Under the Back Porch

 “I’m not going,” Jessie shouted. Her voice echoed down to where I stood, keys in hand, at the front door. “You can’t make me.”

I sighed and rubbed my forehead. “Dammit, Jess,” I muttered. “You have to go to school.” After a long moment, I tried again. “Jessie, it’s the first day of school and you’re fifteen. You have to go to school.”

Jessie appeared at the top of the stairs, backpack dangling from one shoulder. Her sullen expression barely masked the look of fear on her face. “I hate it here. I hate this town, I hate that school, I hate you. You’re not my mom.”

I raised my eyebrows. “I should hope not. I’m pretty sure I’m a guy.” I followed her out the front door and locked it behind us. “You’ve got your keys, right?”

She shot me a sour look. “I’m not an infant, Terry. I’ve been to school before.”

That afternoon, my co-worker Stella handed me a cup of coffee and slumped at the table outside the lab.

“How’s your daughter? I still can’t get used to you having a kid.” She shrugged off my look and smiled into her own coffee. “I mean, you’re gayer than Elton John. I’m surprised you know how to make babies.”

I snorted. “Teenagers can get up to some pretty unexpected things.” Stella laughed, and I continued, “She’s having a hard time. I understand – her parents just died. It’s hard.”

“You’re one of her parents,” Stella said, patting my shoulder.

“Yeah, but not one of the important ones.” The timer went off on the lab machine I was using, so I set my coffee cup aside. “I just hope she settles in soon.”

Three weeks later, Jessie was still upset all the time. From what I could tell, she hadn’t made any friends at school and was spending her time systematically pissing off everyone she met. Keeping my own temper was an exercise in gritted teeth and long late-night runs after she’d gone to her room.

Saturday afternoon, while clearing out the latest invasion force of blackberry brambles from old Joe’s house on the corner, I heard a strange sound. It was high-pitched, sounded like a cat, and was coming from under the house.

“Oh for crying out loud…” I peeled off my heavy gloves and crouched down at the gap in the lattice under the back porch. It was too dark to see anything, so I groaned and trudged into the house to get a flashlight.

Jessie was at the kitchen table, eating the waffles I’d left out for her. She looked worried and dropped her half-eaten waffle back on the plate.

“I wasn’t—” she said, wiping her hands quickly on her pants.

“They’re for you, kid.” I paused in my irritated hunt through the junk drawer. “You know you can eat anything in the house, right? If there’s something you want, just let me know, or write it on the list on the fridge.” I fished the flashlight out from the clutter in the drawer and yelped when a broken ceramic mandoline blade sliced my finger.

I shoved my hand under the tap and ran water over the cut. “Shit,” I said. Blood ran off my finger into the sink.

“Where’re the Band-Aids?” Jessie asked. She picked the waffle back up and came over to look at my hand. “Wow, that looks bad. Maybe you’ll bleed to death.”

I chuckled. “Doubtful, Jess, but it would be nice to put something on it. It hurts like he— I mean….”

She rolled her eyes. “I know about swearing, Terry. Where’s the Band-Aids?”

Once she’d found the first aid kit I kept in the hall closet, she gently dried off my finger and smeared antibiotic ointment on the slice. I watched her, aware that this was the nicest she’d been since she moved in. She smoothed a gauze wrapping over the cut and carefully taped it down.

“Thanks,” I said. The kitchen was silent for a moment, only the distant sound of the grandfather clock ticking away the afternoon. Then the mysterious sound came again and Jessie’s face lifted.

“Is that a cat?” She turned to me. “Where is it?”

I gestured at the flashlight. “It’s under the house, which is why I was getting that. Now that I’m injured, I’m not sure I should crawl around under there.”

She snorted, snatched up the flashlight, and charged out the back door. I followed, feeling hopeful for the first time since I’d gotten a call from the Sheriff to tell me that Jessie’s parents had been killed in a car accident and that I was listed as next-of-kin for their daughter.

Jessie was mine biologically—her mother Tania and I had been friends in high school, and on one very drunken night after we graduated, more than friends. She’d decided to keep Jessie, but we’d never even thought about being together. She’d met Ronald in college, when Jessie was five, and they’d gotten married within a year. I’d always been part of the family, but I hadn’t been expecting this.

None of us had.

By the time I got outside, Jessie had crawled through the hole in the under-deck lattice. I squatted down and stuck my head through, watching the beam of the flashlight bounce around as she moved.

“Find anything?”

“Yeah, it’s gross down here,” she said, her tone cheerful. “I think you should fix that hole, though. There’s, like, raccoon nests here.” She grunted and the flashlight pointed up at the underside of the porch. “Dammit, that was horrible. Terry, you’ve got to clean this up. Oh …oh.” She was silent for long enough for my chest to fill with dread.

“What? Jessie?”

“Hey, baby,” she crooned. “It’s okay, I’ve got you. Yeah, I know, I’m scary. And that’s your … no, don’t look at that, baby, it’s okay. Come on.” There were rustling sounds and she said, her voice very soft, “Terry, there’s a litter of kittens under here. There were—there were four, but…”

I could see she was coming back. She shoved the flashlight into my hands and crawled the last bit out on her knees, cradling something against her chest. Little tufts of fur stuck out between her fingers. She lowered her hands slowly to show me two little scraps of cat barely alive enough to lift their heads.

“Can you save them?” She looked near tears.

I felt my heart squeeze. “Well, we can certainly try. Let’s get them inside.”

Four hours later, we were back at home with lots of new cat paraphernalia. Jessie sat on the couch, cradling the two kittens in her lap. The vet had said she thought they were about a month old, so we should be able to rear them without too much trouble. She hadn’t been able to tell how long they’d been abandoned, but they’d responded well to being warmed and fed two large syringes-full of formula. I’d stopped on the way home to pick up a pizza for us, since I knew I was too tired to cook dinner.

I collapsed on the couch next to Jessie and leaned over to look at our new pets.

“So,” I said, running a fingertip over the head of the orange one. “What do you think we should name them?”

Jessie’s shoulders curved in. “Dunno. Where’s their mom?”

I sighed and rested a hand on her shoulder. She didn’t jerk away from me, for the first time since she moved in.

“I don’t know, Jess. She’d have come back to them if she could have.”

“You don’t know that.” Her voice was thick and hoarse and I caught sight of her chin wobbling. I rubbed her shoulder and tipped her chin up so she was facing me.

“Yes, I do. No mother willingly abandons her children.”

Her face crumpled and she collapsed into my chest, suddenly sobbing. I wrapped my arms around her, noticing that even in her grief, she’d curved around the kittens, making sure not to crush them.

“I miss my mom and dad,” she said into my now-damp shirt. “I don’t want to be here.”

I stroked my hand gently over her hair. “I know, kiddo. I’m so, so sorry. Your mom and dad wouldn’t have wanted to leave you. It was an accident.” I rested my chin on her head. “But I love you too, and I’ll be the best parent I can, okay?”

She snuffled hard, wiped her nose and face on her sleeve, then sat back up. The kittens wriggled in her lap and she smiled down at them.

“We can be a family together,” she said. “You and me and these two. How about we call them Luke and Leia?”

“Sounds great,” I said, scooping Leia up and letting her curl up on my lap. “As long as we don’t have to deal with Darth Vader any time soon. I’m tired.”

Jessie laughed damply and leaned against me. For the first time, I thought we might make it.