by Paul Pen
“But I’m not scared of it anymore.”
Mom smiled and an eye closed. “Of course you’re not.”
“And how did I stop being afraid?”
“Like all fears are overcome,” she answered. She stood and went to the door, then held a finger over the switch and added, “By facing up to it.”
She turned off the light.
The baby cried.
Grandma shushed him over his crying while my eyes readjusted to the absence of light. I looked toward the hall, but the firefly was gone.
“Are you going to let him cry?” I asked.
My nephew screamed with all his might, grating his throat. The two dark shapes that were my mother and grandmother approached the crib. One of the figures shortened. It was Grandma bending to put the baby down inside.
“It’s all we can do,” she replied.
“Anyway,” added Mom, “the dark isn’t so bad.”
The baby was crying louder and louder.
Dad’s voice came from the hall. “Shut him up, please!”
I approached the crib and peered in. My grandmother, or my mother, was rocking the frame to lull the baby to sleep.
“Don’t be afraid,” I whispered. “The dark isn’t so bad.”
Mom’s nose whistled as she heard me repeat her words.
But the baby kept crying.
My father’s armchair scraped along the living room floor. The changes in light on the television screen marked out his silhouette in the doorway. In the movie someone was playing a harmonica.
“What’s wrong with the child?”
“It’s the dark,” my mother answered.
Dad turned on the light. I closed my eyes in time.
“And what’s he doing here?” he asked. I knew he was referring to me. “You, what are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to see what was happening.”
Dad hit the light switch twice, seeing that the baby was quiet when it was on and cried when it was off. He left it on.
“Then we’ll leave it.”
“We have to turn it off,” said Mom.
“Do you want us to leave the light on all night?” Grandma said. “How’s your daughter going to sleep? She has to sleep in this room, too.”
“And anyway, the baby has to get used to the dark,” my mother added. Dad sighed. He flipped the switch again.
We were left in darkness.
The baby began to cry again.
“You, go to bed,” he ordered me. “You know what the Cricket Man does to boys who misbehave.”
Before letting go of the crib, I whispered to the baby, “Don’t worry, I have an idea.”
My father waited for me to go out in front of him. Then he went back to the living room. The striped armchair scraped along the floor as he turned up the volume on the television.
I walked down the hall with my eyes scanning it for the new firefly. I stepped on the screw again. Next to my foot the insect’s greenish light came on. It flew to the jar as if visiting a relative in an entomological jail, the two of them communicating with light signals from each side of the glass. I opened the lid to usher it in there. Both fireflies accompanied the action with flashes of green light.
I smiled when I thought of my nephew, who I could still hear crying.
“Hang on,” I whispered. I got back in bed, impatient. I parroted the lines from the movie that my father never tired of watching, my brother never fully understood, and my sister probably hated. Until the same old music had ended. The saddest melody ever sung. That woman’s voice filled the basement with a much deeper darkness than the mere absence of light.
My brother came into our bedroom and climbed onto his bunk. The springs squeaked under his weight when he lay down. Then they squeaked again, rhythmically, for a few minutes. First slow, then faster. Faster and faster. Until my brother groaned. And the springs stopped squeaking.
Soon he was snoring.
I waited a while longer, to make sure everyone was sleeping. When I couldn’t hear anything except the cistern’s dripping and the baby crying, I got out of bed and picked up the firefly jar.
In my sister’s room I could hear my grandmother’s slow breathing.
I leaned into the crib.
“Give him light,” I whispered to the fireflies. “He’s still scared of the dark.”
I positioned the jar beside him and covered both of them in the sheet. Two green flashes illuminated his face.
Before I left the room, the baby stopped crying.
8
The next morning, I sat up with a start in bed as I remembered the jar with the two fireflies. There was already a lot of noise in the house. The toaster went off a few times in the kitchen, the chairs scraped the floor around the dining table, and the cistern filled in the bathroom.
I arrived in my grandmother’s room dressed in the same underpants as the night before. I bent over the crib, but it was empty. No trace of the baby or my jar. I lifted the sheet I’d covered them with. Nothing.
Mom called my name from the kitchen, the smell of toast in the air. First I went to the bathroom to wet my face and hair. It was always on end when I woke up.
“Come on, sit down,” Mom said when she saw me, getting the butter out of the fridge. “We’re having breakfast now. See what happens when you stay up so late? Then you don’t wake up.”
My brother was waiting with cutlery at the ready for my mother to serve breakfast. He pointed at the chair next to him with his knife, then made a face that lowered his scarred bottom lip to reveal his gums. I sat down. In front of me, Grandma was smiling at nothing. She drank coffee with the tip of her finger in the cup to check the level. To her left, my sister breast-fed the baby. Dad stared at him.
“He slept in the end,” he said.
My sister turned her mask toward Dad. When she found him looking at where the baby was suckling, she covered the visible part of her nipple with her hand. Dad frowned.
“See?” my mother said from the toaster. “He just needs to get used to the dark.”
My sister looked at me without turning her head.
“Or not,” she said.
I thought I could see a smile on her lips. I thought about the jar with the fireflies.
“What do you mean by that?” Dad cut in.
“Nothing,” she answered.
“No, tell me, what did you mean by that?”
Grandma stopped smiling. My brother contained one of his heehaws.
“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she insisted from behind the mask, still looking at me.
“What did you mean?” Dad said again.
The baby cried when the nipple escaped its mouth. My sister pinched it with two fingers to offer it to him again.
“I meant that it can’t be all that good for these children to get used to the dark,” she said, gesturing at the baby and me with slight movements of her head. “These boys need sunlight.”
“We take all the vitamin D we need,” my mother reasoned from the kitchen.
“But they need air,” continued my sister. “They need life. They need—” She took a deep breath as if she was about to say something important, but closed her mouth and fell silent.
“What do they need?” Dad prompted her. “Say it. What is it they need?”
My sister fixed her eyes on my father’s.
“I’ve said what I wanted to say.”
“Are you sure?” he asked. “I don’t think you finished your sentence. Go on, I dare you to say what these boys need again.”
My sister helped the baby in his wrestling with her breast.
“Come on,” Dad persisted. “I dare you. They need air. They need sun.”
My sister’s lips tightened behind the mask.
“Go on!” my father shouted.
My sister straightened her back. The baby began crying again when he lost the nipple. She put her breast back in her blouse and buttoned it up.
“What this child needs
more than anything is a father,” she said.
With care, she laid the baby on his back on the table.
In front of Dad.
The blow he dealt the wood with his fist made all the plates and forks jump. The baby waggled arms and legs. Grandma found him, guided by the sound of his crying. Mom took her cup in both hands as if it were about to fly off the table. Dad’s fist opened and closed three times. His knucklebones crunched the first two times. He blew out as he shook his head.
After punching the table again, he stood up and left without saying another word. During the short walk to the hall, he stared at my sister. The metal door to his bedroom closed behind him.
Mom began passing out the toast. She served everyone except my sister.
“And me?” she asked.
“The last slice is over there.” She indicated the kitchen. “The toaster’s in the cupboard.”
Sitting on the floor with my legs crossed, I pushed the cactus along with my finger to follow the sun’s trajectory.
“Here, vitamin D.”
I remembered what my sister had said that morning and formed a bowl with both hands, holding it under the shaft of light, in case the pills that Mom gave me weren’t enough. I turned them over under the sun and then lay down. With my eyes at floor level I scanned the main room of our home. I looked under the dining table. Under the cupboards and fridge in the kitchen. Mom was washing some clothes in the sink. There was a washing machine in the basement, but she preferred to do the laundry by hand. She said it was good exercise. Then she’d hang the clothes out in her bedroom, by the washing machine she never used. I also looked around the bike. And under the brown sofa and Dad’s striped armchair. And under the cabinet the television sat on, and the shelves filled with tapes and books. My jar was nowhere to be seen.
First the chick had escaped.
And now the fireflies were escaping.
“At least I know you won’t go anywhere,” I said to the cactus. When I sighed I smelled the detergent Mom used. It was one of my favorite smells in the basement.
Dad came back into the living room for the first time that day since the incident at breakfast. He’d even skipped lunch. He walked up to my mother at the sink.
“He still hasn’t come,” he said to her. “And we’re out of eggs. We knew this could happen one day, but not—”
“The boy’s here,” my mother interrupted. “Look, there, on the floor. With the cactus.”
Dad turned around. “You’re like a ghost,” he said. “You’re always so quiet.”
I went up on my knees.
“Leave it,” whispered my mother.
“Come on, get out. I need to speak to your mother.”
I showed him the pot with the cactus.
“And?” he said after glancing at it. “That plant’s had more light than it could ever need.”
I left the living room. My parents waited until I was far enough away before carrying on with their conversation. Before I could open my bedroom door, a hand grabbed me. It was my sister. Her pretend face rested on my shoulder from behind.
“Come with me,” she whispered.
She pulled me to her bedroom. The baby was sleeping in the crib. Grandma was on her knees, by the bed, with her forearms resting on the mattress. The rosary danced in her fingers, the beads advancing with their familiar rattle. She murmured her prayer with her eyes closed, an indecipherable cooing. My sister held a finger over the hole in her mask where her mouth was. We continued to her bed. I could see a shape under the covers. She pulled them off, revealing what was under them.
It was my firefly jar.
I breathed in, about to say something, but my sister silenced me again. Grandma opened her eyes, still saying over and over the name of the One Up There. My sister and I kept still. The rosary beads continued to chink together and against my grandmother’s fingernails. We tiptoed back to the door, accompanied by the hum of her prayer. Just before we left the room, Grandma said, “Close the door on your way out.” My sister did so. In the hall I looked toward the main room. My parents were still talking in low voices by the sink. My sister gave me a slap on the backside and pointed to the bathroom.
When we were in, she squatted down, pushing the door with her back to close it. She rested the jar on one knee.
“What’s this?” she asked.
I looked at the jar.
“What the hell is this?” she repeated. “And what was it doing in the baby’s crib?”
I bent to put the cactus on the floor. Then I tried to take the jar. My sister snatched it away from me, holding it high above her head.
“Why did you put this in the baby’s crib?”
I didn’t respond.
“Do you want me to call Dad and tell him? So he can ask you why you did it?” She turned her face so that her mouth was nearer the door, still staring at me. She gave me a few more seconds before shouting, “Da—!”
I covered her mouth with both hands, touching the orthopedic material of her mask. She stuck out her tongue and I felt a moist slug between my fingers. It made me take my hands away.
“What is this?” she asked again. “Tell me. It’ll be our little secret. You know this is dangerous for such a tiny baby, right?” She shook the jar. The pencil knocked against the container’s transparent walls.
“Careful,” I said. “You’ll hurt them.”
My sister studied the jar. “I asked whether you know how dangerous this is for a baby as tiny as that one is.”
I hung my head, ashamed. I hadn’t thought of that.
“Don’t get like that now,” my sister said. “Look at me. You’ve put the baby’s life in danger.”
My lips wrinkled up.
“Don’t cry. As long as no one finds out, it doesn’t matter. And if you behave yourself, nobody has to find out. It’ll be our little secret.”
“I won’t do it again,” I said.
She laughed, then pushed the jar against my chest and let go of it without warning. I managed to catch it before it fell onto the floor. My sister opened the bathroom door and disappeared. One of the fireflies flashed green. The other responded right after it.
I felt the back of my hand burning. Perhaps I’d held it under the sun too long. I discovered a red mark on my white skin. So white that I thought maybe Dad was right.
Maybe I was a ghost.
I climbed onto my chair at dinnertime.
“Is this all we’re having?” I asked.
I combed the mashed potato with my fork and rummaged through the heap of peas. A couple of them fell onto the floor. I waited, shoulders hunched, for Dad to tell me off.
“Eat,” he said.
I didn’t argue.
“Eat this as well,” he then ordered. He pointed with his knife at the potato skins that he’d set aside on his plate.
“We’ve never eaten mashed potato like this.”
Mom’s nose whistled.
“Well, it’s much tastier this way,” she said.
She searched for some scraps of skin in her potato and put them in her mouth. She chewed with a smile that made her cheek wrinkle in an irregular way. My grandmother ate her skins, too. To my right, my brother was gobbling the yellowish substance. Some pieces slipped through the gap in his bottom lip and returned to his plate all chewed up. Just like flies when they vomit their saliva to regurgitate the solids they feed on, transforming them into a liquid substance, which they then suck up with their horn-shaped mouth.
I ate everything on my plate, but I was still hungry.
“There’s no more?” I asked. I heard Dad rest his cutlery on his plate. In quick succession, my grandmother’s hand moved from her forehead to her stomach to each side of her chest and to her mouth.
“Sure there’s more,” Mom replied. She reached for the seventh plate, positioned as always between my grandmother and my sister. When Grandma heard her, she grabbed Mom’s hand.
“Not yet,” she said.
Mom looked at me and bit
her bottom lip.
“Please,” Grandma whispered. “Not yet.”
Mom left the plate where it was with a sigh. Dad offered me his. He held it with his arm stretched out, the plate in the air in the middle of the table.
“That won’t solve anything,” my mother said.
“It solves the boy’s hunger.”
“Only tonight,” she added. “What will we do tomorrow?”
“What’s happening tomorrow?” I asked, chewing a piece of skin.
“Nothing,” whispered Mom very close to my face, trying to smile. Then she looked at Dad. “What will we do tomorrow?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “I really don’t know.”
That night, Dad let me stay and watch a movie with them. I watched while I played with the two peas that had fallen from my plate.
9
Back in my room after the movie, I knelt in front of the cabinet at the foot of my bed. When I opened the drawer I found two more fireflies near the jar. When I unscrewed the lid to put them in, my brother appeared in the bedroom. He climbed onto the bunk, making everything shake. The lid fell onto the floor. After I recovered it and closed the jar, only three fireflies were inside.
One was missing.
I heard the heavy metal door to my parents’ bedroom close. My sister pulled the chain. I heard her footsteps traveling from the bathroom to her bedroom. My brother turned off the light in our room. The cistern’s dripping was clear in the sudden silence.
I remained still, looking into the darkness.
A spot of light hovered about the room. I left the jar in the drawer and the green glow flickered twice before landing near the door. I crawled toward the firefly, still glowing in the same place.
“Come here,” I whispered. But just before reaching it, the spot of light slid under the door. I opened it a crack. The firefly took off in the hall, heading in the direction of the living room. I came out of the bedroom on tiptoes, feeling the draft from the window on my legs. The two new visitors must’ve flown in through there.
I followed the trail of light in total silence. In the living room, the pilot lights on the TV and video shone, like two more fireflies trapped inside the appliances, dead. The living one flashed three times before perching on my father’s armchair. I leapt on it, forming an upside-down bowl with my hands. I thought I’d missed, until four green lines glowed between my fingers. I closed my right hand, trapping the insect inside. It tickled when it beat its wings.