Opinion

One-Legged Crickets Don't Sing, Do They?

Working with elements of meditation and hallucination, introspection and self-projection, C.J. Macgenn has created a charmingly thoughtful tale of grief and renewal in her novella, a one-legged cricket. The story begins with the happiest of endings: The artist, Julie, and her loving husband, Tony, finally acquire their dream home and settle in to live happily ever after. But by the bottom of the thirteenth page, Tony has died and Julie finds herself moving "from one world into another." And in this new world, she is utterly incapable of creating art, teaching students, or even managing her own life.

In the midst of her downward spiral into grief-fueled depression, Julie is involved in an accident of sorts, hitting, then capturing, a cricket with her car. She finds it—stunned, angry, one-legged, and attempting to climb out of the vehicle—after she endures the manifest agony of the financial problems of widowhood. By the time Julie becomes aware of the insect, we've already enjoyed a detailed introduction to the creature in Macgenn's smooth narration of the cricket's awareness of its predicament, disdain for its captor, and formulation of its escape plan. With the same open-mindedness with which we approach myths and fables, we accept his ability to speak when he exclaims, "'Watch where you swing those fingers, lady. They're deadly weapons, you know.'" And so begins the (eventually) uplifting relationship between Julie and her cricket friend, Ulysses O. Niveus.

The circumstances of their meeting fit together in a clean analogy of life and limb. Ulysses is tragically changed when air currents suck him into a vortex of human invention, ripping a vital limb from his otherwise perfect body. And while he struggles with the problem of escape and return to the life he so recently enjoyed, Julie struggles to escape the brutal financial vortex that sucks the last of her strength in the wake of her husband's death. We immediately draw a correlation between Ulysses' fate and Julie's, accepting the metaphor of life partner as vital limb.

As the relationship develops, we see the unlikely pair awkwardly comfort each other even as both of them fall more deeply into melancholia. Macgenn suspends her readers in a state of emotion somewhere between pity and frustration, articulated in the character of Julie's friend, Annie, who tries her best to help the protagonist reemerge into a life cycle of normalcy. Playing matchmaker, she introduces Julie to a friend, insisting, "'I'd just think you'd rather spend time talking to someone like John than this little cricket of yours.'" But Julie "'...wouldn't rather,'" and withdraws from her disbelieving friend. From here we delve more deeply into the story, wishing Annie could understand while wanting Julie to heal.

And, too, we want Ulysses to heal. In her personification of this insect, Macgenn infused him with deeply human spite and self-pity, balancing these elements with the equally human need to nurture. His hopelessness slowly turns to acceptance as he reluctantly lets go of his former life and embraces the help Julie offers while offering in return his open and understanding ear.

Watching the wounded bug give emotional support "in the exact words Tony had just spoken in her mind," we catch a glimpse of the power of imagination, wondering for a moment if indeed the cricket's voice is Julie's own conscience loudly coaching her—in a direct Disney analogy—to release herself from her past and embrace a new life, new confidence, and new direction in her art. But second-guessing these characters, so delightfully realistic in Macgenn's prose, is distracting to our enjoyment of her philosophical look at the process of working through loss and rediscovering self, where the true strength of a one-legged cricket resides.

Wendy Blake is an adjunct professor of English in the Seattle-Tacoma area.