I only remember the log house as a cold place, a steady chill whistling through apertures in the chinking.
My sister and I shared a room there—the north half hers, the south mine. Her window looked onto a fishpond and a split-rail fence, mine onto a modern scarecrow—an inflatable tube man dancing in the distant neighbor’s field.
She was small for her age, with dimpled cheeks. Blonde and quiet, terribly quiet, always staring then glancing away the moment I met her gaze.
Hearts lined her headboard, paisley checkered her quilt, and a lamp stood guard on her bedside table—its base a ceramic lamb with a paint stroke for a smile and a bow tied around its neck, mid-prance.
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She loved animals, as many children do.
We owned a hamster, a fawn-coated dollop of a thing. We watched it tuck grain into its cheeks, growing larger in front of our eyes then deflating, growing, deflating.
The two of us also maintained a bowl of food for the feral cats in the grasses around our house. I avoided those dusty cats with their missing eyes, limbs, and patches of fur.
But my sister was not put off by their wounds, nor by the way they dragged their gums across her skin. She hauled them into her arms by their legs or tails, teeth bared as she touched the tip of her nose tenderly to theirs.
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When I was her age I loved dolls. I loved arranging their soft, stiff bodies around me in different configurations; dressing them; filling their thimble cups; tucking them into bed. My half of the room bustled, each doll mid-action in her allotted corner.
I had amassed a significant collection which, along with their home furnishings, lined our shelves. One day I sensed something amiss, a pall over the room. There, in the corner, a doll’s mouth scrawled over with black marker. They all were.
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She begged us to take in a litter of kittens from the shelter, among them a milky brown one with blue eyes. My sister named him Gary, after the confectioner. She kissed him the most, wished him our best.
“Watch,” I told her, slipping a reluctant finger down its ragged spine. “See how gentle?”
She tracked my touch with her eyes, flexing her jaw. I thought I heard her squeal, just barely.
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My sister suffered night terrors, seemingly the same one. I startled each night at the sound of my name screamed from across the room. NA-DA-LIE! NA-DA-LIE!
I lay awake in my bed counting each instance, imagining myself each time dying in her dreams a different way. Eventually the screams passed and the long wait began. For the scarecrow tube man to resurrect under the rising blue sheen.
A few hours later she would wake, click on her lamp, and hoist her legs over the side of her bed. I kept my eyes closed as her scant footsteps neared my bed and she whispered my name.
“Natty?”
I waited.
“Come downstairs with me.”
Barefoot, we descended the cold hardwood steps.
I would pull a box of cereal from the kitchen cabinet while she slid into the adjoining bathroom. I felt her watching me as she hiked up her nightdress, climbed onto the toilet, and released a stream of urine against the water within.
“The door,” I would say. “You always forget the door.”
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My sister watched me pack the injured dolls into boxes, fold the cardboard flaps shut, and yank tape across the seams. I pushed them into a cubby behind our closet and shut the door.
“See?” I said. “Gone.”
She blinked, looked away.
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She was young, my father and I told ourselves, and small for her age, when he walked into our room last year and found her sitting on the floor, teeth bared, touching the hamster’s nose to hers and squeezing it dead.
My father says he looked at me next—where I faced her sitting upright in my bed, asleep with a schoolbook open on my lap. I’d dropped the pen I was holding, dappling my hands and blanket blue.
We buried the hamster in the backyard. I delivered my first eulogy.
“To our tolerant hamster, Pockets: sleep tight.”
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“Are your dolls in there?” she asked me sometimes, pointing at our closet.
“Yes,” I would say. “You know that already.”
She twitched her chin, picking absentmindedly at her lashes.
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The foster kittens slept in my sister’s bed at night, nestled in a pillow near her face.
I awoke to the sound of her moaning. I didn’t open my eyes. I just waited for it to pass.
“Natty?” she called, between sniffles. I sprung up.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s not moving.”
I threw off my covers, walked over, clicked on the lamp. I knelt beside her bed.
She pointed at a calico kitten—her finger so miniature and defeated.
I held my breath, laid its slender body across my palm. Its eyelids, its heart—nothing moved.
I furrowed my brows. She covered her face with her hands.
We lay there for a little while, stroking our dead in the light of the lamb.
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Again that night I awoke to the sound of moaning. I laid a hand on my sister’s back and waited for it to pass.
“It’s dead—” she cried.
“I know,” I whispered. “I know.”
“Look—”
I sat up. She was pointing at a different kitten.
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Over the course of the night, one by one, the kittens’ hearts all stopped. Gary’s last.
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They’d never seen anything like it, the shelter employees told us when they came to collect the bodies. If it was a virus, our house could be contaminated now. In any case, we wouldn’t be eligible to foster for some time.
My sister shrugged.
We watched each other for a few moments. I motioned for her to join me in seeing the others out but she stayed behind. Then, closed the door behind me.
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I remember my sister every time my daughter pads into my room at night and whispers my name: that whistling voice, her milky musk. For a second, before I wake fully, I’m certain she’s come to kill me.
“I’m thirsty,” my daughter will say instead, and I’ll relax, click on the lamp, take her little hand, and walk with her to the kitchen.
I’ll fill my daughter’s cup and watch her bring it to her lips, gulp it down.
“Happy now, baby?” I’ll ask her. She keeps gulping. “Happy?” I ask again. She’s not breathing, only gulping. “Happy?” I ask again, uneasy. “Happy?” I ask again, her face bluing. “Happy?Are you happy?”
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Nat Holtzmann is a writer, editor, and book designer based in Chicago.