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In 1954, when the sun withdrew into Virgo and night fell over the Arctic, tropical and polar air colliding to brew storms off the coast of South Carolina, no one in Boston paid much attention. The weather forecast, televised for the first time that year, may have picked them up, but we had yet to get a television. Weather events were Acts of God to be dealt with when they arrived. At the end of that August, all you had to do was go outside or look at the thermometer —92 in the shade—to know the city was an oven.
There was nothing to do in the heat. The summer session at the Lynn ice arena had ended and the Skating Club of Boston wasn’t slated to open until the following week. Sleepovers at friends’ houses were usually out of the question because they aggravated my allergies and interfered with my training. However, as there was no ice, school had yet to start, and I hadn’t wheezed in a while, Mother let me accept Dinah’s invitation to her family’s Hingham farm, provided, of course, I used common sense and didn’t pet the cat and stayed out of the barn.
On arrival, I suggested exploring the nearby Thayer woods, but Dinah said they were filled with mosquitos. That left the barn.
When we came through the door, an old farmhand was raking straw. There was a charge about the wiry man, akin to what was developing in the air. He barely nodded at us as we scrambled over the hay bales. Tucked between two, a surprise: a mother cat with her litter – a tuxedo, a calico, and two tabbies. Dinah picked up the calico. I chose a tabby with a white spot on its nose.
“Don’t you girls go gettin’ attached to them kittens. Too many mouths to feed around here. Gotta drown’em this afternoon.”
“You can’t drown kittens.” I’d never heard of such an outrageous thing. He didn’t answer, just continued scraping the floor with the broom rake. I stuffed the tabby under my shirt, planning on sneaking it home—no matter that I’d always been caught, scolded, and forced to return previously smuggled mice, hamsters, and gerbils.
“You girls best be gettin’ home. Looks like a nor’easter comin’ in,” he said, as I headed for the door, as Dinah returned her kitten to its mother.
The sky had taken on a green tinge and the temperature had dropped over the last half hour. In the distance, thunder drum rolled.
We dashed back to the farmhouse, the rain arriving in big splats. I ran to my room to hide the kitten in my overnight bag before lunch. By the time we were halfway done with our sandwiches, the snare drum splats had morphed into a full percussion section. Just as well. We could play Monopoly and I could keep an eye on my kitten. When pressed about the litter, Dinah’s mother assured us that Carter would be too busy boarding up the barn that afternoon to do any drowning. She’d talk to him, but usually left barn matters to his discretion — a grown-up’s way of saying she wasn’t committed to saving the kittens. So, I waited until she’d gone back to her art studio before getting some milk from the fridge. I offered the little tabby a few drops on my finger. Its tongue felt like fine sandpaper. I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, but I didn’t care. It was my kitten now and no one was going to drown it.
The wind picked up, lightning forked through the sky, the rain came down in sheets. More interested in the kitten, I had trouble concentrating on Monopoly. By four it was getting dark, but when we went to turn the lights on, there was no power.
After a candlelight supper, Dinah’s mother lit the hurricane lamps and we climbed the ladder to the loft. Settling us on giant pillows, she opened a volume of ninth century Persian tales, first telling us about, Shahryar, the Sasanian king, who, on discovering his wife’s infidelity, executed her. He then married a series of virgins, killing each one the morning after their nuptials, before they could cheat on him until there was only one virgin left in the kingdom, Scheherazade. For one thousand and one nights after their marriage, she engaged him with stories of princesses, merchants, and demons, delaying her execution, until the king guaranteed her life. Dinah and I almost forgot the howling wind and snapping branches, so engaged were we with her tales.
Although the individual ones were new to me, I was familiar with the larger story, as I’d wanted to skate to Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Mother said the symphonic suite was too sophisticated for an eight-year-old. I didn’t agree and was imagining a program with a flying camel, spread eagle and an Axel, as the walls shook, the windows rattled, and a big sumac crashed against the house. Unfazed, Dinah’s mother read on through the night, none of us aware that Hurricane Carol, one of the worst cyclones to hit the northeast, one that would destroy eight hundred Massachusetts homes, damage over three thousand others, kill sixty-five, was raging outside.
Morning broke to a landscape of downed trees, their roots giant fingers reaching into the sky. Maybe the roads would be blocked and Mother wouldn’t be able to pick me up. I could hear more of the thousand and one tales and play with my kitten. I’d already planned to keep it in a box behind the claw-footed tub in our guest bathroom next to the Maxwell House coffee can that housed my mealworm colony. Mother usually didn’t look there. If she cleaned the bathroom today —a better idea than driving in bad conditions —she wouldn’t go into that room for another week.
But she arrived early afternoon, eager to get home. Reluctantly, I said good-bye to the Starrs, and climbed into the back seat of our Plymouth, kitten, tucked away under my shorts in the overnight bag.
Detours for running water and fallen trees made for a slow ride back to Boston. Mother was going on about the Skating Club opening tomorrow and my getting back to training, when the kitten meowed. The cry, followed by a stink bomb; the kitten had done its business on my shorts.
A dragon eye, in the rearview mirror.
“Where’s the cat? You know you can’t have a cat.”
Her tone said dog house.
I had to think fast. Mother had a soft spot for animals.
“They were going to drown it.”
“Who was going to drown it?”
“The whole litter. I mean the farmhand. I had to save one. If I can’t have it, it could live in Aunt Lorraine’s barn.” An afternoon at my aunt and uncle’s New Hampshire farm was a better prospect than one in our apartment without a kitten. At least I could visit the cows. “We could drive up this afternoon.”
“Their farm is over 50 miles from here. Today it would take hours. No more overnights for you.” The rant continued.
With all the detours, I couldn’t tell where she was driving and knew better than to ask. At least two hours passed before my uncle’s corn fields and the dirt road leading to the farmhouse came into view. Aunt Lorraine was weeding when we pulled up. I expected Mother to park and get out of the car. Instead, she rolled down the window and told her sister how I’d misbehaved and that we had a kitten to drop off. My aunt shot me a disapproving look, but said I could take it down to the barn where my uncle was working. Mother followed with, “Don’t be long.”
Uncle Jim was getting ready to milk the cows. When I told him how I’d landed in the doghouse, he promised my kitty could have a home in his barn. Opening my overnight bag, I took it out to pet it for the last time.
“You better go now,” he said, as I continued to hold it. “Your mother will be waiting.”
Putting it down, I watched it scamper away, before hugging my uncle and running back to the farmhouse. Aunt Lorraine usually had lemonade in the summer. Maybe we could visit a while in the kitchen, because we wouldn’t be visiting any farms again any time soon. But Mother was still behind the steering wheel, pointing over her shoulder at the backseat. I climbed in. Through the rear window my aunt said, “No more smuggling. Your mother had to drive miles out of her way for this kitten.” I hung my head. My aunt never scolded me.
Without a word, Mother started the engine and headed back to Boston. I leaned against the window. By the time we reached the traffic circle, the silence was getting to me. Even a rant was preferable, as you could guess what might come next. The silent treatment was like the eye of the storm; you couldn’t predict what was coming on the other side. If I could distract her with an Arabian Night tale, she might forget her anger, but I wasn’t as skillful a storyteller as Scheherazade and none of the stories Dinah’s mother read were about smuggling forgiveness. I would need to dazzle her with my new Scheherazade program.
Trying it out the next day, I collided with another skater, sustaining a bad concussion. Regaining consciousness, I first heard Mother’s upset voice telling the neurosurgeon how she’d scolded me for smuggling a kitten.
Fifty years later on August 4th, 2004, my mother’s ninetieth birthday, a tropical wave began off the West African coast, becoming a tropical depression as it moved across the ocean to the Lesser Antilles. From there, it evolved into a tropical storm with winds up to thirty-nine miles per hour, acquiring the name of Charley. By August 11, the Jamaicans called it a category 1 hurricane, and when the meteorologists predicted Charley would make Florida landfall as a category 2, Jeb Bush issued a warning. Two days later Charley hit the Floridian coast as a category 4.
Mother was living in Florida at the time, and I, in California. Winston, her Yorkshire terrier, was recovering from surgery in the hospital. The veterinarian had just notified her that their facility would shut down shortly, staff ordered to leave. Mother called me, frantic. What were they thinking abandoning animals that needed care, not knowing when they might be back? She was too old to make the two-hour drive in the storm. The roads would soon close and she might get stuck. Her building staff were boarding up her windows now, and between the hammering and the pelting rain, conversation was difficult. We hung up so I could locate a transport service.
I don’t remember how many drivers refused the job, before one man agreed to it. I thought Mother would be thrilled, but she was becoming increasingly agitated at the thought of losing her companion and fretted the driver would have an accident. Remembering Dinah’s mom reading through the night of Hurricane Carol, I kept her on the phone. If Scheherazade could navigate one thousand and one nights, like Mrs. Starr, I should be able to manage one. As Charlie raged, destroying thousands of homes, downing tens of thousands of trees, killing sixteen, I resurrected the Hurricane Carol smuggling saga, reminding Mother how she had once driven an extra hundred miles to save a barn kitty. We talked on through the night until the doorbell rang and a man with Yorkshire terrier appeared.
