Page 55 of That Birthday in Barbados
“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.”
? Mother Teresa
Nicole
SHE VOLUNTEERS AT the no-kill shelter in West Palm Beach two or three mornings each week. When she first decidedto volunteer at the animal shelter, she knew she had togo to the one where the dogs and cats were assured of getting out by adoption. She couldn’t volunteer at the one where they have a certain number of days to be found by their forever family or receive an orange tag on their door that tells the euthanasia tech who will be put to sleep at the end of the day.
Nicole knows this because she used to volunteer at the public shelter in a county outside Greenville, South Carolina the summer after her senior year in high school. Catherine was already in college and had won a scholarship to spend the summer at a design school in Italy, and Nicole had been incredibly lonely. She’d thought spending hours working at the shelter with dogs and cats would be a great way to involve herself in something good and combat her loneliness with animals because she loved being around them.
Nothing would have been further from the truth.
On her first day at the South Carolina shelter, she went through the necessary volunteer orientation with one of the full-time shelter employees. He was a gruff older man who had been there for years according to another volunteer, and he never smiled when he looked at the dogs or cats. The first warning sign for Nicole should have been his advice “not to get attached.” She’d assumed he meant because they would be adopted, and it would be painful to see them leave with their new family. She understood that, but it seemed to her that she would be happy to see them leaving with someone who would love them.
For the first week, she was only allowed to work at the front desk. She wasn’t allowed to go into the kennels, and although she saw dogs and cats when owners brought them in to sign them over to the shelter, she did not see them again once they were taken back. One day, she asked the shelter manager when she would be able to work in the back. The manager was a woman in her fortieswho also didn’t smile very much and looked at Nicole as if she had grave doubts about her ability to do much more than hand people relinquishment documents and answer the telephone.
“I’m not sure you’ll be suited to working in the back. Let’s keep you out front for now.”
Nicole wanted to argue with her, but she wasn’t exactly sure what the basis of her argument should be because she didn’t know why the woman thought she wouldn’t be suited. And so she did her best to shine in the position she’d been put in, greeting people with smiles even when she began to wonder how so many owners could drive their pet to the shelter and hand them over to her at the front desk as if they were a piece of mail that had been delivered by mistake.
She began to wonder if the people had any idea how scared their dog was when he or she realized their person had left them, how they barked or meowed to be allowed to follow them out the door. She wondered if they felt any guilt at all for raising a puppy to love them and their children and then “getting rid” of them because they chewed the corner of the living room rug when they’d left them home all day alone.
As the weeks went on, Nicole’s smiles were less ready, and her stomachhurt when the front door opened, and in walked another person with a dog so old he couldn’t clearly see where he was being taken, a dog who had devoted his life to loving his person and should be allowed to die at home in the place he knew and loved. She wondered how anyone could do such a thing.
It was on a Saturday morning that a man in a baseball cap walked in to the shelter with just such a dog. The man couldn’t look her in the eye when she handed him the relinquishment form. He was well-dressed and spoke like a person with a good amount of education. Out the front window of the shelter, she could see that he had pulled up in a Lexus sedan. The dog was black with a gray muzzle, and he had trouble standing on the tile floor. His back legs shook, and he finally lay down beside the man’s feet, his head raised as if he didn’t want to let the man out of his sight.
Nicole’s heart throbbed, and she tried not to look at the dog for the duration of the man’s filling out the form. She saw the number 16 filled in beside Age. She wasn’t allowed to question him or do anything at all except take the form when he was done. When he signed his name at the bottom, he held the dog’s leash up and waited for her to walk around the desk to take it from him.
The man turned to walk away. The dog tried to stand to follow him, but his hind legs slid on the tile, and he fell onto his stomach.
“What’s his name?” Nicole called after the man.
The man stopped at the door, still not letting himself look at the dog. “Nash,” he said.
The dog’s tail began to thump, but the man opened the door and walked out.
The dog again tried to stand up, whimpering now. Nicole dropped to her knees and scooped him up, walking over to a nearby chair and sitting down with him on her lap.
“It’s okay,” she said in a soft voice. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. You’re going to be okay though.”
Nash shook, so hard that she could hear his teeth chattering. She held him closer and rubbed his head. He tucked his nose inside her armpit, as if he couldn’t bear to look at his surroundings or face what was happening to him.
The door to the shelter area opened, and Jerry, the morning’s attendant walked out. He saw Nicole holding the dog and said, “Owner surrender?”
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
“I’ll take it back.”
Nicole wanted to protest, to keep the dog here with her a little longer, at least until he stopped shaking, but Jerry reached for him and was walking for the door before she could say a word. There was no one else out front then, and Nicole could no longer hold back her sobs. She felt Nash’s terror and sadness as if it had been injected into her own bloodstream, and she sat there absorbing it on a level she had never imagined possible.
And she knew with a sudden, undeniable conviction that she had to take Nash home with her. She ran to the front desk, dialed the number to her house and prayed her mom would answer. Her dad was playing golf this Saturday morning, and her mom had planned to run some errands. The phone rang and rang with no answer. She glanced at the clock on the wall. Eleven-forty five. The shelter would close in fifteen minutes.
She tried her mom again, still with no answer. At five minutes until twelve, she decided she would adopt Nash and take him home without asking her parents. She knew they would understand once she had explained the situation.
No one else had come in to the shelter so she decided to go back and tell the attendant she was going to adopt Nash. She stepped through the door that led to the kennel area, and the first thing she noticed was the silence. She walked down the row of cages, frowning when she saw there were no dogs in them. But by the door at the end of the hall, six or eight or ten black bags were stacked alongside each other in a row. Nicole shook her head, trying to process what she was seeing. She realized with a sickening thud of her stomach they were body bags.
“Oh, no,” she said out loud. “Nash. Nash!”
She began to scream his name over and over again, running down the hall in the opposite direction to find someone, anyone who could tell her where he was. She stopped outright at the sight of the door at the end of this corridor. A red sign – DO NOT ENTER – hung in the center.
