Gerbils, when in captivity, usually live for around three-and-a-half years. Rocky made it for nine months in the Keller household. He was a subject upon which my six-year-old self, along with my five-year-old sister, enacted our wicked experiments. It was a sad existence for Rocky, and his demise, though quick and scarring, existed solely as a way to haunt us, to make us pay for what we put him through.
…
I was growing bored with fish. They came and went quickly from my nightstand and couldn’t vouch for my sense of responsibility. They were side characters, unimportant to the plot, but somewhat enriching for a short while, until they inevitably were underfed, overfed, or suffered any other mistake a preschooler could make. I wanted to move on to something more. Of course I thought myself mature enough, though the carcasses of Rainbow, Puffy, and Joey begged to differ. I pleaded for months for a gerbil, a “real” pet. I wanted something that was furry, something I could pet, something that breathed the same air as me. I knew I hadn’t reached the pet jackpot —a dog— but it would be nice to climb another rung of the ladder towards that grand prize.
On a warm June day, not long after I had conquered the first grade, my father drove me to the pet store a few miles away. I walked towards the back, where they kept the gerbils, or “rats,” as my father called them. I looked at the stacks of enclosures, in which various four-legged creatures lived chaotically. Some ran and scurried rapidly around the borders of their property, while others cowered in the colorful huts that lay in the cages. I had love that I was ready to assign to an animal, and somehow, through a decision-making process that I could never comprehend now, I was able to differentiate one of those organisms from the rest.
Rocky’s fur was a sleek, clean white. The kind of white you see when the sun is reflecting off a fresh bed of snow. The fur glided down his torso and ended with a few tufts near the tail, which was a pale, hairless pink. His eyes were deep red, as if he were captured poorly in a photograph. The other end of his cylindrical body ended at a point with a small pink nose, with two long, thin front teeth directly under the nose.
I saw Rocky as my sidekick. My ride-or-die. The one whom I looked to when I was in a fix, and the one whom I wanted to help protect. We took him home from the store, along with a large, colorful cage and some food for him. I set him up on my desk. Finally, a pet too big to fit on a puny nightstand. Rocky was just shy. When I tried to take him out to play, he would run into whatever corner was farthest from me. When I wrapped my fingers around him in his cage to remove him, on more than one occasion he bit me. When I finally got him out, and it was time for us to continue our adventures as a dynamic duo, he would run away 50% of the time. I tried to get him to play with all of the equipment in his cage, but he only seemed entertained by his surroundings when he thought I wasn’t watching. He was just shy, of course. Many times, my dad would tell me that we needed to tame him, so that if we held our hand out, he’d come to us. I didn’t think that my dad understood. Rocky and I were already best friends. He didn’t need taming.
Of course, as it occurs in many stories and narratives, the sidekick doesn’t last. On a quiet snow day in February 2010, my sister, Maia, and I took him out to play on the hardwood floor of the hallway. By this point in his stay with us, he had run away at least five times, and it had taken us hours to find him, so we had learned to extend our legs with our feet touching each other, creating a makeshift pen. He ran between us frantically. He was clearly very excited to be spending time with his two favorite people. We decided to let him be a free spirit, let him run around. We parted our feet, and he continued to scamper across the floor. The scamper turned into a pseudo-hop, which Maia and I found to be quite funny, and we began to laugh at his bizarre movements, mocking his jerking motions. The sound of our laughter was cut short as Rocky dropped to the floor, motionless. Maia and I looked at his limp body for a moment, then looked at each other, then a cry rang out throughout our house. We stumbled down to our father, who was working, and yelled to him among sobs that Rocky was dead. We knew that nothing he could do would help. My sidekick, the Watson to my Holmes, the Robin to my Batman, was gone. I thought of all of the bonding we had left to do, all of the time we should have had together. We mourned for a few days, buried his body in the forest, and moved on to other things. Other things, of course, meaning that I now wanted a lizard.
…
He purchased me in June 2009, and for the rest of my life, he was my overlord. The decider of my fate. My God. And he was a cruel and unforgiving one. He was Agent Smith: a representation and enforcer of the system. He was the system. I lived in a restricted tyranny and all of my actions were determined by his childlike whims. My cage was my only solace. It was my safe haven. There I was most myself. I was able to reflect on my isolation and ask myself what cruel world would let me live this life. I tried to accept the cage as my home. I explored the wheel, the pipes, the water bottle that released liquid when I touched my tongue to it. How I loved that bottle. However, in this cruel authoritarianism, nothing was left sacred. As much as I tried to make the cage my own, any enclosure’s main design flaw is the lack of escape. Every so often, a large, chubby hand descended into my sanctuary, and no matter where I went, what I did, it captured me. The hand carried me over to the carpeted floor, and the second my little feet touched the ground, I jumped into action for my escape, darting my eyes to find any way out. If I was lucky, I would make it past his grasps towards me. If I truly got away, I would find a place to lie low. This enacted a terrifying game of hide-and-seek, where I would be forced to stay still as four harbingers of evil stomped around the house, looking to apprehend me once again. I would inevitably be found, and my return to captivity crushed my spirit further. On the day of my sweet release of death, I had been physically and emotionally abused for the last time. The stress had gotten to me, and after a few quick convulsions, I made the ultimate escape from my imprisonment.
…
In movies and television series, protagonists can go through many sidekicks. Superman had twelve, as did Jack Bauer. Sidekicks are expendable. You lose one, and another may come. Rocky was one assistant, one experience, one memory. I was the sole creator of his dismal existence. You can lose as many sidekicks as you want, but you can only ever have one overseeing god, one controller of your destiny, one determiner of your expiration.