A Thousand and One Plastic Bags

No one was going to make him leave the cupboard. If he wanted to stay in there forever, that was his choice. This was not a family that believed in rushing someone when they were grieving, and this was a kind of grieving. He was going to be dressed up in a tuxedo as soon as he got to the new house. Once a very small boutonniere was pinned to his lapel, he would be asked to perform four or five marriages before retreating to a new bedroom that would be much tinier than the one he was leaving behind.

His mother kept a thousand and one plastic bags in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, because you never know. That’s what she said whenever his father begged her to get rid of some of the bags. She would say “But you never know,” and that was the end of it. It turned out “You never know” is a hard thing to argue, because, truly, you really do never know. The boy nestled himself amongst the bags and nearly hit his head on a pipe. Picking up a dishwashing soap container, he understood why some people felt compelled to eat the tablets. They did look sugary, and he hadn’t eaten since he stormed out of breakfast when his father mentioned all the marriages he would have to officiate.

Being seven-years-old should exempt you from having to marry people, but this was not the case for him. He had to look up at the happy couples, help them exchange their vows, and then close his eyes while they kissed. In three years, he would be too old to marry anyone, nor would he be allowed to attend any weddings until his twenty-third birthday. Once he was forty-two, he’d be allowed to get married himself if he so desired, but he believed fervently that he would never want to do any such thing. Why bring someone into your home who stuffs a thousand and one plastic bags under your kitchen sink and tells you there’s nothing you can do about it? The boy scratched at the rash developing over his left wrist. He didn’t want to be found, but he did want to know that people were looking. Searching. Trying to find him before the moving van left and the electricity was turned off and creaks and belches of an old, empty house began.

Upstairs in her bedroom, his mother had fallen asleep by accident. She was supposed to have taken five pills for ear regrowth after the dachshund next door bit her right one off, and one pill for sleeping, but she got her numbers mixed up, and now her ear would take even longer to grow back and she was liable to sleep through the morning and into the night. Her son was in the cupboard downstairs and her husband was telling the movers that, no, he did not murder his family. No, he was not like those men in documentaries who, either driven by financial failure or the fear of a second spouse and offspring being discovered, suddenly goes from being a loving patriarch to a knife-wielding maniac. It didn’t help that he was saying this while holding a cleaver, but the family owned nearly twenty-two cleavers and each one had to be packed carefully. The father didn’t think to reflect on why they had so many cleavers. He was sure that if he asked his wife about it, she’d simply reply “You never know” and then ask if it was too early for a nap.

In the cupboard, his son had noticed a leak. How could they give their house over to a new family if there was a leak? It seemed unethical. He would tell his father about the leak when he was discovered. He would demand that the leak be fixed then and there. If they were late getting to their new city and their new home and all those couples because a leak had to be fixed, well then that was just too bad. He was an honorable boy, and that was because he was a boy, and it’s very easy to be honorable when you’re anything other than an adult. Upstairs, his mother was dreaming about the dachshund. How she had spoken to it in Portuguese. How she had praised its ears. After the bite, she wouldn’t tell anyone which dog had done it, despite repeated visits from the local authorities, because she knew they would put the dachshund down, and she couldn’t be a party to something like that. She would not participate in murder. In her dream, the daschund is making her caldo verde and bacalhau and all is forgiven. The dachshund stands at a stove, cooking, and smoking a cigarette. She tells the boy’s mother that her life is very hard, and that something about the woman from across the street who would be moving soon leaning down and whispering to her in a language she loved so dearly had set something off in her.

“I didn’t even like the taste of your ear,” the dachshund said, and the woman said, “But you might have liked it. You never know.”

The father was wrapping each spoon in tissue paper. The movers begged him to help them load one of the eight couches into the truth. They were so tired. Even though this was their job, they had never seen a house with so many things in it, and they were beginning to notice a strange rash emanating from their wrists all the way up to their shoulders. The movers took off their shirts and the father had to apply lotion to them, because they had begun to weep. That’s how painful the rash was. Not itchy, but painful.

The little boy came out of the cupboard and crept upstairs. He saw his mother in bed, and he climbed in with her. He was wet from the leak and his hands smelled like all the groceries that had, at one time, been carried in those plastic bags. He smelled of kale and potatoes and pork and clams and custard and salted cod. His mother was murmuring something in her sleep, and he leaned over to tell her that it would all be all right. That he left the cupboard, because he knew there was no preventing all of the couches being stacked in a large van and taken away. He would be angry for a long time, maybe forever, but he was also resigned, and that was how movement showed itself. That was how you got from Point A to Point B. That was why you left the cupboard, because, if you didn’t, nobody was ever going to come looking for you.

He went to tell all this to his mother, but she was lying on her remaining ear, and all that was left on the other side was a clump of gauze to cover the hole where her missing ear used to be. The boy didn’t want to whisper anything into gauze, so he nuzzled her back with his face instead. In her dream, she felt a pushing. A pushing against her. What was pushing her? What needed her to move?

Downstairs, the father ran out of boxes for the smaller things and didn’t know what other kind of vessel he could put things in. It was then that he glanced over at the cupboard under the sink.

And he knew.