Balance of Fragile Things

by Olivia Chadha

  “No? Well, you were young. Kamal’s death—”

  Vic had never heard anything about an uncle. He leaned forward to look at them.

  “It was my fault, puttar,” Papaji said.

  “Papaji, you came all this way—for what? Why did you come here, of all places?” Vic’s father turned toward the old man.

  “Son, I am old.”

  His father threw his hands in the air. “And what? We are all getting older.”

  “Let it go, puttar, just let it go.” Vic watched Papaji move close to his father, then pause as though an invisible barrier pushed against him. He frowned, then placed his large hand on his son’s shoulder.

  “I can’t.”

  The two men stood still in the middle of the rain-dampened parking lot. Silence held them both. Vic watched Papaji make a motion to speak, but he stopped himself, struggled, inhaled, then seemed to find courage.

  “Son, please don’t be like me. Don’t waste this.”

  “Waste what?”

  “Your life.”

  Vic watched his father pause as though he was caught in a sudden downpour without an umbrella. Papaji looked at his son as though hopeful that his words affected him. But then Vic saw his father turn away. He walked quickly toward Vic, and Papaji followed. Vic ducked back inside, pretending that he’d just emerged from the restroom. Then they all returned to the table.

  “So, Isabella, how is the play?” his mother was asking.

  Isabella looked at her with disbelief and did not answer. Their mother placed her hand on her husband, who had sat beside her, and he softened. One touch, and she’d quelled the fury that was soaring.

  Papaji wiped his eyes with his handkerchief and turned his attention to the burger the waitress had placed in front of him. “Ahh, fit for a king.”

  Vic’s father turned his eyes toward the floor, and his mother shifted in her seat as though she was struggling. “My mother’s coming tomorrow. Oma’s coming.”

  “What?” his father said.

  “Can she stay for a while?” Isabella asked.

  “Yes, she will stay with us, for a short time.”

  “Why?” His father turned his anger on his wife.

  “She needs us now. She is alone in Cleveland, in her small apartment. Her friends have passed away. It’s not right. She shouldn’t be alone. Family should never be alone.”

  “Yes, but we don’t have room.”

  “I could room with her, you know. I don’t mind,” Isabella said.

  “And I could stay with Papaji,” Vic offered.

  “Not now,” Paul grumbled.

  Vic smiled at his mother, though he was certain she did not know why. Amazing, he thought, how you could slot someone into a category and so quickly they could prove you wrong. He was delighted she had made such a large decision for the household without consultation.

  “Yes, darling. She’s coming tomorrow. Her flight is tomorrow. That’s that.”

  On the Wing

  Desire

  Posted on October 17

  How is it possible to reconcile killing a creature one loves? I read an article about a rare insect smuggler—yes, they exist—who was finally caught in a sting operation (pun intended). In his possession they found several Queen Alexandra’s Birdwings, Atlas moths, and Rhino beetles. He had agreed to sell them to an undercover FBI agent for $10,000 total, and had, over the previous 25 years, stolen, smuggled, and sold thousands of endangered and nearly extinct insects. He only got 3-6 years and a $50,000 fine that he could pay by selling an insect or two. For a holocaust, only 3-6 years? The man should be locked up for life, jabbed with a pin in his midsection. If only the afterlife is how Dante imagined it.

  The images printed in the paper of the Japanese smuggler are ridiculous. His face is always turned toward the hidden camera, as though he’d like to be captured. Perhaps that was at the center of his motivation—the pursuer desiring pursuit. In further investigation of this character, the FBI agent who courageously tossed this fiend in jail talks about how he felt the man was sexually attracted to him. Keep in mind the agent was a happily married man, though this did offer a particular kind of power in his undercover sting. In a way, the smuggler was caught by the one he desired. This desire or obsession for a thing is nothing like love. It is selfish. Love is selfless—at least how I imagine love to be.

  The objects of desire for the obscenely rich are odd. Does the desire drive the market, or vice versa? A man attempted to board an airplane carrying forty snakes and rare caimans in a briefcase. A woman in Australia wore a specially designed apron with twelve pockets in which she stashed bags of rare and endangered fish. The items were worth tens of thousands of dollars. A man was caught with his own ark of animals: four exotic birds, fifty rare orchids, and a pair of pygmy monkeys no larger than his thumbs. Now, my question is: Is money at the bottom of desire? The man, by the way, hid the baby pygmy monkeys in his pants. When does life become a product like this? Perhaps we’ve already crossed lines allowing for the patenting of life. That was the tipping point.

  Do we care so little for the lives of others? Or are we in denial about the act of extinction—not natural extinction but the one that we speed toward because of our carelessness? Perhaps someone should make the case that the loss of these small creatures that few worry about is going to ultimately affect our planet on a large scale—then maybe they would listen and not build another strip mall with the same junk food on every corner. Butterflies are the second largest pollinators next to bees. A butterfly’s habitat goes under a strip mall. No more butterfly. No more pollinators to bring your crops into fruit. No butterflies, no food. Worried yet?

  I am disturbed by the guidebooks I’ve found in the library. Each of them illustrates in detail how to capture and kill butterflies and moths. They say to use gas or put it in the freezer and describe the death clinically, as though you’re hanging a picture on a wall. While I understand the scientific process has value, I still do not believe that repetition of such deaths, whether mammalian or insect, are really necessary. I can observe the butterfly by luring it close with sugar or sweat, and view photographs of its cross section. The hundreds of companies that sell butterflies in frames, in jewelry, or alive through toy kits are fraudulent. They say they have clearance from customs, but insect trade is not regulated, as it should be. People care little for the insects of this world, yet their disappearance will have direct effects on our ecosystem. Yes, it’s true that it is more difficult to observe and photograph or draw the wild butterfly and moth, but if you really love them, then that’s what you’ll do. If one hundred people kill hundreds of butterflies, well, you get the picture.

  I dream of seeing these butterflies during my life. But some of them are endangered and now so rare; it is likely that they will become extinct within fifty years if they aren’t properly cared for.

  White Witch/Ghost Moth (Brazil): One of the largest moths in the world. Its wings spread like a birdwing and are white. 31 cm

  Paris Peacock (India-Asia/Australia): It has a large black form like a swallowtail with iridescent green dots across its wings: a sea of green stars on a blanket of black night. 8-10 cm

  Rosy Maple Moth (Eastern U.S.): Its comb-shaped antennae are like antlers on its head, and its body is fuzzy like a baby bear’s to keep its body warm in flight. It is bright pink and yellow, like it escaped the Skittles factory. 32-44 mm

  American Snout (South U.S.): An eater of the hackberries, this butterfly has a nose like a trunk, and near the end of its third migratory flight, when it dies en masse, it can leave the South covered in corpses. 3.5-5 cm

  Chestnut Leafwing (one small area in Texas): It looks like dead organic matter, a leaf with a hole in its side. None look exactly alike, which helps it camouflage itself in a dense forest. 5.7-7 cm

  Long-Tailed Skipper (Southeast and Southwest U.S.): Its body is mostly chocolate brown with long coattails; the center of its body, from thorax to center of the forewings, is peacock blue. 4.5
-6 cm

  Monarch (migration in California): I want to go to California to see the Monarch migration as they stop in the eucalyptus forest outside of Santa Barbara. Surely, there can’t be a more spectacular sight in the world. 9.4 to 10.5 cm

  Pygmy Blue (Western U.S.): This is the smallest butterfly in the world, and though there are micro-moths that are even smaller, I’d like to see it. Its whitish, brownish, grayish coloring gives it a pixie appearance. 1.2-2 cm

  Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing (Papua New Guinea): This beautiful butterfly has been killed in the wild for its size. It is the largest butterfly in the world, and endangered. +31 cm

  Atlas moth (Southeast Asia): This is one of the largest moths in the world. Because so many are being caught and killed and framed like dead flowers, their numbers are dwindling. Don’t believe websites that say they’ve collected only dead insects, or they’ve been cleared by customs. They are all liars. 25–30 cm

  I am sad to write that I still don’t have a name for my blues. Perhaps I should temporarily name it the Singh Blue.

  1 COMMENT

  I just thought of something. Could your bf be a hybrid? I’ve read about a rare thing where insects and some crustaceans can be born with both male and female parts. It’s like a one in a million chance, but you never know. A gynandromorph? —BF Girl NY

  Isabella

  She smelled of roses. Not the kind that could be found in a plastic-wrapped bouquet in Price Chopper, or the perfectly closed ones in a corsage on the wrist of a prom queen, or even the kind sitting singly in a skinny vase atop a table in an Italian restaurant. No, Isabella thought, those flowers were imposters. They were criminals that failed to capture the freshness of the rose. She smelled like the wild kind, tangled along an old fence in a working farm in Pennsylvania. Isabella had seen them on a school field trip a few years earlier. Those pink buds were small and splayed open, which completely exposed their yellow centers for little insects to drink. They were sweet like clover and musky like honey. Oma’s abundant bosom, which Isabella was pressed against in a loving hug, smelled just like that.

  “Zoh good to see you, Isabella!” Oma’s accent was as thick as it had always been.

  Isabella attempted to respond, but Oma’s breasts muffled all sound.

  “I hope you don’t mind—I already moved into your room, neh? It’s a nice room.”

  “Izzy, why don’t you go put your backpack down?” Her mother nodded toward the hallway.

  She did as asked, and as soon as she opened the door to her bedroom, she found herself in a Latvian culture museum. Her dresser was draped with a lace cloth, atop which were a few pieces of amber sitting like mushrooms waiting to be found. Isabella picked up a large piece and held it to the lamp. Inside, she saw a winged insect. Its body was translucent yet seemed as though it might awaken from its slumber and fly away. Strange, she thought, how this piece of tree sap was like a time capsule. Isabella smiled when she noticed a miniature Latvian flag, a rectangle of burgundy with a stripe of white bisecting the center, standing tall in a jar of dry rose buds beside Oma’s bedside lamp. On the ground beside her knitted slippers was a pile of carefully folded Latvian newspapers, each appearing to have been read and reread. The largest basket she’d ever seen was at the foot of Oma’s bed, with slippers and gloves and all sorts of knitted goods in the vibrant colors of her country, with Latvian flair like pompoms and tassels, flowing over the edges. Remarkable, Isabella thought, how Oma could transport her entire home, country included, in a single suitcase.

  Isabella was glad Oma was her new roommate. Vic had stored all of his dirty laundry under his bed, which made his room smell ripe. Each of Oma’s possessions, from her small suitcase to the stack of books and letters, smelled quite nice indeed. Isabella appraised the room and had to resist the temptation to rummage through her grandmother’s things. She was, of course, inclined to collect, perhaps even borrow or steal, so this battle was already one she was destined to lose at some point. It took Isabella only seconds to decide that the most interesting item her grandmother had brought into their room was the small wooden box on the shelf above her bed. Isabella knew that boxes held the most important secrets. It was very tempting, but she could not risk angering her mother or grandmother. So she set out to memorize her lines for tomorrow’s rehearsal.

  The living room was vacant. Papa and Papaji were conducting training exercises with Vic in the backyard. Isabella seized the opportunity to claim the good couch in the living room. She opened her copy of the play, but she couldn’t concentrate: All she could think of was Michelle. How Michelle had been so great in rehearsal as Samantha. How the on-stage lighting made her hair a halo of blonde. How badly she’d wanted to be an actor.

  Isabella had received an e-mail from Michelle a few days earlier, and all it had said was that she was going to be staying in the city permanently. She had been diagnosed with leukemia, but they thought she might have a chance. A chance? Isabella hadn’t been able to process this information. Michelle sent her new address and asked for gossip to distract her. She asked for letters and e-mail instead of phone calls because she was in treatment and sleeping a lot. Isabella responded with a play-by-play of the recent events in her life. She told Michelle she was saving up bus fare for the ride into the city as soon as the play was finished.

  Isabella tried to return to the script, to take her mind off Michelle, at least for now. She felt so helpless, knowing there was nothing she could do and being unable to visit until the play was finished. Forcing herself to turn back to her script, she flipped the pages to the second act, which was more interesting than the first, mostly about the personal pre-war lives of the individuals who were locked away in the windowless bunker waiting out the first week of World War III’s nuclear catastrophe. This next section was more about the current situation: how the four individuals were managing the day-to-day survival in the bunker, the smell of the space, what they had to eat, and so forth. It was strange to Isabella to think of how people would change under this type of stress: leaders under the threat of nuclear fallout. Her character, the daughter of the President, had little to do with her father’s position or with anything at all political before the first bomb was released. Now she was the central figure. Through their present outlooks, the audience would finally learn of the terrifying circumstances that released the hounds of hell.

  According to the script, the whole world was at war, which began when Pakistan tested a series of advanced weaponry on New Delhi. In retaliation, India responded with a barrage of nuclear bombs aimed at Islamabad, Karachi, and Peshawar, killing nearly a million people. Then Russia invaded China and Iran, and a month later the United Nations and the Allies attempted to quiet the approaching apocalypse through diplomacy and offerings to the warring countries. But the Taliban got their hands on a warhead and hijacked a plane and hit Washington, D.C., and the sole survivors were those who had made it into this bunker, many stories underground.

  Isabella sank into the comfortable couch as she read. The names of the foreign countries felt so far away, but when she read about a nuclear warhead destroying an American city not far from the one in which she lived, she felt sick to her stomach. Her character’s role in the second act was as the linchpin of sanity in the dim light of the underground. The Vice President’s nerves were beginning to fray, and the guilt was consuming him bit by bit. The plot was deepening; however, Isabella still felt the play was inauthentic. Perforating the dialogue was glorified gunfire, tape recordings of fake bomb sounds, and wailing air-raid sirens—1,001 Cries seemed more like a platform for experimental sound engineering than a high school theater production. She rolled her eyes when she read a stage direction that signaled a flurry of earthquake-like rumbles. Isabella thought Tewks might employ some music students to set up their xylophones and drums offstage.

  As she read on, her stomach turned, but this time it wasn’t nerves. Her face went hot, then cold sweat spread across her back. She ran to the bathroom and vomited. This, wha
tever it was, was not going away. What, exactly, was happening to her? As she stared into the bathroom mirror she made note of the dark circles under her eyes and the dehydrated skin on her cheeks.

  Her mother and grandmother were kneading dough in the kitchen when she entered. Oma was as round as she had remembered her from a few Christmases earlier. Her sharp blue eyes appeared less clear, though, as though cataracts were taking hold. Wrapped around her robust waist was an apron made of raw cotton.

  “Zoh, mazmeita, vie is your play?” She looked up from her large pile of dumplings.

  “Fine, Oma.” She sighed.

  “Michelle will be proud of you,” her mother said. “As soon as we can, we’ll visit her family.”

  “You’ll come, too?”

  “Of course, Izzy. They need our support. She can beat this.”

  Oma looked at Isabella, and her gaze hit the rear of her skull. “You are looking at mine eyes, neh? I know. There are Cadillacs. What can you do?”

  “Cataracts, Oma, not Cadillacs.”

  “What’s za play about? A nice holiday play, neh? Santa Claus, or Rudolph?”

  Isabella sat in one of the stools at the counter. “That’s the thing. It’s not a happy play at all. It’s quite sad, actually, about a Third World War.”

  At hearing this, Oma placed her dumpling atop the large pile and pressed her hand against her chest. “Why such a horrible play? Nobody want to hear about za Rushkies, Jews, and Germans.”

  “The director is quite the piece of work, too. Treats us like children but expects us to know how to act already.”

  “Maija, darlink, is this true? World War III? Who would take pleasure in such things? It is madness.”

  “Ma, it’s just a play. What can we do now? These children know nothing of the past.” Her mother continued forming the bits of dough into round balls.