All Fall Down (26 page)

Chapter 42

S
unny is seven years old. Maybe eight. She’s found a kitten in the yard back by the greenhouses, close to the fence where she knows she shouldn’t go, but Fleur has been in the grass with Henry for a long time, not paying any attention to the kids she’s supposed to be watching. Patience is the one who told Sunny there were kittens, and now Patience stands in the dirt next to the fence and scuffs it with her bare toes.

“What’s the matter with it?” Sunny squats to poke the kitten with her finger. It’s so tiny it would fit just right into her hand, but she doesn’t pick it up. Are they like baby bunnies? If you touch them, will the mother not come back? Why don’t the other kitty mothers take care of the babies, then, the way mothers here all take turns with the kids?

“It’s probably hungry.” Patience is always hungry. She’s got a fat face, fat belly, fat arms. Fat legs. She sneaks into the kitchen when she’s not supposed to and eats snacks. Her mama’s bondmate works in the kitchen, and he doesn’t tell.

He’d make a report if he knew Sunny was the one sneaking something to eat. She presses her tummy now. The air’s hot on her skin as she bends forward to study the kitten. Its eyes are closed. Tiny little paws press to its tiny nose. It has a little tail. The kitten is orange, and Sunny wants to cuddle it.

“So, let’s feed it,” she says.

Patience makes a face. “You can’t, stupid. You don’t have any milk for it.”

If Sunny told Papa that Patience called her stupid, Patience would get into bad trouble. A switching, for sure. Sunny should make a report, but she’s sure she’ll forget by the time Papa asks if anyone has anything to tell. Patience won’t forget anything, though. Sometimes, Sunny knows, Patience makes stuff up just to get the other kids in trouble.

Sunny stands and looks across the grass to where Fleur and Henry are still on the blanket. They’ve been doing the sex for a long time. It looks pretty boring. All that rolling around. But at least it means Sunny and Patience can come back here to the fence to see this kitten. The other kids are all playing crosses and naughts in the sandbox, and some of them are even taking naps.

Sunny yawns. Last night they woke everyone up to go to the chapel, but thinking of it now makes her tummy hurt, so she doesn’t. She wants to look at the kitten, not think about drinking the rainbow. Papa says going through the gates won’t hurt at all, but it still sounds scary.

“Kittens drink milk?” Sunny asks.

“Sure. Just like babies, do, dummy.”

Patience has a mean mouth. Sunny frowns. She touches the kitten with her fingertip. It mews. “So. We should get it some milk.”

“It has to come from the mother cat.”

Sunny stands again to look around. This kitten is in a little nest made of grass tucked up against the fence. There are lots of cats around, but none right now. It’s the only baby kitten in the grass, and it’s all alone.

She doesn’t think twice about it. Sunny scoops up the kitten in one palm and cradles it next to her body. Its tiny mouth opens as it wriggles against her shirt. Soft fur. The kitten’s warm. Sunny strokes it. She loves it.

“You’d better put that back!”

She looks at Patience. “It’s hungry, and if we don’t feed it, it will die.”

She knows that much. People need to eat. Kittens, too. Her own tummy growls with hunger, but they’ve already had their lunch and it’s a long time until dinner. Oatmeal, that’s what they had today. One bowl. It wasn’t enough.

“You can get us some milk,” she says to Patience. “Right?”

Patience’s nose scrunches as she considers this. She bends over the kitten in Sunny’s hands. Patience touches it, too, and coos over how soft it is.

“Yes. I guess so. But we have to be secret.”

Sunny nods. She knows that. Animals aren’t allowed inside the building. Just the barn and greenhouses to keep out mice. Papa used to have a dog named Jingles who liked to bark and growl, but he died.

“Patience,” Sunny says as she follows the older girl around the back of the main building to the kitchen door. “Can animals go through the gates?”

Patience pulls open the door and stops to look back at Sunny. She laughs. “No way.”

“Papa’s dog. John Second said he gave the dog the rainbow.” Sunny had heard him talking to her mama one night late when they were in bed together. About how he’d crushed up all the pills and put them in the juice. They always talked about things when they thought Sunny was asleep, and she almost never was.

In the cool dimness of the hallway leading to the kitchen, Patience stops to look at Sunny. “You’re a liar.”

Sunny blinks at this, taken aback. Her mouth opens. Tears burn in her eyes and before she can hush, they slip out and burn a path on her cheeks. Patience laughs, pokes her. Pinches hard to bring more tears. The kitten in Sunny’s hands wiggles and cries when she squeezes it too hard.

“Liar’s tongue, liar’s tongue,” Patience says, still pinching Sunny’s arm.

It hurts so bad, but Sunny twists away from Patience’s grip. The words hurt worse. “Not!”

Sunny’s never told a lie in her life. Those with liar’s tongues can’t go through the gates, that’s what Papa says, and she believes it. She pushes away Patience’s hands. “I heard him!”

Patience has big brown eyes. They flash now in the shadows. “John Second wouldn’t.”

He’d said he did. He’d laughed, too. Mama hadn’t. She’d said his name all sad, called him Jack the way she did when they were doing the sex. If she’d talked to Sunny that way, it would’ve made Sunny want to cry or expect the stick, but John Second had only done things to her mama that stopped her from crying and Sunny’d gotten bored and sleepy and turned her face to the wall.

But she knew he’d said it, and she knew John Second didn’t speak with a liar’s tongue. He couldn’t. He was Papa’s first true son.

“Come on.” Patience pushes open the swinging doors to the kitchen and peeks around.

It’s quiet inside. It smells good. Sunny’s tummy rumbles again. The kitten mews, and Sunny puts her hand over its mouth to keep it from being too loud. There’s nobody in here, though. That’s good. They’d get in bad trouble for leaving Fleur when she’s supposed to be watching them, even though she’s not. And bad trouble for bringing an animal inside. And bad trouble for being in the kitchen.

All of this is bad trouble. Sunny hangs back, thinking on this, while Patience heads for the giant silver refrigerator with two doors. She opens them. Inside is all white light and shelves of food, more food than Sunny has ever seen, ever. Patience is already reaching on her tiptoes for a jug of milk. She brings it down and pours two glasses. She gives Sunny one.

“Here.” Patience drinks hers.

Sunny shifts the kitten to the crook of her arm and takes the glass. She sips it cautiously, and Penny laughs again. She pushes the glass hard into Sunny’s teeth.

“It’s not bad, stupid. “

Sunny’s had sour milk so many times she can hardly think of what good milk tastes like—sweet and cold. Like this. She gulps it. The kitten’s little head turns, tiny tongue creeping out when a drop splashes on its fur. Sunny should give the kitten some milk, but it tastes so good and feels so nice in her belly, she doesn’t want to.

“It’s never bad right from the fridge,” Patience says as if she’s telling a secret. “Only in the dinner hall, sometimes.”

Sunny holds out her glass. “More?”

Patience pours more, then puts the jug away. She drinks another glass herself. “Give some to the kitten.”

“How?”

“Put it on your finger.”

Sunny does. The kitten’s pink tongue scrapes her skin. She giggles. She gives it more milk, then drinks some herself.

Patience has opened a drawer and is rustling around inside it. This makes Sunny more nervous than when she took the milk from the fridge. Patience holds up a flat rectangle in brown paper. Silver foil on the ends. Sunny can’t read the white letters on the brown paper.

“Chocolate,” Patience whispers. “A whole bar! I’m taking it.”

“No!” Terrified, Sunny again squeezes the kitten too tight. “You can’t take anything from the kitchen! Thieves don’t get through the gates!”

“You stole milk,” Patience points out.

Sunny’s stomach clenches. Outside in the sunshine, she was too hot, but here in the shadows all of a sudden she’s so cold her teeth chatter and click. She presses the kitten’s soft fur under her chin.

“You gave it to me!”

Patience shrugs. She rinses both glasses in the sink and puts them with the others in the big plastic bin on the counter. “You drank it.”

Sunny wants to cry. Patience is right. She doesn’t cry, though. She hushes herself. Listens with her heart, but can hear nothing. The kitten squirms.

“C’mon. Let’s go back before Fleur notices we’re missing.” Patience leads the way, saying over her shoulder, “If you’re going to keep that kitten, you’re gonna have to keep feeding it.”

Sunny touches the soft fur. Holding this kitten reminds her of holding a baby, all sweet and soft and full of love. Her own baby! She puts a hand on her belly, which should feel too full from the milk but has a lot of room left in it. Always room left in her belly. One day, Sunny will bleed from down there like Mama does, and she’ll go to Papa and see if she can be the one true wife, get him another true son. That would be a baby of her very own to love and feed.

But until then, maybe she can practice on this kitten.

“I’m going to put it in my room.”

Patience’s eyes get wide. “You’ll get caught!”

Sunny shakes her head. “No. Not if you don’t tell.”

For once, Patience doesn’t look like she’s going to be mean. She nods. “Okay. I won’t tell.”

“Will you help me get the milk? If I let you play with the kitten?”

“Sure. I guess so.”

Together, they sneak down the hall and up the stairs toward the bedrooms. Not all the rooms have closets, but this one does. Closets are worldly, made for keeping material things when you have too many to keep in a box under the bed or in a dresser drawer. This closet is empty but for a metal rod and a few shelves and an empty shoe box Mama put in there so long ago she’ll never remember it.

Sunny takes a towel from the drawer and tucks it into the box. The kitten on top. She thinks about how the kitten has to breathe. “Should I put the lid on?”

“I don’t know. I guess so.”

They settle on pushing some holes into the top of the box with a pencil, then putting the lid on the box and the box in the closet. The kitten is mewing a lot. Sunny closes the closet door and presses her ear to it, listening, but she can barely hear it.

She turns to Patience, excitement tumbling all her words together. “We’ll have to feed it every day! And when it gets bigger, we can train it to do tricks!”

“Cats don’t do tricks, stupid.”

“Papa’s dog did tricks.”

They’re both silent while they think of Papa’s dog, the one John Second sent through the gates.

“You’re going to get caught,” Patience says. “We’d better go outside.”

In the hot summer sunshine, Fleur and Henry are still on their blanket, but now they’re just talking. Patience takes Sunny behind the greenhouse and tears the wrapping off what she took from the kitchen. She breaks the stuff inside into a soft square that leaves brown smudges on her fingers. It’s like poo. She offers it to Sunny.

Sunny shakes her head. “Ew!”

“You should eat it, it’s good.” Patience shoves the whole piece in her mouth, chewing.

Sunny risks taking the piece Patience holds out next. Patience wouldn’t eat poo, would she? Oh, it’s not poo at all, it’s sweet! So sweet, and Sunny’s mouth dances with happy when she gobbles it up. Together they eat the whole thing and lick their fingers clean.

“Chocolate,” Sunny murmurs, flat on her back, her belly so tight it might just bust.

“It’s good. I told you.”

“Why don’t we ever have any for dinner, if there’s some in the kitchen?”

Patience shrugs. “It’s for Papa and his true sons and his one wife.”

Papa’s one wife died like his dog. Papa said she tried to get through the gates all on her own before she was ready, so her vessel was here but what was inside, the secret voice, was still there, too. Stuck in the ground forever.

“Papa doesn’t have a one wife now,” Sunny said.

“Maybe it’ll be me.” Patience has chocolate all around her mouth. “Or you.”

Sunny frowns. “We’re too little.”

Patience shrugs. “We won’t be forever. If you are Papa’s one wife, you get a lot of good things. I think I’m going to be his one wife, when I get older. Then I don’t have to even worry about getting through the gates.”

Sunny doesn’t understand everything there is to know about the world beyond, but that doesn’t sound right. Still, she’s not going to fight with Patience. The other girl will pinch or shove her. And besides, now Sunny’s stomach hurts bad.

Fleur is calling them. Patience gets up first. Sunny follows slowly. The sun beats down on her head. She drags her feet in the dirt.

Henry’s gone, and Fleur has her clothes on again. She’s going to take them all inside for afternoon meditations. She lines them up, all the kids who aren’t babies in the nursery or old enough to have chores. Patience, Sunny, River, Willow, Praise.