By Brianna Di Monda

I told my roommate not to get a rat. But I knew she wouldn’t listen—I’d stopped wearing makeup or painting my nails, I’d buzzed my hair, and I stayed inside on the weekends. Last winter, I’d worn the same fur coat every night and drank until I forgot my address and threw up in the street. I’d lost my authority by getting soft, and maybe also by admitting I wasn’t as femme as I thought.

She got the pet rat. It cost five dollars. She picked it out of a box in the back of a Petco. Dozens of rats crawled over each other, and all would feed the snakes available for adoption. She picked a white one and named it Dabs. One night, its ear started bleeding, and she shook me awake and asked what she was supposed to do. The whole rat was wet and red, just like her face. I took it to the bathroom and used a damp towel to wipe the blood off its fur. And when it died within three months, she did not look at me; if she had, our friendship would have ended sooner.

~

Marco gave my dad his first art supplies and paid for more when they ran out. My dad couldn’t have afforded them on his own. Marco helped him become something more than a carpenter. He taught him how to draw and encouraged him to study architecture. The first and only time I met Marco, we sat at his kitchen table, and he smiled when he realized I was Fede’s daughter. From the way he stared, I knew he loved me more than I would ever love him. Because in me, he saw my father and my father’s father. Before I left, he told me to have a good life. He closed the front door, and I sobbed on the sidewalk.

Marco died of depression. After his wife passed away that summer, he went in the fall. He couldn’t hold on without her. And when my grandfather died, my dad asked me to speak at his funeral. But I said I didn’t know him, that he was just a voice on the phone. I was six. These men—they loved me so much, and I have no idea who they are.

~

After Dabs died, my roommate bought a Chia Pet. It sat on her shelf for months, until she got sick of watering and threw it away. But while it was up, it reminded her that this was the best she could do as a parent. For me it signified another life gone. If you want to know where rats go to die, all you have to do is look under the piles of garbage in the street. Follow the alley cats and watch them pull writhing bodies out of the satin black mounds. Or try under their owner’s bed, where we found Dabs after he’d been missing for three days.

I was the one who saw him. I got down on my knees and brought his body, hard as a rock, into the light. I came face to face with death. I saw the difference: the flat eyes, the head no longer titled, the nose no longer wiggling. Those eager, inquisitive gestures—all gone. And then, the body in a plastic bag. My roommate dug a hole in the park and buried him in a blue towel. I didn’t go to the funeral. I still haven’t been to a funeral. I saw her calls coming in and put my phone on silent. I watched a cat slink into the park and kept walking.