Authors: Paul Pen
I examined the floor, my eyes coming to rest on each of the little objects contained in the jar. I didn’t want to count them, because I didn’t want to confirm that there was exactly the same number as there were fireflies in the lamp.
“But don’t cry,” said my mother.
I looked up to the ceiling. I followed the flight of one of the fireflies until it vanished in the air, disappearing in front of my eyes. Like the chick that never existed had disappeared from my hands that night.
Because the fireflies had never existed, either.
I took a deep breath to fill the void I felt in my chest.
Then Grandma spoke.
“I think I know what’s happening,” she said. A smile appeared on her face. “Come here.”
She held out her arms, inviting me to approach her. She stroked my face when she knew that I was in front of her.
“These fireflies that you say you see are like the chick that hatched in our hands,” she explained.
“Huh?”
“I gave you a very special power the night you brought me the egg. I taught you to see things like I have to see them,” she said. She laid a wrinkly finger on my forehead. “Imagining them. And I see you’ve managed to make good use of that power.”
I let out a sigh of wonder.
“There’s no creature more amazing than one that can make its own light,” Grandma went on.
I ran to the light switch at the bedroom door.
I turned it off.
All the fireflies glowed to celebrate the fall of darkness, leaving trails of magical green light in their wake. I swiveled with my arms held wide, traveling all around the room among the intermittent flashes that had been there with me during my last days in the basement.
“What’s their light like?” Grandma asked. “Describe it to me.”
“Green,” I answered.
I took the baby from Grandpa’s arms.
“It’s the fireflies,” I whispered to his little face. “Look at them glow. They slept with you one night.”
My nephew held out his arms. He opened and closed his hands in the air. As if he wanted to catch the lights that floated above him.
Grandma got up.
She left the room.
She returned a few seconds later.
“Here,” she said. “Get them back.” She gave me a new glass jar, while she took the baby.
I leapt onto the bed with the jar open.
I held it up.
“Come back,” I said. The fireflies swirled in a cloud of light, a galaxy of flashes, before returning to the container by themselves.
“Is that all of them?” asked Grandma.
I confirmed it was, closing the lid.
There was silence.
“So,” Dad murmured. “Can I turn on the light? Or are you two going to do some more of your magic with invisible things?”
Grandma laughed. “You can turn it on,” she said.
It was a few seconds before I could open my eyes without it hurting. When I got down from the bed, my family positioned themselves in front of me. Grandma took my father by the hand. Grandpa put his arm around her. Mom stood beside him, holding my brother.
“So, do you want to go out?” Dad asked.
I looked at the wardrobe. I remembered the line of purple light that I’d seen at the top of the tunnel that led outside.
“I want to know what it’s like out there,” I answered.
My mother lowered her head. My brother stroked her face without much care. He kissed her cheek, covering her in drool.
I left the jar on the bed.
I hugged Mom.
“Will I be able to come back?” I asked with my mouth pressed to her belly.
“You’ll have to,” Grandpa answered. “Unless your family stops needing food.”
Mom ruffled my hair with a hand. I stroked the wrinkly fold between two of her knuckles. The circle of burned skin at the base of the thumb. The wide, smooth scar near the wrist.
Then I stood in front of Dad.
He held a hand out to me like the cowboys did in the movies.
When I shook it, his hair scar curved.
I went up to Grandma, who was holding the baby in her arms. I enjoyed the smell of her talcum powder.
“And what if I want to stay with you?” I asked.
She smiled but shook her head at the same time.
“The world’s waiting for you,” she said. “You’re needed up there.”
I looked at the baby’s face. He was cooing with pleasure in his characteristic way. Like a purr. His nostrils opened and closed, no doubt recognizing Grandma’s smell. I clutched him by the sides.
“What’re you doing?” my mother asked. She stretched out a hand, gripping the baby’s body. When I tried to pull on the little boy, Mom pushed him toward Grandma, stopping me from taking him.
Dad’s fingers closed around her wrist. “Let him go.”
“Not yet,” she said. “He’s my grandson. Just until the next delivery. A few more weeks.”
“A few weeks?” Dad gestured at me with his chin. “Or ten years?”
Mom contained a sob. Her fingers separated from the baby like the legs of a butterfly taking flight. Then she hugged my brother.
“You’ll always be with me,” she whispered in his ear. She kissed his temple a few times in a row.
“Good-bye, Scarecrow,” I whispered. He laughed with a guttural gurgle. I tucked one of the legs of his pajama bottoms into his sock.
Grandma handed me the baby.
I rested his head near my elbow, like Mom had shown me.
“We’re going to see the sun,” I told him. The little boy smiled.
“Can you take the jar?” I asked Grandpa. “I want to go out with my fireflies.”
He picked up the container. “Then go out with them,” he said. “I’ll trade you.” He handed me the jar while he took the baby.
“Will I like living out there?” I asked.
“I’m certain you will,” he replied. When he got up, I recognized the Cricket Man’s clicking in his knees. A shiver threatened to run down my spine, but it died when Grandpa rested his hand on the back of my neck.
“Will I be able to live here if I don’t like what I see?”
Mom’s nose whistled. “Sure you will,” she said.
“But you won’t want to,” Dad added. “It’s too nice outside for that to happen.”
I filled my chest with a deep breath. I turned toward the wardrobe. “Shall we go?”
The first thing I touched was the grass that grew around the trapdoor opening. I stroked it with the palm of my hand, feeling the edge of each blade. I still had most of my body underground, supported on one of the steps in the tunnel. I put the firefly lamp down on that damp surface.
I lifted my face.
A breeze stroked me from my forehead to my feet, roaring in my ears.
“Come on,” said Grandpa.
I barely heard his voice, absorbed as I was in the air’s hum. I gripped the grass to pull myself up, but my feet didn’t respond.
“Open your eyes,” Grandpa said.
I’d closed them without realizing it.
My hands were frozen.
My legs trembled.
I breathed in a smell so intense I thought I’d go dizzy.
“Open them,” Grandpa insisted. “You have to see this.”
When I mustered the courage to open them, all I discovered was an immense black expanse. Another ceiling. I’d come out to more walls. To a bigger basement.
“There’s nothing here,” I said.
“What do you mean, there’s nothing? Look at the sky.”
I blinked, my face aimed toward the nothingness. I began to make out dots of light. Intermittent flashes up above.
“Are they fireflies?” I asked.
“They’re stars,” Grandpa replied. “And what you can hear in the distance is the sea.”
I stroked the ground with my hands.
Touching the grass.
I tried again to get out.
My legs didn’t respond.
Then I remembered the power that Grandma had given me. I could make the outside world what I’d always dreamed it would be.
I wished my chick was there to greet me.
Then I heard it tweet.
Wanting to see it was the encouragement I needed to get out. Once there, I picked up the firefly jar that I’d left on the grass.
“Glow,” I told them. “We’re outside.” The lamp lit up more brightly than ever, illuminating everything around me. Showing me at last the world that was up above the basement.
A world that was like I’d always imagined it.
The chick, small and yellow, walked between my legs, beating its wings and tweeting to welcome me. Lots of green butterflies, their lower wings in the shape of a kite, flew among Grandpa, my nephew, and me.
I unscrewed the jar’s lid.
I held it over my head.
The fireflies flew up into the sky, free.
I watched them until I could no longer tell them apart from the stars.
FIFTEEN YEARS LATER
37
I like leaving the lighthouse when the sun disappears but it’s not yet night. It’s the only time of day when the world has no shadows. My son walks along holding on to my leg. I know his little hand will let go of my pants one day, because he’ll want to know what there is beyond the life that his father has shown him, so I try to memorize each of these moments when his fingers squeeze the fabric as if he was afraid to leave my orbit. My wife has stayed in the kitchen. She was still chopping carrots when the last patch of sun vanished in front of our eyes. The patch that dies on top of the fridge at the end of each day, near the
Actias luna
magnet that we bought on one of our trips.
I crouch down when the boy points to what must seem to him like a bubble of cotton suspended in the air. I’ve learned that a finger stretched out toward something, along with two tugs on my pants, is the equivalent of a question. I pull the dandelion from its stalk, careful not to shake the ghostlike head left by the flower. After a gentle puff, the bubble of cotton bursts in front of him, dozens of seeds floating in the air all around. There’s no happier sound than the one my son knows how to make with his throat. I pursue two of those seeds with my eyes, two tiny parachutes standing out perfectly against the dark background of the sky. They fly with their filaments interlocked. At one point, the seeds are no longer visible in the growing darkness. Although I can’t see them, I know they are there, much like Grandma and Grandpa these last few years.
Grandpa hung on much longer than the doctors predicted when they gave him the bad news. He stayed with me long enough to teach me how to find my way out here, in this other world, which I’ve never gotten used to. Some nights I still go down to sleep in the basement. With Mom and Dad. My brother still marches through imaginary cornfields from time to time. My sister was killed by a blood clot caused by the wounds that the glass jar made on her face and neck. She died in my bed the same night I left. I know Dad didn’t go near her, that he watched what was happening from the door, but Grandma didn’t let go of her hand until the end. My sister directed her last look at my mother, who asked for forgiveness as the light of life in her daughter’s eyes went out in front of her.
The finger now points at the empty jar I left on the ground when I crouched down.
“Not long now,” I say. At that moment, the top of the new tower lights up. It’s the light from an ordinary bulb, not the big lens that gave my grandfather work. I see my nephew peer out from up there. Until a few years ago I didn’t let him go up those stairs. I wave so he can locate me, and his figure vanishes in an instant. He likes to think that he lives in a lighthouse, that there are still ships that need to be guided by its light. We inherited the property as distant relatives of Grandpa’s, the ones who came to visit him one day and never left. As a precaution I always say I’m three years older than I really am.
There’re still people on the island who look away when they cross paths with me in the street. Others don’t understand how I can live in the house where such terrible things happened. Some ask me if I know the real story about what happened back then. About what those people did. I always answer that I’ve heard something, but that you can’t live in the past.
I struggled to forgive my family when I learned what they did with the girl. But when I look at my own son, walking with his legs arced like a cowboy’s, laughing as he discovers the world and its dandelions, I wonder whether I’d have done the same thing. Whether I wouldn’t do anything in my power to protect him. Anything good. And anything bad.
A short time ago, when I returned from the greenhouse where I work controlling insect infestations, an elderly woman who was strolling at sundown along the jetty where I moored my boat told me that the two moles on my face reminded her of someone. She narrowed her eyes to rewind the tape of her memory, but my son made that happy sound with his throat that only he knows how to make, winning all of her attention. When the elderly woman bent down to pinch the boy’s cheek, the tape stopped at some other memory.
Each step we take makes the nearest crickets fall silent. The rest continue their singing, encouraging the moon to appear, perhaps. The windows of the nearby houses paint yellow squares in a navy blue world when the lights come on. I scan the plot of land until I recognize the spot I’m searching for. The weeds grow very quickly around the trapdoor. The nights when I have to open it, I pull out entire plants without intending it, the roots hanging from the stem like bundles of veins outside a body. It’s not time to go down tonight, so I let the boy play among the flowers. The blue ones sway each time he bats them. I take a seat on the rise in the land where the entrance is hidden, my legs in the same place they were when I set foot in the outside world for the first time. When I imagined the world was as I’d always dreamed it would be. Filled with the fireflies, the green butterflies, and the chick that never existed.
I cross my legs while my son fights with a poppy plant. His hand is still gripping my pants. I pull on it to get him to sit between my legs, his back against my belly, my chin on his head. His hair smells even better than the field around us. When I put the glass jar on his lap, he hugs it like he hugs the glowworm toy he sleeps with.
There’s a solitary flash in the air.
A dot of light, cleaving through the growing darkness. I don’t think my son has seen it, because his hands are still investigating the jar’s contour.