Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [131]
“Whoa,” said Crys. “Are they always that color?”
“Nope. There’re twenty thousand kinds of grasshoppers, crickets, and katydids in the world, and no two kinds are alike.”
“Whoa!”
“My sentiments exactly. Here, look at this one.” She reached into the net and extracted a flat, cross-eyed creature that looked like a leaf with legs. “That’s a katydid.”
Crys took it, looking it in the eye. She glanced up at Lusa. “They make all ’at racket at night? Keety-did! Keety-didn’t!”
Lusa was impressed with the imitation. “That’s right. You never saw a katydid before?”
She shook her head rapidly. “I thought katydids was some’n big. A big old whopper bird or some’n.”
“A bird?” Lusa was truly shocked. How could rural kids grow up so ignorant of their world? Their parents gave them Game Boys and TVs that spewed out cityscapes of cops and pretty lawyers, but they couldn’t show them a katydid. It wasn’t neglect, Lusa knew. It was some sad mix of shame and modern intentions, like her own father’s ban on Yiddish. She watched Crys study this creature’s every infinitesimal feature, handling it with utmost care, eating it with her eyes. Like a good taxonomist.
“How’s it holler so loud with that little mouth?” she asked finally.
“Not with its mouth. Look, see this? Wings again.” She extended them carefully. “There’s a scraper on one and a little ridged thing like a file on the underside of the other. He rubs them together. That’s how he sings.”
Crys practically put her nose against the thing. “Where at?”
“Those parts are hard to see. Really teeny.”
Crys looked skeptical. “Then how’s it so loud?”
“Did you ever hear a little teeny piece of chalk screech on a blackboard?”
She raised her eyebrows and nodded.
“That’s how. A rough thing pushed against a hard thing. Big isn’t everything. I should know: I’m only five foot one.”
“Is that little?”
“Yeah. For grown-ups, that’s little.”
“How big’s Aunt Lois?” Ain’t Lois, she always said, as if to negate the woman. Lusa could appreciate the sentiment.
“I don’t know; big. For a woman. Five foot ten, maybe. Why?”
Crys looked warily down the hill. “She said you was pushing everybody too far.”
Lusa lay back on the grass, crossed her arms behind her head, and watched a cloud loll in the sky. She wondered whom Crys wished to hurt with this betrayal. “Some of your aunts think I shouldn’t have this farm. That’s what that’s all about.”
Crys lay down, too, with the top of her head a few inches from Lusa’s. “How come?”
“Because I’m different from them. Because I wasn’t born here. Because I like bugs. You name it. Because your uncle Cole died and I’m still here, and they’re mad because life’s not fair. I don’t know exactly why; I’m just guessing. People don’t always have good reasons for feeling how they do.”
“Is my mama going to die?”
“Wow. Where did that come from?”
“Is she?”
“I don’t know the answer to that. That’s the truth, I swear. Nobody knows. I do know she’s doing everything she can to get better, for you and Lowell. Even going up to Roanoke and taking poison once a week. So she must love you pretty much, huh?”
No answer came.
“Another thing,” Lusa said. “I know for a fact that Jesus will not hurt your mother just because Aunt Lois chopped up your clothes. If he was in a position to punish somebody, which is debatable, I think it’d be Aunt Lois, don’t you?”
“So will he kill Aunt Lois instead of Mama?”
“No, he won’t, that one I can answer. Life is definitely not like that. God doesn’t go around calling fouls like a referee, or else we’d have a different world by now. Ice cream three times a day and no spankings and no stinky dresses if you didn’t want them.”
Crys chuckled. For the first time since she’d planted herself fiercely on Lusa’s driveway that morning, she sounded clear and transparent, like a child. Like the crystal she was. Lusa couldn’t see her face, but she could feel her body next to hers in the grass and hear her relaxed breathing.
“Hey. Did anybody ever tell