KEEPING HOUSE
"Oh, dear," Mrs. Deerfield said as she went about her work in the kitchen. "Such a good mother to sacrifice herself for her babies." Penelope Deerfield watched their car rumble through the alley-it had been another hour before the nice couple had driven off, after Penelope had taken in the kittens, her eyes full of tears. "No, you two go on, go on, I shall be fine, I will call the vet and see if we can't save Ramona's babies, I shall be fine, I insist, go on, go on, it was an accident, I shall be fine." And they'd laid dear Ramona down in a blue towel beneath the shade of the iron stairs, and now they were indeed leaving on their beach trip, and Ramona was indeed dead. Penelope Deerfield watched them go, standing over the sink in the kitchen. The sink filled to the brim with soapy dishwater, the just cleaned and shiny china cups and saucers lay glistening on a flowered hand towel that she'd stretched across her cutting board. Penelope Deerfield kept her hands down in the water, but every few seconds one of the small white kittens floated to the top, trying to escape. "Mustn't scratch," she told each kitten as she pressed its bobbing head deeper into the dishwater. Later, after she Scotchgarded the old chair she'd recently finished upholstering, Penelope drained the sink and took the waterlogged kittens out and buried them with Ramona in the mulch pile. It was hot, and she kept swatting at her bangs which fell across her forehead every few seconds in an annoying tickle. She told Ramona's head, "I shall have to cut my hair off if I am to survive the summer." She was down in the crib when someone began ringing the doorbell like a madman. It's too early for my friends," she said aloud, "so it must be the exterminator for upstairs."
Her back was aching from lifting the trapdoor and then setting it to one side. She'd had to crouch down a bit, watch her head as she descended the four steps into the cool hold.
She'd taken a deep breath of the air as she sat at the bottom step, licking her lips. “You've been a good one, today, hardly a sound," she'd told the darkness.
The only light in the crib came from Mrs. Deerfield's apartment, but even with the trapdoor completely off, there was barely enough light to see: twenty-five large mason jars filled with the memories of summers past, the preserves, the pickles, the jellies (strawberry, mint, apricot, peach, raspberry, pepper), and even a few bottles of homemade wine. It smelled of mold and dust, pickling brine and pure alcohol -the floor was made up of sandy earth. Brownish mushrooms sprouted along the corners, among the jars, and from between the clefts in the stone wall. Another ten jars stood in a circle in the darkest corner, the part of the crib nearest the hidden steps up to the house above. Something in the dark scraped its way between the jars, rattling them as it went.
"Be careful, dear, it won't be much longer now I think." But then the doorbell had rung, and Penelope thought of how much her back ached and how weary a body could get, how flesh just didn't hold up in the long run. The doorbell sounded again and again until she could no longer ignore it.
"Stay here, dear, it's that exterminator for sure, come to take away all your little playmates from upstairs." Keeping her head low so as not to strike it against the roof of the crib, Penelope Deerfield went back up the steps to her apartment. In the dark, something behind the ten jars not filled with jams, jellies, pickles, and preserves let out a low moan. Floating in the milky waters of those ten jars: human fetuses.