Page 73 of Big Island Sunrise
Kai enjoyed it too, tucking round radish seeds one after another into the earth. And when he inevitably tired of that and ran off trying to catch lizards, Emma stayed in the garden hour after hour, planting every kind of seed that her sister had sent and noting down the varieties and locations in her journal.
Then came the pigs.
Now the garden was nothing more than one great swath of mud. The seedlings had been plowed back into the earth. Even the hardy starts that she’d transplanted had been trampled into the mud.
Emma set down the unmoving kitten and walked into the garden to see if anything could be salvaged from the wreckage.
“Another one?” came a small voice.
She turned to see Rory looking down at the fluffy black kitten.
“Can I help?”
“What?”
“Can I dig the hole?”
Emma opened and closed her mouth for a moment like a landed fish. “You want to bury the kitten?”
“Yeah.”
“Um, okay. You want to use my little garden shovel?”
Rory nodded, and Emma found an old garden trowel. The little girl looked around thoughtfully before walking to a red hibiscus and beginning to dig.
Once she had created a hole of an appropriate size, Rory came back for the kitten. Holding the small thing like a baby doll, she carried it to the grave and put it in.
“Thanks for playing with me, Katara.”
“You named them?” Emma knelt down beside her.
“No, Kai did.”
Emma very nearly started sobbing, but she managed to hold herself together.
Later, when she was alone, she would weep over the fact that her son had to carry death after death – that he had given each of the kittens a name and she hadn’t even known. For the moment, for Rory, she kept an outward appearance of calm.
The orange kitten peeked out of his makeshift sling, and Rory smiled.
“That’s Zuko.” She looked into Emma’s eyes. “Do you want to say goodbye to Katara?”
She looked at the sad little bundle of bones and fur. “Goodbye.” Her voice cracked.
Rory put a hand over hers. “In Alaska, we put fish under the plants.”
“Yeah?”
“Plants need food too,” the girl confided. “But yucky food, like fish guts and goat poop. Now Katara can be flowers.”
Emma blinked back tears. “That’s beautiful.”
“Yeah.” Rory shrugged nonchalantly. With the tranquility of a girl playing in the sand, she filled the hole back in.
“We need to put a stone on top,” she remembered.
Rory frowned quizzically. “Like a grave?”
“Um, yes. But a big one.”
