My mother knew how to play to an audience.
From the fine dinner at the restaurant kitchen's door she would wander on, alert, to the main street, where one could scavenge occasional dropped treasures: a melting ice cream cone on the pavement, not a bad dessert for a dog, or greasy paper once wrapped around a hamburger, not a bad thing to lick.
Then she would return to our hidden dwelling, circle carefully so as not to flatten us, and lie down. We would toddle over and lick her face, tasting the remains of her meal. Wispy and I savored the different tastes attached to Mother's chin and whiskers, but our brothers pushed us aside, growling, scolding Mother for not saving larger portions for her children.
The differences between us began to be clear. My two brothers had from birth been relentlessly energetic and quarrelsome. They nipped at each other endlessly, shoving and pushing, making life into an exhausting contest. Inevitably they extended playful wrestling matches into real battles, until Wispy and I scampered whimpering to our mother to be licked and calmed.
My mother gave them pet names that reflected their contentious personalities. Tug and Tussle, she called them.
One day, as the boys were quarreling in a corner near the trash cans while I lay quietly with Wispy, enjoying a patch of sunshine that had worked its way around the side of the building, I said casually to my sister, "Listen to Thug and Muscle."
Wispy, who had been half asleep, opened her eyes. She giggled. "Thug and Muscle?"
I had surprised myself. "It just came out that way," I told her.
"Cute," Wispy said, and closed her eyes again.
I said it to myself several times, liking the sound of it, the way Tug turned into Thug and Tussle into Muscle. It was cute. Stretching there in the sun, listening to the boys fight, I tried a few more experiments with human words.
"Yip," I whispered to myself, as one of my brothers punctuated the morning with a small half-bark.
"Nip," I added, identifying the reason for his little pained sound.
"Grr," I said to myself thoughtfully. Then, after pondering for a moment, I added, with satisfaction, "Fur."
"Wake up, Wispy!" I urged my sister. "Listen to what I can do!"
She opened her eyes, yawned patiently, and listened while I explained to her how I was putting words together into rhymes. "What rhymes with cheese?" she asked me, and her little tail thumped against the ground. Wispy loved cheese more than anything.
I thought long and hard. Finally I whispered a hideous word to her, a word that Mother preferred us not to use. "Fleas," I said in a very low voice. Wispy shuddered.
"Sorry," I said quickly. "Peas would rhyme," I added after a moment. Wispy sighed. Neither of us was very fond of peas—or pois, as they were called in French. I don't think Mother was either. She usually nosed them around on the plate, as if she were looking for something better.
As we grew, we began to yearn for more than milk and occasional licks of buttery smears on Mother's face. The sporadic tidbits that she brought us were tantalizing hints that a greater world of food lay somewhere just beyond our reach.
One morning my first-born brother, the one we called Tug, decided to leave our hiding place and go out to forage on his own. We were alone at the time. Mother had gone on one of her own food-finding forays. Now that we were no longer babies, Mother was gone more and more, and for longer and longer periods.
I watched apprehensively as Tug ventured forth. He was not my favorite of my siblings. I much preferred to play with gentle Wispy, or even with Tussle, who was boisterous but good-natured and meant no harm. But Tug was my brother, after all, so I wished him well.
He trotted over to the restaurant door, sat in the place where Mother always sat, assumed the pose that Mother used, and woofed lightly. Mother never barked; eloquent silence was her way. But impatience was part of Tug's nature.
His bark was small, since he was young, but it did bring one of the dishwashers to the door. He was a heavyset man called Pete; I had seen him often, wiping his hands on the dirty white apron he wore, reaching into a pocket for a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He had an interesting decoration, a dagger entwined with flowers, all in purple, extending from his wrist halfway up his arm. He had a loud laugh.
Pete laughed now, looking down at my brother.
"Hey, look here!" he called back through the open doorway into the kitchen. "She's got a puppy!"
Stay!: Keeper's Story
The other dishwashers appeared, each wiping his damp hands. They all looked down at Tug, who was trying to maintain his jaunty appearance, though I could tell, because I knew him well, that he was nervous. His tail was quivering slightly, and his ears—still puppy ears and therefore not completely under his command—were not entirely erect.
Pete squatted and picked him up. For a human with such large hands and such a loud voice, he was surprisingly gentle, and he knew to cradle Tug's bottom in the palm of his hand. I could tell, though, how frightened my brother must be, suddenly for the first time ascending into the air with his thin legs dangling. I could see his brown eyes peering down in panic.
Then I heard a roar of human laughter.
"Gotcha, Pete!" one of the dishwashers called.
"Look at that," Pete said. "Peed right into my hand!"
It confirmed what I had guessed: that Tug was frightened. No self-confident dog would have lost control that way.
"Lemme see it," one of them, a thin black man, said. He took Tug from Pete, who rubbed his damp hand on his apron. "I've been promising my kid a puppy. Is this male or female?" I could see him lift my brother's little tail and peer at his bottom.
The four men all leaned over and peered. There is an amazing lack of privacy in a dog's life.
"Female," one said finally.
"Yeah, female," the others agreed.
Oh, the humiliation I felt on Tug's behalf.
"If you don't want her for your kid, I'll take her home. My girlfriend wants a dog," the tallest man said. "And she said she wants a female."
"Females are gentler. Females never bite," Pete announced, as if he were the voice of wisdom. I realized then what a fool he was. There was no truth at all to what he said.
"I want her," the thin black man decided.
I don't know if Tug understood this conversation and knew that his fate was being determined. It takes a while for a dog to learn the language of humans, and Tug was not the most intelligent of our litter. I am not inclined to vanity. But I will explain that my sister, Wispy, was not much interested in study or education. She had listened politely to my delighted discovery of rhyme and had asked a few cordial questions, but Wispy was hardly a scholar. And of my two brothers, Tug, the elder and braver, was ... well, all right, I'll say it—not at all bright. Tussle, the playful one, had an endearing love of a good romp and a more congenial personality than Tug, but no intellectual curiosity at all.