Free The Kiss: A Memoir by Kathryn Harrison Page A

separating one delicate membrane of flesh from the other. My heart was pounding and I was sweating with fear, but I accomplished the violation gently. The kitten made no sound, it did not struggle. What I did hadn’t seemed to cause it any pain. I held it up to see its eyesbleary, watering, already closing against the light. Its head moved in the same blind bobbing circles as before. Having failed once, I didn’t spare the remaining four kittens, I couldn’t stop myself from continuing. I finished the job weeping, and the fur around all of the kittens’ eyes was wet as well. They looked as exhausted and grief-stricken as I felt, and they curled into their mother’s warm belly and went to sleep. Within a day their eyes were swollen shut, tightly resealed under lids that showed red beneath the fine white fur. I picked one up and tried to brush away the yellow crust that had formed in the corner of one of its eyes. A worm of pus shot out, and, shocked, I dropped the kitten. I knew this was the worst thing I had ever done, too awful to confess, and when I told my grandmother that I thought something was wrong with the kittens’ eyes, I didn’t tell her what, only that they looked funny to me. My voice shook as I talked to her. “What’s wrong with you? ” she said.
    “Nothing, ” I said. “My throat is sore, ” I lied.
    The veterinarian kept the cat and the kittens for a week. When they returned, their eyes were open and clean, a pale icy blue, disdainful, disinterested. I pulled a string on the floor and they followed it. “But I thought you wanted one, ” my grandmother said when they were older, when she was selling them. “I don’t, ” I told her.
    “Why not? “
    “I just don’t, that’s all. I changed my mind. “
    On our way to my mother’s, the backseat of the car filled with camera equipment, my father and I have our first fight, one that begins, like most lover’s quarrels, with a misunderstanding as absurd as it is revealing. On a street corner outside a little bistro where we ate dinner, we argue about the price of shampoo. He insists that at some point during his previous visits seemed to cause it any pain. I held it up to see its eyesbleary, watering, already closing against the light.
    Its head moved in the same blind bobbing circles as before. Having failed once, I didn’t spare the remaining four kittens, I couldn’t stop myself from continuing. I finished the job weeping, and the fur around all of the kittens’ eyes was wet as well. They looked as exhausted and grief-stricken as I felt, and they curled into their mother’s warm belly and went to sleep. Within a day their eyes were swollen shut, tightly resealed under lids that showed red beneath the fine white fur. I picked one up and tried to brush away the yellow crust that had formed in the corner of one of its eyes. A worm of pus shot out, and, shocked, I dropped the kitten. I knew this was the worst thing I had ever done, too awful to confess, and when I told my grandmother that I thought something was wrong with the kittens’ eyes, I didn’t tell her what, only that they looked funny to me. My voice shook as I talked to her. “What’s wrong with you? ” she said.
    “Nothing, ” I said. “My throat is sore, ” I lied.
    The veterinarian kept the cat and the kittens for a week. When they returned, their eyes were open and clean, a pale icy blue, disdainful, disinterested. I pulled a string on the floor and they followed it. “But I thought you wanted one, ” my grandmother said when they were older, when she was selling them. “I don’t, ” I told her.
    “Why not? “
    “I just don’t, that’s all. I changed my mind. “
    On our way to my mother’s, the backseat of the car filled with camera equipment, my father and I have our first fight, one that begins, like most lover’s quarrels, with a misunderstanding as absurd as it is revealing. On a street corner outside a little bistro where we ate dinner, we argue