee, and I ran out of the room and called Mrs. Morris, and she came and looked at Jimmy and told me I had better go home now, and that I could come back tomorrow. Even though I was scared of it, I wished that old tiger would follow me home instead of staying there with Jimmy, only it didn't.

When I got home, I broke a rose off of one of Mom's bushes and put it on Maggie's grave.

July 9
^th

 

Hi, Wonderful Diary!

I have lots of good news. I'm a little confused too, but I'll tell you the happy stuff first, and then maybe I'll be able to figure out the rest.

The last kitten opened her eyes today, the grey one. She's smaller than the others, and Dad says that's because she's the runt of the litter, and she's really cute.

Dad comes up to see the kittens every day, some-times even twice.

It's so funny watching them try to walk. They can't seem to coordinate all their legs, but they crawl pretty good, and when I pick them up they try to look at me, except I don't think they can see very well because they still bump into stuff.

I wonder if they think I'm their mother.

I don't have to feed them so often now because they eat more each time, and I'm getting more sleep, which is good because I was getting so tired I even fell asleep in the afternoon a couple of times.

Mom says I shouldn't give them names, because when they go to whoever is going to adopt them they'll get new names then and they might get confused, only I did it anyway. Mom says I can only keep one, and we have to find homes for the other three, but I'm saving one for Jimmy, so that leaves only two, and if they get confused over their names, that's just too bad.

Maybe I can tell the people who adopt them that they have to keep the same names that I give them, or else they can't have them. Jimmy too.

The grey one is Smudgie, 'cause that's the name Peter gave his kitten at the end of
The Abandoned
, on account of my Smudgie has the same kind of little black spot on her nose. The orange one that's a boy I wanted to call Dempsy, 'cause he's got one ear that sort of flops over at the top and makes him look tough, and Dad says there was a famous prize fighter by that name once, only that was also the name of the tomcat that Peter killed in a fight in the book, and that made me sad so I changed my mind. His name is “Thomas” instead, for tom cat. I know, not much imagination there, but it fits him. The other orange one is a girl, I think, even though Mr. Harding says most orange cats are boys. Her name's Jesse, 'cause that can be either a boy's name or a girl's name, just in case.

I think the calico one is the one I'm going to keep. She almost has to be a girl, 'cause she's at least four different colours, and her name's Veronica.

I wish Mom had named me that when I was born. But Hanna's a nice name too, don't you think? Dad used to make a joke about that. He read in the paper that Hanna was one of the top two or three most popular names for girl babies in Canada, and he said “Every Tom, Dick and Harry is named Hanna.” I don't think that's very funny.

More good news. Jimmy felt well enough to come over to see the kittens today, and Mr. and Mrs. Morris came too. He looks a lot better. His bandage is much smaller now, and he was all excited about coming. He held every one of the kittens, one at a time, and when I told him that Thomas was the only boy, he said that's the one he wants, only he didn't like the name. I told him that's okay, that if he wants to change it he can pick out his own name right away, and that I'll call him by his new name until he's old enough to be adopted. Jimmy said he'd have to think about what name to choose.

It was a little too early to feed them, but I did it anyway. Mom heated up their formula - that's what they call the food, just as if they were human babies instead of kittens - and everybody watched while I fed Veronica, and they told me how good I was at it, so I felt really proud. Then I even showed them how to make her pee, and that made Jimmy laugh.

I like it when he laughs.

I fed Jesse next, and then Jimmy asked if he could feed Thomas, so I let him. He caught on really quick, although it isn't so hard now that the kittens are bigger, so you don't have to be so careful about choking them. He didn't want to do the bathroom thing, though, so I did it and Thomas pooped about two litres worth! He's a real boy! I fed Smudgie last, and she only took about half of her bottle. I thought maybe that was because I was feeding them too early, only she never eats as much as the others.

Mom had some lemonade already made and we all sat in the living room and ate cookies, and then Jimmy and I went outside so Mom could talk to his parents. He must be getting better, 'cause he's allowed to go by himself in his wheelchair now, and we walked - wheeled and walked - down to the fence at the end of the street across the tracks, and guess what? The chain was hanging loose on the gate! There were fresh tire tracks in the sand, and whoever made them must have forgotten to fasten the padlock again.

“Let's go ask our moms if we can go out on the dykes,” I said.

“I don't have to ask,” Jimmy said. “I can go wherever I want to.”

That didn't sound like Jimmy, at least not the way he used to be, and when I acted like I didn't want to go through the gate without asking permission, he pushed himself forward and shoved the gate open and rolled right on through. There's a little hill on the other side, and he picked up speed and bounced along over the stones and I thought he was going to tip over, and I ran after him, but when I caught up he was laughing and hollering like he'd just won a soccer game or something.

“We really shouldn't be here,” I said, and Jimmy said, “I want to go up on top.” See, Diary, the dykes are like long dirt hills, all built up to keep the water out when there's a flood tide, and some of them go all the way to Grand Pre. There's a one-lane dirt road along the dry side and another one, kind of rough, along the crest where the hikers go who don't pay any attention to the “No Trespassing” signs. The way to get up on top is kind of steep and it was really hard to get Jimmy's chair up there, but we managed it, him spinning the rims and me pushing for all I was worth.

Jimmy took off like a race car driver, bumping and rocking over the ruts. “Wow! This is great! Come on!” I had to run to keep up.

“Wait a minute!” I yelled. “Where are you going?”

“As far as I can. I'm off to see the world.”

“We shouldn't be out here. Listen, your Mom and Dad'll be worried about you if they can't find you when they're ready to go home.”

“No they won't.”

“But you're sick!”

He grabbed his wheels and stopped dead, and spun the left one so hard that the chair whirled right around so that he was facing me. “I'm
not!
I'm
not
sick!” Then he mumbled something I couldn't hear.

“What?” I said.

“I
won't
be sick,” he said in a quiet voice. “I
refuse
to be sick.” He turned the chair again and started off down the path, only slower this time. He wasn't going to pay any attention to what I said about not being allowed, so I just had to follow along.

There really isn't much to see out on the dykes, just the little creeks that come in off the Minas Basin and all the grassy flats where the high water comes up sometimes, but Jimmy kept finding things to be happy about, even the bugs that buzzed around his head and tried to bite him on the neck, and the weeds that grew up along the edge of the dyke and got caught in the spokes of his wheels. When he spotted a red-winged blackbird, I thought he'd go nuts. And I
really
didn't like getting so far from home.

“Jimmy, let's go back,” I begged him, and he stopped and pointed out toward the mud flats that are all covered up at high tide. There were crows down there, poking at what was left of some kind of dead animal, and I didn't like looking at that.

“You can go if you want to,” he said, “but I'm staying. There's too much to see out here.”

“It all looks the same to me,” I told him, and he said, “Use your imagination. That's the Amazon River right there. Look, it's full of crocodiles and everything, and a native canoe coming down the middle, and he's got a blowgun and darts tipped with curare poison, and
he knows we're here!
”

“Huh?” He sounded really nuts.

“And
piranhas!
Mean, ferocious little fish that can eat a whole cow in like twenty seconds, and if you fall in, there won't be anything left of you except your shoes.”

“Stop it! You're scaring me!”

“Hanna, look back there.” He was pointing toward the North Mountain. “That's where we were in the airplane, remember? After that we flew over Wolfville, and I was flying it.
Me!
I was flying the plane, I really was, and then we were over Mount Everest and the Rockies and China and all the way to the moon! You were there, don't you remember?”

And I did, of course, just Jimmy and me, and we were so free, no wheelchair, no elm tree to tease me with just a glimpse of the world from a few metres up, no fences and no parents that fight, no college students who toss their pets out when they no longer want them and no fathers in cars that run over your dreams and squash them flat. And it was real, not just in my imagination, and we were so high up that the tigers couldn't ever reach us, not then, not ever.

And I was crying, and Jimmy said, “Hey! I didn't mean to make you sad,” and I turned away and wiped my eyes real fast and said, “I've just got something in my eye, that's all,” only Jimmy knew I was lying, but he didn't say anything.

After that we turned around and went back. There wasn't anything else to do. And when we got to the gate, Jimmy's Mom and Dad were waiting there. I guess they saw us out on the dykes, but they didn't call for us to come back or anything, they just waited. And when we came through the gate, Mrs. Morris said, “It's time to go home now.” That was all she said, not mad or anything because we went where we shouldn't have, and when I went in the house, Mom wasn't mad at me either.

I figured it out later. It was because everybody knows something about Jimmy that I don't, only I wish I did.

July 14
^th

 

Hey, Diary!

Big news today. I don't have to rub the kittens' behinds with the washcloth any more, 'cause they can pee and poop by themselves now, only I have to wash them and change the towels a lot more often, and Mom says she's spending twice as much money for laundry soap now, but she was smiling when she said it, so I know she was only kidding me. Mr. Harding says that it won't be too long before we can give them a kitty litter pan, except that we can't use real kitty litter yet because they might eat it, so I'll have to save our newspapers and tear them up real fine to use instead.

They're starting to walk, too. I think they can see better, and they even play with each other a little bit, sort of rolling around like fighting, only gently, and when I pick them up, they act like they know me.

Brittany and Emily came over to see them this morning, and I let them each feed one, Jesse and Thomas. I fed Veronica myself because she's going to be mine, and Smudgie too, because she needs extra care. She still doesn't seem to want to eat as much as the others, and I have to coax her and pet her a lot, and even then she almost never finishes her bottle. I guess that's why she's so small.

They're pretty wiggly now, but they settle down once they've got the nipples in their mouths. Brittany wanted to turn Jesse over and hold her like a doll, but I said no, just in case she might get milk in her lungs, even though now that she's older there isn't so much chance of that. Brittany acted like she was mad at me for a couple of minutes. I don't understand that. After all, they're my kittens, and I'm the one who knows best how to take care of them. I wouldn't go to her house and tell her what to do, or act snotty if she didn't let me do whatever I wanted to.

After lunch I heard a car drive up outside and stop in front of Mr. Harding's house. It was a taxi cab, because that's how Mr. Harding gets his groceries. Someone delivers them from the store downtown because he can't walk that far and doesn't drive. Every so often a little car comes that says “Medicine Dropper” on the side, and I think it's from Cochrane's Pharmacy, so he must have to take some kind of medicine, too. I wonder if he's sick.