Rat Rash
At first we didn’t understand what Gran was saying. We looked down at Emily, her belly pink as bacon.
“Rap rash?” we asked.
Gran shook her head. “You’ve got vermin in your house.”
Barry and I put traps in the pantry and poison in the garage. We searched the floors for droppings. At night we lay awake, listening for little feet. Emily got worse — her lungs wheezed, her lips swelled. The doctor stared at her belly like it was a rare bird, then gave us cortisone cream. After a week we checked the traps — still nothing.
Emily began to seize and we rushed her to the hospital. When we got back, Gran was pacing the house. She looked at our empty traps, our little untouched bricks of poison. She shook her head again.
“It’s not always the rodent kind that does it,” she said.
At the funeral I couldn’t look Barry in the eye. I kept thinking, was it him? Was it me?