“You aren’t allowed to touch them,” I say.
Kneeling on the floor, I watch six silk worm babies quietly settle some distance from each other in an 8 by 11 cardboard box. I touch them gently, and they feel soft, cool and slightly moist. My little sister reaches her grubby fingers towards the worms, but I nudge her away.
“When do the butterflies come?” Alicia asks me. She is kneeling as I am, arms propped up on the wooden table, her head resting on her arms.
“Soon, but you have to be patient,” I tell her.
“First the silk worms spin a cocoon. They wrap themselves inside. Then the butterflies fly out. Right, Mami?”
“That’s right,” my mother says, standing behind us watching us watch our babies. The worms are bone white, wiggly and thin. They have tiny black spots lined up symmetrically along the sides of their bodies. They move slowly, feeling their way about the mulberry leaves.
“What happens to the wormies?” my sister asks.
“They turn into butterflies, silly,” I say. My mother pinches me lightly on my right shoulder.
“They turn into butterflies, Alicia,” I say again.
My sister looks at the worms, then asks, “What are they doing inside the cocoons?”
I have no idea. I do what I have seen my mother do when she is thinking. I tilt my head and lightly touch my right eyebrow. My mother has long slender fingers and eyebrows that dangle serenely like willow branches above her dark brown eyes. Even her smallest movements are full of grace. Alicia looks at me, wrinkles her nose, tilts her head and scratches her right eyebrow.
I ignore her and turn to my mother.
“They produce silk, spinning and spinning inside the cocoons,” my mother says. “They get ready to be butterflies, making themselves beautiful and strong.”
“Hmmmm,” I say, just because it makes me think.
“Hmmmm,” Alicia says, just because.
“Stop that,” I say.
Alicia looks at me, wide eyed.
“You know what I mean, stop doing everything I do. It’s annoying,” I say.
My mother pinches my shoulder. Alicia looks at me, then at the worms.
“Can I have my own wormies too, Mami?” she begs.
“Of course you can, baby, when you are a little bit older. First you should learn how to do it by watching your sister take care of them.”
Alicia looks at the worms, wants to touch them. She picks her nose.
Every morning, I clean the cardboard box. I check the entire box for little grey pellets of excrement and throw them out with any mulberry leaves that are starting to wilt. I refill it with generous layers of mulberry leaves, freshly picked. The leaves are dark green, with white fuzz on the surface. Sometimes Alicia helps me wipe the dew off the leaves. I check them to make sure they are completely dry before placing them inside the box.
“Why do we have to dry these leaves?” Alicia asks.
“If we don’t, the silk worm babies will eat them and get the runs.”
In a few days, the silk worm babies turn from skinny stringy worms into pudgy puffy marshmallows and lie lazily on the leaves. Then one morning, they disappear. Instead there are six fat cotton balls lying on the mulberry leaves. Looking closer, I see fine strands of fiber bound round and round like tight balls of thin white, almost transparent yarn. Alicia and I wait for the butterflies to make their appearance. We check the cardboard box throughout the day, but no butterflies.
When I wake up the next morning, I jump out of bed and run to the cardboard box. The cocoons are still there, puffier than yesterday, but otherwise, lying very quietly, unchanged. When Alicia wakes up a little while later, she pads to the living room, her stuffed dog in tow, and looks up at me with wide expectant eyes.
