going wrong when I was ten, the death of the mouse seemed almost like a sign from God. Looking back, perhaps it was.
I was in fifth grade, and my mother had cancer. It was a word then, not something I really understood, just knew adults were very afraid of that word. I also knew that my mother was in the hospital a lot and I heard words murmured here and there about breasts being removed, and she was sad and tired and holding on to me more. I knew that my long hair had been cut for the first time in my life, cut because other people had convinced her that cutting it was something that needed to be done, something to make her life easier. But I think my hair was just something else she lost that year. Those were the things I knew, even in fifth grade.
The mouse was a classroom pet. It was brown and white and Mrs. Hobbs had allowed us to have it. It would sleep most of the time, but now and then it would run in its exercise wheel. Doreen Summers, who was my best friend, had brought it to school. Mrs. Hobbs said that if Doreen and I shared the responsibility of taking care of it, we could keep the mouse at school.
No sweat. Doreen and I were what they used to call “good citizens” in school. We were Girl Scouts in the same troop. We were two good Catholic girls who went to catechism class together. Of course, we also kept each other updated on any new cusswords and phrases we had learned. (Our favorite at the start of fifth grade: “A dirty devil’s behind in hell.” Her brother taught us that one.)
We were each ornery in our own way, and got into our share of trouble, but we knew how to take care of a mouse. We had each had hamsters as pets, and taking care of the mouse was not too much different. Every day, you put in fresh water and some food. Once a week, you cleaned the cage. Doreen couldn’t stand that job, but allergies had long inhibited my sense of smell, so I didn’t mind as much. Still, she didn’t shirk her duties. Doreen would take care of the mouse one week, I would take care of the mouse the next week. With a typical children’s sense of fairness, we decided that if one of us was absent on her mouse-caring day, she would have to make up a day for it at the beginning of the next week.
In October, a new girl came to school. Her name was Lindy and she was pretty and smart. Mrs. Hobbs liked Lindy so much, sometimes she hired Lindy to babysit her children. Only later would I wonder about the judgement of a woman who would leave several young children in the care of a ten-year-old. At the time, it just made Lindy seem all the more superior.
Lindy hated me. I have figured out the part about the dead mouse in everybody’s pocket, but I still haven’t figured out exactly what made Lindy single me out as the object of her hatred. Maybe it was because I looked like a target: unsure of myself with my short haircut; noticing that Doreen wasn’t exactly flat-chested anymore; worrying about what it meant to have my best friend grow breasts and my mother lose hers; wondering why adults shook their heads and looked at me with pitying faces when the cancer word was whispered. Or maybe I sparked some silly set of insecurities in Lindy.
Whatever her reasons, Lindy ridiculed me at every turn.
Gradually, she even wooed Doreen away from me. Soon, taking care of the mouse was the only connection Doreen and I had to one another. She dropped out of Scouts, which Lindy had declared was something for “kids.” Doreen’s mother still made her go to catechism, but we stopped walking over to church together.
I started going home for lunch more often, choosing to lose a few minutes to the walk home over sitting in the school cafeteria, watching Lindy snicker with Doreen as they looked over at me. I took long walks around the schoolyard by myself at recess. For the first time, I dreaded going school. When the flu went around that year, I caught it twice. I was glad to be sick with it. Throwing up was better than school.
One cold Monday morning, Mrs. Hobbs opened the classroom door, and let us in. The students who sat near the corner where the mouse cage was kept immediately complained of a smell. The mouse was dead.
Mrs. Hobbs was furious, angrily demanding that Doreen and I come over to the cage. “The mouse has starved to death,” she shouted, even though we were right next to her. “Which one of you was supposed to be feeding it?”
I looked at the cage in horror. No food. No water. I envisioned the little mouse, trapped, unable to do anything but starve. I started crying.
Doreen said with certainty that it was my turn to feed the mouse, I stammered that I thought it was Doreen’s. I was trying to figure out if that was true, even as I said it. I counted back on my fingers, confused, because each of us had been out for parts of the previous two weeks with the flu. Lindy proclaimed it was my turn. That settled it as far as Mrs. Hobbs was concerned. After all, I had been showing an amazing lack of attention to everything connected to school lately.
“Get rid of it. Get rid of it right now,” she said. “Take the cage out to the trash bin behind the cafeteria.” It was clear to everyone in the classroom who she was giving the assignment to. Doreen went back to her seat.
I picked up the mouse cage with the dead mouse in it and walked out of the classroom. I hadn’t had time to take my coat off yet, so I didn’t have to go back to my desk or do anything else to prolong my time in the hated classroom. My nose was running and I could hardly see for my tears, but I walked out to the big metal trash bin. I set the cage down on the ground near the bin, took out some tissue and blew my nose. I tried to calm myself. I opened the little wire door on the cage and took the mouse out.
His body was cold and stiff, but his fur was still soft and he seemed very small in my own small hand. I dropped the cage into the dumpster, but I didn’t put the mouse in with it.
I stood there, crying, wishing I was the one who was dead. I asked the mouse to forgive me for killing it, and asked God to please forgive me, too. I knew that Mrs. Hobbs had told me do something and that probably I should put the mouse in there and go back to class, to accept whatever happened as my penance for killing the mouse, even if I wasn’t the one who had killed it. It was at least a venial sin, I figured, to not have checked on the mouse on Friday.
The biggest problem for me at that point wasn’t facing Lindy or Doreen or Mrs. Hobbs or the class. It was ignominiously putting the mouse in the Dumpster without a Christian burial. All of my dearly departed hamsters were interred in a shady spot in my backyard. The class mouse, I decided, should rate at least as much consideration.
I wavered for a while, then went into the girls’ bathroom. I carefully pulled off two paper towels and made a makeshift shroud of them. I gently tucked the dead mouse into my coat pocket. I wouldn’t go back to class, I decided. I would just walk home. I washed my swollen, reddened face and scrubbed my hands, and left the bathroom.
The janitor was standing in the hallway outside.
“What are you doing out of class so long?” he asked.
“Our mouse died,” I said, “Mrs. Hobbs asked me to get rid of it.” Not a lie, really, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I hadn’t finished my assignment.
“Better not have plugged up the toilet,” he growled, then seeing my face, gently added, “Sorry about the mouse. They don’t live very long anyway. Go on back to class now, it’ll be okay.”
I couldn’t talk, let alone tell him that I was just about to ditch school for the first time in my life. Under his watchful gaze, I walked back to the classroom. I decided I would go home for lunch, and bury the mouse then.
Mrs. Hobbs might have felt bad about yelling, because she didn’t say anything when I came back into the class. She didn’t call on me, or even ask why I was still wearing my coat. Maybe she didn’t even look at me; I couldn’t say for sure, because I was just staring at the top of my desk, not saying anything to anyone, just wishing for two things: that it would be lunch time and that my hair would miraculously grow longer again so that I could hide behind the curtain of it.
But I hadn’t been back in the class for an hour before the kid sitting next to me complained that something smelled bad. I knew what he was smelling, even though I couldn’t smell it myself.
Mrs. Hobbs demanded an explanation. When I started to tell her that I wanted to take the mouse home and give it a funeral, she looked like she wished corporal punishment would be immediately reinstated. I looked helplessly to Doreen, who had officiated at some of the backyard ceremonies. She was silent. Mrs. Hobbs wasn’t. Apparently, pets in Mrs. Hobbs’ household were not given funerals. She told me to go back out, and this time, do as I was told.
I left the classroom hearing laughter. It seemed to start near where Lindy was sitting.
I didn’t go to the trash bin. I went home.
My mother was sleeping. She had been awake earlier, but I knew that since she had gone to the hospital, she
