I’m grumpy too. My brother is dead and I am in charge of his menagerie. He left so much life—three leopard geckos, seven desert tortoises, and a fussy cat. I’m lucky he didn’t get the Mastiff he really wanted. Also, there’s his bonsai garden and the two Yoshino cherry trees that are still in containers. Charges too, but less demanding.
Our easiest times together were always around his animals. I remember when he introduced me to Fat Head, his leopard gecko. Tim had long, shapely fingers and the palms of a calligrapher. I watched his hands wrap under the gecko’s head, entranced by how his fingers cradled the long torso. “Fat Head’s grumpy today,” he said.
I asked why.
My brother shrugged. “He gets that way. So I rub his chin; he likes that.”
“He has a chin?” I asked.
Fat Head relaxed as Tim stroked his translucent belly. The liquid eyes with their bright yellow lids blink and Fat Head settles into Tim’s palm. The other two geckos have sleek phosphorous bodies, their dark leopard spots bred out of them; they glow pinkish-yellow with girly gracefulness. When Tim fed them, one cricket landed and stayed perched on top of Fat Head’s snake-like head.
*
Late spring in the Outer Richmond of San Francisco is cold and foggy. Early morning and evening, I give the geckos a sauna treatment. I microwave towels that I’ve dampened with structured water (no chlorine, Tim said). I lay steaming towels over the top of the tank and the geckos lick the moisture droplets that form along the sides. The humidity keeps their baby-like skin supple.
Leopard Geckos are originally from the deserts of Pakistan, so I have to keep them in radiant heat to stimulate appetite and digestion. To prep their crickets, I dust them with a calcium powder. Once I drop them into the tank, I watch and count, to make sure the three stooges share. It’s like a Chinese banquet; the fastest fattens up first.
If Fat Head, Stubby, and Patricia eat enough, they’ll wake up with a lacey layer of new skin. Then it’s an aerobic day of rubbing along the edges of the driftwood to exfoliate. Without humidity, the new skin dries around their toes, constricting blood flow. Then I have to give them a pedicure with a heat moistened Q-tip. If I’m lucky, the skin slips off like a loose sock, but sometimes the skin calcifies and they lose a nail. Stubby’s lost three.
Fully nourished, their bodies glistening, they will want to have sex. Last week, I found two oblong eggs and had to stop grading finals. I held my breath as I lifted the membrane-thin eggs out of the cage. I put them into an ice cream tub cushioned with cotton balls. If they roll around, the embryos will detach. If my brother’s car had sirens, I would have used them as I raced over to the East Bay Vivarium, where they are now incubating.
For over a decade, my brother had been very ill, first with Graves’ disease, then achalasia, an illness of mystery.
I chose our father who was bedridden. My sister chose our brother.
“Dad’s already so old,” Wen said. “But Tim might still have a chance.”
Wen and I shared our family duties, but it may not have been the way our brother wanted. Now, Tim’s getting what he’s always wanted, his elder sister’s attention, another continuation of love.
*
Everyone gets grumpy. I remember how Tim comforted Fat Head with a few gentle strokes. Our last year was our roughest. The more I took care of our father, the more Tim felt he wasn’t cared for. His illness made him difficult and I was brutal too. Illness gave me a different brother and him a cold sister.
When the medical examiner called with the toxicology report, her choice of words stunned me. “Your brother had a very, very big heart. Over big.” If she’d said, enlarged heart, cardiomyopathy, or diseased heart, would the medical impossibility have given me relief?
Dr. Moffat’s tone was gently unhurried. Her information was clear and her crisp delivery told me what was known and what was unknown. Her patience was not learned, but as the Chinese term calls talent, heaven birthed. She let me ask and ask, her answer always the same, but each time spoken with a longer breath: “Your brother had a very big heart.” I asked to hear it again and again even if it made me sadder than I could bear.
*
Cruelly, I’d called my brother an addict, a shortcut to alleviate my anger. Truthfully, I was short on love. Severe pain and the opiates made him angry and aggressive. Fear made me impatient. Our family does not respect pain. Our family culture took bad moods to heart, which turned to rage. Our way was to hurt in isolation.
Now I feel for my brother and feel my own flawed patience. My brother is gone and all I can do now is trust that he hasn’t taken his pain, or mine, with him.
*
Crickets also have a short life. Here’s how not to get eaten by a gecko. Stand on the gecko’s head. I’ve learned that this applies to many situations. When a mean boss blames you, a creepy friend betrays you, or raging pain obliterates kindness, the question is not why. Why is never a road to the heart. The way is to step away, to not feed fear.
The crickets teach me: Never run. Stand on the gecko’s head; step close to what pains you. Perch above fear. Proximity offers intimacy and destroys rage.
And my brother teaches me: Be kind to the grumpy.
***
Photographs provided courtesy of author.
21 responses
Some say reptiles have cold hearts. That is a falsity when it is mistaken for merely a grumpy heart. Love always prevails, in the end. Thankyou for sharing your pain and fear, Fae. Shed it, like a lizard.
This blew me away. Thank you.
Such a beautifully strong story–and funny too. Grief with geckos, who would have ever thought. Above all I loved the woman narrator, a keen observer who rarely allows others to see her. Amazing piece. Thank you, Fae Myenne Ng. What’s next?
Wonderful observations on the dynamics of successorship –you not only do what the lost loved one did for his loved ones, your hands become his hands, your care becomes his care, you become him. And geckos! Fantastic little wonders that people notice too little.
Fae Myenne Ng’s GRUMPY allows the reader an intimate glimpse into the author’s life as a sister, a life shaped by her culture and steered by a duty and responsibility that is customary and necessitated, if not always welcomed and embraced. The tender devotion she bestows on her brother’s geckos reflects the compassion and understanding she wishes in hindsight she had had for her brother, and reveals her heartfelt personal search for recompense and redemption.
You write like a cricket!
Amazing piece.
Thank you.
I was really happy to read this piece…. especially this time of year when everyone is more or less grumpy! Thank you from Italy
I was really happy to read this piece, especially this time of year when everyone is more or less grumpy! Thank you from Italy
Beautiful piece.
Fae Myenne Ng’s fiction has been stellar for two decades. Now, her non-fiction as personal history joins her earlier accomplishments. “Grumpy” is so graceful, so full, so beautifully modulated. I’m glad to see her here; can only hope for more.
Wow, what a beautiful conclusion to rage, fear, pain, and love. Thank you!
A perfect way to begin Christmas eve–reminding us to be kind to the grumpy (and empathetic with our families). Thank you!
Aside from the animals, I’ve been here too. It’s not easy living with a very ill family member, and the memories after their death bring a kind of brutal clarity. Real life sure ain’t like a christmas movie on TV, is it? Love this honesty.
Fae, I was captivated by how skillfully you strung together disparate moments into one longer narrative. Life seems to take on so much more meaning and significance once it is pared down into units of measure, from animals to hearts, sisters to emotions we all share at our naked cores. You manage to find the universal in every minute, with the very natural grace of someone attuned to life’s subtlest cues. I am sorry for your loss and am so glad you have chosen to share this story of love and longing with the world. Mourning is inextricably entwined with our lives, no matter what time of day it is, no matter the season or the sentence or the thought used to communicate it, and to share your melancholy surrounding loss is to provide a canvas for another to relive and understand pain and suffering, as well as the beauty tied up in it. A beautiful piece from a beautiful soul so sensitive to life’s ebbs and flows.
This teaches us to be kind to others and to ourselves. Your honesty is greatly appreciated.
Greetings from Hong Kong!
I always learn from Fae’s writings— embrace pain. Thank you, Fae.
I think it’s beautiful that Fae turns the (seemingly) smaller things in life to something bold and beautiful. This is something very admirable about artists- being able to see beyond the main event, beyond the flashy attractions. To turn things that are normally forgotten into something that signifies much more than the thing itself.
Fae has said before that you shouldn’t regret not being at a loved one’s death bed in their last moments, because the last time you were with them is just as precious. But maybe it’s true that even the last time you were with them doesn’t matter that much, because they will have ways to live on in your life, whether that be through the pets they leave behind, or the strands of hair you cut from their head as they’re dozing.
If you are grumpy, read this bittersweet story & it will bring a smile to your face as you feel your chin being stroked.
Loved the way you strum your truth so melodically, even if it’s a song of grief rooted in truthful sorrow. However, I didn’t grasp the cricket and gecko allusion at first–is it a predatory love? are the two meant to reflect a power imbalance? But I’ve read it over again and I see meaning lying in their connection of empathy. Empathy for those who sin differently than ourselves. Empathy for a different reality. And through that I read your love, Fae. Thank you for sharing, and I wish you all the love.
I laughed and teared up reading Grumpy!
Fae’s “heaven-birthed” talent is to find the center, the road to the heart. Her storytelling teaches us a kind of direct introspection that we could all heal from if we choose to.
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