I bought one of those hamster water bottles. It hangs upside down and has a tiny metal ball in its throat that keeps the water from flowing out when someone isn’t licking. I bought a big bag of alfalfa pellets. Each night I poured the rabbit food into the cover of an old mayonnaise jar. Rick would get so excited he’d spill most of the pellets before he made it over to the cage, and he’d have to come back and fill the lid again. I’d never get mad; I’d just pour some more. That’s the kind of mother I am.

Slim became a problem when he started wearing Rick’s underwear. I found out when I did the laundry. When I go to the Laundromat, I always count my clothes. I keep a list, and I write things down as I put them in the washer—four T-shirts, one skirt, twenty-seven socks, three jeans, six pillowcases, thirteen pairs of underwear, two towels. Then I check them off the list as I pull them out, wet and stiff from the spin cycle so I always leave with what I came in with. I don’t like to lose things.

It was Saturday and I was waiting for the washer to stop. I didn’t mind waiting. It was my time. I’d paid my quarters. I could see a reflection of a face in the little round window of the washer. I stuck my tongue out to make sure it was me.

The red light went off and I pulled my wheelie basket around, picked up my notepad, and started to count and check. I got as far as the third T-shirt, and I noticed that there was some brown stuff in my laundry. There were dark smudges on the clothes I had just washed. There were teeny caca marks on my permanent-press, extra-soak, sixteen-quarter full load. I picked up a pair of Superman Underoos, and they were full of soggy rabbit doots.

I took a deep breath. My skin was stretching, getting tighter, and I got this light, airy feeling as if I was about to lift right off the floor. I dumped the doots into the garbage, ran another sixteen-quarter full load, and when I got home, I found Rick outside and I jammed those dooty-stained shorts on his head. My hands grabbed on to his shoulders and shook, shook, shook him until his face turned white and I felt the weight of me coming back down again.