by Beth Madden
*
The Father left the bathroom after locking himself in for forty minutes, and had the room’s clunky, old-fashioned phone quickly in hand, ordering room service meals. ‘What do you want?’
He lobbed the menu across the room at the rat, who was slowly going through his backpack, unfolding and re-folding his clothes for the next day. It landed with a soft slap on the short grey carpet, and the rat scuttled to retrieve it, looking at the photographs that illustrated the menu items. Spying the plump sausages served with the mild apple curry—voted favourite children’s dish, though the rat couldn’t read the minute writing in the attractive gold star—the rat hurried over and pointed desperately at what he wanted. He knew by then not to say a word while the Father was on the phone.
The rat quivered with excitement when the waiter lifted the dull steel bowl cover from his yellow curry. Four rounded little sausages floated on top. The moment the waiter exited the room, the rat’s chopsticks jumped into his hand. The Father narrowed his eyes, face distorted, rendered hazy by the drifting steam of their meals.
‘Washed your hands yet? Do it, you filthy rat,’ the Father ordered when he shook his head. The rat bolted into the bathroom and rapidly washed his hands, stretching to reach the tap. He couldn’t see more than the very top of his walnut-head in the mirror.
Almost tripping in his eagerness, the rat scurried back to the table, only to find the Father plucking up one of his little sausages with his black chopsticks. Heart racing unpleasantly, the rat climbed back into his chair and looked down at his bowl. Not a single sausage remained floating on the little curry pool.
‘What?’ the Father asked between gnaws at the last of them, tearing it apart. ‘You think you deserve sausages? Well?’ he demanded, swallowing.
The rat shook his head, eyes on the carpet and fighting the urge to cry.
‘Shut up and eat, then.’
Miserably, the rat ate his curry, stirring it into his rice so it resembled gluggy, golden-brown porridge. He didn’t feel so hungry anymore, and soon put down his little ladle. But the Father belted the table with his fist when the rat tried to stand, making all their dishes rattle. Sure he wasn’t going anywhere, the Father devoured his first course of toasted cheese bread, followed by a feast of crisped beef strips and potato mash. He ignored the side salad, heavily dressed in vinegar to disguise its beginning-to-wilt state.
The rat went on reluctantly spooning curry into his mouth until his bowl was empty and his stomach painfully full. His four-year-old mind couldn’t assemble the words and meaning to give shape to his forever battered, bewildered feelings. He didn’t know why all he wanted was taken away. He didn’t understand why the other children looked forward to going home each day after childcare. Jealousy for them rippled beneath his skin. Every step of his lonely trudge back to the Father’s apartment filled him with greater apprehension, dreading the moment he stretched for the doorknob, fearing the Father stood right behind the metallic green door.
He didn’t understand why he went on hoping.
But he did understand care. He’d seen it in worried parents collecting their fevered children from the childcare house, and in stray cats, protective of their squeaking young, in the alleys behind the apartment. He’d even seen it in the Father as he washed and tenderly polished the fastback sedan until it glittered just how the ocean glittered blue on Link television.
The Father was his father. And all fathers cared for their children. That’s what the childcare house minders said.
Maybe one day, he’d discover that was true.