Chevo Rapes Rabbitta

Chevo Rapes Rabbitta
A Short Story by Diana Weeks

When I answered the phone Carmen was talking in spanish through sobbing gulps of panic.

“What's happening in English, please”. She had been giving me lessons, but I wasn’t a good student. We’d been friends since living in UT student housing and our children started playing together, three years ago.

“Come quick, on…da…lay, chevo is raping Ruben's pet rabbit”! Chevo was their family’s tiny mexican chi..wawa… “hurry!” Carmen yelled, “run… the animals are under the house”.

I grabbed my youngest, Ellen and trotted with her getting a piggy back ride… across the four Austin shaded blocks. Carmen's kids Ruben and Gloria and Mime, Shane and Rene’ were squatted on the ground screaming and crying and watching.

I put Ellen down and crawled under the house. Chevo dropped the limp rabbit and ran past me… to lick Ellen's face. The rabbit was very very still…clearly not caught in an affectionate mood. “We’ll have a nice funeral for peterette. You children can sing ‘i want to be a sunbeam’…and we’ll pick some flowers…Carmen get something to wrap her in… and a box. Have you got a shovel?

I tucked the limp bloody body under the faded blue baby blanket so just her pale gray fur head was visible…and turned her ears to show the pink inside.

Immediately following the burial of peterette… the boys, who were both eight wanted to know what chevo did to the rabbit to kill it.. And did he do it on purpose?

Carmen took Ellen and our daughters …deeming five too young for bees or birds. She seated us at her kitchen table and armed me with paper and pen…and took the girls… back outside. “Chevo got confused” I explained. “It’s normal for animals to mate” how do they mate? Both boys wanted to know. So I drew them pictures. “I don’t know why chevo thought the rabbit was a dog” I admitted.

“He thinks my leg is a dog” Ruben said. He wanted to keep the drawings and after I left he wanted his mother to explain everything I had told them…again in English and Spanish!


The End
All rights Reserved