Guantanamo Babe

I ducked under the large curtains in my room and pulled open the door to the garden, it flew so fast it smashed loudly against the frame freeing loose little pieces of plaster which sprinkled to ground, carried on beams with clouds of lint. 

I sat on the other side, on the floor and smoked and watched TV all morning in a little patch of sun between brown folds.

When the afternoon came I pulled the string to let the sun in.  Next to my place on the ground, where the doors crossed, was Fred Barry, though I did not yet know his name.  He was a beautiful frog, large, the best I’ve ever seen.  

One of his long, muscular legs was bent round - prisoned into the glass frame of two doors crossing.  He was trapped and hot.  I poured water on him and pried him free with a pencil, ripping apart the leg and there was dark blood all about.

He died in the garden, everyone moved him about trying to make him comfortable but this wasn’t fair; he was dying so I made them leave him and every now and then I came over and poured water, and he lifted up head with his front paws for the skin to drink it, to slide it over his back, cooling away the gore.

*

Pacing and pacing, though there is no room for it.  The room is fabulously boxy - you could imagine the large shoes that would fit in it - so she pushes from wall to wall, walking the narrow line so she can spin, and crash, and almost to cartwheel back again through the space she frees.  Pushing and turning like this she ploughs about her mood.

She is around 17 years old but her face belies it now, messy and covered in texture, swollen ashen from crying in the urine atmosphere.  He had shaken her and she’d felt a heavy brain rattling, yet to cease.

She screams - hearing but not caring for the disgruntled adjustments of the rats on the table.

The cage takes up the one bit of space for which her gesticulations could find no use - too crowded by wood and old letters.  They were sprayed though, the rats, every now and then, with stray spittles, from the river of snot that ran sweetly across her quivering mounds.

Eventually she stopped moving, but needing something still, her hand would come slowly to rest and hold at her crying head, cupping it as she slid dramatically to floorboards to pool in adolescent waste.

Teo was there after. They sat side by side at the computer, pressed between wall and rats.   She was snivelling but smiling.  Teo asked to listen to her music and they did, laughing and commenting at the styles of their idols.

Old rat heard all this and slowly moved from the sleeping bodies of his young mistresses towards the open hatch.  He drew up his flanks beneath it and, waveringly; swaying with the gravity at his fat; aimed his tiny arms for the bars.

Teo was pleased with his sister’s choice - Arnie metal - it spoke of his joyings in ‘The Terminator’, attraction to leather, a bond with Arnold from their youth.  Their poses were the same, though she seemed to melt sometimes away, a ghost seeping into chair-back and grey wall.

Very slowly, and with hind legs swinging, the old rat dragged his slug-body over the bars and; making mumbles that attracted the children; shouldered his way to the edge of the bars and towards them.  He drew in his bottom when he had them, and perched, shiny eyed, snuffling.

These three sat together for a while, stroking and chatting while the girl rats sleep on.  Old Rat smiles at the young lady and she is so glad for that.  They beam at each other and find comfort.

Teo now sees that this is more worthy than music for his attentions right now - he slips out of the room to return with a medium-sized tree of broccoli and grins.  He moves it sneakily about his fingertips, raising eyebrows at Old Rat who clucks more quickly and loudly and twitches with a decision about whether or not to reach out.

Teo places it on the cage by him and pats his head with his palm, old rat pushes at it to better feel the affection.  When Teo is seated and we are both watching, he - eyes still on us smiling - starts to paw, and then nibble at the treasured lump.

We sit there until it gets light, and then we go to part.  Old Rat has finished the broccoli.

“Well done! Good boy! Wow,” Ana praises him like he’s a senile care-patient.  He huffs and they stroke him until he flops back inside.

“Goodnight Teo, thank you.”

*

In my dreams it has been kittens (though tinier, with demon faces and wings like squirrels) or rats and mice hiding in crowded rooms with open doors and big black boots to crush them.  That night it was frogs, and many, who came streaming through a crack in my door and into my room, flopping about, drying on the carpet.

They didn’t stop, it was a plague, they did not understand to be shooed away, they only came inside, piling and shiny green.  

I could not concentrate on them all, the live mixed with the squished and there were terrible wet noises everywhere on the ground, they were so small.  

They surged through the house, and it was clear when people had been there for the bodies made green footprints which bubbled on the carpets.  I had caused a scourge, all frogs knew I was not their friend, I have saved cats and rats in my dreams but the frogs did not care for me, or themselves.  They were anarchy.  

I thought this must be what is happening in my brain, racking itself with guilt, turning over until it was sludge and all I am is guilty and unhappy and I don’t know how to make up for it, for there are no animals to save since I failed with Fred Barry.  He baked bravely in sun for hours and the smoke of mine filled his pores until sweet water was all he might wish for and at least I gave him that.  And a burial, and a name.

*

The window over the cage is totally white with mist.  Sometime in the morning Old Rat has died.  His body lies stiff and long at the bottom of the cage where they pee.

I have to pick him up, he is Teo’s friend more than mine and I am very careful.  I have found fabric and a camera box of mine that he used to roost in.  These shall be his tomb.

His face looks noble, eyes not wide with senility but narrowed, determined.

He has blood on his mouth, maybe from the drop to the floor, removed from his sleeping brides.

They sniff the air at me and distrust me.

*

Teo has been crying.

We stand in the garden, cloaked with mist at all sides - walls reaching to white sky and more mist up high…

(It continues, I may have mislaid the rest, I may find it…)