That freckly Californian grass wheezed up bees. Outside my Jewish day school, hundreds of those striped scoundrels swarmed the sky lupines and kindergarteners alike, stirring the chaos of blooming youth. “They’re harmless alone,” Ms. Julia repeated every morning, as if our chattering ears were present. It was spring: the season of basketball, avocados, anxious tantrums, Passover, and gaga pits. Life was pollinating.

I was 5 by a whisker, barely able to stutter through my Hebrew name. Whenever we sang the Israeli national anthem, I was quick to screech past the chorus, “I-... Ms. Laura, dat’s my name! Ḥi-... ḥay-...” before petering back into my jacket. I hated talking. It stung my soul.

Days were long and nights were short and I was an oversized baby stuffed in burgundy galoshes. When the rare taste of nimbus saliva tapped my cheek, I would plop beneath the field-facing gutter and watch bees scatter under droplet desolation. At dawn, those tenacious flies came back a-buzzin’ like the ḥanukkiah’s spindly fervour. I wished I could be as strong as them: their impossible aviation gave my speech hope. I loved those bugs so much.

One recess, I decided to kill them.

Yellow and black smeared along my boots as I leapt flower to flower, punching them into the Earth. The quelling-act felt powerful. The Maccabees were me: quality over quantity, child over bee. In that moment, I was more than God’s thrown dice. I was the dealer.

The dreadlocked lunch supervisor rushed across the sky lupines with a pained grin, waving her wrinkled hands like there was no tomorrow. “No, you silly little meshugganah!!!” She grabbed and spundown my wrist. “Don’t hurt our little friends! All life is sacred. Let’s play somewhere else, ‘kay?” Frozen solid to that field, I thawed enough to nod my head and waddle back to the blacktop.

𓆤𓆤𓆤

The garden was a spectacular armoury of strawberries and squash, sealed in cedar inches. That planter-box dreadnought perched panopticonically, cowing any critters who dared approach. All except me. As the sloughing sun faded behind the Sierra Nevada, my 7-year-old stomach growled. Veiled in croaking horizon, I tip-toed to the garden and bent over the box. I reached a chubby paw to pluck a pair of sagging ripe tomatoes, and oh my god what’s that? A stain of mucus cuddled my finger as I dashed back inside.

“Momma, pappa, I saw a little friend out there!!!” I sang to my folks, smiling devilishly. My words had grown since spring. They sighed and shook their heads. “That’s not a good thing, sweetie.”

We had a slug problem.

“You need to get rid of them, Jason,” I overheard momma whisper above the countertop. “If you pour beer into some bowls and leave them lying around the garden, the slugs should fall in and drown. Best plan we’ve got.”

I nearly puked. Who would smother such sacred life? The witching hour ticked away, mucus crusting my sleeping form until I was galvanised awake by those voracious slimeballs’ chants. When the moon’s usurpation seemed infinite, I snuck outside in the 75-degree blackness. 

Fumbling across the garden floor, I flung each bowl upside-down, spilling happy juice in a slug parade. The saving-act felt fulfilling. The slugs prayed to me: their divinity, their religion. I finally had a voice. I was the dealer.

After daylight smote that toasty void, I was dragged before my grim work. They weren’t angry—they were impressed. My folks laughed and laughed and laughed, snarling love. For the first time in a long time, I was proud. “Oh, our little meshugganah!” they said with a head-pat. “You’ll always be our Buddha. You’d never hurt a fly.” 

𓆤𓆤𓆤

I screamed ‘till they crawled into my lungs. I was 13 and I was dying.

Crickets flooded my bed, caressing every patch of exposed skin with yoked legs and ticking antennae. Where the insects had scurried up the walls, chunky chitin fell from the ceiling like squirming ashes. There were all sizes: potato bugs, camel crickets, Carolina locusts; you name it. Everyone was coming to the party.

My shrieking mutated into a gagged broken record. I reverted to spring, to that baby-child who couldn’t speak, to a whimpering stasis. “Bu-... bu-... bugs…” I squeaked, tapering off as they swarmed the throat. I used to sing with those little chirping friends on hot summer days, but in that bone-shattering moment, they sang through me. The door behind swung open, but my spine was locked. I couldn’t have moved. Even if I simply covered the mouth to prevent cricket inhalation during hyperventilation, I would’ve snuffed the sacred lives of those poor insects. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill again.

Snivelling jaw unhinged and limp body thrown to the corner, I was lodged in a shivering fetal position as those crickets bored into me. The living-act felt vain. Every orifice became a new abode. I wasn’t the dealer anymore. I was the house.

Momma carelessly flung crickets aside. “My little meshugganah,” she begged desperately, hugging me like a panicked jumpsuit, “tell me what’s going on!!! This is the second time this week! There aren’t any bugs, honey.” She cradled a 5-year-old. “There’s nothing there.”