velouria kerry as a child i pleaded with my parents for a kitten, though everyone in our household was--still is--incredibly allergic to cats. so many times i dreamed i'd found one, a tiny kitten that was practically waiting for me, and curled up in my bed i held it close to my chest. i would wake up expecting it to be still in the crook of my arm, and was disappointed to find myself alone, cradling empty space. looking back, i think what i wanted was something small and warm, something fragile that needed and belonged only to me, a little being that i could pour all of my thoughts and feelings into. i had a lot of feelings then. they were suffocating and heavy, like a stomach ache. one sticky summer night when i was sixteen danny and i were prowling around town as usual. we were sincere and curious and hungry then. we wanted so much. we wanted to devour not only each other but the whole world. we found ourselves at the square in decatur, a gathering place surrounded by restaurants and shops, a fountain in the middle and the train station underneath, bordered by shallow steps. on the steps across from the thai restaurant a woman was sitting on one of these steps with a cardboard box, and people were pausing to speak to her and look into the box. most of them were smiling. i don't remember what she looked like, only the impression that she was hunched with long hair. kind of witchy. it turned out the box was full of puppies. i asked her how much and she said they were free. she said, "take one! you should have a puppy." it was dark, she was dark, the box and the puppies nestled inside were dark. she lifted one out of the box and put it into my hands. "a little girl," the woman said. "six weeks old." i lifted her up to see her face. she reminded me of a teddy bear, dense brown and black fur with little black eyes. her tongue was also black, and her belly was naked and warm. "take her, take her." we walked down the dim streets, passing her back and forth, cradling her like a baby. she had never been washed. the smell of a newborn puppy is hard to describe; it was something like hay, something like milk. the smell reminded me of his mouth the first time we kissed. pure, like a beginning. we named her velouria. lush, ageless, kind of regal. it just fit. i took her home and my parents were not pleased. i covered the floor of my room with newspaper and let her wander around. i found a box and stuffed towels inside, set it next to my bed, and she cried all night. i held her to my chest, and at some point she climbed up onto my pillow and slept beside my face. she peed all over the newspaper, she peed on my pillow, and i didn't care. i had to go on a trip for a few days and johanna took care of velouria for me. she and her mother bathed her and fed her instant oats. she was fragile, much too young to be separated from her mother. when velouria came back home my dad said it was time to find a home for her. i sat at the computer in his office and cried while i posted an ad online. the internet was different then, primitive and bare and anarchic. the next day we received a phonecall, and within hours a man with dreadlocks pulled into our driveway and rang the bell. he took velouria into his arms and drove away, and i stayed in my bed all day, hating my parents, imagining her chained up in a yard with patchy yellow grass. a few weeks later i called the guy. he didn't pick up. i left a message on his machine, saying i just wanted to check on her, and never heard back. this was twenty years ago so velouria, or whoever she became, is probably long dead. danny is also dead. i still wonder very occasionally how big velouria got, what kind of life she had, and i cross my fingers that the man who drove away with her loved her like i did. 231222 what's it to you? who go blather from