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“Your chick?” she asked. “The one that hatched here?”

“The one from the egg Mom gave me.”

My grandmother’s thicker eyebrow made a few different shapes before she answered.

“Sure,” she said, “it’ll be tweeting happily out there.” My sister was right. Grandma lied, too. She stretched out a hand in search of my belly. I took a step back to move away. She clawed the air. “Where are you?” she asked, moving her arm.

I took another step back. “Goodnight, Grandma,” I said.

She raised her sparse eyebrow. She opened her mouth to say something, but at that moment the bedroom door hit the wall. My brother came in making the floor shake as usual. He marched around the room with exaggerated steps, lifting his knees high. When he started humming his song, we understood what state he was in. Grandma shushed him.

“Come on, Scarecrow,” she said to him, “get into bed.”

My brother stopped his march but kept humming at the same volume. There was a lot of saliva splattering through the gap in his bottom lip. My grandmother waited to hear the squeak of the neighboring mattress’s springs before continuing her prayer.

I went up to my nephew’s crib. I poked my head over the side. He was sleeping peacefully in spite of the false scarecrow’s singing and Grandma’s constant mumbling as she prayed. I rested my chin on the top of the wooden frame.

“I’m going to get you out of here,” I whispered to the baby. “So they don’t trick you like they have me.”

He replied with a coo.

Back at the door, I said goodnight again to Grandma.

“And my kiss?” she asked, the prayer stopping, a bead trapped between two fingers.

“Goodnight, Grandma,” I repeated.

I closed the door behind me.

32

The potato cupboard emptied as the days went by. The rice, milk, and eggs began to run out, too. Mom had rolled up the toothpaste tube with a hairpin to get as much as possible out of it. My sister said that it was a good sign, that soon we’d be able to put the escape plan we’d devised into action. I lost the desire to see it through whenever I thought about the fact that I was going to have to hide in the same wardrobe where my sister said the Cricket Man would come in. At night, in the dark, she reminded me of the reasons why I had to get out of the basement, persuading me from the bottom bunk. She always kept her mask within reach, on the mattress, in case Mom or Grandma suddenly came into the room.

That was what happened one night when Mom opened the door without warning. She came up to my bunk in the dark. “Are you always going to sleep up here, or what?”

“My sister doesn’t want to use this bed.”

Although she was lying right under me, she said nothing. Mom brushed my hair with her fingers.

“Son, why’ve you been so quiet lately? Have we done something to upset you?”

My sister hawked, though it didn’t seem like she needed to clear her throat.

“Have you changed your mind about anything?”

“No, Mom,” I lied. “There’s nothing wrong.”

“You sure?”

I confirmed I was with a sound in my throat.

“You can tell us anything.” She stroked my head in silence. “Anything.” When she kissed me, I felt the wrinkled skin that surrounded her lips on my forehead. Before withdrawing her face, she whispered in my ear, “Even if you think you can’t.”

My sister scratched the mask with a fingernail as a signal to remind me of the pack of lies they’d told me.

“There’s nothing wrong, Mom,” I repeated.

She sighed. “All right,” she said. She tucked me in and gave me another kiss on the cheek.

Before she left the room, my sister spoke.

“No kiss for me?”

Mom closed the door without answering. My sister let out a chuckle.

On another of those nights, while my sister was putting the finishing touches on the plan from the bottom bunk, I remembered that I’d left the cactus in the living room. I’d spent the whole afternoon pushing the plant pot along with a finger, following the course of the patch of sun. Watching the dust dance between its spines and thinking about how that light could envelop me as well soon enough.

“Where’re you going?” she asked when she saw me climb down from the bunk.

“I left my cactus in the living room.”

“OK, fetch it. But don’t talk to the others too much.”

I headed up the hall toward the living room, which was lit like it was every night by the television’s glow. I noticed that the intensity of the light didn’t change. The movie must’ve been on pause, two blurry lines of interference traveling up and down a frozen image.

“. . . leave because he wants to,” I heard my mother say, her voice barely a sigh turned into words. “His father’s plan isn’t working. We’re going to have to tell him everything. He’s not so little anymore. We knew that—”

“Quiet,” said Grandma. “I hear something.”

The floor creaked under my feet.

Mom looked out into the hall. “What’re you doing there?”

“I just came out,” I lied. “I left my cactus in there.”

Mom scanned the floor. “You can get it tomorrow. I’m talking to your grandmother now . . . about the movie we’re watching.”

Mom never paid much attention to the movies. She just followed them from the kitchen, leaning against the countertop, biting her fingernails so they ended up like little saws.

“Anyway, you should be in bed,” she added. “Go before your father gets back.”

In the bathroom, the cistern emptied with a final sucking noise. If I wanted the cactus to sleep with me, I had to rescue it before he came out. I heard him turn on the water to wash his hands. I ran up the hall, ignoring my mother’s urgent gestures. I dodged her at the hallway entrance, slipping through her hands.

The water stopped running in the sink.

Mom decided to try to overtake me. We both pounced on the plant. Although I was first to reach the pot, she grabbed my forearm. The ceramic container slid between my fingers.

The pot flew.

It broke as it hit the floor in the middle of the living room.

“No,” Grandma said when she heard it. She’d listened to what was happening from the sofa.

“Son,” said Mom, “no, I didn’t want to . . .”

The light from the TV set allowed me to see the soil spilling in all directions. The two balls of spines that formed the cactus rolled to the hallway entrance.

The hinges on the bathroom door squeaked. Dad was coming. He started a sentence before reaching the living room, but was unable to finish it. Just like he was unable to complete his last step. I heard the crunch under his foot, similar to the sound Mom made when she stuck a fork in the pulp of an orange to squeeze it.

Grandma held her hand to her mouth.

Mom squeezed my shoulder in some sort of apology. I moved away from her.

Then Dad screamed. The yelp that follows a flash of pain. The soles of his worn brown slippers had offered little protection against my cactus’s spines. He rested a foot on the opposite knee to look at the sole, leaning against the corner that formed the beginning of the hallway, right where I’d hidden from the Cricket Man. Then he scoured the floor with his eyes. When he discovered my mother and me by the table, his hair scar tightened.

“This’d better not be what I think it is,” he said. The two of us looked at the squashed remains of my cactus. What should’ve been a spherical shape was nothing more than a formless lump of waste among triangular pieces of broken pot on a carpet of soil.

“Tell me what this is.” Dad raised the volume of his voice. He let go of the corner he was clinging to and swooped on me. When he put down his injured foot, he gave another cry. He had to hop on one leg to reach the sofa. There, Grandma tried to feel for the injured limb, but Dad batted her hand away with the sock he’d just taken off.

“It was me,” Mom said.

“Fetch the first-aid kit,” he replied. Mom tried to add something, but Dad interrupted her.

“Fetch the first-aid kit, please,” he said again. “I’ll see to the boy later.”

Mom pushed me into the hall. When we passed my cactus’s carcass, I stopped. She crouched down beside me. She kept an eye on Dad on the sofa. His breathing was tense. She took the cactus by one of its spines and lifted it. In the light from the television, we both saw the extent of the damage. Both balls had burst, revealing a soft pulp under the split skin covered in spines, most of which had bent, making the cactus wound itself. A drop of slimy liquid hung from one of those wounds. It sparkled in the light before falling to the floor.

“I’m sorry,” Mom whispered. Then the spine with which she was holding the moist remains came off. The cactus hit the floor again.

Mom tried to make eye contact with me, but I shied away.

I looked at Grandma on the sofa. I remembered the words she’d said to me when the cactus appeared in the basement.
While this cactus is OK, we’ll be OK.
I picked up a piece of the pot and ran to my room.

“It’s starting to work,” I heard my father say.

“Nothing’s
working
,” Mom added.

I closed my eyes before entering the bedroom. But not because I was afraid to see my sister’s face as I had been for years, but because I didn’t want to cry again. I sat on the floor, resting my back against the door.

“What’ve they done to you now?” she asked.

I showed her the piece of plant pot I’d recovered.

“No way,” she said. “Your cactus?”

Only when I knew that I’d have the voice to speak, I said, “I can’t wait for the Cricket Man to come.”

The springs on my sister’s bed squeaked. I opened my eyes. She was lying on her side, her head supported by a hand, her elbow pressing into the mattress. She smiled.

“He’ll be here very soon,” she said. Realizing she had the mask on, she lifted it to repeat her words with her face uncovered. “Very soon.”

I went to the cabinet at the foot of my bed. I opened the drawer. The fireflies were fluttering around inside the jar. I picked up the T-shirt nest that held the shell of the egg the chick never hatched from. I put it on top of the cabinet and placed the piece of plant pot beside it.

I observed the two bits of important things in my life that had broken. Something much more important had broken inside me.

As I climbed the ladder to my bunk, I looked at my sister through the bars that acted as steps. “How do you know he’ll come?”

The muscles in her neck tightened. “I just know,” she answered.

And it was true that she knew.

The Cricket Man returned to the basement five calendar boxes later.

33

The night that the Cricket Man returned to the basement my sister woke me up by speaking in my ear.

“He’s coming,” she said. Sleepiness delayed my response. She shook the bunk bed’s frame. “The Cricket Man’s coming,” she said again.

Then I reacted. I opened my eyes, my stomach tight. I pricked my ears, gripping the pillow, and waited to hear his footsteps. Or the sack dragging along somewhere up above the ceiling. I listened.

“Are you sure? I can’t hear him.”

“Tonight’s the night you’ve been waiting for,” she said.

“But I can’t hear anything,” I insisted, the sheet up to my chin.

“You still don’t believe me?” She returned to the bottom bunk, making the springs squeak in an exaggerated way.

“Oh well, we’ll have to abort the plan, then,” she said. “Two weeks of preparation for nothing. We’ll just stay in the basement forever. Although, I’ll let the Cricket Man know you’re here. As soon as he comes.”

I was aware of the intensity in her voice. She continued to murmur things about how disappointing my attitude was until she fell silent. I took the chance to prick my ears again, hoping to hear one of the sounds that always gave away the Cricket Man’s arrival.

Nothing.

Just the cistern’s constant dripping.

Then a bang reverberated inside the room. The wall to my right shook. As did the sheet I was holding in my hands.

“The Cricket Man,” I whispered.

My sister’s face emerged over the side of my mattress.

“See?”

She freed my hands from the sheet finger by finger, tense as they were from the fright.

“You must keep calm,” she said, “otherwise you won’t be able to control yourself when he passes by you.”

She was referring to the moment when the Cricket Man would go through my parents’ wardrobe, almost brushing against me because I’d be hidden among the clothes. I imagined the articulated sound of his limbs as he moved. I thought of all of the parts of the plan I didn’t feel prepared for.

“Come on,” she said.

I began to climb down the ladder. Halfway down, I molded the pillow to imitate the shape of my body. I made the straight angle of a pair of bent legs and the curve of a back in the fetal position. When I’d finished, I jumped down from the step. I landed on bare feet. “How am I going to walk outside?” I asked.

My sister was pacing around the room.

“Normally. Like you always do.”

“All I have on is underpants.”

She sighed. Then I heard her rummaging through the shelves of the wardrobe I shared with my brother.

“I can’t see a thing,” she said into the darkness. Seconds later she knelt in front of me.

“Arms up.” A T-shirt came down over them. The garment’s neck resisted until she passed my head through the hole.

“Now your feet.” I lifted my left foot, holding on to her shoulder. It took her a while to get a slipper on.

“I never wear those,” I said.

“What does that matter now? What matters is you can walk up top.”

“Dad might suspect if he sees me wearing them.”

My sister took off the slipper. “Then you’ll have to go as you are.”

“Will I be able to walk barefoot?”

“You’ll have to.” My sister carried on pacing around the room. Murmuring. I went to the cabinet at the foot of my bed and opened the drawer. The pencils inside the jar hit against the glass. The greenish light from the fireflies began to glow.

“What do you need from that drawer?” said my sister.

The light went out. “The jar with the—”

“You don’t need anything,” she interrupted. “You can get it later when you come back. Along with the shell. And the piece of plant pot. You can take the bunk bed as well if you want. But right now you don’t need anything.”