The one about rats.

My having pet rats is somewhat of a grotesquely fascinating family legend. So much so that when anyone’s in town for holidays or the odd visit, my mother’s in the habit of prodding me to grab them from their cage in the back corner of my bedroom, and return with my travelling freak show clutched close enough to my chest that yes, I really am sure they won’t make a break for you. So far, my younger relatives have been the only ones willing to risk catching the Plague from my two domesticated and breeder-bought rodents. I can’t say I don’t almost understand everyone’s unique blend of intrigue and repulsion, though. If you’ve never been courageous or stupid enough to look at rats close up for their details, those fleshy little hands and fingers are-even to me-distinctly troubling.

But I suppose intrigue beats Black Death, as told from the mouths of babes; my seven year old cousin, Maurice, once informed me matter-of-factly that they were “pretty ugly, but he’s cool” and that’s high praise for a rat, even if I tell him every time he comes over that they’re both females and yes, I am sure.

I’ve got my routine down nearly to a tee when little kids burst into my bedroom with that distinct look of determination in their eyes and the inevitable demand taking shape in their mouths. I pick up Verona, a chubby black rat with owl-wide curiosity in her eyes, and I hold my hands open to wait for her to decide that this unwashed palm is interesting enough to leap into for the moment; it always is. And that’s the way it’s always been.

A while back someone asked me why it’s never Sienna, my albino with a choppy-mohawk running up the ridge of her spine. Why I never have anyone hold her. I defaulted: she bites sometimes. I don’t want to risk her hurting anyone so I keep her put up or on me. The answer is satisfactory enough, but after everyone’s Purelled their children and gone home I still do wonder. I know she only really bites people when they’ve got food in their hands and she’s trying to drag it to her little tissue paper shred nest or when she’s afraid, and logically as long as I don’t put anyone-or her-in either of those circumstances, she shouldn’t bite. She probably wouldn’t bite. The more I tried to reason myself into deciding whether I could trust her or not, for some reason I couldn’t stop seeing myself as her and wondering if she was intelligent enough to feel lonely, isolated, ostracized.

That’s stupid, I argued with myself, I don’t bite, I don’t cut people with my teeth. Except for when I use words like weapons and fight people and their open palms like it’d all be over if I didn’t. But she’s not smart enough to control herself, I pleaded with the little voice in the back of my mind to relent, but it didn’t. Sometimes you can’t help yourself either, can you?

I can’t some days. There are times when I leave my own body and watch, horrified and grotesquely fascinated as I lash out at anyone getting too close to what I imagine is my shredded tissue paper nest. When I’m scared. Pondering myself, I went into the cage, picked her up, and stroked her side as she sniffed up at me. before climbing up onto my shoulder.

The next time someone came over, I gave them Sienna to coo over until they realized my little brother had a mouse named Ralph and rats were old news. She didn’t bite or scratch. After I’d sat her back in her cage, she peered up at me with her pale red eyes, and maybe everything didn’t have to end quite so painful.

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