Ju and his Temper

Chapter 1

Motley

‘There, there, don’t cry,’ Mum said gently with a paw around my heaving shoulders. ‘They will be back soon,’ she added, not without a hint of exasperation. ‘You must just learn to play by yourself. Now, mind what I’m going to say,’ She paused to give my shoulders a good shake. ‘I’m going out to look for food again. Remember, do not move beyond this space.’ She swept a finger round the space she meant. ‘If you hear any strange sounds, be quiet and stay very still. Then if you absolutely have to, run back here to our hiding place.’ Then with one last cursory loving pat, she was gone. It had happened too many times for her to lavish more time on me. I sat there in the dark, with darker thoughts for my siblings. Now with Mum gone, I could hear them squealing and squeaking with glee in the distance, as they gamboled around, oblivious to the fact that one of them was missing. Maybe, even taking delight that I was not amongst them. That hurt even more and the tears threatened to flow again. With one hard painful swipe of my paws, I effectively dried my eyes and at the same time banished my dark thoughts before they overwhelmed me. Feeling better, I debated whether to join my siblings and risk being shunned by them or wander around by myself for a while. For the sake of my emotional health, I picked the latter.

The roof I was in was a big cavernous place. From where I was standing, the rafters looked like swords held up in honor during a parade. The beams formed a backbone that connected all of them together. The mildly offensive smell of droppings was everywhere. Cockroaches and lizards scuttled around. Small birds sometimes came in through the air vents in search of food or potential places to build their nests. Some, I think, came in out of sheer curiosity. A few adventurous ones had hopped around and even taken mini flights in the roof much to the consternation of its occupants.

I scampered up to a beam and peered into the distance. My siblings were nowhere to be seen or heard. Mum had constantly admonished them not to keep the noise level up for too long at any one time so as not to invite trouble or incur her wrath. After all the hell they had been raising, they must be tired and were most probably resting somewhere, I thought. Up on the beam here, the noises I heard seemed to be further magnified, so I quickly scuttled down to the safety of the ceiling below. My wanderlust still burning strong, I slipped through a chink in the dividing wall into the next house. Being the intermediate one in a row of three linked houses, its roof was darker than the rest. This time I did not even bother to look for my siblings. I just dashed across the ceiling to the next dividing wall for it was really stuffy here. I followed the wall until I came to another chink in it. I slipped through it and heaved a sigh of relief. The air in the roof of the last house was better and there was more light. Again I climbed up to a beam and the view did not disappoint. Part of the ceiling here looked like a dance floor with small beams of light streaking into the darkness through holes of various sizes. I had always fancied myself dancing amidst the beams but there was always somebody in attendance. Well, I thought, I had better act out my fantasy since I was all alone. I was on my way down when a chink of light in the shape of an ‘L’ caught my eye. This was huge in comparison with the other holes. It had not been there before. I stopped to stare at my new find and it dawned on me that so big a find would surely do my stature more good than harm in the eyes of my siblings. They would surely let me hang around them for a few days after this. But first I had to check it out before I could go back and break the news to them. I dropped down onto the ceiling and scuttled from one pile of dirt and rubbish to the next until I reached the one nearest to the crack. There, I stood up on my hind legs to sniff for danger but the coast seemed to be clear. Still, it paid to be careful, Mum always said, so I slowly inched myself towards the crack. By now, the ray of light emerging from it was an assault on my eyes but I doggedly crept on. On reaching the crack, I took a deep breath and lowered my head through it whilst holding onto the edge of the crack with my two front paws. Down below was a boy’s bedroom. I was directly over the unkempt bed. Its bed sheet had broken loose from its moorings. The blanket was a rumpled heap on the bed and the pillow still had the dent of somebody’s head in it. A classical guitar lay discarded at the foot of the bed. I swept a cursory glance round the room. A desk at the window was more or less in the same state as the bed. A wardrobe that stood at the far corner of the room had vomited some of its contents through its slightly ajar door. A bookcase stood next to it. In sharp contrast to the rest of the room were the trophies neatly arranged in it. One could roughly guess where the trophies originated from the balls that littered the room. A volleyball hung in its netting on the wall. A handful of colorful ping-pong balls resided in a small basket on the bed head. A basketball that showed evidence of recent use sat in a chair next to the desk.

I hung there, taking in the sights and the strange smells. Then I heard running footsteps and disjointed whistling coming towards the room. The door was flung open so suddenly and violently that I could feel the blast of warm air straight in my face. In came a tall boy about fifteen years of age with sweat still oozing and dripping off him. Gasping for breath, he pulled off his wet T-shirt and fell across the bed with only his sports shoes hanging out of it. As I watched, he groaned like a wounded animal, pummeled the bed and then with a single flip turned over on his back and looked straight up at me with such pain in his eyes. Or so I thought. Anyway, I was not going to stick around and find out. I hurriedly withdrew my head and set off for home at a bound.

When I got home, the rest of the litter was clamoring over the last of a bread crust. Mum was fussing around them, peeling a strain of sticky cobweb off one and flicking a speck of dust off another, the entire time saying, ‘Do save some for Motley. He’ll be coming any minute now. Be good kids and save some for your brother.’ She might as well save her breath. Nobody heeded her. With a triumphant yelp, Don snatched the last pawful of crust, reared on his hind legs to avoid the melee, saw me and promptly stuffed it into his mouth. Well, that was to be expected of Don, I thought. Mum mistook the look of resignation on my face as a prelude to a major tantrum. As if by magic, she produced some more bread crust, tried to thrust it into my paws only to find it being snatched away by Van. Chuckling gleefully, she turned to flee with her loot. Everybody was shocked into silence by her audacity for nobody was supposed to take anything that Mum saved up for another, especially me.

‘I found a crack, a big one, in the ceiling.’ In the lull that preceded the storm, the effect of my words was awesome. Everybody swung round to look at me. ‘Gather round,’ I said imperiously, not without some cockiness. ‘But first of all, I’ve got to eat. I’m famished. So I’m going to have this.’ I took the bread crust off Van’s unresisting paws. In between mouthfuls of bread, I told them how I found the crack. I had not had this type of attention in quite a while so I could not help embellishing the tale a bit.

Don was the only detractor. ‘I don’t believe you. I’ve got to see this for myself. Who knows, you might have come up with this tall tale about a crack just to get that last piece of crust.’ I watched with rising panic as the first glimmers of doubt appeared in their eyes. ‘No, no, it’s true. It’s there, over there at the last house. Come, I’ll show you.’ With that, I hopped off my high perch and headed back to where the crack was, my family trailing behind me.

On reaching the place, Mum being Mum, insisted on doing a reconnaissance run first before letting anyone near the crack. Everyone was suitably impressed with my find, even Don. They milled around it, taking turns to hang their heads over the edge and report on what they saw below. After my encounter with the boy I was not that keen to do further peering.

‘He’s asleep.’ They reported to me. ‘Just like a baby.’ They commented on his looks, his room, his possessions and I knew I was snugly in their favor, safe from their teasing, snide remarks and ridicule for the next few days at least. They would spend their waking hours bouncing ideas off each other about how the crack got to be there, speculating about the boy and planning future excursions to the crack. For the moment, I felt I was one of them. Everything was going as I planned.

We had strict injunctions from Mum not to go near the crack without her permission or supervision. They fell on deaf ears. The minute she went out through the doorway, someone would invariably make a beeline for the crack. At first we would scuttle back home at the slightest noise below, be it the drop of a pen or a resounding sneeze. But soon familiarity breeds contempt, curiosity got the better of us because where else could we get such a vantage view and assess human behavior at the same time?

After a mock basketball practice session down below whereby the boy jumped up as far as he could to dunk his imaginary ball, we realized that short of climbing up a ladder or something like that, it would be impossible for him to get at us whilst on his own two feet. At his best attempt, his sweeping fingers were still a good half a meter away from us. We became bolder after that. We even took to whispering around the crack.

‘What’s he doing?’

‘Sitting at his desk.’

‘Oh my, something’s black has grown around his ears. He looks like he’s in pain. Look, his face is all scrunched up.’

Really?’ There was some shoving as everyone wanted to stick their heads through the crack for a good look.

‘Silly thing, he puts those black round things over his ears when he wants to listen to music. I’ve seen him do this several times before. He seems to enjoy doing that.’ Don said with a superior air. ‘Soon he’s going to do this.’ Don snapped his fingers together. True enough, the boy did just that. ‘Next his body is going to move from side to side like this.’ Don dipped as if to avoid the peanut shells we sometimes threw at him in vexation. Again the boy did just that. By now all of us were suitably impressed by Don’s prediction of human behavior.

‘What’s next?’ Van asked but Don had lost interest and scampered off in search of adventure somewhere else.

Very soon, just looking and watching were not enough. We started to take risks. We dared each other to jump over the crack. At first it was done across the breadth of the crack. Then we proceeded to do it lengthwise. In our excitement, we forgot to tone down the noise we made. Besides the squealing and squeaking that we made as we cheered and egged each other on, there was this scratching sound as we scampered across the ceiling, take flight and a thump when we landed on the other end of the crack. It was fun until one day a soft white mass hit the crack with a resounding thud and sprinkled droplets of water in all directions catching us off our guard totally.

Chapter 2

Ju

‘Damn those rats!’ I murmured to myself. ‘They’re getting bolder and bolder.’ I sat down heavily on the bed and bent down to retrieve the white T-shirt which I had thrown at the ceiling. It was still soggy wet with my sweat. It brought back memories from the last few hours, memories best forgotten but which insisted on coming to the fore.

Coach had said, ‘I’m worried about you. If you go on with this type of play, I may have to consider dropping you in this year’s inter-school basketball tournament.’ He paused to gauge the effect his words had on me. Whatever he saw made him dropped his eyes and shuffled his feet. "I hate to do this, Ju. You’ve been one of the best sharpshooters this school has ever had. It’s just that lately….you’re….the others are talking….I’m in a tight spot just trying to keep you on the team. Get your act together, boy. Otherwise…’ When no response whatsoever came from me, he patted me on my shoulder and gave me a fatherly squeeze. ‘Should you have any problems, just feel free to talk to me any time, you hear?’ Then he spun on his heels and left. What could I say? Even I was bewildered by what was going on. The legs that propelled my body through the air now seemed weighted down with lead. The arms and hands that used to be able to find and grapple for the ball seemed to have minds of their own, minds that I had no control over. The eyes that could judge distances effortlessly failed me completely and I could only watched helplessly as the ball missed its target