YVETTE SIN | writing

BEETLES AND BACKYARD CONSTELLATIONS

by Yvette Sin

It’s too early when Grace shakes me awake, her clumsy kid-fingers prodding the sleep from my sides.

“Peter,” her voice is small. “Dad’s outside digging holes again.”

The kitchen tiles are too cold for bare feet so I walk on my toes, stepping from one sunspot to the other. Grace follows at my heels but at half my stride, she gets left in the cold. Everything is in its usual disarray: grease-crusted pans on the stovetop, rings of dried peanut butter on the counter, a tower of takeout containers collapsed over the bin. The spot of mold that neither Grace nor I can reach has started to spread, bold and daring, across the backsplash under the oven hood. The kitchen window has been left open again, the crisp November air making everything seem sharper, more in focus.

As I swing the window shut, a smudge of purple catches my eye. I turn to see a fistful of wildflowers sitting tidily in an old jam jar on the kitchen table: lavender, dandelions, clover and Queen Anne’s lace — a little girl’s idea of a bouquet.

I gesture at the table. “They look good.”

“I know,” Grace says.

She’s already got my jacket out for me, has placed my boots, sole to sole, on the mat by the back door. I slip them on and look out at the figure in the yard, hunched over a shovel. I can just barely make out the small piles of dirt, already about a dozen or so, scattered like a tiny mountain range across the yellowed lawn.

Grace hovers near my elbow.

“Make us breakfast, okay?” I say. “Something hot.”

She nods, grateful for a task, for a reason to not have to look outside.

I open the door. These days, the cold is bone-deep; the autumn chill immediately finds its way inside me, tucking itself through sleeves, beneath shirts, all the way through until it emerges from my mouth in a small white breath. The ground has frozen solid, the unforgiving topsoil crackling beneath my boots like last season’s animal bones. The aspens at the far end of the yard are nothing but bare limbs now, jagged branches forking into the sky. Their discarded leaves create a long yellow smear on the ground beneath that, with each gust of wind, threatens to encroach upon the rest of the yard.

As I approach, the metallic clang of the shovel grows louder and louder. The closer I get, the more frequent the holes become. I study them like I always do, searching for a pattern in their spacing, in their diameter. Each is of varying depth and size, scattered from six inches to six feet apart. Two years ago, for my thirteenth birthday, we went on a field trip to the planetarium and spent hours looking up, enraptured as old gods and ill-fated heroes materialized out of tiny, glowing pinpricks in the black. The holes appear just as random, just as entropic, but deep down, I know there are no constellations in our backyard. I search for them anyways.

Dad doesn’t hear me until I’m close enough to see the dirt caked under his nails, ten dark crescent moons crowning the tips of his blue fingers. His hair, once a salt-and-pepper static, is now near-translucent against the gnarled backdrop of trees. His shirt collar is damp with sweat, a result of his ongoing siege against the frozen earth. He must have been out here for hours.

“Dad,” I say to the back of his shoulders.

He pauses, the shovel halting in its metronomic swing and bite. He’s breathing hard as he turns to look at me.

“Oh, Petey, it’s you.” He readies another swing. “Grab the other shovel from the shed, I could use a hand.”

“Actually, why don’t you take a break?” I suggest. “Gracie’s making eggs.”

He doesn’t seem to hear me. Instead he plants his foot firmly on the shovel’s neck, driving the edge through the stubborn soil, albeit only inches deep. The muscles in his arms flex through his old fleece jacket as he angles the handle downwards. The earth tears open like a cut lip.

“She’s put flowers on the table,” I try one more time. “You should see them.”

He slams his foot down again. The metal clangs. “To eat flowers,” he says, “and not to be afraid.”

It takes me a second to place the phrase. When Grace and I were younger, Dad would lull us to sleep by reading verses from a dog-eared, paperback poetry book, his voice low and lyrical. I wonder if he’s been reading it again.

“Did you know,” he continues without looking at me, “that beetles don’t freeze? Everything else freezes, but not them. They can’t, it’s not in their blood.”

“You’re not digging for beetles,” I say, just to check.

“No,” he smiles a little. “I am not digging for beetles.” Another swing.

I glance back at the house. The reflection of the clouds in the window keeps me from seeing inside, but I think I catch a glimpse of blonde curls, a wooden spatula clutched in a child’s fist. Meaningfully, I shake my head. Grace backs away from the window.

Clang. The earth resists another wound.

I shove my fists deep into my pockets. Fingers are getting numb. “Henry,” I tell him firmly. “It’s time to go.”

Dad freezes at the sound of his name. His frame curls over the shovel like a question mark, foot still planted on its metal neck. I can’t see his face. I used to tell the neighbourhood kids that my father was a giant, that he could lift me up with one hand above his shoulder and I, soaring, would be able to see the suburban rooftops lining the streets like cobblestones. Now, as I slowly step towards his hunched frame, I realize with a jolt how frail he looks. I have never felt bigger than my father before.

Arm outstretched, my fingers lightly brush the pilled collar of his brown fleece. This contact seems to jostle him back into the moment: he inhales sharply once through his nose and ducks away from my touch, forcing his weight down onto the shovel instead.

“Henry,” Dad grins lopsidedly at me as he sprays our ankles with loose soil. “Only your mother calls me ‘Henry’ and gets away with that tone.”

“Called,” I correct. “Only Mom called you Henry.”

For the second time, he falters. I take the opportunity to step between him and the shovel, wrapping my fingers below his grip on the handle. “Come on,” I say, facing him. “Time to go.”

His gaze is unfocused but when he feels the shovel slipping away, his eyes lock onto mine with such piercing intensity I almost lose my grip.

“Who do you think you are,” he growls suddenly, “telling me what to do?”

Despite his deterioration over the years, I still have to use both hands to keep him from swinging the shovel around. “Dad, don’t —”

“Don’t you,” he interrupts, “use that tone with me. You are a child. How could you possibly understand?” His arms — the ones that used to lift me, flying, above my little kid world — flex underneath his jacket, wrenching the shovel in his direction. Just barely, I cling on.

The frost underneath us crackles like electricity, our feet snapping frozen twigs in a struggle to find purchase. We’re so close now that our breaths whiten the same air between us, but despite being stronger, his hands, bare in the cold for hours, begin to lose their hold.

“You don’t understand,” he strains. The sharp edge of his voice distorts with panic. “I have to find it.”

“Find what, Dad?” I feel four again, just learning the difference between up and down, right and wrong. “What are you digging for?”

“Oh Petey,” he says, eyes shining. “Here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud,” he quotes, “mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful.” Seemingly renewed, he begins gaining ground.

Our struggle has brought us over one of his holes — a medium-sized one, roughly three feet wide. I have to step awkwardly to avoid twisting my ankle, which allows him, babbling, to angle the shovel so that the handle presses against my windpipe.

“The sky of a sky of a tree called life,” he gasps, looking somewhere off my shoulder. “You’ll love it, Mary. You’ll love it.”

“Dad!” I cough out. My grip loosens but he doesn’t seem to notice. I feel my heel begin to slip backwards into the hole.

“Peter!” A flash of blonde curls darts around the corner of my vision.

“Daddy, stop,” Grace grabs his elbow. The tip of her nose is already pinking from the cold; she’s only wearing Mom’s old apron, the one with chickens on the front, too large and too long for her. Gently, she moves down his arm, her clumsy kid-fingers running across his white knuckles. Then, softer: “Your hands are freezing.”

Everything stops. Our father’s eyes, unfocused, drift to her small, white palms cupped over his, like how you hold a baby bird you find on the ground. He notices the apron and the hard lines in his face slacken.

“Mary?” he wavers. The shovel falls to the ground.

Grace smiles sadly. “I made us breakfast.”

Dad furrows his brow. “But — I have to keep digging.”

“Peter will dig for you.” Grace glances at me. “Come inside and warm up, you know what the doctor said about being outside too long.”

Unsure, he turns me, the moments before already dissipating, the clouds beginning to part. His hands, I notice, are trembling.

Slowly, I bend down and grab the shovel. “I got it, Dad.”

“See?” Grace takes him by the elbow again. “Peter’s taking care of it. Let’s go inside.”

It’s all he needs. The fog slips away, his shoulders straighten. He wipes his dirty palms on the legs of his trousers. “That’s my boy,” Dad grins at me before shrugging Grace off and heading towards the house. His shuffling footsteps kick up the leaves around his ankles, leaving an amber trail in his wake.

Grace starts to follow him but I motion for her to wait. We watch our father line his boots up by the wall, sole to sole, before disappearing through the door.

I turn to her. “Thanks.”

She shrugs in the same quick, rolling way Mom used to when she was trying not to cry.

I flounder for the right words. “You look like her.”

“Yeah.” She blinks hard.

Grace surveys the piles of dirt scattered around us and fiddles with her apron ribbon. “Do you —” she ventures hesitantly, so quiet I can barely hear her over the rustle of the wind through the branches. “Do you think there might actually be something buried here? I know he’s — sick. But maybe, I don’t know…” She trails off.

I study her, something wet and painful suddenly rising up in my chest. She’s had to fold the apron up twice before tying it, I notice, just to keep from tripping over the hem. Sometimes I forget that she’s only seven, that she brings weeds into the kitchen because she thinks they’re pretty, that she might still believe in buried treasure, in her father. That she deserves to, because she’s seven, and so small, and shivering in the backyard.

Before I can form an answer, Grace gathers herself, decidedly moving past the moment.

“You don’t actually have to dig more holes, you know. Just come in after ten minutes.”

“Yeah,” I say slowly, coming to a sudden resolution. “I don’t know, I might keep digging.”

She stares at me, confused.

I continue, “You know, we could plant some flowers. For the table.”

Her lips twitch. “It’s winter.”

I shrug. “So we’ll plant carrots.”

Unable to help it, she lets out a giggle, and for a moment, she just looks like a girl playing dress-up in her mother’s favourite apron.

“Okay, but come in soon,” she reminds me. “Eggs are getting cold.”

Years later, long after we sold the house, I would come to learn that Dad was wrong about the beetles, and how they survived the winter. They don’t freeze, he was right about that, but it has nothing to do with their blood. Many insects produce what’s called an antifreeze protein, a polypeptide that binds to small ice crystals to prevent the formation of larger, fatal crystallization. Years later, I would think about how his fingers trembled around the shovel handle that bitter November morning, how they were turning blue at the nails, how his liver spots darkened the backs of his hands like teardrops on poetry book pages. I would think about how Grace wrapped them in hers, folding one of his large hands into the envelope of her tiny palms, thawing his fingers one by one. And I would think about the beetles, binding the smallest parts of themselves to what might kill them anyways, and how they, buried under layers of snow and soil, might dream, one day, of spring.

Among the barren aspens, I watch Grace retreat into the house. Then, alone in the yard, I curl my fingers around the shovel and begin to dig.