Listen

by Pil Lee

Nothing says welcome like a dead rat on the front porch. James has let his snake out again and it has left me a little gift. I kick it off to the side where Kitty waits patiently and let myself carefully into the house.

I can sense that James is waiting for me to come into his room so I deliberately turn away from the light at the end of the passage and make an unwanted pot of tea in the kitchen.

I know I won’t be alone with the tan checked linoleum for long, but I don’t know what sound I’ll hear. Will it be his footsteps at the doorway or will it be the soft rasp of a cool dry body winding around the fridge and then the table leg?

I stand at attention beside the sink, stirring and stirring the sugar that has long since dissolved, not looking behind me but listening with ears that almost hurt. And yes, there it is near the fridge and then it moves to the table. My leg muscles clench and my ankles feel like they will whimper, they want to run. Then the rustling leaves the table leg and I try to use a third ear to know if James is watching from the doorway and laughing under his breath, but there is no third ear and my two real ears are so fixed on the sound on the floor that they weigh down my head, they pull my eyelids almost closed and my neck stretches tight as a drum behind me.

Kitty jumps up on the sink beside the teapot. The tea scalds my hand and tears mist my vision and distract my ears. I turn around quickly but there is nothing else shadowing the gray striped laminates. There is no James in the doorway, there is no rat-present-giver on the floor.

I try to pat Kitty but I think about the rats and my hand doesn’t make it that far. I reach past and open the window and hope she will go out by herself.

I stand then, with my hand on the window latch, for a while, just waiting, and I realise that I’m not sure what to do. I’m ready to fight James on the cracked laminate, I’ve rehearsed it so many times in my head that when he has me down I do nothing because I have spent all my energy in my mind trial, but I haven’t rehearsed doing nothing. I haven’t measured my split times on a hot uninterrupted teapot at the sink. I haven’t coached a cat-and-latch opening performance. My ears are still aching as they strain for that silk on rice paper sound along a floor which should be confettied with red drops of blood from the pain of listening, but I am alone in a silent kitchen so I decide to move out into the hall.

The light silhouettes me. It is from James’ room so my shadow falls on the glass of the front door. Passers by would see my outline from the street, larger at first then sharper but smaller as I move towards the end of the hall. I stop just outside James’ open door, and the people on the street, who could they be, is there anyone else in the world but us in this house, they would see me swaying slightly, in the one spot for a while, almost like a snake charmer’s dancer.

(unfinished)