John Marsden - Incurable

If Gavin’s in his own bed I stop by on my way to the shower and give him the first of what will be a number of prods or shakes or pushes. The one sure way to get him out of bed is to kiss him, but I’m reluctant to use that tactic too often in case it loses its power.

The bathroom, yeah, well, it’s not too good at the moment because of the rats. It would be nice not to have rats, not now not ever, but it’s a part of our life that I suppose will never change. People from the city think we must live in filth and slime if we have rats but it’s not like that at all. I’m quite tidy and Gavin’s not bad and Mum was always pretty neat. Every year we get waves of mice and/or rats, and they arrive with no warning. Each time we wage war against them and eventually they’re gone, either because we’ve defeated them, or because the owls and feral cats and magpies have wiped them out, or because they’ve heard rumours of a great new chocolate factory down the road. Whatever, they go, and sometimes it’ll be twelve months before the new lot check in.

But it is really disgusting to wander into the bathroom half asleep and find rat droppings all over the floor and the soap half chewed and a roll of toilet paper that they’ve dragged to their hole and eaten away so they can make a nice soft nest with it. You wouldn’t want to wipe your bum with that paper.

So this particular morning I picked up the droppings using a tissue and dropped them into our loo and flushed them away, cos I knew I wouldn’t have time to clean the floor properly till this afternoon or tonight, then I chucked out the soap and the loo paper. We had friends from the city years ago who’d never seen rat droppings and didn’t know what they were, and when they found a half chewed apple in the fruit bowl, surrounded by these little black pellets, they thought someone had eaten part of the apple and put the rest back, so they cut it up and gave it to their little daughter. God, I practically vomited when I realised.

I put some Ratsak right down the hole, but they don’t seem to be eating it at the moment. Then I blocked the hole with steel wool, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. Not far away was a perfect little star on the floor, a daddy-long-legs, with a solid circular black body. I’d never seen one quite like him, so neat and precise. When I counted, he had only seven legs, poor thing. I thought he was dead but I wasn’t sure so I touched him really fast and he didn’t move but I still suspected him and flicked him again and then a third time and he suddenly came to life and went scurrying away on his seven good legs.

My last encounter with a spider had been just a few weeks ago when I’d been getting a bag off the top of my wardrobe. I’d pulled it down and taken it into the dining room to pack it with stuff for school. As I started chucking in the books I felt a tickling across my scalp. ‘Dear God,’ I prayed, ‘please let it not be a spider.’ I thought, ‘I’ll go to the mirror, look calmly into it, and if there’s a spider crawling through my hair I am not going to panic.’

I went to the mirror, looked calmly into it, saw the biggest huntsman of all time crawling through my hair, and panicked. I scrabbled madly at my hair but I couldn’t dislodge the spider. Now I’d made it mad. I imagined it going into attack mode and filling my brain with venom. Amazingly, it didn’t do this, and I was able to have a second go, which was more successful. I swear, he was the size of my ear, and that’s not counting his legs.

Yes, between rats and spiders, not to mention fights to the death with armed enemy soldiers, life was never dull.

Anyway, I took my shower. I’m a long-shower person, because I find it the best place to think. We have a pretty good supply of water at the moment, so I can indulge myself. My favourite shampoo is the citrus with a touch of ginseng, Sunsilk I think. I have no idea whether it is any good for my hair, but it smells so good I have to stop myself from drinking it.

On the way back I generally chuck another load in the washing machine, or unload it from the night before. I pay a second visit to Gavin, then get to my bedroom, pick out which of my wardrobe of dazzling Wirrawee High School uniforms I’m going to wear, get dressed, call on Gavin’s room to deliver the very last final you’d-better-move-right-now-buddy warning, and then tackle the kitchen. It’s fairly embarrassing how many times I have to start by cleaning up from dinner the night before, and no, that’s not the reason we have rats, but once that’s done I can think about breakfast and lunch.

Neither Gavin nor I are big on breakfasts, especially since the money got so tight we can’t afford Coco Pops or Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. If I’ve got time and I’m in a good mood I’ll make porridge, which Gavin quite likes but which I’m not mad about. I just have the boring Weet-Bix with as little sugar as I can manage or some bread and jam. If the bread’s fresh I just eat bread, but if it’s stale I toast it. If the day ever comes when I get sick of bread I’ll starve to death.

By the time I’ve started eating, Gavin is probably stumbling down the corridor to the bathroom, or, on a good day, he might even be coming back showered and clean. Then he’s likely to lean against me and let me feed him pieces of bread or toast, like he’s a little bird in a nest. He seems to need this to give him the energy to go all the way to his bedroom and do the dressing thing.

As I’m eating, as well as feeding Gavin I’m also starting on the lunches. He likes the good old sandwiches with the conventional fillings, like cheese and Vegemite, chicken, or last weekend’s roast lamb with sliced tomato. He’ll still be leaning into me as I pop another square of toast into his greedy little mouth, and at the same time he has the cheek to complain about everything Fm doing with his sandwiches. ‘Err! Err! No more pepper!’

I prefer something a bit more exotic for lunch, which I’ll usually do the night before. I tried making sushi once but that was a disaster. When I say exotic, I don’t normally mean as exotic as sushi, but something like quiche or curried lamb shanks or vege kebabs.

By now the pace is starting to pick up. There might be time for coffee or there might not but there’s usually time for juice at least. I chuck a bit of fruit or a few cookies in the lunch boxes and close them up. I flick plates and cutlery at the dishwasher. I persuade Gavin to go back to his room to get dressed and I achieve this in a variety of ways depending on the mood I’m in and the mood he’s in. It could be putting him over my shoulder and running down there with him, or yelling at him to get a move on, or flicking at him with the fly swat.

I leave him to it and do a quick burn outside. I let the chooks and ducks out and scatter three tins of seed for them. Most of the seed goes to the rosellas, who’ve learnt that the Lintons’ is the place to be at around six forty-five a.m. I swear, they email each other to let everyone know there’s a free feed. As well as the rosellas, who are pretty, there’s the currawongs, who aren’t, and who steal the eggs; the magpies, who make a beautiful noise in the mornings and who are really cheeky; and the crows, who sound like death every day. We’re still investigating which bird tore the last lot of ducklings apart. When the mother ducks hatch their clutch of eggs — and they can do big numbers, like eighteen if they put in the effort — we leave them locked in the yard for weeks, until the little ones are old enough to look after themselves. But with the last lot we had a disaster. Under one of the doors was a gap just big enough for a duckling. Eight out of the flock of eleven squeezed under it and found themselves in the great outdoors. That was the end of their little lives. Something attacked them and pecked them to death one by one. I got home from school and found these tiny bodies, each one with terrible wounds, and a couple of them flattened as though they’d been stood on as well.