When the cat was killed by a driver in a tragic hit-and-run, the dirt bike kid watched it happen. He screamed to gather us to her carcass: Pumpkin! He pedaled hard around the block. Pumpkin is dead!
I was afraid to tell Dad, at first. He went outside, shoveled Pumpkin into a grocery bag and dug a hole under a lilac bush. It was too late in the season for flowers, but he said they would bloom next year: a small truth sounding like kindness.
The kids begged him for a real funeral to say goodbye. He smiled a little, but not at them, and had us circle the grave and hold each other’s sweaty hands while he prayed. It was a test.
The dirt bike kid and the girls with yards of upside-down toys wept for the cat, loose with their sadness. The streetlights flickered on, and I was afraid of Dad again. I tried not to picture Pumpkin with a halo and wings, but I failed. I begged God to forgive me for it, then tried not to picture God as a cat shaking its head at my blasphemy, then prayed not to cry as the cats kept coming. I missed the amen, but I held out. I passed.
After the funeral, Dad said I was so grown-up, not weeping over a cat that didn’t belong to anyone. Not to the neighborhood, not even to God.
He prayed over hamsters in the years to follow, maybe a second cat. He prayed, and I grew into a tragic, feral thing.
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