Kitty's Saga Chapter Seven: Going in Different Directions

The first time Stafford asked about Sandy's will, it was raining.

April rain ticked steadily against the kitchen windows while Kitty carried dinner to the table. She had made roast chicken with potatoes and carrots, the kind of meal Sandy liked because the house smelled warm for hours afterward.

"This is wonderful, Kitty," Sandy said after her first bite. "You've become such a good cook."

Kitty smiled.

"Thank you."

Across the table, Stafford snorted.

"She's not in the will, right?"

The question landed so abruptly that Sandy stopped chewing.

Kitty looked at him.

Stafford kept eating.

"What?" Sandy asked.

"I'm asking if she's in your will."

"Stafford."

"What? It's a reasonable question."

"No, it isn't."

He gestured vaguely toward Kitty with his fork.

"You know how people like her are. They show up, make themselves useful, get comfortable. Then the minute you're gone, the whole place is empty."

Kitty stared at him.

Even someone from as far down the ladder as Kitty knew when she'd been insulted.

People like her.

She knew exactly what he meant.

Poor people.

Foster kids.

Girls without families.

People who came into the world with nothing and were therefore assumed to be waiting for an opportunity to steal everything.

Kitty looked at Sandy.

She waited for her to say something.

Something decisive.

Something that would make Stafford understand he couldn't speak about her that way in this house.

Sandy sighed.

"Stafford, that's enough."

That was all.

Stafford went back to eating.

Kitty stood.

"Excuse me."

She carried her plate to the kitchen, left Stafford's dishes exactly where they were, and went upstairs.

For once, he could clean up after himself.

Kitty locked her bedroom door.

She sat at the little desk Sandy had given her and pulled out her final mail-away school packet.

One assignment remained.

Write an essay about your childhood.

Kitty stared at the page.

She didn't know where childhood technically began.

For her, memory began with death.

So that was where she started.

Her parents had died when Kitty was three.

There wasn't much she remembered about them independently. Most of what she knew had been reconstructed from Pam's stories, social workers' files, and the fragments that remained in her own mind.

A smell.

A voice.

Her mother's hair.

Her father's shoes beside the door.

And the bedroom.

She remembered the bedroom.

Her parents had gotten heroin from the same batch. Whatever was in it killed them both.

Pam was older. Old enough to understand that Mommy and Daddy were sleeping strangely, but not old enough to understand death.

She told Kitty not to bother them.

So Kitty didn't.

Pam went to school.

Kitty stayed home.

The first day, nobody came.

The second day, nobody came.

Maybe it was the third day when the mailman noticed the little girl appearing at the door in the same clothes.

He asked where her parents were.

Kitty pointed down the hall.

"Mommy and Daddy are taking a nap."

The mailman asked if he could speak to them.

Kitty told him the truth.

"They won't wake up."

Pam came home from school to police cars.

An ambulance.

A coroner's van.

Adults moving in and out of the house.

Their parents had been dead for days.

Pam never forgave Kitty for that.

Not really.

Some part of Pam had always blamed her little sister for opening the bedroom door and allowing the outside world in.

Kitty never understood that.

Their parents had been dead whether anyone opened the door or not.

That was the difference between Kitty and Pam.

Pam could live inside a lie if the truth hurt too much.

Kitty couldn't.

Maybe that was why Kitty had survived her.

She finished the essay shortly before midnight.

At the bottom of the last page, Kitty wrote her name.

Kitty Mc—

She stopped.

Then finished it carefully.

Her last assignment.

She stared at the pages.

For most people, finishing high school probably didn't happen alone in a borrowed bedroom while rain tapped against the window and an angry man complained downstairs.

There should have been a ceremony.

A cap.

A gown.

Someone taking pictures.

Maybe parents crying in the audience.

Kitty had none of that.

But she had finished.

Sandy had given her the chance to do it.

Whatever else Kitty was beginning to think about Sandy, she would always be grateful for that.

Kitty placed the essay back in its envelope.

Then she went to sleep.

The next morning, Stafford's dishes were still on the table.

His glass was there.

His plate.

His silverware.

Even the napkin he'd crumpled beside his chair.

Kitty stood in the doorway looking at the mess.

For a man who constantly accused her of laziness, Stafford seemed remarkably incapable of performing any labor that wasn't assigned to somebody else.

She had concluded him.

Stafford was a layabout.

Worse, he was a layabout who considered himself superior to the people cleaning up after him.

Kitty made breakfast.

Then she cleaned the kitchen because Sandy shouldn't have to live in Stafford's filth merely because Kitty hated him.

Afterward, she tucked her final packet under her arm and walked to the drop box on the corner.

Mr. Fieldbrook was outside.

Naturally.

He wore his thick Coke-bottle glasses and held the same old broom Kitty suspected existed primarily to give him an excuse to remain outdoors and monitor everyone else's business.

For once, Kitty was glad to see him.

"Hello, Mr. Fieldbrook."

He peered at her.

"Kitty."

"How are you?"

"Same as yesterday."

He swept something invisible from the sidewalk.

"Stafford still there, is he?"

Kitty slipped her packet into the box.

"Every weekend since Sandy fell."

She tried to sound indifferent.

She failed.

Mr. Fieldbrook glanced at her.

"Hmm."

He swept again.

"Boy must've absorbed his father's attitude toward people."

Kitty turned.

"You knew his father?"

Mr. Fieldbrook immediately became more interested in sweeping.

"I knew of him."

Which, from Mr. Fieldbrook, probably meant he knew the man's entire life story.

Kitty waited.

Mr. Fieldbrook lasted perhaps five seconds.

"Sandy doesn't talk about Milly much anymore, does she?"

"Not really."

"They were close once. Very close. Before Milly met Chris."

"Chris was Stafford's father?"

Mr. Fieldbrook nodded.

"Sandy never liked him. Said he'd leave Milly eventually."

"Did he?"

"Of course."

He said it with the confidence of a man who had been waiting twenty years to be asked.

"But Milly had Stafford first. Sandy warned her. Milly didn't listen. Chris left, and Milly blamed Sandy for being right."

Kitty frowned.

"Why would she blame Sandy?"

Mr. Fieldbrook shrugged.

"Sometimes being right is the worst thing you can do to somebody."

Kitty thought about Pam.

That, she understood.

"Milly took it hard," he continued. "Eventually sent Stafford off to live with his father."

He shook his head.

"Too bad."

"Why?"

Mr. Fieldbrook looked toward Sandy's house.

"Because now he's just like him."

Something in his expression suggested there was considerably more to the story.

Then, perhaps realizing how much he'd already said, Mr. Fieldbrook abruptly resumed sweeping.

Conversation over.

Kitty knew better than to push.

She thanked him and walked back toward the house while Mr. Fieldbrook returned to his true occupation: pretending to clean the sidewalk while listening to the neighborhood.

Inside, Kitty stopped at the photographs.

She had passed them hundreds of times.

Now she looked.

Really looked.

Her attention settled on the photograph of Sandy and Milly outside the courthouse.

They were young.

Milly was smiling broadly. Sandy stood beside her, one arm around her shoulders.

The photograph had aged to a warm orange.

Its frame was nicer than all the others.

Kitty moved closer.

There were pictures of Stafford as a baby.

Pictures of Sandy.

Pictures of Milly.

But none of Stafford with his mother.

None of Stafford with his father.

She'd never noticed.

Then again, Kitty's own family had been so irregular that other people's missing pieces rarely struck her as unusual.

Voices drifted from the back porch.

Stafford was telling Sandy about business school.

Kitty walked toward the kitchen and looked through the screen.

Sandy sat in her chair, eyes half closed.

Stafford talked.

And talked.

And talked.

Sandy's chin dipped.

Stafford didn't notice.

Kitty studied his face.

She tried to imagine his father.

Chris.

What parts of Stafford belonged to him?

The eyes?

The mouth?

The contempt?

Could cruelty be inherited that way—not through blood, exactly, but through repetition? A boy learning how a man treated people, then growing up and calling it normal?

Stafford noticed her staring.

"What do you want?"

Kitty blinked.

"I was going to make pork for dinner. Would you like that?"

He scoffed.

"No. I'm not eating that. Are you trying to give me heartburn?"

Kitty resisted the urge to tell him that perhaps every meal wouldn't give him heartburn if he ate like a human being instead of a starving insect.

"I'll make you a nice salad, Stafford."

She smiled sweetly.

Then walked away before he could object.

The week before Milly's birthday, Stafford came to take Sandy across the state to visit her.

Milly owned a condo near the river.

They would be gone several days.

Kitty's own birthday had passed quietly.

No cake.

No presents.

No celebration.

Kitty hadn't reminded anyone.

Stafford had been there, and she knew instinctively that if anyone tried to make the day hers, he would find some way to spoil it.

Better to let it pass.

Eighteen.

She was eighteen years old.

That should have meant something.

Instead, the morning Sandy left, Stafford stood in the foyer and announced that Kitty couldn't remain in the house alone.

"Absolutely not."

Sandy sighed.

"Stafford—"

"She probably already has sticky fingers. You're going to leave her here unsupervised?"

Kitty waited.

Again.

She waited for Sandy to defend her.

Sandy looked tired.

"Kitty can find somewhere else to stay for a few days."

Something inside Kitty changed.

It wasn't dramatic.

It didn't break.

It simply cooled.

Once, she'd thought of Sandy as her great benefactor. The woman who had rescued her when nobody else had cared enough to do it.

Now Kitty saw something more complicated.

Sandy had helped her.

That was true.

Sandy had also paid her almost nothing, depended on her constantly, and allowed Stafford to humiliate her in the home Kitty worked to maintain.

Gratitude, Kitty realized, could exist beside disappointment.

She didn't owe someone blindness just because they'd once shown her kindness.

"That's fine," Kitty said.

She packed her backpack.

She had been homeless before.

She knew where the women's shelter was.

She knew how early she needed to arrive to have a decent chance at a bed.

Stafford watched her leave.

Kitty didn't say goodbye to him.

At the mailbox, she stopped.

Two envelopes waited inside.

One was from Pam.

The other bore the return address of her mail-away school.

Kitty put both into her backpack.

Then she walked away from Sandy's house.

She didn't know it yet, but she would never sleep beneath that roof again.

Kitty opened the school envelope on the bus.

She expected another form.

Maybe a final grade.

Instead, something stiff slid into her lap.

Kitty caught it.

She read the first line.

Then the second.

Her breath stopped.

It was her diploma.

She had graduated.

Kitty read her name again.

Then again.

She pressed her lips together because a laugh was trying to escape.

She wanted to stand in the aisle.

She wanted to hold the paper over her head.

She wanted to tell every stranger on the bus.

I did it.

Nobody had expected her to.

Maybe Sandy.

Maybe not even Sandy.

But Kitty had.

She'd finished.

And suddenly the shelter didn't seem like the most important place she needed to go.

Kitty got off several stops early.

Mrs. Wells worked in the same government building Kitty remembered.

At eighteen, however, the building seemed different.

Smaller.

So did the people inside it.

Kitty approached the reception desk.

"I'm here to see Mrs. Wells."

"Do you have an appointment?"

"No."

The clerk disappeared into the back.

Kitty waited.

There was whispering.

Then the clerk returned.

"Okay. Go right in."

Mrs. Wells's office hadn't changed.

Old files filled the shelves. Regulation manuals leaned against one another. Papers were stacked in carefully controlled disorder across her desk.

Mrs. Wells hadn't changed much either.

Her hair was grayer.

Her glasses still slid toward the end of her nose.

She looked up.

"Kitty."

"Hi."

"What brings you my way?"

Mrs. Wells opened a file.

"You know we've been missing school."

Kitty almost smiled.

Mrs. Wells had never been particularly worried when Kitty disappeared after Pam was removed. She'd probably known Kitty would make herself difficult to catch if anyone tried returning her to the group home.

Kitty reached into her backpack.

"I wanted you to have a copy of this."

She placed the diploma on the desk.

Mrs. Wells stared at it.

Then at Kitty.

"You graduated?"

Kitty smiled.

"I graduated."

Mrs. Wells picked it up.

For the first time Kitty could remember, the woman seemed genuinely surprised.

Then she smiled.

"Good job, Kitty."

Kitty's chest tightened.

"I knew you had it in you."

That part Kitty didn't believe.

But she appreciated it anyway.

Mrs. Wells pulled Kitty's file closer.

"The last note I've got here says your sister lost your birth certificate and Social Security card. Is that still a problem?"

"Yes."

Kitty leaned forward.

"If you have anything, that would be everything I need."

Mrs. Wells glanced at the clock.

She was clearly late for something.

For once, bureaucracy worked in Kitty's favor.

"I've got copies."

She opened a drawer.

"You'll still need to go to Social Security for a replacement card, and you'll need an authenticated copy of your birth certificate eventually."

She handed Kitty several sheets.

"But these should help you get started."

Kitty took them as though they were money.

Maybe they were better than money.

Proof of birth.

Proof of identity.

Proof of education.

Three things the world required before it would allow Kitty to become anybody.

"Thank you."

She carefully slid everything into her backpack.

"This is all I need."

Kitty stood.

Mrs. Wells walked her toward the door, then stopped.

"Kitty."

She turned.

"Now that you've finished high school, you should think about college."

Kitty almost laughed.

College belonged to other people.

People with parents.

People with money.

People who didn't calculate the availability of shelter beds before deciding where to spend the night.

Mrs. Wells took a pamphlet from a rack.

"The community college is doing tours this time of year."

She handed it over.

"Go look."

Kitty stared at the photograph on the front.

Students crossed a green campus carrying backpacks.

They looked impossibly clean.

Normal.

Safe.

"You think they'd take me?"

Mrs. Wells looked surprised by the question.

"You graduated, didn't you?"

Kitty looked down at the diploma tucked safely in her bag.

"Yeah."

"Then go find out."

Kitty smiled.

For one wild second, she nearly hugged her.

Instead she said, "Thank you."

Then she was gone.

Mrs. Wells watched her hurry down the hall.

Of all the children whose files had crossed her desk over the years, Kitty might have been the one she'd worried would disappear completely.

Instead, somehow, the girl kept moving forward.

At the bus stop, Kitty studied the route map.

North took her to the women's shelter.

Fifteen minutes.

If she went now, she'd arrive early enough to get a bed.

There would be dinner.

A shower.

A place indoors for the night.

East took her toward the college.

Three buses.

Two transfers.

Nearly two hours.

There was no bed waiting there.

No meal.

No guarantee anyone would even talk to her.

And she'd been there once before.

Kitty remembered that day.

The humiliation.

The certainty that everyone could see exactly what she was.

Poor.

Uneducated.

Unwanted.

A girl who had wandered into a world built for other people.

Kitty looked north.

Safety was north.

She looked east.

Nothing was promised east.

A bus appeared at the end of the street.

Kitty checked its number.

Eastbound.

The college.

Behind it, somewhere in the city, was another bus that would take her toward the shelter.

A guaranteed meal.

A possible bed.

Survival.

The eastbound bus pulled to the curb.

Its doors folded open.

Kitty thought of her parents asleep in that bedroom.

Pam telling her not to open the door.

Stafford telling her what people like her were.

Sandy telling her to find somewhere else to stay.

Mrs. Wells asking one simple question.

You graduated, didn't you?

Kitty tightened her grip on her backpack.

For most of her life, every decision had been about surviving until tomorrow.

Where could she sleep?

What could she eat?

Who could she trust?

What could she endure?

For once, Kitty wanted to make a decision about something larger than tomorrow.

The driver looked at her.

"You getting on?"

Kitty stepped aboard.

"Yeah."

She paid the fare.

The doors closed behind her.

Kitty found a seat beside the window and placed her backpack on her lap. Inside were her diploma, copies of the documents proving she existed, a letter from the sister who had abandoned her, and a college pamphlet she hadn't known she wanted until someone placed it in her hand.

The bus pulled away.

Kitty watched the northbound stop disappear behind her.

She didn't know where she would sleep that night.

She didn't know whether the college would take her.

She didn't know how she would pay for it if they did.

For once, she didn't need to know.

Kitty had spent her entire childhood being carried wherever circumstance decided to take her.

Foster homes.

Group homes.

Pam's apartment.

The streets.

Sandy's house.

Always someone else's destination.

Not this time.

The bus turned east.

And Kitty went with it.