Blue in the Face

You were much more innocent then Before the ego took your eyes I knew you when I mattered When our foot steps fell into pattern My ears heard and your mouth spoke Simple intricacies and well-known secrets

In a hundred years, when the future leaders of America read about my family in the history books (as is inevitable), they will never see the descriptor “superstitious.” We hardened folk believe in Jesus and eating ourselves into a sugary guilt, not ghosties in the attic. But when my brother insisted one evening that he’s started to hear something running across the roof above his bed in the wee hours of the night, I may have peed a little.

Our house is home to a variety of creepy sounds, including thumping, groaning, and unexplained maniacal laughter (a rare but not unusual occurrence in American homes); many of which forced me to consider looking up the Winchesters in the yellow pages a time or two. Then I remember my mom explaining away the satanic whispers in my ear as “house settling noises,” and I fall asleep happy, knowing that the house is finally ready to settle down and sleep too.

Yet the running across the roof became scratching in the walls, and the scratching in the walls became a clanging of silverware that my hungry bachelor of a brother left in his room overnight. We were just about to call our friendly-in-the-neighborhood priest for a good ol’ fashioned exorcism when, out of the darkness, we heard my brother emit a disgusted, horrified cry.

“Mouse turds!” he declared, his angsty teenage eyes wild with rage. “A mouse just took a dump on my desk!”

Satisfied enough with his mouse-turd diagnosis to decide it wasn’t worth a look, mom and I set out to find a mouse trap clever enough to catch any Jerry,  anvil-antics and all. If you’ve been fortunate enough to avoid your home becoming a Chuck-E-Cheese (complete with a multitude of mascots) you probably haven’t wandered into that dark corner of Walmart fully stocked with an array of mice-killing poisons, death-boxes, and swinging pendulum blades (shameless plug: they’re easily installed in only 3 steps!). Or maybe you have, you sick freak.

Either way, you get the picture - I was scared to be there, and I wasn’t a mouse. After scouring the racks for the option least likely to give us stress-diarrhea, Mom and I finally settled on the most humane-looking option: a small, opaque box with poison bait inside. We had nearly torn our trembling feet off of the unforgiving white linoleum (only white, I assume, to better show the blood spilt by all the tiny squeaking souls taken by the monstrosities on the shelves) when we spotted, amongst the rest of the torture devices, a box marked “Humane option!” The angels sang as I snatched this precious gem from the shelves. “Mom, we don’t have to kill it!”

As much as my Mom didn’t want to hurt the mouse, it took some convincing - almost as much as if I had begged to keep the mouse as a pet. To be fair, she probably thought I wanted to. Ever since I imprisoned and fed an ant in a container in my room when I was five, she hasn’t really trusted me around strays. But without too much arm-twisting, we left with BOTH traps on the condition that my brother got to decide the mouse’s fate.

Fortunately for the adorable vermin hiding in his closet, he chose the capture-and-release trap. We dropped a gob of peanut butter in the trap to lure the cretin in and left it on his desk, mouse turd ground zero.

At this point, I have to admit that I was extremely excited to see this stupid mouse. Mice are freaking cute. I don’t wanna touch a wild one with my bare hands or anything, but inside a container, I can stare at its twitching whiskers, giant ears, and tiny feet without fear of death-by-rodent. So when I went upstairs to check the trap and saw those giant ears and a tiny fuzzy body, I was ecstatic. I ran downstairs, flapping my arms in victory, and squeaked at a pitch that even my dog could barely hear, “HE’S IN THERE AND HE’S SO CUTE MOMMY MOMMY COME LOOK WOW HE’S FUZZY HOW CUTE AAAAAAAH.”

My mom staunchly refused to look at my prize. She later informed me that this was because it made her think about taking him away from his furry family. But because she didn’t want to keep it in the house until the morning (it was 11:30 pm) and I was afraid he would roast if left outside in a trap, she dragged herself out of bed and into the car so we could set the mouse free.

Our final moments together were bittersweet. The mouse was mostly bitter. I opened the lid of the trap, and as he peered over the edge of the plastic to see my face, his beady eyes glittered sourly with thoughts of crumbs saved for later that he could never return to. As he ran for cover, I could have sworn I heard him squeak, “I’ll be back!” in the best Arnold Schwarzenegger impression I’ve ever born witness to.

I once did something classy I got my belly button pierced And before the nice man with a thousand tattoos stabbed me with a curved needle He told me that when he finished counting down from three, I should exhale Really, really hard So I did And I breathed the pain away

I sort of thought it was annoying That no one had told me about this sooner This was genius I could have used this the last night my dad Weak from cancer Starved and lethargic Was able to hug me standing up On his way to the hospital

How convenient this would have been When the phone rang too early on that Wednesday morning When the breath caught in my throat every time I said “The funeral is Saturday and thank you for the cookies. Something about the way they crumble reminds me of home.”

But I really could have used the help during the funeral When I watched the man with my eyes and sense of humor Lowered into the ground And when I realized, months later That he was still there