The White Guinea Pig

by Ursula Dubosarksy

  ‘Pitter patter rain is falling down!’ Tory sang, a monotonous song she had learned at childcare, but which seemed to her endlessly entertaining. ‘Pitter patter rain is falling down!’

  Ezra made her breakfast—Weetbix with warm milk and brown sugar. She liked it all mushed up, one caramel-coloured blur of food. She fed herself with her own pink plastic spoon.

  ‘Is it good?’ said Ezra’s father, squeezing her shoulders. ‘Is it delicious?’

  ‘Tory!’ called their mother from the bedroom. ‘Come in and give me a kiss!’

  Ezra made himself raisin toast, and ate three pieces. The rain was easing. He decided to go for a bike ride. Sunday mornings were always good for riding, as there was so little traffic, and he loved the way the wheels on the wet roads made the water shoot up with a splashing whirr on his legs. Tory would be cross—she didn’t like him to go out without her, but perhaps they’d let her watch television that morning, to keep her out of the mud and give them a bit of peace.

  He put his plate on the sink, then went back to his room to get a jumper. Tory was in his parents’ bedroom, screeching and laughing. He didn’t say goodbye, just muttered to his father, who was tossing coffee grounds into the front flower-bed, that he was going out on his bike. The handlebars were cold and wet, and he pushed the front gate shut behind him with his foot and started down the black shining hill.

  He rode around the almost-silent suburban streets, turning circles and figures of eight on the wide roads, feeling the wet leaves of low hanging branches brush into his face, leaving drops on his cheeks like cold tears. An elderly man with a sack was delivering leaflets; some children he knew by sight were playing hopscotch and throwing stones on the footpath. The shops were closed, but there was a pile of papers and an honesty box outside the newsagent. In the distance, but not too far off, he heard a siren—police, ambulance, fire? He was never sure which was which. The minister, in black shirt and trousers, was carrying a cardboard box into the back of the sandstone church, talking and nodding to his wife who ran along beside him. Ezra span his wheels with pleasure by all of them, and began to feel warm and thirsty.

  He must have been out nearly half an hour. By the time he came home, it was all over. Tory was dead. He didn’t turn the corner and see it happen, he wasn’t even able to call out, ‘Tory! Be careful!’ He didn’t know what happened, and he was never able to ask.

  He turned past the church, braking down the black tar hill to their house. He saw the ambulance and a police car. He heard wailing, human wailing, not a siren. He had never heard anyone wail before, and this was his mother, though he didn’t recognise her voice.

  He jumped off his bike. Tory was on a stretcher in the ambulance, and his parents beside her, kissing her. She was covered with blood. She was broken and grotesque. She was undeniably dead. He turned his face. He never saw her again. He didn’t kiss her. He hadn’t even bothered to kiss her goodbye when he left the house that morning.

  The rest of the day, he scarcely knew what happened. He stayed near his parents, he knew that, because he remembered how tightly his father held his hand all day, so much that at night his fingers were bruised and throbbing.

  He thought he remembered seeing the white truck that ran her over parked outside their house, and the man who drove it, and the police talking to him, but he couldn’t be sure. Perhaps his memory had just made it up afterwards. He didn’t ask his parents—not that day, not ever—what had happened, how Tory came to be on the road, how the driver hadn’t seen her, were they inside, were they in the garden? Did Tory scream, did she cry out? He knew some things, just from listening, but he was told nothing.

  Tory was dead. It had even been reported in the newspaper: four small smudgy black and white lines. Your name in the paper. People cut those sort of things out and stick them in scrap-books to show their friends. Had his parents cut it out? Had they just thrown the paper away, wrapped potato peel in it? What could you do with it? Ezra remembered the time when he had nerved himself into throwing out a copy of the Bible. The pages were tattered and half-unreadable, still he expected God to strike him dead any moment. But it was Tory who was struck dead, and ruined all their lives.

  Ezra didn’t go to her funeral, he didn’t want to. He went to school instead, and sent his parents alone. Tory was buried that Thursday afternoon.

  They moved house after it happened. Their new suburb was just the same and even the house itself was not all that different, but at least it was a house that had never known Tory. And they lived next door to and went to school with and bought milk and bread from people who had never known Tory. She was their own deep, private secret.

  It was because of Tory that Ezra became interested in Animal Liberation. He’d found a pamphlet in the local library, and for him the message was very simple and true—life is valuable and nothing should die unnecessarily. Oh how true it was. How he believed it.

  He told his parents he was no longer going to eat meat or wear leather shoes. He sent in his Animal Liberation membership, torn off from the bottom of the library pamphlet, and started getting letters and phone calls from adults after nine o’clock at night. His mother brought home a paperback recipe book, Delicious and Nutritious Ways to Feed a Growing Vegetarian, that the doctor had apparently recommended and which Ezra thought made him sound like some kind of exotic South American lizard. Then he began going to Animal Liberation meetings, which his father dutifully drove him to, as if he were taking him to the Wolf Cubs or miniature-car racing.

  Ezra was always the youngest by far at these meetings, and he never said anything, beyond a ‘hello’ and ‘thank you’ for biscuits made without animal products and cups of honey-sweet tea. They all smiled at him and called him by name and some of them even shook his hand when he arrived.

  Ezra couldn’t have said he positively enjoyed the meetings, but he got used to them. There was always a lot of quarrelling in rather formal language, over what letter to write or whose conference to picket, and then someone would read out something outrageous or wonderful from a book or magazine, and they would discuss it. Well, fight about it, particularly two elderly ladies who always came together and apparently even lived together, but who seemed to have distinctly different but equally firmly held opinions on just about everything. Sometimes the rest of the members would just leave them to it, and sit back in the bean-bags and armchairs, munching on the sweet food, until eventually someone would look at their watch and start clearing their throat and suggest a vote of thanks to their host for this month’s invaluable meeting.

  Ezra sighed. He had a photo of Tory on his bookshelf, and he looked at it often, without tears. His parents had photos too, throughout the house, some of them framed, some of them with him in them as well, his arms around her little shoulders, or trying to carry her along the beach. He laid his head gently on his pillow, and looked up at the ceiling, letting the pamphlet about pain-free cosmetics fall onto the carpeted floor. He placed his hand over his chest and began to count his ribs.

  ‘Ezra! Telephone! It’s Simon!’ His mother called him from the kitchen. Clicking his tongue, as though he had been interrupted from an important business conference, he got himself up and went out. Simon was a man—well, a boy, really; he had just started university—from Animal Liberation. He was doing a degree in medieval Nordic languages, he told Ezra when they first met, and was very impressed by the advances made in animal welfare in Sweden. He’d taken a liking to Ezra, perhaps on account of his youth rather than his charms, as Ezra was generally taciturn and noncommittal in conversation. Simon usually rang Ezra a week or so before each meeting to check that he was coming.

  ‘Hello?’ said Ezra cautiously, as he picked up the phone.

  ‘Ezra! Simon here.’

  ‘Hello,’ repeated Ezra.

  ‘Right, well. I’m ringing to ask a bit of a favour, actually.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes,
well. You know Shirley?’

  ‘Yes,’ admitted Ezra. Shirley was one of their fellow Liberation members.

  ‘Well, she’s got chicken-pox.’

  ‘Oh.’ Chicken-pox? Ezra frowned. Surely only children got that. Shirley must be at least fifty. ‘Are you sure it’s not smallpox?’

  ‘And she can’t have this month’s meeting at her place, of course,’ continued Simon, ignoring this. ‘And we thought perhaps you could have it at your place instead.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Usual time, you know, three o’clock. Just for an hour or so.’

  ‘I’d have to ask my parents,’ said Ezra, in what he hoped was a discouraging tone. But this was lost on Simon, who only ever seemed to hear the words people said, not the voice they said them in.

  ‘Great! I’d have it here, but my situation’s pretty impossible, you know.’

  Simon lived at the university, in a tall grey building he shared with about one hundred and fifty other students. Ezra would have thought the university was an ideal place to hold a meeting, with all those box-like rooms, and rows and rows of folding chairs.

  ‘Okay then, Ezra. Thanks. I’ll let the others know. See you on Saturday.’

  Ezra laid the phone on its rest, twisting his lips. He went out to the living-room.

  ‘A meeting? Here?’ said Ezra’s father when he told them, holding the pause button over Paint Your Wagon.

  ‘How many people, Ezra?’ his mother asked, anxious. ‘Will they make a lot of noise?’ she added, perhaps thinking of televised reports of fierce protests outside fur boutiques.

  ‘I don’t know, about ten, I suppose,’ Ezra shrugged.

  ‘Animal Liberation,’ Ezra’s father said, thoughtfully. ‘I see.’

  ‘Everyone takes turns, do they, darling?’ asked his mother. ‘I mean, you have to do your bit.’

  ‘They bring food,’ said Ezra. ‘We’ll just have to make the cups of tea and stuff.’

  ‘Animal Liberation,’ Ezra’s father repeated, seemingly unable to think of anything else to say, certainly not a yes or no.

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ Ezra’s mother decided at last. ‘We’ll just have to keep out of your way, that’s all.’

  Ezra’s father looked from his son to his wife, eyebrows raised, with a nervous smile. Then he released the pause button, and the gaudy goldfields of California sprang back into sound and motion. The three of them turned their eyes to the screen obediently. But perhaps that night with less certainty of refuge than usual.

  5 · The Escape

  Geraldine woke up late the next morning. She’d been troubled by unpleasant dreams—well, dreams are always unpleasant, but these ones lingered uncomfortably long in her conscious mind and through her breakfast of toast and honey and milk.

  The dreams were about Alberta. An outsized, angel-white Alberta. An Alberta who found her way into their living-room to complain about the glare from the windows that was giving her a headache, and why didn’t they get themselves some proper blinds? And Geraldine’s mother had apologised: ‘I’m so sorry, Roberta, we’re too poor to buy any,’ and the white guinea-pig had flashed her wicked front teeth and replied frostily, ‘It’s Alberta, if you don’t mind.’

  What could this mean? She could ask Violetta, who’d read books about the meaning of dreams—well, she’d read books about the meaning of everything, really. But Violetta’s interpretations always seemed worse than the dreams themselves—it might be better not to know.

  Why on earth should she dream about Alberta in the living-room, safely tucked up in her father’s favourite armchair, ordering everyone about? Surely, it would be more sensible to dream of Alberta getting eaten by a dog, or dying suddenly of heart failure. Guinea-pigs did get heart failure, after all, she’d read it in one of those pet-care books. She’d even gone so far as imagining how she might bring such a thing on in Milly and Martha—a diet of chips and cream-cakes, perhaps, or a loud unexpected noise …

  In any case, she was too late getting to the bus-stop to talk to Ezra about keeping his mouth shut on the subject of Alberta. The bus-stop was the only place Ezra would speak with Geraldine in public. That was because there was no one else there, except Violetta, going over her notes on Chaucer or the laws of inertia. Once he got on the bus, he was unapproachable. He sat next to a boy younger than him from a different school, and together they chewed gobs of gum while they read war magazines, blowing out huge unappetising pink bubbles.

  The bus took them down to the wharf where the big blue and white ferry was harnessed, waiting to take its load of school children and office workers into the city. The boys Ezra’s age from his school lounged about outside smoking cigarettes and talking about things that embarrassed him. He and the bubblegum boy sat inside with all the murmuring adults.

  Geraldine sat outside on the lower deck, even in winter, when it was freezing. Then she and her friends wore black duffle coats and breathed grey mist out of their mouths, pretending they were in Siberia. When the fog was thick, the sky ahead was bright white like a painted cloud and you could see nothing at all, so you might as well be anywhere, although perhaps not Siberia. The ferry would come to a stop and drift in the strange light, blowing its horn and sounding like a lonely elephant that had lost its herd. Then all the children on board would relax and start talking loudly and run up and down the decks, knowing they would be legitimately late for school.

  Geraldine tried to catch Ezra that morning on the gang-plank when they arrived at Circular Quay, but he refused to acknowledge her, stalking off through the turnstiles, lugging his scratched black school bag. As much as anyone as small and thin as Ezra could be said to stalk, that is. Geraldine’s mother always said how it tore her heartstrings to see little Ezra struggle off in the morning with that great black bag. But Geraldine was not deceived by his size. She knew there was nothing pathetic about Ezra.

  She didn’t catch him on the way home from school that afternoon either, as she had to stay late for a recorder practice. They were preparing for a performance at some unspecified (and possibly unwelcome?) date in the future—a piece called ‘Schwanda the Bagpipe Player’. They’d been practising for so long now that they all knew their parts as well as their times tables, which took some of the gusto out of their playing, and the tune had developed a rather dirge-like drag to it.

  Alma usually played the triangle at these rehearsals, pinging erratically at every fourth or fifth bar—their teacher was never sure which—but of course, she was not there that day. Far, far away, thought Geraldine, bitterly. Where had she gone—Finland? The Galapagos Islands? As she blew air through her recorder, Geraldine wondered if she could try the same strategy as Alma and off-load Alberta onto someone else—and who knows, maybe even Milly and Martha at the same time? Someone who might want guinea-pigs—there must be such people.

  The late ferry that afternoon didn’t get her home until just on six o’clock. It was already dark as she stepped off the connecting bus and turned down the street leading to her home. She pushed open the front wooden gate and banged her way into the living-room.

  She heard with a shock the sound of her mother crying and she felt sick in the stomach. Parents didn’t cry—that was something you grew out of, like wearing nappies. She walked slowly through the hall and peered around the corner.

  Her mother was sitting alone at the dining-room table, her face in her hands, elbows resting on the long white pages spread out before her.

  ‘Mum?’ said Geraldine. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘No,’ said Geraldine’s mother, not looking up.

  Geraldine hesitated, then turned around and ran down to Violetta’s room. Violetta was bent over her desk with a cassette recorder, playing a French tape.

  ‘What’s wrong with Mum?’ said Geraldine, coming up from behind.

  Violetta jumped. ‘Don’t sneak up on me like that, Gerry!’
r />   ‘What’s wrong with Mum?’ Geraldine repeated. ‘She’s crying.’

  Violetta sighed and twisted round on her chair. She pressed the pause button on the recorder.

  ‘You know, Geraldine. Dad’s business.’

  ‘But why is she crying like that? Where’s Dad?’

  ‘He went to the doctor,’ replied Violetta. ‘About half-an-hour ago.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’

  Violetta released the pause button. ‘Il voudrait mieux de ne pas aller au manifestation avec Luc,’ advised the machine.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Violetta. ‘He’s got a pain in his stomach, or something.’

  ‘Since when?’

  ‘Parce-qu’il n’est jamais bien habillé,’ replied Violetta, staring down at the table like her mother, shoulders hunched. She had a very nice accent.

  Geraldine walked quickly out of Violetta’s room to her own and flopped down face-forward on the bed. Her room was grey and dark in the dusk.

  She sat up and looked out the window. Across the fence she saw the lights on in Ezra’s house and heard the faint sound of television. She wondered what they were watching—probably something solemn and dull, like the news or today’s parliamentary highlights. She flopped back down on the bed.

  She hoped there was nothing too wrong with her father. Apart from going bankrupt, of course, and there wasn’t much a doctor could do for that. What would happen to them all, she wondered. Would they have to go and live in Brazil, and move house every six months, pursued by heartless creditors?

  She could hear the pigs squeaking, mewling, wanting their evening pellets. Tears came unaccountably into her eyes at the thought of them. Poor hungry little things. Why should they be so afraid of her? Why couldn’t they love her, just a little bit?