Rat-at-tat.

I spot the swinjey…ole, dry-up…potato skin suddenly the other morning on we kitchen window sill. Horror swell-up in me like music in a dramatical movie, slow, rising to a crescendo. “Mummyyyyyyyyy,” I scream. “If you keep putting food-things here I gon pack up me traps and move out, I can’t take it no more.”

“I want to plant it, man,” my mother say in a nonchalant tone.

“I ain’t care, don’t leave it there, it gon attract…attract…” I couldn’t finish the sentence. “I leaving…gone…”

By no measuring stick you can say me is a bad daughter. Threatening my mother with such a drastic measure, that I gon skip town and country all because of one ole piece o’ potato skin, might make me sound like a dreadful daughter, but hear me out, hear me plight.

First, let me explain. When I say I gon flee, I am being typical product of me society. This is flight or fright territory. As soon as a two-legged rat, that is, a bandit, walk too bold people does say, I gon pack up me traps and migrate. It was a four-legged rat that had me in the grip of terror the other morning. Or rather, the memory of it.

The tamasha...trouble...start up late last year, just before my mother go back Abroad. Then, signs of a rat in the house appear like signs of somebody doing obeah…black magic…to a’ enemy. Here, a plantain get bite-up. There, a papaya get chomp-up in vicious chunks, like a’ whole hungry army been feeding. My mother buy a trap, I set it, the food vanish and the trap mysteriously end up in a different spot.

Me and Rehanna (cleaning-girl) smell the creature in hide-away corners. It was a high-stinking smell, like a dead-man bussing through a crack in a grave. But we can’t see the creature.

Rehanna say, “G, how me scared. I does think, what I gon do if I see it.”

I feel good when she say so because, as we all know, misery love company. The good feeling didn’t last though.

Cry and the whole world does laugh at you.

I learn this late last year soon after the signs of the rat. In me grief I couldn’t finish me breakfast. I push away the last bit of toast. Maybe if I exhibit enough horror my mother gon change she mind about going Abroad; she gon stay here and baby sit me, keep me safe from the rat.

My mother look at the last piece o’ toast. “You leaving that for your boyfriend?”

“Eh?”

“The rat. You leaving that piece o’ bread for he?”

Lis confirm this snickering-like behaviour that very same day. “Ow, the poor ole rat is in love with you,” she say in a’ email. “He musta say, ow, look a nice girl in this house, let me stay here and rest me ole eyes by gazing at she.”

Me sister didn’t exactly laugh. “Talk to it, apologise to it,” she email. “You got to get rid of it, yes, because rats does spread disease. Feed it poison but apologise to it and explain why you got to do that.” She is such a softie, a real bleeding-heart.

Some people take to naming the creature. Me best friend in the whole wide world call it The Midnight Rambler.

Me second brother ask me on the phone, “How is Al Zaquari?”

“Eh?”

“The rat. Isn’t it terrorising you? Oh, oh, I have a suggestion. Put up signs around the house that say BEWARE OF BAD CAT. And the rat gon read it and get really scared and run away.”

If I wasn’t so horrified I woulda give it a name too. Bolo. Everybody in Guyana know Bolo. He is the big, bad, bullying, bone-breaking character in them Chinese movies.

Soon after my mother gone Abroad, Zaquari-Bolo start to torment me.

(To be continued…I gone to lie down people, remembering this rat make me have ten nervous breakdowns…)