Butterfly Kit
Dear Brush-foot Butterfly Farm,
Thank you for the caterpillars. They arrived safely, 2 per Food-Cup, along with the Butterfly Enclosure-Net, Drinking-Sponge, and Instruction Sheet. I’ve been watching them closely for more than an hour. At first, they were barely moving, but now they’re lifting their heads, starting to explore the inside of their cups. Don’t worry. I won’t touch their bodies, remove the filters from their cups, or introduce foreign foodstuffs. I will follow your Instructions, so that all 8 of them may fatten up, form chrysalides, grow beautiful wings, and fly away.
I know who sent them. Our younger daughter called this afternoon.
‘Would you have preferred tadpoles?’ she asked.
Who else would think of such a thing?
Dear Brush-foot Butterfly Farm,
Just 24 hours and the caterpillars have doubled in size. They remind me of the puppy I got my husband after we heard the diagnosis. He’d always loved dogs. I thought he’d find it soothing to pat its golden fur. I thought they’d lie together on the couch. But all it wanted to do was eat. It stole his omelet and ran in circles around the kitchen. It slurped his coffee from the mug he’d forgotten on the windowsill. It nipped his ankles as he puzzled over the laces of his sneakers. I should have known. I should have gotten him caterpillars. The dog is 5 now. It weighs 73 pounds. It takes up half the couch.
Dear Brush-foot Butterfly Farm,
The caterpillars are gobbling up their food supply. What is it made from? Why is it pink? It must be gourmet-quality.
In the nursing home, my husband was also fed delicacies. Shrimp and salmon. Strawberry ice-cream. I would bring the spoon to his mouth. I would touch the glass of cranberry juice to his lips, and he would drink. He grew skinnier than ever.
Today the grandkids came by and peered into the cups.
‘Gi-nor-mous,’ they said, ‘Eeeeewesome,’ and did not touch.
Dear Brush-foot Butterfly Farm,
I’ve lined up the caterpillar cups on the mantelpiece. They’re safe there; no dog, no sun, no drafts, but I keep the windows open. In the nursing home, the air was always still – everything locked tight.
My husband’s window faced a patch of woods. Leaves shimmered in the wind, and when winter came, a stream appeared, a little broken bridge. I held his hands and walked him to the window. Step by step, we shuffled, face to face. He stared, then clutched my fingers. I don’t know what he saw.
Your Instructions say: Do not disturb! The caterpillars will create their own environment inside their cups. I guess you mean those scrappy strands of silk, their black droppings in the pink sand.
My husband also created his own environment. He talked to people who weren’t there. He tapped out messages on the arm of his chair. Once, he bored his finger into the air and whispered, ‘I’m building Noah’s Ark.’ That was when he lived in station 4. Then they moved him to Station 2. He closed his eyes and drifted in the dark.
Dear Brush-foot Butterfly Farm,
Yesterday my caterpillars’ bodies swelled up, and their skin began to crust. They’re clinging to the filters at the tops of their cups, as if hoping to escape. I thought I was losing them, but then I remembered: they’re becoming chrysalides, just as you describe in the Instructions.
Today I got his ashes, by the way. They came in a green cardboard box. Someday, I’ll fly to California and scatter them on the ocean. That’s where we met. We would sit on a cliff and ooze red grapes into each other’s mouth.
I hope the ashes are really his.
Dear Brush-foot Butterfly Farm,
All 8 chrysalides have hardened. I’ve taped the filters and their hangers-on to the inside walls of the Enclosure Net. I tried not to jiggle them, but some of them buzzed at me. I’ve put the Enclosure-Net on the ottoman beside the couch. The dog sniffed it and padded away. Later, the kids came over.
‘How will they know when it’s time to get out?’
‘What if they don’t know how to fly?’
‘Are they afraid?’
Dear Brush-foot Butterfly Farm,
I wasn’t there.
The first butterfly came out when I was making the bed, and the second when I was doing dishes. They seemed to want some privacy, so I went for a walk with the dog, and when we came back: Voila! Pink streaks of butterfly-juice all down the sides of the net and 5 more butterflies.
Counting them is tricky. They flicker around, tiny fanfares of orange and black, rushing back and forth, trading places. Then they close their wings and all but disappear.
One chrysalis left to go.
Dear Brush-foot Butterfly Farm,
I’ve been misting them, per Instructions, and I moistened the Drinking-Sponge with grape juice. I’d lost hope for the 8th butterfly, but today when I was reading on the couch, I heard a little plop. The last chrysalis had fallen onto the floor of the Enclosure-Net. I knew something was wrong right away. Its butterfly head was sticking out, but its lower half was still trapped inside its husk. It was lying upside down, and its legs wouldn’t stop twitching. One of the other butterflies kept fluttering around it.
‘Open your eyes,’ the aides would say to my husband, when I came to visit. ‘Your wife is here. Open your eyes!’
Then they’d prop him up in his recliner, fuss with his shirt, pulling it down over his navel – as if I’d never seen it, never kissed it. But he’d slide down again, lift his legs, and start pedaling the air.
Dear Brush-foot Butterfly,
I leave the dog at home and carry the Enclosure-Net to our older daughter’s yard. Sun and shade. Ivy and clover. A jungle of yellow daisies. Her kids unzip the net, open the flap, and the butterflies dart crazily upwards. Flittering past the apple tree, skirting the arms of the old oak, they zig-zag off.
Then the kids do something. They ask their mother to help the 8th butterfly out of its chrysalis. They know her hands, so gentle and precise. She frees it within moments.
‘What’s happened to him?’
‘His wings are tiny.’
‘Like little rags.’
‘Deformed.’
‘He’ll never be able to fly.’
‘Let’s hide him under a leaf in the garden.’
‘At least he’ll be comfy there.’
‘But he’s -’
‘Maybe we should just squash him.’
But they don’t. Or can’t. They put it back inside the net. They give it a name. They place a flower beside it and watch as it unfurls its proboscis and drinks the nectar.
‘We’ll keep him safe,’ they say, ‘As long as he needs.’
I listen to them.
Its legs keep twitching.
I look away.
