My Brother, the Cricket

My only brother has an anatomical anomaly. He was born with a pair of cricket legs situated symmetrically on both sides of his body, just below his arms. They are halfway between his armpits and his hips and largely under his voluntary control. There is also a rough patch of chitin on his torso where these legs can rub, producing the same chirring sound crickets make in the wild.

Our parents chose not to have my brother’s anomalies surgically altered, on religious grounds. While my mother would occasionally blame my brother’s difference (we were never allowed to use words like “deformity”) on modern pesticide usage, eventually both my father and mother came around to accepting my brother as he was, and saw his extra set of appendages as the will of God. The usual evolution towards rationalizing this as “a blessing” occurred. Eventually, it even begat a smugness, a sense of superiority in them. It was quite something for my sister and me to watch this transformation in them.

I remember my brother would have to be daintily reminded not to stridulate at certain social functions. He would often employ this friction tic to self-soothe when he was nervous. He would just start chirruping at family gatherings. People close to the family were used to it. Others could be alarmed with superstition and fear, the usual awe of monsters.

I shared a bedroom with him until we were sixteen, and I could always tell if he had something heavy on his mind. Because his limbs would start making that sound, the susurrus of summer fields on a starry night. We’d be lying there in the dark in separate beds. I’d feel bad because I knew he was worried about something. But the truth is I found the sound calming and it would help me to fall asleep. Many years later, I would buy a small electronic device with this sound recorded on it. That endless mantra on a sound loop just helped me fall asleep more easily and get that deeper, more restorative sleep.

When our parents died together in an airline crash, the three of us reunited in our hometown for their funeral. Neither my sister nor I had ever created a family but my brother had wed just after his college years and now had three young children. We had kept up with him and his wife Rosa largely through social media and email. My sister and I were both insanely peripatetic with our business concerns and had lived in many different states and countries. We had not physically reunited for seven years.

At the funeral, the vast majority of the mourners were from our parents’ church. A few members of the near and distant family showed up, but most of the kin had just sent condolences. At one point, after the playing of one of my mother’s favorite hymns, my brother began to stridulate under his black suit of mourning. It was a very muffled sound as his extra set of limbs didn’t have much room to move in there. I knew this was really his only way of crying so I felt terrible. I exchanged a doleful glance with my sister. I could see she was feeling an identical twinge.

I got up and walked to my brother’s chair. I encouraged him to rise by taking his shoulders in my hands without speaking. He stood, somewhat confused, thinking I wanted a hug, I guess. I helped him remove his jacket and unbutton his shirt and pull it out of its tuck. His instrument was freed. His grief began its rhythmic chant like the rasp of a funeral sistrum in ancient Egypt. It was only a minute or two until I noticed his three kids were now holding hands in a circle, a girl and two boys. And they too were now producing that sound of grief the other mourners soon found weirdly calming. We were all transported to a summer night with the stars twinkling in time to the lulling susurrus that was everywhere at once. I wanted to lay my head in grass and sleep. Everyone did.