Debbie Cowens
For her fourth birthday, my daughter was given The Very Hungry Caterpillar, and it soon became her favourite book. Lucy loved to poke her fingers into the holes in the pages where the caterpillar had chomped its way through every kind of food.
Real caterpillars, though, had proved a disappointment.
‘Mummy, it won’t eat the lollipop.’ I turned from the washing line to see Lucy standing beside one of the stripped swan plants, holding a red lollipop out to a fat black-and-yellow caterpillar as it inched up the leafless stalk.
‘Real caterpillars don’t like sweets, or any people food, really,’ I explained, carrying the laundry basket over to join her. ‘Monarch butterflies are very fussy eaters. They only like swan plants.’
Lucy picked up the caterpillar between her thumb and forefinger, and lifted it across to a neighbouring plant. ‘But there are no leaves left on this one and it already has two baby caterpillars on it.’
‘They must have eaten them all.’
Lucy held the caterpillar to her face and gave it a stern look. ‘Don’t be too fussy. You have to eat other leaves as well or you’ll never become a butterfly.’ She placed it on a waxy leaf of the lemon tree.
‘Come on inside now, Lucy. I need to get the washing in.’
But that wasn’t the end of it.
Late that night she appeared, standing over me by the bed.
‘Mummy,’ she whispered in my face. ‘We need another swan plant. It’s hungry.’
‘Lucy? What are you doing up?’
‘It’s starving. It needs food.’
‘What?’ I switched on the bedside lamp, the sudden yellow light shocking my eyes awake. The soft unbroken snores beside me meant that the light hadn’t disrupted Bill’s sleep. Little did.
‘The caterpillar.’
‘Oh, is that all? Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine,’ I muttered between yawns. ‘Go back to bed.’
‘No, it’s hungry. It won’t get to become a butterfly. It’ll just die.’
Something about her voice chilled me. Maybe it was because I’d never heard her talk about death. Maybe it was the desperation in her voice and that she cared so much about helping the little caterpillar. Maybe agreeing was just the fastest way for me to get back to sleep.
‘OK, sweetie. I’ll get another swan plant tomorrow. We can plant it after kindy.’
Checking the caterpillars’ progress became our post-kindy ritual. Lucy would count the caterpillars on each swan plant – we had six plants along the fence now – and monitor their progress.
‘Look, Mummy. The caterpillar’s peeled off its skin and gone into its Chris-a-Lucy-is.’ She pointed excitedly at the brown and green cocoon.
‘Chrysalis.’ Last week’s library trip had involved a book on butterflies with photos and life-cycle explanations.
‘How long until it becomes a butterfly?’
‘A week or two. You’ll have to wait, Lucy.’
Lucy found the waiting hard. Impatient, she checked the swan plant three or four times a day, and spent most of every sunny afternoon playing in the garden where she could keep an eye on the chrysalises.
Unfortunately, our cat, Mog, had also been enjoying the spring weather. She had killed several sparrows and a fledging starling, depositing their bodies in our hall, the bathroom, under our bed, and even in Lucy’s room.
‘If killing the poor birds wasn’t bad enough, she’s torn them to bits,’ I complained to Bill after finding a particularly disgusting mess of feathers and bloodied bird in Lucy’s wardrobe. ‘What if Lucy had found it? We’ll have to put a bell on that cat.’
Thirteen days after Lucy found the first chrysalis, she came running in from outside to find me in the kitchen.
‘Mummy! The butterfly has hatched. Come and see!’
Her excitement was contagious. I ran out behind her, thrilled to see one of our caterpillars had finally emerged as a beautiful red and black winged butterfly.
‘Where is it?’ I asked as we approached the row of swan plant stalks. ‘It hasn’t flown away yet, has it?’
Lucy shook her head and pointed to the ground. There, drying on the bare earth at the foot of the plant, were two scarlet wings, veined with black like a stained-glass window. There was no creature attached to the torn fragments.
‘What happened to the butterfly?’ I asked.
‘Only the wings changed. I took off its skin but it hasn’t grown another Chris-a-Lucy-sis yet.’ She pointed to the top of the swan plant where the flayed remains of a butterfly’s body had been squashed into a ball and speared on the tip of a stalk.
‘You mustn’t do that, Lucy.’ I grabbed her arm with more force than I’d intended. ‘You’ve hurt it. It won’t grow another chrysalis now. It’s dead.’
Lucy blinked at me. ‘I have its wings.’
‘No, we’ll bury the butterfly with its wings. And you must promise me you’ll never do that again, OK?’
‘OK, Mummy.’
We buried the butterfly behind the swan plants. Lucy made a cross for the grave out of ice-block sticks.
But words like never don’t have the same permanency with four-year-olds. I found four sets of torn butterfly wings in Lucy’s dresser drawer the next week.
I showed the wings to Bill after Lucy had gone to bed. ‘We have to do something about it.’
‘I thought you said you’d told her off already.’
‘I did, but it was like she barely noticed. The look she gave me. It was just ... blank. Not upset or angry or anything. She’s really scaring me, Bill.’
‘Now you’re over-reacting. A lot of kids pull legs and wings off bugs. It doesn’t make them some psycho off one of your CSI shows.’
‘That wasn’t what I meant ...’
Guilt silenced me. What kind of mother would fear her own child? How could I suspect my sweet little Lucy with her freckles and curls and giggles?
After that we stayed indoors after kindy. I kept Lucy close. I read her stories and she helped me prepare dinner.
‘I like peeling, peeling Mister Potato, peeling Mister Carrot,’ she sang as she stood beside me.
I smiled. Lucy could make up a song to accompany any activity.
‘Be careful with the peeler, sweetie. Remember, you always have to peel it away or you might cut yourself.’
Her eyes widened. ‘It could cut me? Could it cut off your skin, too?’
‘I didn’t mean to scare you, honey. But they’re sharp and you have to be careful so you don’t get hurt.’
Lucy nodded and held out her vegetable peeler to me. ‘Show me the curly peel again, Mummy. Show me on Mister Potato.’
I took the plastic handle and, grabbing a large spud from the sink, spiralled the blade around the top of the potato. ‘My granny showed me how to do this. She could peel a whole kumara in one long, curling piece. Do you think I can do this without breaking the peel?’
‘Uh-huh.’ Lucy grinned.
‘Ta-dah!’ I dangled the long coil of potato skin in front of her, and she clapped and giggled, but then shrieked when I deposited it into the compost container.
‘Mummy, no! Don’t throw it away.’
‘It’s just potato peel, Lucy. Don’t be silly.’
‘I want it,’ she growled.
The determination in her eyes worried me more than the strange request. ‘It’s going in the compost. It’s good for the garden,’ I explained.
I didn’t mention the potato peel to Bill. It would sound even crazier than the business with the butterfly wings.
After dinner, Lucy seemed more like her usual sweet self. She sang her ‘I Like Bubbles’ song at bath time. She was angelic for hair-washing, scrunching her eyes shut and holding her breath like she was diving under the waves as I rinsed out her hair.
‘I like your skin.’ She grabbed my forearm as I wiped the water from her brow, her little fingers poking and feeling along my damp wrist. ‘It feels nice.’
‘Oh. Thanks.’ I pulled my arm back.
‘Mummy, why don’t people have wings?’
‘We’re not born with them, sweetie.’
‘Neither are caterpillars.’
‘No, but they grow them when they become butterflies. People don’t become butterflies.’
‘No, silly,’ Lucy giggled. ‘They die, die, die, and then they become angels. With wings.’
She reached her dripping hands behind me in an awkward hug and squeezed the skin of my back. Where my wings would be.
‘Lucy, stop it. That’s not funny.’ I stood up, my voice stern to mask my fear, but she kept laughing. ‘Bill,’ I called down the hall. ‘Can you come down here?’
Lucy was still giggling when Bill reached the bathroom. I gave him the look but he just grinned at Lucy.
‘What’s all this noise about? Is it you, little Miss Giggles, huh?’ He knelt down by the bath and splashed the water at Lucy who squealed in delight.
‘Don’t, Bill.’
‘Don’t what? Splash the giggle monster into submission?’ he joked. ‘Go have a sit down. Relax. I’ll take care of this.’
I watched him playing with our cute little girl, flapping and laughing in delight. Was my imagination running wild? How could I let the words of a four-year-old girl, my daughter, get under my skin?
‘OK, don’t get her over-excited,’ I muttered. ‘It’s nearly bedtime.’
A glass of red and half an hour of TV blotted out most of my worries. By the time I kissed Lucy goodnight, she was just my lovely daughter again. I resolved to get a good night’s sleep and headed to bed. My exhaustion was obvious as soon as I slid between the sheets. I could barely keep my eyes open and I fell asleep within minutes of turning the lights off.
I woke in the night with a terrible sense of danger. Unsure whether I’d had a nightmare or woken up to one, I blinked in the dark, my own breathing drowned out by Bill’s heavy snores. A glint of something silver flashed a few inches from my eyes and a familiar shape stood by the bed.
‘I want to peel off your skin,’ she whispered, her small hand pressed against my left cheek, the cold steel of the peeler on the other. ‘You’ll be a beautiful angel.’