A Lepidopterist’s Guide to Survival
Steeping herself in pollen, Miriam plants coneflower, fireweed, monarda. She backs herself into a corner of the garden, where she sits, watching. A yellow wooly bear is the first to anchor, harvesting what it can before lighting away. A grackle jeers from the fence post, its wings iridescent in the spring sunshine. Miriam surveys her work and jots down notes in a small pad she keeps tucked in her pocket. A cabbage white flutters to the beebalm, its spindly legs grasping onto the bright pink fringe. Miriam spends hours in the garden, tracking the pollination paths of thirty-two different species before the light fades, darkness creeping across the sky. When she can no longer see the words she writes in her journal, she reluctantly stands up, and heads for the house.
-
“Schmetterling,” her grandfather said, his voice as papery as a moth’s delicate wings. He sat on a small folding chair in the middle of the strawberry field watching his granddaughter pluck ripe berries and place them carefully in her willow basket.
“Schmetterling,” Miriam repeated, the word sweet and cloying on her tongue. She watched the cabbage looper spiral its way lazily over the rows of lush green plants.
“Strictly speaking, a moth is not a butterfly,” her father corrected from a neighboring row. But her grandfather waved away his son’s explanation and adjusted his hat so the brim covered his face from the harsh afternoon sun.
Miriam considered this distinction as she chewed thoughtfully on a strawberry, holding the stem delicately between her fingers. “What is the difference between a moth and a butterfly?” she asked, still tracing the looper’s distant path across the field and into the nearby woods. The linen-colored wings had certainly looked similar in shape and form to the butterflies that stretched along her father’s study, pinned and splayed behind glass, forbidden from her.
But her father just waved his handkerchief at her, shooing away her questions like a buzzing fly, before wiping the sweat from his brow and continuing down the row to find a new patch of ripe berries, the bushes at his feet still flush with red jewels.
-
Each time Miriam steps into the woods, she feels a piece of herself slough off to the forest floor like yellowed needles from a larch. Bits of her carpet the familiar path, glowing iridescent in the dark. She follows herself each night, retracing her steps, looping back on old versions that she no longer recognizes, fractals of herself shimmering like a kaleidoscope.
Carrying a glass jar, she opens the lid and waits. She can feel them fluttering in the air around her, their wings changing the air pressure, the current, minuscule metric differences perceptible to the itching antennae that sprout from her forehead. Her back bristles as she feels the weight of the jar in her hands, the insects swarming the glass, inching their way around the confusing trap. She hesitates, feeling the presence of something new: heavier than the wooly sphinx moth, larger in wingspan than the lunar. For a moment, she is indecisive: torn between the freedom of the winged creature and her scientific curiosity, the impulse to catalog the details of a new specimen.
“Miriam?” a voice calls, reverberating against the pine wood.
Reluctantly, she places the lid on the jar and screws it tightly.
“Miriam, what are you doing out here?” her father’s voice calls out again, closer. She looks up and sees him in the distance, holding a lantern above his head. She feels as the moths draw closer toward him, felt-tipped wings beating against the glass, pummeling themselves for the flame. For a moment, she wishes to do the same, dashing into the light, propelling herself toward him, to feel herself ignite under his gaze, and have him watch with keen interest as she burns to ash.
“Couldn’t sleep,” she manages, her mouth dry. The summer heat has drained her body like a wolf spider of its prey. She imagines herself cocooned, fixed in a web of his design. She feels claustrophobic in the darkness and steps closer to the light pooling around him.
“What do you have in the jar?” he asks, staring intently at her quarry. His arm begins to shake as he holds the lamp high, his muscles jelly from disuse.
“Something new,” she manages. She can still feel the flexing of wings in the glass. She flushes, her stomach wrenching with guilt. Her antennae retract, tucking into her hair.
“Oh? Give it here,” he commands, holding out his hand for the jar. Miriam feels transfixed, like one of the specimens in her father’s collection, pinned to a board in his office.
“Midge, let us see it,” he insists, his voice a knife cutting through the dark. Reluctantly, she lets the jar fall from her fingertips as he takes it, stowing it away in his jacket pocket. “It’s far too late to be out here,” he announces, turning on his heel back toward the house.
Slowly, Miriam follows the diffused light of his lantern, stumbling past the shards of herself crushed into the earth.
-
Miriam knocks on her father’s office door and waits for permission to enter.
“Yes, what is it?” His office walls are filled with diagrams of flayed specimens, anatomical designs spread bare across the room.
Miriam lingers in the doorframe. “Do you really want me to come? To the party, I mean?” she asks, her voice faltering. She feels her muscles clench, as if bracing for a blow, his words like a stiff wind buffeting her to the ground.
“It is expected,” he says, shuffling papers on his desk. “Your absence would be conspicuous. You know how I hate idle gossip. How would it look if you weren’t there when I accepted my award?”
“Of course,” she nods, rubbing her fingers nervously. “It’s just there’s the matter of,” she begins. “I don’t know if I have anything appropriate to wear. Perhaps there is something of Mother’s in the attic?”
“There’s nothing up there but mothballs and dust. I’ll have a dress purchased and laid out before the party,” he concludes, turning in his chair. He stares at an ink drawing of a black swallowtail on the wall before waving her away after a while.
Miriam nods and withdraws from his office quietly.
-
Sitting on the dusty wooden floor of the attic, Miriam pulls a plain linen-covered book from a box. Opening it, she sees a looping scrawl, similar to her own hand. “This isn’t father’s writing,” she murmurs to herself, remembering his boxy lettering on the labels of specimens in his office. She flips through the journal, deciphering the handwriting as if it were her own. Furrowing her brow, Miriam strains to read in the dim light of the attic.
“T. seems only interested in the ostentatious of lepidoptery, the fetishizing of collections, the hoarding of science. He is not interested in sitting in a field or swamp in waders, waiting for the rhythmic beat of a butterfly.”
For a moment, Miriam feels wholly alone, the silence of the house cloying, closing in on her as she studies the journal. As she turns the page, a photo falls to the ground. She picks it up, blows off the dust that’s collected on the image and examines it: a woman in coveralls and high boots holding a baby in a hazy pasture. On the back of the photo, she reads a faded inscription: “Miriam and me: in search of an eyed hawk moth.”
“Mother?” she gasps, confusion prinking her mouth. “But he said you died in childbirth.” Miriam studies the photo intensely, her face hovering a few inches from the image, taking in everything she can about her mother as if gathering pollen, sustenance: tawny brown hair swept into a ponytail, almond-shaped grey-green eyes peering out, defiant. Miriam spends the rest of the afternoon reading the journal as drizzle clings to the attic window, where dead flies litter the sill.
-
Miriam wears a dress of brown tweed and a long linen scarf around her neck. Her father had ordered a bright magenta silk dress and had it laid out in her room the afternoon of the party. But Miriam had recoiled at the sight of the silk, imagining the thousands of silkworms harvested to produce the glossy fabric. She left the dress folded in the tissue paper, untouched.
“You wouldn’t wear the silk?” her father asks with an exasperated sigh as they arrive at the Dean’s house.
Miriam shrugs and tugs the scarf tighter, feeling it constrict the words surging in her throat. She swallows and follows him into the party.
Miriam blends into the background of the parlor, hovering near a brown leather chair in the corner, away from the crowd. She imagines herself like a stick caterpillar mimicking a branch as a survival tactic, protecting herself from the incessant peck of starlings. Watching from a distance, she observes the other attendees fluttering around the room in dizzying circles as they swarm from one guest to another. Many cluster around her father, cooing with praise and admiration.
“What do the wooly bears tell you this year?” a man jokes, sloshing his drink as he jabs her father in the rib with his elbow.
“Pah. That’s just an old wive’s tale,” her father scoffs, rolling his eyes. “No real lepidopterist pays any attention to such bunk.”
“Oh, but it would seem that the changing band color may be less of a weather predictor of what’s to come and more of an indicator of the previous growing conditions. Wooly bears are all black when they first appear. The brown stripe might then indicate the previous weather conditions,” Miriam’s voice trails off as she looks from the man’s ruddy face to her father’s scowl. She clears her throat and fumbles with her drink.
“Well, that’s all very interesting, but uh,” the guest mutters, excusing himself and slinking back toward the bar.
“What have I told you about correcting people? No one wants to hear your dissertation, Midge,” her father scolds, eyebrows bristling.
“But he had started the conversation,” Miriam insists, her voice strained as though grasping for a logic to suit him.
“You don’t understand. They’re all maggots, feasting on a host,” he grimaces and drains his brandy in a long draught. She tries to imagine Dean Witherstone and Professor Dixon as larva, wriggling on white bellies over the fetid flesh of her father as though he were a dead deer by the side of the road. She dismisses the image, her stomach souring, and sets down her wine glass on a tray.
“Perhaps we should go,” she suggests, gently placing her hand on his shoulder.
"Can I have everyone's attention, please?" the Dean announces, clinking a fork on the side of his glass.
“Not now, Midge,” he wrings himself free of her touch, and steps toward the front of the room.
"We are fortunate to have Prof. Tussock here with us tonight. A renowned lepidopterist, Prof. Tussock has made a new discovery, the capstone to his illustrious career at the university," the Dean continues, gesturing toward Miriam’s father, his face beaming.
Miriam applauds mechanically with the crowd, her mind spiraling. “A new discovery…” Her fingers numb, blood draining from her extremities as she watches her father accept the award for distinguished research. Dean Witherstone claps him on the back, pushing him toward the audience to bask in its praise.
“Well, this is quite a night. Twenty years ago I was given a similar honor for discovering the Boloria Hydapse, which some of you may remember. Some spend their entire careers without ever making such a discovery. But it has been my good fortune to add to my collection this new discovery, that I am naming Speyeria Midae.”
Miriam shoves her fists into her pockets, hoping to feel something as her father continues his speech. Her legs weaken, buckling beneath her and she leans against the wingback chair once more, steadying herself as she drowns in her father’s words. She remembers the weight of the moth in the glass, the flutter of its delicate wings that she wanted to set free. Something new, she had told him.
“And of course, I’d like to thank the college for its continued support. Without the Dean and my colleagues, this kind of research would not be possible,” he manages, humility rolling around in his mouth like marbles.
Dean Witherstone applauds and wraps an arm around her father. “We have another special surprise for you. We had the art department create a sketch of your species for you to mount on your office wall.” He brings out a painting of the moth and rotates it for the audience to see.
Miriam blanches at the sight of her discovery once more in her father’s hands. She stares, silent, as a smattering of applause continues until the Dean steers her father toward the bar to celebrate. She watches him disappear into the crowd, backs and arms blotting out his visage.
“You must be so proud of your father,” a voice crows behind her. Miriam turns, forcing a smile at a woman dressed in navy taffeta, a birdcage veil skimming her hair.
“Of course,” Miriam manages. Her teeth begin to chatter and she shivers, sinking into her dress. She shifts, the dress shriveling around her.
“Are you all right?” the woman asks, reaching out toward Miriam’s arm.
Miriam stumbles, her legs thinning beneath her. “It’s warm in here, isn’t it? I need a bit of fresh air. Excuse me.”
-
Outside, Miriam rips the scarf from her neck and gulps the cool night air, her mouth desiccated. Her skin itches and her back throbs, constricted in her mother’s dress.
“How did you do this?” she wonders trying to imagine the happy woman in dirt-caked coveralls mingling in the suffocating layers of crinoline, alcohol, and arrogance. She unzips the dress, expands her ribs, diaphragm breaking loose of the thick fabric encasing her body.
Miriam thinks back to the date on the photograph she had found in the attic. There had been something familiar about it, a number that she had seen before in a different script. The fritillary: her father’s neat handwriting in his collection room. The photo had been taken on the same day her father discovered the boloria. Miriam squinches her nose, wondering how that could be. “He is not interested in sitting in a field or swamp in waders, waiting...” She considers this, trying to remember a moment from her childhood when they had tramped through mud or dug up monarda to transplant in a garden along a migration path: her father was not there. His shadow loomed over the memories, but was merely a pockmark on a photo, a sun glare blurring the image.
“He’s never discovered anything,” Miriam whispers to herself, the words hardening in the night air before her. As her breath dissipates, the plume of words, as delicate as a butterfly’s wings, shatters before her, falling to the earth. “Then how did he discover the bolaria?” she wonders. She thinks back to the pinned specimen in her father’s office: a furry brown body with elongated wings that feature moss-colored eyespots. Miriam’s tongue elongates, curling from her mouth, salivating from the intoxicating aroma of a nearby hawthorn tree. “The eyes,” she murmurs, superimposing the eyespots of the bolaria moth onto the photograph of her mother in her mind: an exact replica. She imagines her mother, shedding one life only to be captured, wings pinned by her father’s avaricious hands.
Miriam feels her exoskeleton breaking, wings protruding from her spine. She slips into the woods, following the fractal path of herself, recognizing some shards, others unfamiliar. Her feet begin to shrink, bones breaking, slender wisps of muscle tenderly arching over the ground. In the distance, she can hear the familiar voice of her father calling for her, but she ignores it, his words a cloying trap like a spider’s web. Above her, she can feel others flitting across the canopy, beckoning her to join their flight. Antennae eager, tingling, she rises into the air, her wings stretching out toward the horizon.
***
Shelly Jones (she/they) is a Professor of English at a small college in upstate New York, where she teaches classes in mythology, folklore, and writing. Her speculative work has previously appeared in Podcastle, New Myths, The Future Fire, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @shellyjansen.