Ailsa left for work at three each morning. She left her six kids alone in their big, cold house. The older kids went to school. A neighbor came over and took the littlest one to her house until Ailsa got home after lunch.
One morning Ailsa was called in to work on her day off. She left a note on the kitchen table telling her daughter Stacey to take Baby Tom to the sitters. The two oldest boys got up first. They hogged the bathroom. In the room Stacey shared with her little brothers she had to lie in her sleeping bag and wait for them to clump down the stairs to the kitchen. Sometimes she would yell and bang on the bathroom door but it didn't do any good. This morning she really needed to get in the bathroom because her period had started. A new complication in her life.
The two big boys turned on the burners on the stove in the freezing kitchen. They ate cold Pop Tarts and drank milk straight from the carton. Bill had an after school job at a grocery store, Jason at a gas station. They took their truck to school. When Jason scooped his homework off the kitchen table he inadvertently picked up the note for Stacey. He turned it in with a math assignment.
Stacey made cinnamon toast for herself and her little brothers. No milk left. She heated up some Kool Aid for them. The little boys were watching cartoons in the living room. Stacey turned off the TV.
``GET YOUR SHOES ON!'' she yelled and ran out the door to catch the early bus.
The little boys turned the TV back on then had to run to catch their bus half an hour later. Homework, lunch tickets coats all forgotten. And Baby Tom.
Baby Tom sat watching TV in the silent, freezing house. He wore only a disposable diaper that had absorbed several pounds of urine. Tom did not know he was cold, he just climbed up on the sofa and fell asleep. There was a cat named Togo who lived in the house. He was rarely seen. He preferred the peace of the inside of closets. Mostly he ate mice and the occasional rat that slipped up through the floor boards under the sink. But Togo was cold this January morning. He jumped onto the couch and was surprised to find a sleeping, smelly baby human. A possible source of warmth, thought Togo, and he laid his big furry body over the cold cold child. When Ailsa got home she walked over to her neighbor to get Tom. Not there. She ran back to the house and searched, her heart pounding.
``Tom! Tom!'' she called. No answer. Then she saw his white silk hair poking out from under the cat.
``Tom!'' she picked up poor Togo and flung him out the door. She held her baby to her heart and rocked and wept for herself and her children and the cold cold house. Then she got up and lit the kerosene heater and turned on the stove in the kitchen. She unloaded groceries and turned on the radio. Baby Tom in a big sweat shirt and a clean diaper seemed fine. Togo crept back in the house by a secret hole he knew. When Stacey came home Ailsa said ``Didn't you get my note?''
``Note?'' said Stacey.