Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

Yesterday I watched my little sister playing with a dead rat. Her mother, my step-mom, watched on. This seems like a good segway into the next chapter of my story.

I left Savannah and returned to my hometown, Columbus, Ohio. I would be living with my father, who rents a house in a neighborhood on the west side of town known as Hilltop. My parents divorced when I was four and my father remarried about 10 years ago. He has two young children now, Maggie (8) and Zach (6), my half-brother and half-sister.

I looked forward to this new chapter in my life. I would get to reconnect with those of my friends who still lived in town, spend some time with Zach and Maggie, as well as my grandmother, who was very old and very sick (also known as dying). I hadn't lived in Columbus since the summer of 2003, after my freshman year of college.

My dad has been a very graceous and grateful host, but living at his house has been a constant cycle of revulsion and frustration. It's kind of been a source of reverse inspiration, creating an impulse to be the only one in this house that has even of whiff of having my shit together. Living with four other people who are either stumbling or screeching through their lives makes me the calm center of the universe, but I have to shut myself in my room to keep my sanity.

Let's see where to I begin. OK, Kendra, my step-mother. She is a nurse and addicted to the internet. All of her time outside of work (the word "all" is really not being misused here) is spent on a chair in front of her computer, where she toils away at an online, text-based, role-playing game. Kendra picks up the kids from school and they all come home to play their games without a care. Zach and Maggie play video games or silly kid games and Kendra tries her best to ignore them. The only time she shows much interest in them is when they make a lot of noise or get into a fight. Then she yells at them from her computer, often without averting her eyes from the screen.

Now, you might ask yourself who maintains this house? The answer I must give is no one, although my Dad tries very hard. Kendra, Zach, and Maggie produce mountains of trash and debris every day, leaving it strewn in their wake or, in Kendra's case, in various deposits around her computer monitor. This includes toys, sloppy kids drawing, food debris, and really anything else that you can imagine. The house is often what I would call "wrecked," although living here has forced me to redefine the kind of house I consider wrecked. Dishes pile up daily and often sit for some days. Food is left about the house: half-eaten, untouched, dropped, ignored, and left to thaw out on the counter overnight. There is a serious fly problem. Infestation is the proper word and the word "swarm" would not be at all inappropriate.

My dad words the second shift (2-11 PM) at a hospital. When he gets home the kids are up waiting for him, either running around screaming, like you do, or in their "beds." As you might have guessed their "beds" are not beds at all, although they do actually have their own room with bunk beds in it. Their beds are on the living room floor. They consist of two mats, the kind that are sold very cheap at Wal-Mart for large dogs to sleep and lounge on. These are set on the living room floor, topped with a sheet, some pillows, the TV is turned on (or rather, never turned off) right in front of them and voila! Bed-time! I have never really figured out why this is the sleeping arrangement, but there it is. What's worse is that Maggie usually won't sleep unless my father lays down on their little nest and watches TV with them. He often falls asleep there himself. Its a fucked situation.

The house is in all stages of neglect: laundry un-cleaned, everything misplaced, a fair amount of pack-ratting. Also, actual rats! It's not bad they are pet rats, but its still pretty bad. Since everyone in this house pretty much lives like an animal Kendra seems to think its a good idea to accent these with some more animals. In fact since I have lived here the menagerie has grown from a fish tank and two cats (actually three, there used to be a stray that the kids would feed and play with, those darling children) and now includes a python, chinchilla, some frogs, and a turtle. But the turtle may have died -- its hard to keep track. Also the rats.

Now, I believe the rats started out as food for the python. But the most important decisions in this house are made by the eight-year old. This requires a little back story. Maggie was born with a serious heart-defect and was very as a baby, nearly dying when she was two. Since then she has been hopelessly indulged and spoiled. I believe that, in fact, in many ways she has never grown out of her infancy. Anyway, the rats. I think one day Maggie must have named a rat that was destined for the snake cage and he became a pet. Then, somehow, another rat was added to the clan. Stop me if you know where this is headed . . .baby rats! This is actually a perfect set-up if you have a snake; you just breed the food for it. But no, these are pets, apparently. Kendra took the male rat and put it in another cage. Then it died, so sad. Then it was a toy for Maggie.

I saw her playing with it and I thought "That rat looks dead." But I also thought that couldn't be because that is obviously disgusting and Kendra was right there. As I walked away Kendra said "She's playing with a dead rat." She said it with a marveling chuckle. As if to say "That crazy Maggie, playing with a dead rat again. She really marches to the beat of her own drummer!" It almost seemed like Kendra knew that this was not appropriate or sanitary, but then again Maggie was ten feet away, Kendra was engrossed in her computer, and, well, in the context of everything else it wasn't that extraordinary.

Maggie played with the rat all night. I don't know where it is now, but whether she treats it like a toy or a piece of trash or some food she is finished with there is still no way of guessing where it has ended up. Rest in peace little buddy