1503933547 (8 page)

A shiver ran down my back, as if a real cricket walked down my spine.

Mom returned with the glass of milk. She offered it to me, and I took it with my free hand. I didn’t want her to discover the firefly.

“I want to see you drink it,” she said.

I drank it in one gulp.

“It tastes strange,” I said.

My mother looked away for an instant. “The glass must be dirty,” she replied. “Now, sleep.”

She took the glass and waited for me to lie down. She tucked me in.

“I’m still scared,” I said to her. “What if I can’t sleep?”

I had to wait until she went and my brother started to snore before I could put the firefly back in the jar. I would’ve liked to have changed my wet underpants, too. But I must’ve fallen asleep right then, because when I opened my eyes again, my family was talking in the kitchen. The house smelled of coffee and toast. In my hand there was a squashed pea.

10

The toaster went off to welcome me to the kitchen. Mom was warming milk. Beside her, twelve eggs sat on their throne of gray cardboard.

“Doesn’t it all smell great?” she said. “I knew he wouldn’t let us down.”

“The boy’s here,” my father warned her.

Mom turned around.

“Come here so I can give you a hug,” she said, kneeling by the oven.

My brother, sister, and father were also hanging around in the kitchen.

“That doesn’t go there,” Dad said. He took out a packet of rice my brother had just put in the top drawer and stored it in the third one down.

When I pulled my chair out from under the table, I found a sack of potatoes on the seat.

“Wait,” said Mom. She came over and took it off so I could sit down. “See how you were able to sleep?”

I nodded, rubbing an eye with the back of my hand.

“Don’t listen to your father,” she whispered in my ear. “That Cricket Man’s an invention to scare kids and make them behave.”

“But I saw him,” I responded.

Dad spoke from the fridge. “I can hear you both,” he said. “You bet you saw him. Because the Cricket Man exists. And he moves like this.” He crossed the kitchen in a squat and put a string of onions on the extractor fan. “The difference is his knees bend backward.”

Mom held my chin and shook her head. Then she straightened with a groan, hefting the potatoes, and she stored them in a low cupboard.

The rest of my family sat down one by one.

“So someone was scared last night,” my father said as he took his seat. “And it seems it wasn’t the baby,” he added, gesturing at my sister without looking at her.

“First the baby cries, then the next night it’s the boy. What is going on in this house?”

“I didn’t cry,” I answered.

“You didn’t? So why did your mother have to go to your room and comfort you?”

“I actually went to calm your other son down,” Mom cut in. She put down a bowl of boiled eggs in the middle of the table before sitting. “He wouldn’t stop laughing.”

“Can we eat?” my sister interrupted. “I’m hungry.”

Dad waited with his wrists resting on the table’s edge, without picking up his cutlery.

“Why isn’t Grandma coming?” Mom whispered. “Shall I go fetch her?”

My sister stretched out an arm to take an egg from the bowl.

Dad smashed his hand down like he was killing a mosquito. “No one eats until Grandma’s here,” he said.

“And how do we know she’s coming?” Mom asked.

My grandmother’s voice came from her room. “I’m coming out,” she shouted.

“She’s coming out,” repeated Dad.

“They understood me,” she added. “I don’t need a translator.”

The sound of her slippers dragging along the hall preceded her appearance in the doorway. She was wearing the nightgown she always ate breakfast in, which she then changed out of and wouldn’t put on again until nighttime. Her white hair, which combed in a certain way hid the bald areas made by the fire, was now brushed forward, covering her face. On either side of her head the bare patches of scalp could be seen.

“Your hair,” said my father. “We’re all here.”

She sorted it out as best she could. Mom wanted to get up, but my grandmother stopped her. “Don’t worry, I’m fine on my own.”

When she sat down, she tidied her hair a bit more and tried to smile, but the result was nothing more than a big crease across her swollen face.

“How are you?” my father asked her.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” said my brother.

Grandma took a deep breath. She felt for her plate with her fingers. Then a hand slid across the table to her right. She touched the seventh plate. She always smiled when she found that Mom had served it, but this time her chin trembled.

“Let’s eat,” Dad said.

“Let’s eat,” Grandma repeated. Her lips were reddened, her eyes swollen, the tip of her nose raw.

“Why are you so sad?” I asked her.

She put her cup down on the table, and dried her lips with a cloth napkin full of holes. Mom had explained to me that moths made the holes, so for days I’d searched for caterpillars all around the basement. I wanted to feed them with my clothes, see them grow, and witness their metamorphosis. But Mom filled wardrobes and drawers with mothballs. For days the basement smelled of nothing else.

“Can’t you see how sad she is?” I said to everyone.

Mom lowered her head.

Grandma put her napkin on her lap. A strained crease of flesh spread across her face in the worst imitation of a smile.

“Did the Cricket Man do something to you?” I asked. “I saw him go into your room.”

Her normally cloudy eyes filled with tears.

Then the baby’s high-pitched scream came from the hall.

“Have you left him in the bedroom?” asked Dad. Grandma blinked as if she’d just remembered there was a baby in the basement.

“Go get your son,” Dad ordered my sister.

She put the sugar jar down on the table. The teaspoon clinked against the edge of the glass. She looked at Grandma, then held a finger to her temple and moved it in circles.

“Don’t do that,” Dad said.

“Do what?” asked Grandma.

“Nothing,” replied my sister, “I’m not doing anything. I’ll go see what’s wrong with him.”

She tipped a final spoonful of sugar into her coffee and closed the jar as she got up. Then she was still for a moment and sat down again. She lifted the jar with her elbow resting on the table. “Would you mind going?” she asked me.

“Me? Why me?”

She looked at the jar. Then tipped it up. It was just like the firefly jar.

“Well, if you don’t want to . . .” She left the jar on the table and ran her finger around the edge of the lid. “I could—”

“All right,” I interrupted when I understood she was blackmailing me, “I’ll go.”

She smiled and took her finger away from the lid.

“If he’s crying because he’s hungry, bring him here and I’ll feed him.”

My brother pushed his chair out to block my path.

“
She
has to go,” he said.

I tried to dodge around him but he moved again.

“
She
has to,” he insisted.

“I don’t care who goes,” Dad said, “but go now. I can’t stand that child’s screaming.”

In the crib, the baby was crying with his arms stretched out toward the ceiling, as if he wanted the Cricket Man to find him and take him away. I put a hand on his tummy and rocked him. His crying began to subside. When I put a finger near his mouth, the baby caught it and began to suck. A mistaken look of peace lit up his face.

That was when I noticed the bulge under the sheet.

It moved near his feet. At first I thought it had been his legs thrashing about as he cried, but the bump was too far from the baby’s body, like a stretchy limb that wanted to escape from its own anatomy. The bulge moved to a corner of the crib. I went on tiptoes to grab hold of my nephew. Before I could lift him and get him away from the thing that moved under the sheet, the bulge positioned itself on his chest. Like a second body.

I felt the tickling of whiskers before I saw anything. A gray, pointed nose, twitching, appeared between my hands. It bumped against the baby’s chin, and my nephew just managed to turn his head to escape the thing.

The rat came out from under the sheet. It walked over the little boy’s cheeks, sinking its feet into the flesh. One of the front ones found purchase on his nose, the other near the ear. The rodent’s claws opened little cuts on the skin. The baby opened his mouth to scream again. The animal’s tail slithered between his lips, and its snout stopped for a few seconds on the boy’s left eye, sniffing, the whiskers quivering over it like grotesque eyelashes.

I pulled on the baby with trembling hands. A muscle in my back sent me a stab of pain. The animal clutched the boy’s head, bending the neck at an unnatural angle, before jumping back into the crib. It escaped between two bars. The tail disappeared into a corner of the room.

I kissed the baby’s forehead, which was resting on my chest. I held his head from behind to keep the neck straight. Two drops of blood slid down his face.

“Is that child going to shut up, or what?” my father yelled from the kitchen.

I sat on the floor, my back resting against my grandmother’s bed. With one of my thumbs, I cleaned the drops of blood from the baby’s face.

“How hard can it be?” Dad asked from the other room.

“If he’s hungry, bring him to me,” shouted my sister.

My throat was so tight from the shock I couldn’t answer.

I sat there waiting, until I heard my grandmother’s footsteps in the hall.

“What is it?” she asked as she walked in.

She bumped into me. A sparse eyebrow arched, taut with worry.

“Hey, what is it?” She knelt beside me. She searched for the baby with her hands. “Is he OK?”

I swallowed. I opened my mouth but couldn’t utter a word. I swallowed again.

“A rat,” I managed to say.

“No,” she responded. She pressed the little boy’s head against her chest. “Where?”

“In the crib,” I said. “A huge rat, it came out from under the sheet. It walked over his face. Grandma, it scratched his face.”

Mom appeared in the room. Behind her, my dad and my brother. They crowded around us.

“What’s happened?” Dad asked.

“What’s happened, you ask?” My grandmother held the baby out for my mother to take him, then she stood up. She spoke very close to Dad’s face. “Rats. I told you they’d end up giving us a fright.”

“Rats?” Mom covered her mouth.

“There’s poison in every corner,” Dad explained. “Maybe with the delay it took a bit longer for—”

“Sure, blame it on him,” my grandmother broke in. “Is there any more with today’s things?”

My father left the room without answering.

My sister then appeared in the doorway. She parted a lock of hair caught in her mask’s artificial nose and examined the tips. “What’s happened?”

My brother grabbed my sister’s arm. He pulled her toward the baby, which still cried in my mother’s arms. He pushed her till she was down on her knees.

“Don’t touch me!” she yelled. “Get off me. Don’t touch me.”

My brother’s fingers went white around her arm. “You should have”—he choked on a syllable—“have been looking after him,” he said.

She groaned.

“Leave her,” Mom said as she stroked the baby’s face. “It was an accident.”

“It was an accident,” my sister repeated. “This place is full of rats.”

My brother let go of her arm. She massaged it.

Dad returned to the room. “We’ve got another box,” he said.

He shook it so my grandmother could hear it. It was red, smaller than a cereal box, but the same shape. The black silhouette of a rat was printed on one side, inside a yellow circle.

“Someone bring me the antiseptic from the bathroom,” Mom asked while blowing on the baby’s face.

My sister sat on the bed. She chose another lock of hair and smoothed it using two fingers like scissors.

“He’s your son,” my mother said. “Won’t you go?”

“How about his father goes?” she replied.

I ran to the bathroom to find the first-aid kit. Screams came from the bedroom. I also heard a slap.

In the afternoon I sat by Mom on the brown sofa in the living room. She was mending one of Dad’s shirts. On the sofa’s arm was the sewing box she’d used to help my sister after she gave birth. It was really an old Danish cookie tin. That was what the lid said. Behind us, my brother was riding the exercise bike, the pedal clipping the metal frame once every five seconds.

I observed Mom’s face. Her profile sculpted by the fire. Once I found her in the kitchen looking at a photo. She was touching it with her fingers. It was her before going down into the basement. She was standing on some rocks, gripping her skirt between her legs. Surrounded by the white spray from a massive wave that must’ve soaked her an instant later. Mom knelt to show it to me. When I saw that face of smooth skin and perfect features, like an orthopedic mask over Mom’s scars, I seized the picture frame and threw it to the floor. The glass broke.

On the sofa, I stopped the needle and thread. I kissed my mother’s cheek. I liked her eye that was almost shut. I liked the rough feel of her skin when she kissed me on the forehead before I slept. And I liked the clumsy eyelid that wrinkled up when she was concentrating on mending a shirt’s elbow.