Carol Emshwiller is one of America’s finest contemporary fiction writers. In her stories, elements of fantasy and surrealism are employed to comment on the real world we live in—with style, compassion, and a wit that bites.
—T.W.
A tiny thing that sang. Nothing like it mentioned in any of my nature books, and I had many. At first no name we gave it stuck. Sometimes we called it Harriet, or Alice, or Jim. Names of kids at school. All ironies. More often we just called it Bug. This mere mite—well, not really that small, more the size of a bee— pulled itself up by its front legs, the back ones having been somehow bent. Or so it seemed to us. Perhaps it happened when we caught it.
How can such a tiny thing have such a voice? Clear. Ringing out. Echoing as though in the mountains or in some great resonating hall. Such a wonderful other-worldly sound. We felt it tingling along our backbones and on down into the soles of our feet.
My sister kept it in a cricket cage. Fed it lettuce, grains of rice, grapes, but never anything of milk or butter, “in order to keep down the phlegm,” she said, even though we didn’t know how it made its sounds. We asked ourselves that first day, “Is it by the wings? Is it the back legs? Is it, after all, the mouth?” We looked at it through a magnifying glass, but still we couldn’t tell. Actually we didn’t look at it long that time, for (then) we didn’t like the look of it at all. There were hairs or barbels hanging down from its mouth and greenish fur at the corners of its eyes. We didn’t mind the yellow fur on its body as that seemed cuddly and beelike to us. “Does it have a stinger?” my sister asked, but I couldn’t say yes or no for sure, except that it hadn’t stung us yet . . . me yet, for that first day I was the one that held it.
“I would suppose not,” I told my sister. “Maybe it has its voice to keep it safe, and besides, if it had a stinger it would have used it by now. ” I did look carefully, though, but could see no sign of one.
To make it sing you had to prick it with a pin. It would sing for ten or fifteen minutes and then would need another prick. We knew enough to be gentle. We wanted it to last a long time.
How we discovered the singing was by the pricking, actually. The thing lay as though dead after we first caught it and we wanted to know for sure was it or wasn’t it, so we pricked it. One prick got a little motion. Two, and it sat up, struggling to pull its poor back legs under itself. Three, and it began to sing and we knew we had something startling and worthwhile—a little jewel—better than a jewel, a jewel that sang.
My sister insisted she had seen it first and that, therefore, it was hers alone. She always did like tiny things, so I supposed it was right that she should have it, but I saw it first, and I caught it, and it was my hand first held it for she was frightened of it . . . thought it ugly before she heard it sing. But she had always been able to convince me that what I knew was true, wasn’t.
She was very beautiful and it was not just I who thought so. Heads turned. She had pale skin and dark eyes and looked at everything with great concentration. Her hair was black and hung out from her head in a sort of fan shape. She wore a beaded head band she’d made herself with threads and tiny beads.
We were in the same school, she, a full-blown woman about to graduate, and I in the ninth grade, still a boy . . . still in my chubby phase before I started to grow tall. I felt awkward and ugly. I was awkward and, if not exactly ugly, certainly not attractive. Her skin was utter purity, while I was beginning to get pimples. For that reason alone, I believed that everything she said was right and everything I said was wrong. It had to be so because of the pimples.
Beautiful as she was, my sister wasn’t popular, yet popularity or something akin to it. . . something that looked like it, was what she wanted more than anything, and if that were impossible, then fame. She wanted to make a big splash in school. She wanted to sing, and dance, and act, but she had a small, reedy voice and, although graceful as she went about her life, she was awkward when on stage. Something came over her that made her like a puppet—a self-conscious stiffness. She was aware of this and she had gone from the desire to be on stage to the desire not to expose herself there because she knew how, as she said, ridiculous she looked—how, as she said, everyone would laugh at her, though I knew they wouldn’t dare laugh at her any more than I dared. People were afraid of her just as I was. They called her “The Queen,” and they joked that she had taken vows of chastity. They called me “Twinkie.” Sometimes that was expanded to “Twinkle Toes,” for no reason I could tell except that the words went together. I certainly wasn't light on my feet, though perhaps I did twinkle a bit. I was so anxious to please. I smiled and agreed with everyone as though they were all my sister and I always agreed with her. It was safer to do so. I don’t remember when I first figured that out. It was as though I’d always known it as soon as I began to realize anything at all.
