“He eats better than I do,” Mom said, peering over the top of the cage. She poked a finger in through the bars and wiggled it around. “Here, Petey Petey.”
“He doesn’t like it when you do that,” I said to her. I was already annoyed. She never made anything easy.
“How do you know what he likes?” she asked. She waggled her finger at him one more time. “Since when did you start speaking hamster?”
“It scares him,” I said. “Look, he’s curling up tighter and digging in the shavings. That means he’s scared.”
“Maybe you don’t handle him enough,” she said. “Otherwise he wouldn’t be such a scaredy-hamster.” She pulled her finger out of the cage and stood up straight to look at me.
“Don’t pick him up while I’m gone, okay? It’s only two weeks—he’ll be fine. Just feed him twice a day and make sure he has enough water in the bottle. I’ll clean the cage when I get back.” I wished I could take him with me to camp, but it would be hard to explain to the other junior counselors why I couldn’t leave him at home. All Mom had to do was shove some food in his cage, and with it sitting in the middle of the kitchen, there was no way she could forget. I just kept telling myself he’d be fine.
“Don’t worry about your precious rodent,” she said. “I’ll feed him every day. He’ll be fat and happy when you get home, you’ll see.”
It didn’t work out exactly that way.
“Where’s Petey?” I said as I dropped my suitcase on the kitchen floor, a pile of junk mail filling the space on the counter where the cage had been.
“Oh,” Mom said, looking down at the newspaper she was holding. “I was going to call you, but I didn’t want to ruin your trip. He got out the other day when I was feeding him. I looked everywhere, but I couldn’t find him.”
“What do you mean he got out?” My eyes searched what I could see of the floor. A tiny hamster could be hiding anywhere in this house. “All you had to do was feed him. You said he’d be okay.”
She put her arm around my shoulders and gave a quick squeeze. “I’m really sorry,” she said. She was looking everywhere except right at me. “I only left the door open for a second so I could cut some more apple, and when I looked back he was gone.”
“He really ran away?”
She nodded. “I’m sure he’s around here somewhere. Probably found a nice, soft corner to curl up in.”
“But he was counting on me…” Petey was the first thing I’d ever been in charge of, and I’d let him down. He must have missed being held and stroked on the very top of his head. He must have thought I was never coming back, and he made his escape when he saw an opportunity. A sick, heavy feeling settled in my stomach and made the back of my eyelids prickle.
I got down on all fours and looked under the table and along the wall. “Here, Petey Petey.” I made little kissy noises as I was calling him. “Here, Petey. I’m back. Here, Petey.” Mom got down on the floor too and together we searched everywhere we could, spending the next hour at hamster level trying to find him. But we never did.
Sometimes I would see hamster droppings on the counter or the table, and I took it as his way of telling me he was still somewhere in the house, curled up safe in a little nest he’d made for himself, only coming out at night to look for food. I’d leave a pile of peanuts on the counter for him, and little by little it would vanish, so at least I knew he was eating something.
The sharp smell from the cedar shavings in his cage brought back everything I’d felt that day when I’d come back to discover him gone. Mom must have put the cage back here in case we ever got another hamster, but we never did. It didn’t seem right to bring another living thing into this house when I couldn’t even manage to keep Petey safe. The water bottle was still secured to the side of the cage, but it had been dry a long time.
I carried the whole thing over to the wall where the green bins were stacked. Even if Petey was long gone, the cage was still good. Maybe when all this was over, I’d get another hamster. Or clean it out and give it to TJ. He was about the right age for a pet.
As I set the cage down on the bins, I spotted something sticking out from under the cedar chips. I shook the cage so the chips settled and I could see it better, sticking my face right up to the bars to get a good look. He wasn’t curled up in a ball, but lying out straight under a thin layer of cedar chips. The skin looked dry and papery but still had a few tufts of brown hair clinging to it.
Petey.
“Oh God,” I said. I looked closer to make sure, but there was really no doubt. Petey hadn’t escaped at all. He’d died right in this cage while I was gone, and instead of doing something normal like burying him, or even telling me the truth, Mom must have covered up the cage and left it in the dining room like it never happened. That was her solution to everything—cover it up like it never happened.
My mind raced as I backed away from the cage containing the mummified remains of my only pet. “How could she?” I whispered. She probably forgot about him completely. Didn’t feed him or even give him water. Petey trusted me and I’d totally let him down.
Without even thinking about it, I opened the top of the cage and gently wrapped him in the towel. He wasn’t much more than dried skin and bones by now, but the least I could do was give him a decent burial. Grabbing the shovel, I headed outside, not caring who saw me.
On the side of the house, just under my window, was a sheltered spot next to a spindly hydrangea bush. The cold ground was hard as I stabbed at it with the shovel, but after breaking through the top layer I was able to dig a small hole, pulling out chunks of hard clay soil and piling them up in the walkway. When the hole was deep enough, I leaned the shovel against the wall and knelt down as I lowered the pink towel into it. Tucking the edges of the towel around Petey, I waited for thoughts to come—something about how I was sorry I’d left him alone, and how I’d do it differently if I had it to do again. I wished for something profound to give him a dignified send-off, but my mind just felt blank and empty. Slowly, I got up and dumped dirt back on top of him, scraping the shovel on the walkway as I scooped it up over and over again until the pink towel was gone.
When I was done, I patted the dirt down with the back of the shovel and looked at the smooth ground where my first and only pet was buried. Unless you knew, you’d never guess he was here, but maybe it would make me feel a little bit better when the bush bloomed with huge pink flowers in the spring and reminded me that Petey was in a better place.
chapter 8
3:00 p.m.
I, however, was still trapped in this crappy place. As clouds gathered outside, it grew quieter inside, and every move I made seemed to echo off the ceiling. Mom had the television going twenty-four hours a day if she was home—something to keep her company she said—so I grabbed the stereo from my room and set it up on top of a pile of papers in the middle of the kitchen. Filling the house with sound helped make it feel a little less lonely and made this crazy project seem a little less futile. Music to decontaminate by.
After I suited up in my orange rubber gloves, I stood near the sink and tried to figure out where to start in what used to be a functional kitchen. That was always the problem when you were standing in an endless pile of garbage—where to start. Regular people might leave their dirty dishes in the sink for a few hours or even a day until someone got around to washing them and putting them in the dishwasher. Once the dishwasher broke down and the plumbing backed up, our dishes sat in the sink and on the counter for years. Actual years.