A Short Story：There Is No Place Without Cockroaches

What would a house without cockroaches look like?

Illustration by my younger sister~

While I’m working on my mathematics homework, my sister, who had just moved out of the house less than two weeks ago, returns home with more luggage than what she took away when she moved out.

“There is no place without cockroaches......” She approaches the bed we shared before, says weakly.

“Your clothes are dirty.” I say, handing her the old pajamas she stored in the armoire.

“I think I need to stay here for a while.” She pulls the shirt over her head.

Her voice is low. Her face is cloudy. I know even though I say nothing, she would continue to say something.

Due to the constant presence of cockroaches inside the apartment, sister decided to terminate the lease of the house that she had just rented for less than a month yesterday.

Three days before moving, sister hired a professional cleaning company to thoroughly clean the apartment. They placed cockroach poison in all areas of the house. Despite these preventive measures, from the first day she moved in, new cockroaches kept creeping out of unknown corners.

She rummaged through every corner, every furniture, every appliance, and every item of the house a dozen times, but still couldn't find any evidence of hiding places for cockroaches. She had no choice but to ask her landlord for help. However, the cockroaches continued to hide every time the landlord entered the door, like they were playing hide-and-seek with them. 

The landlord suggested that they could contact a professional pest control company, but sister politely declined the idea. She clearly understood that the problem did not lie in the house, but in the hallway outside the gate, in the neighbors' house, in that old building, or in the warm and humid climate of the city, which is suitable for cockroaches to live in.

Cockroaches may crawl in through the cracks of doors, climb up through drains, or even fly in through windows. Cockroaches are everywhere. Even if she kills all the cockroaches within her sight, new ones will pop up again and again. Cockroaches are as common as dust there.

“If cockroaches are both there and here, I'd rather stay here temporarily.” Sister signs, holding my pillow. “At least the cockroaches here know how to avoid people. And I don’t need to pay rent here.”

Hearing such words from sister, who had made leaving home and being independent her goals for years, I feel frustrated as well.

I'm as scared of cockroaches as sister.

The house we grew up in always had cockroaches. Of course, cockroaches are very common creatures, and it’s not surprising at all that they appear anywhere. But in our home, they are not considered a threat or a problem to the adults. For a quite long time, cockroaches were more numerous and frequent in our home than in others.

Over the years, cockroaches have crawled up our arms while we were sleeping, climbed into our textbooks while we were doing our homework, and stolen our attention from the wall behind the TV while we were watching a TV program. They have been found in our rooms, in the living room, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in the washing machine, and even in our school bags, our shoes, or our socks.

Their frequent appearances did not make us accustomed to their presence. Our fear grew deeper and deeper. Even the sight of a small black spot on a wall could easily trigger our stress reaction, and it took us a great deal of effort to restrain our instinct to scream.

At our home, we were not allowed to be frightened by just a cockroach. For mom and dad, who were both raised in poor village families, cockroaches and rats were much more common than rice and meat. They even fed on them when their family was struggling to pay the bills.

In my memory, the first time I saw cockroaches was when I was four years old. It was an early autumn evening, mum carried both me and the groceries home from the market. As we entered the house, laughing and chatting, I heard my 9-year-old sister's desperate screams and continuous heavy pounding on the door coming from the guest room. At the same time, I saw my dad casually watching TV in the living room, as if nothing was happening.

I separated myself from mum's embrace and rushed to the guest room, turning the door handle with both of my hands as I called out in a sobbing voice to my sister, who was still screaming inside the room.

The door was locked. It was useless to twist the door handle and shout.

“Stop yelling, you two!” Dad scolded us, laying on the couch.

“Let sister out!” I stepped fast towards the television and opened my arms, trying to protest to him by blocking the screen with my skinny body.

“You sisters are so close.’’ Dad laughed out loud and approached me with the same grin he always had when he was building blocks and flying kites with me.

He picked me up with one arm and stepped to the shoe cabinet in the foyer, picking up a key with his free hand before carrying me towards the guest room.

The door was unlocked. Sister was knocked to the ground by the suddenly opened door. Before I could speak out “Sis”, dad threw me roughly on the floor. I was locked in the room as well.

I quickly understood why sister was screaming so loudly. The tiny room was occupied by a kind of unknown insects, big or small, moving or still, covering the walls, floor, wardrobe, and bed. The crawling ones were frighteningly fast, and the ones which remaining still were much scarier. An ear-piercing scream escaped my throat.

Sister, who had just screamed for a long time, hugged my head in silence. Even though her embrace blocked my vision, I could clearly feel the abnormal touch of my skin and external substances. My screams could not stop. The intense noise I was making soon brought complaints from the neighbors. Dad had to release us after two minutes.

A couple of neighbors who suspected there was child abuse in our family had a long argument with dad in front of the gate of the house. Mum pulled sister and I out of the house, lifting up our tops and taking off our trousers to show them that we were not harmed. Then the strife stopped quickly.

It was a punishment for sister being distracted talking to her deskmate in English class. Sister's fear was used as a whiplash by dad, leaving indelible scars in our hearts.

After that day, as a four-year-old child, I found it hard to trust our parents' love for us. It’s difficult for me to laugh or play with dad, who treated us horribly that day. It wasn't easy to maintain a close, loving mother-daughter relationship with my mum either, because she stood by and did nothing all the time. I no longer played the role of the innocent and lovely daughter in the family from then on.

Mum and dad thought that I would soon forget about what happened that day at that age, so they didn't pay much attention to the changes in me. A month passed, I still hadn't softened my attitude towards them, only then did they truly realized how much that day had affected me.

Dad bought me a lot of snacks which he thought I would like, and mum bought me some picture books which were suitable for children. They did their best to cheer me up, hoping that I wouldn't be angry with them anymore. But I still couldn't laugh at them like the way I used to do.

After a few months of similar ineffective attempts, dad gradually lost patience, eventually stopped trying to be a good dad. Instead of playing Lego with me after work, drawing or doing jigsaw puzzles with me after dinner, and driving us to parks for picnics and kite-flying on weekends, he seemed to prefer lying on the sofa watching TV shows, football or basketball games after work, and going out somewhere on weekends to hang out with his friends whom we had never met before.

Mom and Dad started argue a lot, causing many broken things in the house. Dad returned home later and later, leaving Mom to take care of us alone, which made her become more silent. The meals on the dining table were getting less and less tasty while the house was more and more messy. As a result, there were more and more cockroaches in the house.

Though sister and I were both scared of cockroaches, we had to accept their existence. We did our best to stay calm and quiet every time we saw one. Whenever one of us found a cockroach, we would ask the other to deal with it together.

With the help of search engines, we have used various methods to deal with cockroach problems, including insecticides, cockroach bait, cockroach houses, food-grade boric acid, silicone powder and other weapons that we bought with our pocket money. Countless cockroaches died at our hands.

When I was in the second year of primary school, mum quit working as a housekeeper and returned to the workplace. Sister and I took care of each other and shared most of the chores. We tried our best to keep the house tidy. The number of cockroaches was decreasing, but they still inevitably appeared from time to time, because we could not do anything about the damp sinks, the aging kitchen fixtures, and the leftovers from Dad's late-night snacks in the living room.

Communication is not a solution in our family. In this four-person family divided into three parts, maintaining a superficial peace in silence and enduring a certain amount of discomfort from the rest of the family was the maximum effort each of us could make.

As time went by, dad reduced his hours at home and also decreased the frequency of arguments with mom. He always gave us a certain amount of pocket money every week, which allowed us to live a little bit better outside the house.

Mum put most of her energy into her work and took her attention away from the family. But she always arranged delicious take-out dinners for sister and I after we took separate school buses home from classes.

Sister didn't get any more complaints from her teachers. She took her duties as a student and sister seriously, some nice academic report cards and a safe and healthy me were proofs of her effort.

I gradually mastered a gentler way of treating our parents. When they asked me with concern about how I was doing at school, I would tell them information that fit their imagination of student life, sometimes with lies or fake smiles. If I shook my head or said nothing was happening or showed impatience, it was easy to ruin the harmony we all were trying to maintain.

We tried not to invade each other's personal space, striving to keep our own boundaries, just like the cockroaches in the house who learned to avoid us and only emerged quietly at dark late night.

This kind of life lasted for many years in this house. It may not be painful, but this space, which is very far from happiness, is getting more and more unbearable.

Sister, who always wanted to leave home, grew up five years earlier than me. After graduating from high school, she went to a well-known college located in a very distant city and did not return home once during her four years of college.

Shortly after sister left home, dad was sent to Brazil to work in the branch office. We only met twice in a few years. Mum quit her job as an accountant and started a childcare business with a friend of hers who had received a large alimony payment after her divorce. She had been so busy taking care of children from other families, so I was often the only one left at home. My busy studies didn't leave me much time to clean the house. There were cockroaches here from time to time.

Sister lived in university dormitory with three roommates. There were cockroaches there too, due to her unhygienic roommates. They appeared infrequently, but it still scared her every time they showed up.

What would a house without cockroaches look like? Sister and I often talked about this topic in our bedroom and on the phone.

“I would be able to cook and wash dishes without fear, and dare to go to the bathroom at midnight with the lights on.”

“I could put tatami mats in the living room, watch TV sitting on the floor, and lie down on the floor for a nap.’’

"I would invite friends to my place. We would have afternoon tea together. Sometimes I could even ask them to stay over at night.”

“I think I'd like to stay at home more often, since it’d be the most comfortable space for me.”

“I'm sure I'd sleep very well every night there.”

“I would be much more relieved staying there, that would greatly improve my mental health’.’

......

A home without cockroaches gradually became a haven in our imagination. We believe that in that space we would experience a sense of comfort and happiness that we have never felt before.

However, sister now tells me that there is no place without cockroaches. I can't accept such negative words from her.

She was accepted into her preferred university, selected her preferred major, and got a nice full-time job in home city shortly after graduation. Isn't that a pretty good life for most people? Why is she getting discouraged so early while there are so many other houses in the world?

Sister lies down on the bed, burying her face deep into my pillow. I climb into bed and sit beside her.

“Next time...” I say, slowly, “instead of choosing aged buildings in old neighborhoods, you could choose new buildings built in the last five years, or you could consider commercial and residential buildings. ”

“The rents of flats in new buildings are much higher than those in old buildings. I've also considered the commercial and residential units, but the utility bills there are more than twice as high as those for residential units. I’ve only been working for a few months and it's hard for me to afford an apartment that costs more.”

“It's not difficult to solve the money problem,” I click on my mobile banking app and show it to sister, “I've saved up quite a bit of pocket money that should help you support yourself for about half a year.”

‘You better save that money for yourself when you graduate five years later.’ Sister shakes her head, “I don't want to spend your money.”

“Or I could just tell dad that I'm having some trouble with physics and need a few months of tutoring. Then he will definitely provide some financial assistance.”

“I don't think it's a good idea. It's not good for you and me if the lie gets exposed.” Sister denied my proposal again.

“The city is so big. Maybe we could find a suitable apartment soon.” I raised my tone slightly, “Don't we often see buildings like youth apartments or guesthouses on the streets? We could check out those places. I can also ask my classmate for help. Her brother is a realtor.”

"I still just want to live here for a while." Her voice sounds tired.

How long does ‘a while’ mean? I want to ask her, but sister doesn't seem to be in the mood to answer. She turns her head and lies down again.

With a gentle sigh, I rise from the bed and return to my desk, which is laden with homework.

I roughly calculate how many days I have left before I graduate from high school and college in my head. Until those days arrive, I still have to focus on my studies as I always do. But if I want to achieve my goal of living in a house with no cockroaches as soon as possible, I need to do something more.

Areas with cold and dry climates tend to have fewer cockroaches, I could choose them for settlement. High altitude locations and even foreign countries can also be included in my consideration.

Money is also a factor that can not be ignored. With more money, I will be able to choose a cleaner and tidier house, buy better furniture and electrical appliances, taking adequate measures to prevent cockroaches. I also want to buy a house of my own.

Sister selected a FAME major. If I want to find a job that is more location-independent and higher-paying, I may have to choose a practical STEM major. I'm more of a liberal arts person, but I also do well in maths, so I'd probably be good at that type of career too. Besides that, I'll need to learn more skills when I get to university to prepare myself for a freelance career that suits me or the changing trends in society.

If those are not enough, I will continuously adjust my strategies and look for better solutions. I believe that there will always be a house without cockroaches in the world exclusively for me. I don't think this is a fantasy, but a goal that can be achieved through hard work.

I won't give up even if sister does.

Thinking about it, my frustration has been swept away.

Sister remains silent lying on the bed, not sure if she has fallen asleep due to fatigue. I glance at my watch, there are about two and a half hours left before mum comes back. We have to prepare dinner, eat it and wash the dishes before she comes back to avoid sharing a space with her and enduring her interrogation or accusations about sister, who suddenly moved back home.

I'll cook tonight, and sister will wash the dishes. There are potatoes, tomatoes, pasta, ham sausage, peppers, beef and chicken in the fridge. Beef and chicken are in the frozen tier and it would take way too long to defrost them, so I have to use the rest of the ingredients for dinner.

Sister likes tomatoes and I like potatoes. I search on the search engine for dishes that could use these two ingredients, the title ‘Pasta with Tomatoes and Potatoes’ appears on the first page of the search results. The recipe also included sausage as an ingredient. Butter and ketchup are also needed. We don't have butter and ketchup here, but we get mozzarella cheese and black pepper beef sauce. I quickly decide what we are going to have for dinner tonight.

Before I start preparing dinner, I have twenty minutes left, which is just enough time for me to finish the remaining two math problems. I pick up my pen.

Working on the math problem on the scratch paper, I can’t stop imagining the taste of Pasta with Tomatoes and Potatoes with melted mozzarella cheese and savory black pepper beef sauce.

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This is my very first story written in English. I am delighted that I was able to finish it. Thanks to anyone who read this story for being my earliest reader. I'd love to know what you think if you'd like to share your feelings below : )