After the Eggs are Laid in Autumn

by Gwen Whiting

I spent hours that summer searching the bushes and trees for praying mantises. There was no one else to play with, except for a mother who lay in bed crying and a father who smelled like rotting peaches. I pilfered mason jars to keep my insect friends in, hunted bits of fabric for the tops, plucked rose petals to put in the bottom, and hoped that my mother wouldn’t notice the random way that her flowers bloomed. Everything else disappointed her.

     But it was now fall and the leaves on the trees were dying and the roses had long gone. My father mowed them down on a day his walk was so unsteady, it made me seasick to watch, though we hadn’t gone to the ocean since before my mother was ill. Today was much the same, although there were no more flowers to mow down, and my mother had moved from her bedroom to a hospital.

I missed my short-lived mantises. I never kept them for long before letting them go, but at least in the short time of their visits, the mantises listened when I talked, folding their limbs, and cocking their heads.  It felt good to open their jars at the end of it, watching them catch flight and disappear into the clouds.

     I asked my father for something to eat, but he was sleeping. There was nothing to do and I was afraid to turn the television on for fear of waking him, so I walked into the kitchen and found a jar. Maybe there was a mantis hiding in the garden.

     We were out of most things to eat. The only fruit left in the kitchen was a few lemons, limes, and a jar of pickled onions. I picked a lemon because I liked the color and put it into the jar whole. Perhaps it was bright enough that the mantis would mistake it for a flower.

     The trees were just a mess of stray branches tangled with the fence that separated us from the neighbors. I trailed my hand against the metal as I walked to the back yard. Leaves rustled like whispers, but there were no bugs nibbling at the few green shards that remained.

     I sat down on our tire swing and set the jar on the ground. My foot bumped the jar and I heard something rattle. A flash of green beat against the glass, dwarfed by the bright yellow lemon.

I picked the jar up. A mantis clung to the lemon, the last insect I might see that season. I smiled at it and tried to think of a name for it as its forelegs lifted, pressing together. It hissed, antennae twitching.

     I thought of all the other insects I had caught over the summer. 

     “I guess I should let you go. But maybe you can come back and visit?” It wouldn’t happen. You had to care about someone to visit them. Not like my father, who never wanted to take me to my mother in the evenings, complaining that she cried too often when she saw us. If people had a hard time loving you back, surely it was impossible for bugs. 

     I knelt in the dirt and set the jar down. The mantis didn’t stir. My heart squeezed. Was it afraid of me? Was it dead? I closed my eyes and folded my hands, like mantises did, and wished. That school would start. Or my mother would come home. Or even just that my father would start talking to me, making lunches, or doing any of the things that fathers did—whatever those were. I left the glass there to molder and walked into the house.

     It smelled good. Like bread in a warm oven and glass cleaner. My father was washing the kitchen counter with an old rag as the washing machine rumbled in the distance. Even my jars were clean, lined up in a neat row, their punctured lids screwed tight. It choked me up to see them, empty and gleaming, all traces of leaves and egg sacs disappeared.

     “You wouldn’t believe what woke me up,” my father said, wonder in his voice. 

     “Mantises,” he continued. “It seemed like thousands. But it’s so late in the season, I can’t imagine how they’re still alive. They came in, hissing and, just as sudden, they died.” 

     I ran to the garbage can and lifted the lid. The trash was full of their broken bodies, green wings and legs now only brittle husks buried in a mess of eggshells and coffee grounds. My eyes welled up. Every year, the mantises disappeared after laying their eggs, but I had never seen so many at once. My father’s hand clapped down on my shoulder. His breath smelled of black coffee. I looked up at him. His eyes were still shot with red, but they were kind.

     “I’m sorry. I know you loved them. Maybe we can start looking for bugs together. We could... catch a butterfly for your mother. For when we bring her home.” He gestured at the jars on the counter. He had cleaned them, not just for me but for us. Was this the reward for letting the last mantis go? For caring for them all summer long? Had the insects given themselves so that we could now live? As I looked up into my father’s tired face, I saw that the mantises had cast a spell over us all. That, by spring, we would be a family again.

            “We don’t need jars. I’m done hunting mantises.” I crushed my cheek against his chest as I hugged him, rubbing my nose into his old flannel shirt. The following year, when the roses exploded into bloom as my mother baked bread in the kitchen and the mantises began to peek and hiss from behind newly-green leaves, I kept my promise. Instead, we planted a bee garden.

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About the Author

Gwen Whiting (she/her) is an author and museum curator living and working in Tacoma, Washington. She has previously published flash in Daily Science Fiction and Every Day Fiction. Learn more about her work at gwen-whiting.com.