Murder of Innocence

When I was twelve, two tiny pet rats taught me the truth about cruelty. This story is one of the hardest I’ve written, but it was also a turning point in how I began to understand my father — and myself.

Disclaimer: this post contains a detailed description of animal cruelty.

When I was around twelve, I got a pet rat. She was tiny, helpless and endlessly curious. I named her Krokė because I was obsessed with crocodiles at the time. She would sit on my shoulder, crawl around my arms. She was the cutest thing I had ever seen and I was completely attached.

Soon my brother wanted one too, so we got a second rat and named her Dina. We loved letting them loose in our room, watching them mantle up the crack behind the closet and leap down to the floor. I built them a little house from a toy building set. They were our first pets and they filled our hearts with joy.

My dad didn’t care for the rats. He didn’t value our joy; our love for them was just a nuisance to him. He said they were smelly and insisted we change the sawdust in the cage every day, which we sometimes forgot to do.

One weekend, our family went to the Baltic Sea. Bringing the rats was out of the question. I filled their water and food and said goodbye, thinking they’d be fine for a couple of days. At the last minute, my dad decided to put them on the balcony “because of the smell.”

The balcony was enclosed by glass windows. I remember his face as he shut the last one — the sly, satisfied smile. I didn’t know why it chilled me, but something deep in me knew this was a warning.

While we were out, the balcony turned into a glasshouse sauna in the summer sun. When I got back, the tiny bodies of Krokė and Dina lay stiff and swollen inside the house I had built. My hands shook as I took them out. My heart broke as I realized they were gone.

I bawled. No one comforted me. My parents were busy with my uncle’s family that was visiting. Someone, probably my dad, suggested it was my fault, that I hadn’t left them enough water. I couldn’t untangle myself from the guilt, but the message was clear: don’t cross me, or you can be gotten rid of just as easily. The terror.

That day put a nail in the coffin of my childhood. I couldn’t cry for over twenty years after that.

A part of me knew I had to get away from the family that raised me. I began hatching my escape plan: to attend high school in another city, then leave the country for college. I made it happen when I was sixteen. I got as far away as I could, I never admitted to myself why, but now I have clarity.

I never wanted to be like my dad. I banished my own masculinity to make sure I’d never resemble him and his violence. Ironically, I always looked like him. And to this day, every time I look in the mirror, I see his ghost staring back at me but the blood no longer freezes in my veins because now I know the art of shaping my water.