My Momma’s cat, Lucky, is a good producer, and every spring, she gives birth to another crop of kittens. She’s all different colors, muddy brown with patches of orange tiger stripe on her feet and a splotch of gray tiger stripe on her tail. That means you never know what kind of kittens she’ll have. I named her Lucky because the star on her nose makes me think of the song “Lucky Star” by Madonna, which is on my top ten list of favorite songs.

 I can tell exactly when Lucky’s about to have her babies. First, she starts crying over and over. And every meow gets turned up at the end, mee OW, which makes it sound like she’s asking a question. 

Momma hollers, “Would somebody please put that cat outside?”

But she doesn’t really mean it and no one ever does because we don’t want Lucky to have her kittens under the trailer, which is Lucky’s number one hiding spot. Plus, Daddy says she might get into the insulation under the house.

Next, Lucky starts poking her nose around under our beds. That means it’s almost time. She’s looking for someplace to lie down and start pooping out kitties. She had her first litter in my room right on my favorite sweatshirt. 

This spring my little sisters followed Lucky around everywhere. She’d started making her having-babies noises and the littles wanted to see what it looked like when the kittens came out. They formed a parade as they marched up and down the hallway, Lucky in the lead, belly swaying.

“Me OW, me OW” she chirped, while the littles trailed behind in their blankie capes, waving stick batons. 

 I’d already seen it all. Two times. Disgusting. Cats don’t come out like some fancy kitten picture in a magazine. They come out in these veiny blobs. You have to wait till Lucky finishes licking the sack off before they start to look like something. 

“If that’s what having babies is like, count me out,” I said. 

Momma said it’s not like that at all. 

Lucky gave birth to five kitties. This time, Momma said we could keep one. I got to choose. Most were black, but one looked like Lucky, a muddy brown with an orange stripe down its face.

“Not an it,” Momma said. “It’s a girl. Money cats are almost always girls.”

 My little sister Kelsey called up her friend Rosie to come over and see.

“Rosie said it's okay,” Kelsey said. “Her Ma said she can have one!”

“Not yet,” Momma said, laughing. “She has to wait a few weeks before they’re ready.”

Rosie bent down near Lucky.

“That one,” she said, and pointed to the one I picked.

“That one’s mine,” I said. “Choose again.”

“But I want that one,” Rosie said. She picked at her chapped bottom lip until it bled.

“Too bad, so sad,” I said.

 “What’s its name then?” 

“I’m not telling.” 

“If you haven’t named it yet, it’s not yours,” she said. 

“Says who?” 

“You better think up something quick, Sophia, before Rosie claims your cat,” Momma said and toddled down the hallway toward the bathroom.

 I thought through my top ten list of songs. 

“Karma,” I said. 

“Karma?” said Rosie.

“Yeah, Karma, like ‘Karma Chameleon?’ by Culture Club? Ever heard of it?”

Rosie ran one finger down the kitten’s nose. “Mine,” she said real quiet-like.

Later that day Daddy asked me to go with him to pick wild things. No other kids, only me. I’m the oldest and the best finder. That’s why.

“Your mother has one of her cravings,” he said and grabbed his hat. “And she wants ramps. I don’t know if we’ll find them or not, but let’s walk down to Lemon Stream and take a look-see.”

“Why don’t you just buy her some?” 

“Now, why would I pay for ramps when I got you?” he said. 

When we got to the path through the woods by the stream, I ran ahead so I could go fast down the hill to our picking spot. There were saplings in the trail and their roots made steps all the way down to the flat bank above the water, their trunks small enough to fit in my hand. I got some speed, grabbed a trunk, and swung my body around, stretching my arm out to catch the next one. I became a monkey swinging from tree to tree down the hill.

Daddy sidestepped down slow and easy. By the time he got to me, I was shooting skippers across the water. The stream was full and brown and smelled like the garden when we turn it over in April. It was loud, too, rocks cracking together as they got tumbled over in the current.

“What do you think, Miss Sophia,” Daddy said. “Upstream or down?”

“Down,” I said.

There used to be a good spot for picking under some yellow birch trees, but we never knew exactly where to go each year because every spring when the snow melted and the stream flooded the bank changed and plants moved. The trees were spaced far apart, though, and the brush hadn’t grown up tall yet. It wouldn’t take us long to find them. Under my feet crinkly brown leaves were piled up here and there, and I could see the dead stalks from last year’s ferns in a clearing. Everything under our feet went crunch, crunch, crunch.

Daddy brushed some of the dead leaves aside and pulled out a plastic shopping bag. I kept looking for the ramps while he scrunched down and snapped off some baby fiddleheads. In-between the clumps of trees the sand was dotted with skunk cabbage and nettles. 

Most plants were still babies starting to poke out of the ground, but overhead the trees were already leafed out. Red budded swamp maples and the pink tips of the birches filtered the sunlight and made all the new little things coming up seem green, green, green. I snapped off a leaf from a Trout Lily and ate it then stuck the flower behind my ear. It tasted like a sour crabapple.

A few feet away I saw a cluster of plants. They had two skinny leaves and a pink and purple stem. I pulled one up and gave it a sniff. It smelled strong like onion, but also like chives and swamp. It made my belly growl.

“Daddy!” I hollered. “Found them!”

He looked up from where he was picking, stretched, and smiled. “Course ya’ did,” he said.

We worked side by side using sticks to dig the ramps out of the sand. They were hard to pull up without breaking the end of the bulb off. Daddy showed me how each leek looked like a separate plant above ground, and how, when we pulled them up, they looked like scallions at the bottom, tiny white bulbs with short stubby roots. 

“But look here,” he said and pried up a long piece of root from the ground, thin like thread, it connected one ramp to the next. “See, they have these cool runners that spread out underground like a web. All the ramps in this clearing? They’re like a little family,” he said. “When you’re harvesting, make sure you leave a few live ones behind. Don’t pick them all. That way there’ll be more next year.”

We continued to dig. It was warm and the smell of onions grew stronger the more we filled our bag. 

“Did you name your kitten yet?” he asked, and rocked back on his heels, his head tilted to one side.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Well?”

“Karma.” 

Daddy smiled and looked down.

“You don’t like it?” 

“How’d you come up with that?”

“A song.”

“Uh huh, I see,” he said and went back to digging.

“What?”

“I think if you named your cat Karma because you’re a Buddhist or you have some sort of cosmic understanding of Karmic principles and how they relate to your kitty that would be alright.” He poked his stick in deeper and pulled out a large ramp. He held it up for me to see. Specks of sand and small pebbles fell to the ground and when he ran his hand across the bottom, a thin layer of dirty skin peeled away leaving the clean white bulb beneath the pair of leaves.

“But if you’re picking that name because you think it sounds cool, or you’re copying someone else’s song without understanding the meaning behind it, then I think you didn’t put too much effort into the name and it doesn’t really honor your cat. Names are important, Sophia.” He placed the leek in the bag with the others.

When we got home, Rosie was still there playing with the kittens in the kitchen. In the living room, the littles were piled up in front of the television watching Sesame Street except Kelsey, who was holding onto Momma’s shirt with one hand and sucking her thumb.

“Time to amscray, Rosie,” Daddy said. “We’re gonna have dinner soon.”

Rosie looked out the window and stuck out her scabby bottom lip. “It’s almost dark,” she said. “Can’t I stay?” My kitten was clutched in her hand. 

“Not tonight, Rosie,” Daddy said. 

“Give me Karma,” I said. “You’re not supposed to be touching them so much.” Daddy was right. It was a stupid name.

I walked Rosie home because it was getting late and the whole way there she bargained for my cat. 

“Won’t you trade with me? Please? Why won’t you?” 

“The other kittens are way cuter,” I said. “Why don’t you take the one with double paws? He’s special.”

Rosie crossed her arms. “Hmph,” she said.

I didn’t respond.

“Hmph,” she said again and kicked a rock. 

When we got to her house Rosie’s ma was in the doorway smoking. 

“Hey, baby,” she said, ruffling Rosie’s hair as she went by.

“See ya’ later Mrs. Davis,” I called out from the driveway.

 “Wait up, there, Sophia,” she said. She took one more drag off her smoke then flicked it over the porch rail.

“Yeah?” 

“How’s your mother doing?” 

“Okay, I guess. She’s pretty happy right now. I found her some ramps,” I said.

“What’s that now?”

“Ramps. You know, wild leeks?” 

“Child, don’t you know there’s perfectly good onions in the Shop-n-Save? I meant, how’s her pregnancy going?”

“Going ‘bout the same as the others,” I said. “I’ll tell her you asked after her.”

“It’s just, you know, she’s had so many,” Mrs. Davis said. She took a long drink of Coca Cola from the bottle. “How many brothers and sisters you got now, anyway?” 

“Three sisters,” I said. 

“And all in that tiny trailer. Mylanta,” Mrs. Davis said. She put one hand up in front of her mouth and shook her head. “You want to stay for dinner tonight? Me and Rosie are having American chop suey.”

“No, thank you, ma’am,” I said. “Anyways, we don’t eat meat.”

“Don’t eat meat? Lord. No wonder you’re all so damn scrawny. How’s your Daddy, anyway, he still over at the college?”

“Yes ma’am, but he’s on sabbatical now.”

“Sabbatical?”

“Yeah, you know, taking a year off to do research.”

“I know what a sabbatical is, child. What’s he researching?”

“Biology stuff, taxonomy.”

“Huh. Must be nice to get the time off. Especially with that baby coming. Mr. Davis, you know, he’s always gone. On the road, working. Always working. But I guess we each have to choose our own priorities.”

Over the next couple of weeks, the kittens grew and got to be real cute. Rosie was over all the time. 

“Rosie, dear, your thorns are starting to show,” Daddy said, and Momma laughed, but Rosie didn’t get the hint.

One day, Rosie and Kelsey were playing with the cats on the back steps. Daddy got me zinnia and marigold seeds for my birthday and I used sticks and rocks to make a little fence around my very own flower garden in a sunny patch by the end of the trailer.

There was a small hole in the plastic house skirting and Kelsey came up with a game where she would pass kittens to Rosie, and Rosie would push them through the hole. Then they would pull the kitten back out and pretend the kitties were getting born all over again. 

Rosie took the double-pawed one and pushed it under the house. 

“Meow, meow,” called out Kelsey.

“Time to be born, little baby!” Rosie said and pulled the kitten back through the hole in the plastic. The kitten whimpered. Lucky stuck her head out of the open back door to check things out.

“Not so rough,” I said.

Momma came out the front door with a load of laundry. She set the basket down on the grass and pressed on the small of her back before picking it up and waddling over to the clothesline. The time was close now, I could tell.

Kelsey passed my kitten to Rosie. Rosie shoved the cat into the darkness underneath the house. I sprinkled a couple of seeds into a hole and covered them with dirt.

“Time to be born, Karma,” Rosie squealed and shoved her hand back into the hole. 

I dropped the seeds. 

“Give her here,” I said.

But Rosie had a hard time fitting both her hand and the kitten through the small slit in the plastic. She turned Karma sideways, jerked her back fast, and the kitten’s head got caught behind the skirting. The plastic made a flat cracking sound.

 Rosie pulled again and the kitten’s head flopped backward. She dropped the kitten back in the hole, then stood up and brushed her hands on her pants. “I need to go home now,” she said.

 “Momma,” I yelled. “Rosie, what did you do to my cat?”

“Nothing,” she said and started backing away. 

I reached my hand into the darkness. I felt soft fur, a warm body, but when I pulled her out of the hole, Karma was still. 

“Momma,” I yelled again. 

“Where’s the fire?” Momma said as she came toward us.

“Rosie killed my cat,” I said.

“What?” she said.

Kelsey looked confused and hugged my mother’s leg.

“My kitten,” I said. “I think she killed it. Can I do CPR? What do I do?”

Rosie sniffled and wiped her eyes. “I didn’t do anything, and I’m telling my mother you said that,” she said. She turned around and ran away up the dirt path to the road.

“Give her here,” Momma said. She took the kitten in one hand and looked her over. She pressed Karma to her cheek, then shook her head and closed her eyes. She steadied herself with one hand against the house, then made a low hissing sound. Her other hand went to her side. The brown fluff of kitten dropped into her apron pocket.

“Sophia, honey,” she said. “Find your father.”

I knew where Daddy was. He was down back putting up a fence. I was barefoot and the ground was cold and slippery, mud oozing between my toes as I ran. I tripped once on a root and skinned my knee. 

“Daddy,” I yelled. “It’s time!” When I came around the corner by the big pine, he was already coming up the path toward me.

“Is she in the house?” he said.

“Yeah.” I said and turned to walk with him. 

“Did her water break?”

“I don’t know what that means.”

Daddy stopped and grabbed my shoulders. “Look, Sophia,” he said. “We’ve been through this. Maybe you don’t remember, but that’s okay. We have a plan. Remember?”

I nodded. 

He started walking toward the house again.

“Okay, so repeat it back to me, what’s our process?”

“I take the littles into the living room and turn up the TV loud. I don’t come in your room no matter what unless you call me in.”

“That’s right,” he said. “If it gets late, you can heat up some leftovers for dinner, okay?”

“Okay,” I said.

“And if I tell you to call the hospital, what do you do?” he said.

“I call the number by the phone and tell them to send the ambulance.”

 “Exactly,” he said. “Now quick, give me a hug.”

By the time we got in the house, Momma was already in their room. The littles were on the floor in front of the television. I curled up on the couch. Kelsey climbed into my lap and we watched 3-2-1 Contact as loud as it would go. Later on, I heated up some leftover leek pie in the oven. It felt like ages since I had heard anything from the room. I crept up to their bedroom door. I heard Daddy talking but I couldn’t tell what he was saying. I knocked fast five times, then slow twice.

“Everything okay?” I said.

“Not now, Sophia,” Daddy said.

Back in the kitchen, I noticed Momma’s apron was back on its hook. I reached in the pocket, and my kitten was still there. With everything going on, I forgot all about her. 

Karma was still warm, so I pressed her body against my face. A small flutter, like a mosquito against my cheek, made me look again at her face. Her eyes were closed, but she was alive! She stretched open her mouth but the sound I heard was not the meow of my kitten, it was the wailing cry of a brand-new baby.

The bedroom door banged open.

“It’s a girl,” Daddy said, grinning. “What shall we name her?”