ME, CINDERELLA?(28)

Taking off one boot as a defensive weapon, I moved farther inside, trying to see underneath the rickety stairs. My breath still blew white—the heaters must not have gotten turned on yet, and it was almost as freezing inside as it had been outside, except for the chill of the wind. I could see the animal under the staircase, its ratty gray fur moving with its breaths. I stepped closer to the staircase, holding my boot above my head, ready to bring it down on the creature.

“Meow!”

I stopped with my boot still in my hand. A cat? Too small to be a cat. I squinted, and as I was debating what to do it poked its head out and meowed again at me. I got a good look at it—just a kitten, and a ragged one at that. It had a light gray coat, marred in places by burrs and scratches, and its whiskers trembled as it looked out at me.

I sat back and laughed, all of the tension running out of my system. A damn kitten! My foot was beginning to turn numb from the cold, so I shoved my boot back on. I leaned forward, holding my hand out in goodwill.

“Here, kitty, kitty. Here, sweetheart.”

The kitten hissed, its fur standing up on its back.

“Don’t be scared.” I stopped, my hand hovering in the air. My fingers got colder by the second.

The kitten’s fur relaxed, but it stepped back, still wary.

“Here, kitty.”

Kitty had white mittens tipping his gray coat, and a white pointed diamond on his forehead, just between his ears. It looked like a large white snowflake had landed on the middle of his head and stuck. One ear, torn and healed over, flicked from the front to the side. Both of his ears looked too big for his head.

The kitten hissed again, but this time less assuredly.

For whatever reason, I was determined to make this animal my friend. He was the first native I had met in Hungary, and I wanted to make a good impression. I dug through my duffel bag until I found my sandwich. Peeling off the last piece of salami, I tossed it at the foot of the staircase. The kitty immediately perked up his ears and widened his eyes. I couldn’t help but laugh again. He looked like a bat with such giant kittenish ears, the one ragged ear flicking repeatedly toward the food.

“Come on kitty,” I said. “I won’t hurt you.” I kissed the air until he came forward from behind the staircase.

“See,” I said as he sniffed the salami and began to lick it. “It’s food.”

He knew it was food, too. He sat down on his thin haunches and began to tear at the salami until it was shredded by his tiny teeth, clutched between his paws. He ate ravenously.

My smile turned off when I recognized the cause of the rapidity with which he ate. He was starving.

I knew what that was like. More children know starvation than you might think, but most of the other children couldn’t eat because their families were poor. I knew part of that with my Nagy, once my father abandoned me to her. His wife didn’t want any of her money going to feed me, and my grandmother found it hard to stay steadily employed with only her needlework and tailoring.

I had learned to turn off my appetite when it was needed. When my friends and I had gone on field trips to amusement parks, I would smile and laugh and watch the other children buy ten dollar lunches, claiming I had eaten a huge breakfast and then drinking lots of water. Water would fill my stomach, swell it out so that it looked like a normal teenage girl, or approximately that. Sometimes people would be kind and offer me some of their food.

“Here, have some of my fries. I can’t eat them all.”

Oh, to be so full that you didn’t want to eat french fries! What that must have felt like! Whenever I had the opportunity, I ate. Who knew when the next time would come? At buffets, I stuffed myself until I was overfull, and the binging way I ate ruined any chance at healthiness.

I had rituals with food, and every food had its own special way of being eaten. Cookies I would dip three at a time in a glass of milk, so that the third one had almost turned to mush by the time I got to it. Sandwiches I nibbled around the edges, saving the middle, uncrusted part, for last. Broccoli I munched the heads off of first, then sliced the stems into little cubes that I ate with a fork, like peas. Coffee I would sip even while it was burning hot, just to feel the way it trickled down my throat to my stomach and warmed me from the inside out.

Chocolate—oh, chocolate. I would smell the chocolate in my fingers, letting the warmth of my hand melt it slightly and deliver an intoxicating aroma to my nose. My tongue licked the side of the chocolate bar, tasting it first before placing it directly on the middle of my tongue, pressing it to the top of my palate and inhaling again, savoring the taste for as long as I could before it melted away. God, chocolate. Both my downfall and my salvation, chocolate could tempt angels to sin, if sin involved eighty percent or more of cacao.