19

Bugs

Children live only so long as children, they shouldn’t rush things, Odessa says as I scoop one spoonful of Rice Krispies after another into my mouth. The kitchen is full of light. The table sparkles. I pile my spoon high with the crunchy bits of cereal, the milk drips and the only sound beside me munching is Odessa humming God Bless the Child. Where is Pops? Where is Mama? Aren’t they ever coming down? I ask Odessa who spent the night with me when we listened to Ella Fitzgerald sing Summertime.

Come on Scags, she says and washes the sink again and prepares to clean the stove. She lowers her voice and says, They were out late last night, having a wonderful time with their friends. Now they have to catch up with them Zs. I want my Pops, I say real low because when Odessa is working she doesn’t hear much of anything. I slow down, I stop eating fast, but still I don’t hear them so I clear my empty bowl and juice glass from the table. Odessa thanks me and I go outside to the patio.

Davy and I have a collection of bugs. We’ve caught them and then killed them using carbon tetrachloride. All our bugs sit petrified in one last position as if at any moment they could move but won’t. They sit in little jars on the patio. We also have pulled many cocoons off trees and bushes and put them in shoe boxes with twigs and leaves. Davy told me yesterday that he doesn’t want to walk through the fields looking closely at the leaves of weeds and grasses for the centipedes, grasshoppers, lady bugs, beetles, praying mantises, and all the other kinds of bugs we catch because he hates to see them die. I love to watch them fighting and trying to get away one second and the next they’re frozen in one position never to move again. They will always be dead.

Odessa comes to the doorway, watches me tap each bottle she has saved for us while I count them, count up all the dead bugs and there are 23 jars of dead bugs. Where is everyone?

It’s Saturday. Pops has to get up. He has to take me for a ride so we can look at all the cars and so he can give me a nickel for every car I know the name of. He has to let me drive. Mama and Pops have to come downstairs right this minute, by the time I count to ten, by the time I tie my shoes, by the time I spell my whole name backwards. If Julia were home we could go for long bike rides, play the tickling game, run through the sprinklers and sunbathe.

I go further into the back yard where I see Davy’s window. The shade is closed. Doesn’t he see that the sun is shining, the sky is bright blue and that the grass is so green it looks like one of my crayolas? I lie down in the grass and put my face into it. It smells green and a bug goes up my nose. When I sneeze it comes flying out. Now my nose is all tingly and I think, ugh a bug went up my nose. I won’t tell Davy. I just want him to come over so we can take some jars and cotton, cleaning fluid and aluminum foil, which I hand out in little pieces because I don’t want to use it all up, and go to the fields behind the Mills sisters’ house and catch us some bugs.

It is so quiet outside, you’d think everyone has died or moved away. Maybe some kind of gas leaked out of the ground and only Odessa and me escaped it. Maybe this is a dream and I’ll wake up petrified in a jar trying to scream.

I feel the tears bubble up in my eyes and my throat gets tight. I don’t want to cry but where is everyone, don’t they know I’m waiting for them?

I don’t know why but I go to the white shoebox where we put our first cocoon and I think while I’m waiting on everyone, as everyone sleeps and ignores me, Davy too, I’ll open the box. I feel something hit the side of the box, I open it, and out flies a monarch butterfly. Bright orange and dark black. It hovers over me, over my head, and I let out a whoop, and the butterfly takes a look around its new life. It flies off to Mama’s garden where it sits in the bright sunlight opening and closing its wings, drying them off. It flutters around the tomato plants and hops from one stake to the next. There are no other butterflies flying around and there is no one who saw this but me. The butterfly opens its wings and then flies towards the Cooks’ next door, up on their roof. Now I can never capture it again. It disappears and I wonder will I ever be able to describe this to Pops and where is he anyway?