The April night of 2013 when a young security guard was shot and killed in front of the MIT campus, Jazz was worried because their two cats were after a mouse in the basement. Jane was glued to the TV, preoccupied with the news. Also, perhaps because of her rural European background, she was prone to a fatalistic attitude about cats and mice, and did not move immediately to rescue the small rodent. Later, her six-year-old daughter called on her again: “Mom, they got him, but he is still alive.”
Jazz held the mouse in her hand on top of a paper towel. The little critter was not moving yet still breathing and apparently intact. Relenting to her child’s pleading eyes, Jane picked up a container. She added two pieces of cereal and punched holes in the lid with a fork. After gently placing the mouse inside, she hid it away from the cats on the top of the fridge. “I hope he will be okay, sweetheart,” she said.
She wished she could do something to reassure her little girl and bring a smile to her round face. Five years ago she had brought her home from a Chinese orphanage and called her Jasmine. Within a year, the lively baby named after a fragrant flower had become Jazz.
The massive hunt for a wounded mass murderer on the move continued on the following morning. When she checked on the mouse, Jane found that he was dead and, following the lockdown, did not dare to venture outside of their house to bury him in the backyard.
For the whole day mother and daughter were stuck inside with a dead mouse and the TV streaming the same announcements over and over again. Restless, bewildered, aimless, unable to focus on domestic chores, Jane, while checking on Jazz and feeding the cats dead food, checked the mouse’s description on the web: white belly, gray, round body.
According to the description, the little critter was defined as cute but deadly as a possible transmitter of a serious respiratory disease. Ouch! Jane hoped that his presence in the basement was just a rare, individual occurrence.
By nighttime, the fate of that poor little thing made her think of young Dzhokhar, the surviving Marathon bomber. She even felt a short-lived surge of tenderness and compassion toward the sweet-looking, puppy-eyed young man who, after causing such a deployment of armed police forces, lay hidden a few blocks away, bleeding to death inside a white boat.
“Yes,” Jane told herself after turning off the TV, “cute but deadly.”
Anne-Marie Delaunay-Danizio has a B.A. in English Literature from Emmanuel College; a master’s in Art History and a master’s in Museum Studies from Harvard Extension School; and an MFA in Visual Arts from the Institute of Art and Design at New England College. A visual artist, her artwork was accepted in the SEE|ME Winter 2020–2021 Exhibition at the Yard, Flatiron North, New York. Her writing is published in Atherton Review. Anne-Marie enjoys sculpting, painting, and practicing Reiki.