Barbie Grasshopper Dreamhouse

The screaming outside intensifies. If eight-year-old Rose and six-year-old Belle fight for much longer, a surveillance drone might cite Margaret for child neglect.

As she hurries through her house toward the commotion, Margaret’s calf catches on the hard edge of her daughters’ Barbie Dreamhouse. In that breathless space between falling and finding balance, Margaret considers letting herself slam into the ground. Stomach first. But she catches herself and examines the flap of skin hanging from her throbbing calf. It’s the kind of injury that bleeds dramatically. Fortunately, the floor is cheap laminate, not carpet. Her hands curl around the non-existent swell of her stomach.

Please, she thinks. She isn’t even three months along. The fetus is just a clump of twitching cells curled into the shape of an indeterminate animal.

The Dreamhouse mocks Margaret with its three decadent stories and its sharp edges. She scowls at its bright, plastic rooms, pink on pink, swollen with plastic accessories. A single doll sprawls inside the house in hapless, immobile perfection.

The yelling escalates. It’s a good thing their nearest neighbors are miles away. Margaret swallows her pain, as she has swallowed so many things, and steps, grimacing, into unrelenting sunlight.

“You have to share! It’s the law!” Belle cries.

“I share EVERYTHING all the time!” Rose screams back, clutching a pink, plastic case protectively against her chest. “It’s not fair! I want things that are just for me! I don’t want to share EVERYTHING with a STINKY BABY like you!”

“Mom!” Rose yells. “I found the grasshopper! It’s mine!”

“NOOO! I found it first!” Belle protests. “Rose just caught it because she’s bigger!”

“Why are you fighting over a grasshopper like a pair of baby birds?” Margaret asks.

“It isn’t a normal grasshopper, Mom,” Rose says.

“It’s a Barbie grasshopper!” Belle says.

“What do you mean?” Margaret asks. “Let me see.”

Reluctantly, Rose surrenders the plastic case imprisoning the grasshopper. Margaret peers through the pink plastic. The grasshopper stares back with alien stupidity, revolting antennae twitching, mandibles writhing beneath bulging eyes. As far as Margaret can tell, it’s identical to every other grasshopper devouring the remnants of her garden.

She wonders how much oxygen grasshoppers need. Will it suffocate in the case? Would that be cruel, considering how most grasshoppers die? Their mindless hunger subsumed by the cravings of bigger creatures? Would that tiny, insectoid mind understand that it was being eaten alive as it thrashed against a merciless beak or tongue?

Alex, the renowned entomologist, would know. Alex, who had once known Margaret as thoroughly as one person could know another.

“It’s just a grasshopper,” Margaret says.

“It’s Barbie grasshopper!” Belle insists.

“It’s pink, Mom,” Rose explains.

Everything looks pink in the reflected glow of the saccharine plastic. Margaret opens the case, just a crack. She peers at the grasshopper, and it remains—

Pink.

This isn’t the uniform, manufactured pink of the Dreamhouse. This is pink shot through with yellows and delicate oranges. Its pale eyes, gold highlighted with rose, stare unblinkingly back at her as it flutters half-formed wings.

Revulsion hits Margaret like a punch in the kidney. She snaps the case shut, nearly severing a leg with its petulant plastic jaws. The grasshopper’s unnaturalness leaves her skin crawling.

“Go wash your hands,” she tells the girls.

“But Mom, we didn’t touch it!” Rose lies.

“Wash your filthy hands, NOW,” she snaps.

They scamper inside. Margaret sets the loathsome thing in its pink prison on the porch railing. The girls are too naïve to understand all the things that can go wrong in a body. All the dangers lurking in the vast, cruel world.

She thinks again of Alex. She will know if there’s any peril lurking in that grotesque, pink exoskeleton.

Overwhelmed by nausea, Margaret flees to the master bathroom and turns on the fan and shower to disguise the sound of retching. At this point in pregnancy, everything makes her vomit.

Disgusting. Unnatural. Vile. Margaret thinks as she rinses out her mouth, suppressing her panic. She remembers the genetic counselor’s damning words almost ten years ago, after the second miscarriage—recessive gene, nonviable. Paul had held her hand. They’d cried together. Then, with the help of genetic testing, they’d had Rose and Belle, their precious, healthy girls.

Now, she carries the burden of a failed vasectomy. Less than a one percent risk of failure, the surgeon told Paul. But the odds were never in her favor.

She doesn’t dare go to the clinic. They’ll register her for monitoring and implant a tracker in her abdomen. Visions of an infanticide trial and Rose and Belle being snatched away by the Mothers of Liberty haunt her.

Margaret tends her bleeding calf and contorts her expression into pleasant neutrality before emerging from the bathroom. She wipes her blood from the hallway and begins making lunch for the girls. Boxed macaroni and cheese, again.

As they eat, Margaret stands apart from herself, amazed at the mindless, effortless grace of her movements. Anything you practice long enough becomes instinct, she thinks, even caring for another person.

The girls don’t notice she isn’t all there. They’re too excited about the grasshopper. Margaret orders them to leave the grasshopper alone. They whine, but the afternoon heat enervates their protests. She shoves them in front of the television and bribes them into compliance with the harmless stupidity of princess cartoons and freezer-burned ice pops.

Once the girls are deep in a pink princess coma, faces and hands sticky with ice pops, Margaret retreats to her bedroom and locks the door. She creeps into the warm, smothering darkness of her closet. For a few seconds she just breathes, rubbing her face against a moth-eaten wool jacket, letting the itchy discomfort ground her.

She leans against the back of the closet. Outdoor heat radiates through the shoddily constructed wall, into her body. She imagines the house cracking around her, swinging apart on plastic hinges. She imagines looking up and up into a penetrating and disdainful gaze.

Margaret shakes off the strange thoughts and rummages beneath old maternity jeans, their elastic sagged into uselessness, until she finds the shoebox. She opens it reverently, stripping away layers of headbands and ponytail holders, relics from when she wore her hair long. At last, her trembling fingers grasp the battered tablet.

She boots it up and checks the security settings. All is well. It’s almost six o’clock where Alex is. She’s probably in her office, finishing up work for the day.

The video call goes through. She stares into Alex’s beaming face framed by long, dark curls. Alex is so alive, so clearly herself. Margaret is suddenly conscious of her stained housedress. The familiar pang of grief for a life not lived wells in her throat.

She swallows it down, substituting useless grief with gratitude. Alex is safe, free from the clutches of a country which would have sent her to a work farm or an institution. Several of their friends vanished like that—spirited away in the night by masked men in unmarked vans.

As for herself, Margaret is safe for now. And if she’s unhappy—the point of life isn’t happiness, is it? The point has always been survival.

“Margaret, it’s been weeks!” Alex says. “I was worried.”

“I know,” Margaret says. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . .” she wipes her sweaty forehead, torn. How much should she tell Alex? How many of her pains will she lay at her friend’s feet? But the words tumble out of her before she can stop them: “I’m pregnant.”

Alex’s eyebrows arch, disappearing under her bangs.

“Oh shit,” she says. “And you don’t know . . .”

“We don’t,” Margaret confirms. “They don’t offer genetic testing anymore. And if we go to a clinic . . .” she doesn’t need to finish the sentence. It doesn’t matter what her chart or her OB-GYN or any of the facts state. If she miscarries or gives birth to a stillborn child, she’ll be tried for infanticide. A crime which has a thirty-three percent conviction rate and an average sentence of seven years.

“Didn’t Paul get a vasectomy?”

“Didn’t work, I guess.”

“How far along are you?”

“Almost three months.”

“Shit.” Alex leans back in her beautiful, leather chair.

Margaret avoids Alex’s sympathetic eyes and gazes instead at the shelves piled high with academic journals, books, and frames bulging with mounted insects. She will never step through the door and see Alex’s office in person. She will never again press herself into the sympathetic curve of Alex’s neck. Not with the borders locked down. Not with two girls needing whatever scant protection she can offer.

“We’ll figure something out,” Margaret says.

It’s what she and Paul have been telling each other, over and over, for the last seven years. First, optimistically. Then, resignedly. And, finally, with horror, as friends and family and colleagues transformed into people they no longer recognized.

“I didn’t call about that,” Margaret continues. “I mean—there’s nothing you can do. I don’t need your help.” Once, Margaret had needed Alex. She’d been a parasite, pulling Alex down, taking more than she gave. Alex was better off without her. “It’s . . . my kids found this weird grasshopper, and I wasn’t sure if it was safe. But I can’t ask anyone. I can’t draw attention to us, can’t risk someone coming out here . . .”

Alex nods, understanding. “By the way, what are the grasshopper numbers like out there? My colleague, Lee, studies grasshoppers, and they’re convinced that swarming may occur in your area, given the conditions. But, of course, we get so little information.”

“There are more grasshoppers than usual,” Margaret says. “It’s really hot and dry. Drought weather.” 

Famine weather, she thinks, but doesn’t say. Food prices are up again too. The girls think it’s normal to have mac and cheese for lunch three days in a row. “I haven’t seen swarms, though.”

Margaret shudders as she envisions a swarm. When they were in college, Alex had shown her videos of locust swarms. So many mouths, so many legs and wings. And that sound, like sirens ringing in the end of the world.

“Anything from the news?” Alex presses.

“You know they never tell us anything real.” The words are harsher than Margaret intended. Her stomach rumbles. Hunger and nausea: her two states of being. “Sorry,” she says.

Alex nods, her eyes all soft sympathy. Margaret hates it. Seven years ago, Alex would’ve had a sarcastic comeback.

“So, tell me about the grasshopper your girls found?”

“It’s . . . pink?”

“Really? Pink?” Alex smiles. “Sounds like erythrism!”

“What?”

“Erythrism! It’s a genetic mutation. Kind of like albinism or leucism. Except it makes the grasshopper look pinkish. They usually don’t make it to adulthood because they don’t have natural camouflage. Can I see it?” Alex squints into the darkness of Margaret’s closet as if the grasshopper lurks in the shadows. “It’s pretty rare.”

“It’s in a container. Outside,” Margaret adds. “And the girls . . .” Alex deflates, but nods. Rose and Belle don’t know that Alex exists.

“So, the grasshopper’s not diseased? Or dangerous?” Margaret asks.

“Oh no,” Alex says, shaking her head. “I mean, insects do carry parasites, like all animals. Just wash your hands. And don’t eat them raw! Cooked is fine. Lots of people eat grasshoppers. I’ve had pan-fried grasshoppers before, and they’re delicious.”

“I can’t imagine eating insects,” Margaret cringes.

“A good portion of the world does,” Alex says. “We only find it strange because it wasn’t normalized in our families as kids. Insects have tons of protein and nutrients. They’re a true superfood. And think about it: if a swarm eats everything, if there’s nothing left to eat but the swarm . . .” Alex must notice the queasy look overtaking Margaret’s face, because she cuts herself off.

“They called it a ‘Barbie grasshopper.’”

Alex laughs. “I guess the kids are all right.”

No, they’re not, Margaret thinks as she forces herself to smile, as her nausea morphs into hunger. No one was ever all right, and no one is all right, and no one will ever be all right.

After a few more minutes catching up, Margaret ends the call. She creeps past her daughters’ screen-hypnotized faces to the kitchen. She scours the cupboards for random scraps to devour, for anything to ease this churning in her gut.

She downs a glass of orange juice that’s more dye than juice. She savors a few chalky pieces of chocolate. She even opens a precious tin of canned meat and shovels the bland, overprocessed sludge into her mouth with her fingers.

Please, Margaret silently begs as she stuffs herself to the point of sickness. Please, she thinks over and over, until the word becomes mere sound. She sags into a chair, hating the world with a dull, diffuse hatred which has no real target but herself.

In the next room, Rose and Belle sing along to songs about the power of friendship, love, and kindness. Empty, useless words.

* * *

Two months later, Margaret crawls from bed, clutching her throbbing abdomen, the tattered threads of dream-memory still clinging to her, wrapping her in a web of animal fear. She reaches for Paul, but he isn’t there. In the other bedroom, her daughters sleep, nestled in their bunk beds like burrowed cicadas. Where does Paul sleep on the nights when he doesn’t come home?

Predawn light creeps through the window as Margaret trudges into the kitchen. It’s already too warm, and it will only get hotter. Her naked feet pad through a thin layer of dust. The heat won’t abate, and the rain won’t come. And so, the dust drifts in and makes itself at home. Even after downing two glasses of water her parched throat aches, like the dust has crawled inside her.

Something moves in Margaret’s peripheral vision. She turns and sees the Barbie Dreamhouse sitting insolently on the table. The pink grasshopper stares back at her from its third-story window, antennae flicking.

She told the girls not to bring the Dreamhouse and its repulsive tenant inside. But they never listen. She steps closer, glaring as the grasshopper presses its lurid, pink body against the plastic wrap imprisoning it within.

Since she was a child, Margaret has associated two-story houses with wealth. A three-story house—that’s just opulence. The grasshopper has no understanding of the façade of prosperity it’s trapped within. It digs against clear plastic with pink legs. Margaret lowers herself into an uncomfortable crouch. 

She expects the grasshopper to jump back when she leans close, but the girls have desensitized it to looming human bodies. Its mandibles twitch. Fretfully, hungrily. Always hungry. She understands that feeling, that mindless urge to consume.

This creature staring boldly back at her doesn’t look like a grasshopper. It looks like a hyperreal, tooth-achingly sweet decoration made of fondant, the kind you can’t buy anymore.

Margaret’s mouth floods with saliva. They eat insects in lots of places, Alex told her. How did you pan-fry a grasshopper? Drench it in oil and sauté? Would it pop, like a kernel of corn?

Margaret flinches back, revolted. Pregnancy cravings—she’s had them before. But not like this.

Please, she begs the cells multiplying in her womb. Please—her prayer breaks off. She doesn’t know what to ask for.

And then—a wave of pain obliterates thought and crumples her to the floor. Her knees crack against linoleum. She bites the corners of her mouth and swallows her own blood, but doesn’t scream. She can’t wake the girls. She needs to stand. She needs to force herself to the bathroom. She will wail into a towel as the shower washes the sweat and blood from her body. When it is over, she will dispose of the evidence.

Her vision blurs as another wave hits her—a contraction. Too early. Liquid gushes from her, soaking her legs and nightgown. She reaches down and presses both hands into the warm fluid to assure herself that it’s real. She holds her hands before her face, and blood has pinkened the amniotic fluid. She focuses on the Dreamhouse, and her vision drowns in pink. Pink shutters framing pink windows. Pink flowers, undying in their pink flower boxes.

The grasshopper illuminated by predawn light, a mutated pink framed by artificial, plastic pink.

Margaret’s giant hand rips through plastic wrap and breaks the perfect house to pieces. The grasshopper scrambles away. She pursues it with wet, pink handprints despoiling pink, plastic walls. She corners the grasshopper and pulls her captive from the wreckage.

She stumbles to the back door—but hesitates. It’s not too late to turn back, to return the grasshopper and handle this latest disaster in the privacy of the bathroom. To bear down and keep her cries as unobtrusive as possible. It’s what she has done for years. The grasshopper squirms in her slick palm, but Margaret holds fast. She crosses over the threshold into the backyard.

She glances furtively around, listening for the ominous whir of drones. Only night noises greet her. There is no one to behold her premeditated crime. Only bare, rocky soil interposed with the dead bushes. On the horizon, the sleeping town hovers like a mirage. Above her, the moon’s sickle-smile wavers as the sun starts to rise.

Her bare feet sting as she trudges over withered remnants of grass, past empty flower beds, around the gray-black skeletons of tomatoes. Another wave of pain ripples through Margaret. She doesn’t scream. She isn’t far enough from the house yet. More warmth oozes down her legs. She looks, and it’s blood, painting her feet a lurid, unnatural color, like something out of a horror movie. She hasn’t seen a horror movie in years. They aren’t allowed. So many things aren’t allowed anymore. She walks until her house becomes small and unreal, a dollhouse too small to possibly contain her.

The grasshopper wriggles in her palm. She uncurls her hand, but it doesn’t flee. It just sits there, looking at her. Waiting.

Margaret hesitates. She is being what people call “unreasonable.” But there is no reason in the creature resting on her palm, and there is no reason in her body, and there is no reason in a world which has condemned her to become this feral, bleeding thing.

She is so fucking hungry.

It doesn’t taste like candy. The breaking crunch of its body between her teeth, the prickle of its exoskeleton, jabbing the soft pouch of her throat as she swallows—Margaret has never devoured a living creature before. She has never swallowed a brain. She licks bitter ichor from her lips.

Another contraction hits, and this time she screams while more blood drips down her legs like water trickling through a hole in a dam. But her body has never been a dam. Her body is a wound, ripped open and stitched haphazardly back together. Over and over again.

Margaret looks up at the horizon. A swelling cloud is blotting out the nascent sun. She doesn’t realize what it is until the first grasshopper smacks her forearm. It clings to her skin, probing for food. Her neck swivels down. Her jaws snap open and shut. Another burst of bitter flavor, another set of wriggling limbs. Another live, raw being, another brain snuffed out. Consumed. The buzzing grows louder. The cloud looms closer. Two more grasshoppers land on her arms. She devours one, but the other escapes. No matter. There are hundreds—thousands—millions—of the desperate creatures.

Alex would love this, Margaret thinks.

Another contraction hits. Her scream is swallowed by the buzzing roar of wings.

And then the swarm is upon her.

As bodies ricochet off her, as the contractions come faster and harder, as she screams and screams, choking on the grasshoppers flailing into her open mouth—time falls away. The swarm encloses Margaret, blotting out the world. When it is time, she squats, wails, pushes.

The fetus slides from her and plops onto the dead earth. The placenta follows.

Margaret doesn’t look at the bloody thing between her feet. She has been here before. She knows what she will see. Horror crawls through her. And grief. But relief supersedes all other feelings. Her knees tremble, and she slumps to the ground beside the doomed thing she’d unwillingly carried for almost five months. Grasshoppers swarm her, obscuring the evidence of her crime: the crime of possessing an unwieldy body, of being a woman and a mother.

Margaret has lied to herself for months. Every time she thought, Please, and didn’t dare go further, pretending she didn’t know what she wanted—a lie. She has always known. Viable or not, Margaret hadn’t wanted this pregnancy. She doesn’t want more children. If it were still legal, she would’ve had an abortion.

She opens her mouth, and an eddy of the swarm glides inside her. She devours everything she can get between her teeth. It takes no effort; she opens her mouth, and she is fed. Like a baby bird.

For the first time in years, Margaret is almost happy, almost free. For the first time in months, her body is almost her own.

She is almost full.