When I was four I put Teenie's puppies in Amma's swimming pool. One of them drowned, and then I wasn't so cute anymore. Then I was "Bad Kitty" and I was sent to my room and my pabbi came in later to tell me to never put puppies in the swimming pool again. I cried hot tears and told him I wanted to teach them how to swim. Pabbi sighed and looked like he wanted to hug me, but instead he kept his angry face and said, "Well, Kitty, now you know." I wanted to ask him what it was I knew now, but I didn't. I never have. Maybe I knew then about death, or about swimming pools, or about puppies, or about getting in trouble for doing something you thought was right. All I knew that day was that there was something thrilling about being a Bad Kitty, something so much more exciting than being patted on the head.
I was eight years old when I smoked my first cigarette. Toonie who lived next door sneaked the longest butts from her mom's car ashtray and stashed them in the shed in her backyard. She had a big glass jar that we put pill bugs and roly-polies into, then she would light a cigarette like she'd seen her mother do and put it into the jar and close the lid. We watched the jar fill with smoke and the bugs run around until they got really slow and stopped running. The first time, she opened the jar up right away but then the bugs came back to life and rammed themselves against the jar trying to get out. They looked so desperate and sad. So Toonie lit another cigarette stub, put it into the jar and closed the lid again. This time we watched the roly-polies and pill bugs until they stopped trying to escape, then put the jar aside still closed. We wanted to make sure they were really dead.
Toonie lit another stub and puffed on it until a big cloud of smoke was all around her. We were outside the shed, just this side of the fence that separated our yards. She handed me the cigarette and I put it to my lips. My mouth was a small O like I was kissing and I made little smacking noises like our goldfish made when they played at making air bubbles at the surface of their tank. When nothing happened Toonie said, "You have to suck, Kitty, like on a straw." I did, and smoke started pouring from my mouth and filling up the air around me. It was fun making so much smoke like grownups did.
I heard my pabbi call out, "Kitty!" from our side of the fence. He sounded mad, and that's when I realized that I'd been smoking cigarettes. I climbed over the fence and saw Pabbi standing there on the porch looking mad. "What were you doing?" he asked me. "Nothing," I said. "Nothing? I saw the smoke Kitty! I can smell it on you!" I burst into tears. Bad Kitty.
