Project Mulberry: Chapters 12–16

They were a grayish greenish white color, and big enough now that you could see all the little segments of their bodies and their tiny, delicate feet.

Their mouths were pretty mean-looking. You could see the two parts—lips? is that what you’d call them?—except instead of being top and bottom, like people lips, they were side by side and looked like pincers.

“They look like aliens.”
“Aliens!” I said, indignant.

It didn’t look like crawling, not the way Kenny used to crawl when he was a baby. It was more like rippling—they rippled across the leaves.

What I’d thought were dead worms were just the skins of worms. Our worms were molting.

But I still hadn’t decided what to embroider for the project. I wanted it to be something really special—something that would deserve genuine homemade silk thread.

There were three that looked to me to be a tiny bit bigger than the rest, and two average-sized ones that seemed the most sluggish.

“Julia, entomologists have been studying caterpillars and moths, like, forever,” he said.

“I don’t want to,” he muttered.
He was being so weird. “Why not?” I persisted.

“I found a website that lists more than five hundred phobias. Mine is called ‘scoleciphobia.’ ‘Phobia’ means fear in Greek, and ‘skolex’ means worm. I memorized some of the other ones too. Amaxophobia—fear of riding in a car. Ephebiphobia—fear of teenagers. And my favorite: Arachibutyrophobia. Guess what that is?"

“They’re going nuts!” I said. “They’re moving their heads around like crazy. I can’t see very well, but they’re all, like, frantic. Do you think something’s wrong? Maybe they don’t like it in there.”

But I knew it would never be as special on tape as it was now, happening right in front of me, those wispy threads at first barely more than air, and then like a cloud, the caterpillar spinning layer after layer after layer, each layer made of one hundred percent real silk thread.

“You have to boil the cocoons. For about five minutes, to dissolve all the sticky stuff that keeps them together. Then you can unwind the silk. But the boiling kills them—the pupae.”

Bang, crash, smash into smithereens.

I still felt dizzy, and now my stomach was starting to churn.

scientists don't even KNOW if worms HAVE consciousness, not like humans anyway, thats why theyre called a LOWER FORM OF LIFE!!!

One display shows a dress made of black silk brocade.

Susan B. Anthony said of the dress: “My pleasure in the rich brocaded silk is quadrupled because it was made by women politically equal with men. The fact that the mulberry trees grew in Utah, that the silkworms made their cocoons there, that women reeled and spun and colored and wove the silk in a free state, greatly increases its value.”

I’d taken care of them, fed them, worried about them, watched them grow. And now they’d never get to be moths. I knew I would appreciate the heck out of that silk. But would that be enough to take away the feeling in my stomach—half- numb and half-sick?

I was surprised to see how fat their bodies were. I’d seen pictures before, but I guess I thought ours would be different somehow. They weren’t slim and graceful like a butterfly; instead, they were squat and chunky.

He looked at me a little sheepishly.

He wondered if we should bury the moths under Mr. Dixon’s mulberry tree, so their decomposing bodies would help sustain the tree, but we decided it would be a little weird, carrying all those dead moths over to his house.

I went up to my bedroom, scrabbled around in the mess for a few minutes, and found the book Patrick had left me.

The blue ribbon was won by a girl who’d made a quilt with applique pictures of her family’s history, starting with a slave ship from Africa.

But the judges were very impressed that I’d used homemade silk thread for my picture, so they gave me a Special Citation for Originality.