White Butterfly

by Mosley, Walter

  I aimed my fist for the place that I had last seen the little man’s face. I felt a meaty impact.

  Then I was stumbling down the stairs. I ran into a woman wearing a black negligee in the room where the Mexican woman and her child had been learning to read.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed with a laugh in her voice. But when she looked at my face she backed away. I reached out to her after we’d collided; as she pulled away the material of her gown felt rough against my palms.

  My bare feet were cold on the pavement outside. Marla’s strong perfume and her female scent permeated my clothes. Maybe she liked me? I laughed and hurt and almost threw up. I shouldn’t go home smelling like I did but I had to go home.

  It took a long time for me to read the time off my copper-faced Gruen “very thin” watch. By then it was two forty-five. I took a deep breath and started the engine.

  I drove very slowly down to my street, parking far enough away that Regina wouldn’t be awakened by the familiar sound of my motor. I spent a whole minute opening the gate so it wouldn’t squeak. Then I went in through Jesus’s side door.

  Jesus lay on his back with his mouth open. He would have slept through an earthquake. I took off my clothes and shoved them under his bed.

  I sat in the bathtub letting the water trickle in slowly. Marla’s smell was down my legs and under my fingernails. It was in my hair and on my breath.

  After a long time I came out of the tub. I put on a robe and went to the baby’s crib. Edna was hunched over one arm on her stomach and sucking her thumb. There was a dried web of mucus on the rim of her nostril. As I came close she sniffed at the air and frowned.

  Regina was turned away from the door. The covers were up to her ears and she was taking in the deep breaths of sleep.

  I got into the bed softly, so lightly that hardly a spring creaked. The pain in my head throbbed with each heartbeat.

  The green fluorescent arms of the clock next to my bed said three-thirty.

  It was the first time I had been with another woman since we’d been married. And it was a prostitute. I didn’t even like it. But I had gotten dark pleasure from that girl.

  Whoever had killed Bonita Edwards had probably met her at Bethune Street. I imagined all the ways I could question Max. I imagined sapping him and waiting until he awoke, and then hitting him again. Maybe I wouldn’t let him talk for hours. Maybe I never would.

  At three-forty she said, “Did you get the money, Easy?”

  “No, baby. I been askin’ questions fo’ Officer Naylor t’day. I ain’t hadda chance t’look into it yet.”

  I thought that I’d make it look hard to get the money. I planned to tell Regina everything about my money after I was finished with the police.

  I just needed time to get all the words straight.

  I stayed very still in hopes that she’d lull back into sleep. I purged all thoughts of sex, violence, and death from my mind.

  After a while I couldn’t even remember what Marla looked like.

  “You smell like you been in a whorehouse,” she said at four-oh-five.

  Neither one of us had moved.

  “You know I love you, Regina,” I said.

  “I know you think you do.”

  “You’n Edna mean more to me than anything.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Is that all you could say?”

  I waited up until dawn but she never said another word.

  — 12 —

  MY TONGUE FELT LIKE A CACTUS PAD and the blood was pounding in my head. I got out of bed and walked along the walls into the living room.

  They were all there.

  Jesus was sitting in the light of the window reading a book and holding the fingers of his left hand against his head. I recognized his pose as the posture I took while reading.

  Regina had on a turquoise housecoat. Edna, dressed only in diapers, sat in her lap. Mother and daughter sat staring at each other in awe. Just as I came into the room Edna reached for her mother’s face and Regina leaned forward to be touched.

  They were all so beautiful that I started to back away. But then somebody took the stairs in two steps and knocked at our door.

  When Regina rose she saw me. A look of confusion crossed her face as if, maybe, I shouldn’t have been there at all. Then she frowned and went to answer the door.

  It was Gabby. She grinned at my daughter and wife, kissing them and making silly faces.

  The smile died on her face when she saw me. I turned away and went back into the bedroom.

  Regina came soon after saying, “You should be civil to Gabby Lee, Easy.”

  “Did she say somethin’ to me?”

  I noticed blood on the white pillowcase. The little Negro’s memento from the night before. My right arm ached as I made to cover the pillow with the sheet.

  “Gabby Lee had plenty of trouble with men, Easy. She might not know how to be civil to a man but that don’t excuse you.”

  “Could I drive you today?”

  Regina had taken off her robe and was about to step into her yellow dress.

  “Why?”

  “Like we used to do. Then I’ll pick you up tonight.”

  “Why today?” She sounded suspicious.

  “Listen, honey,” I said. I put out my hand to zip her back. She hesitated for a moment before allowing my touch. “I know I been wrong with you. I know that. But I wanna make it right.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s just that I gotta get through this thing with Quinten Naylor first.”

  She touched my ear where the blackjack had struck. “What happened to you?”

  “I love you, Regina.”

  I sat down on the bed. My head hurt so much that it was past pain. It felt more like a kind of motion; like a razor-backed viper slithering through my brain. Regina saw the agony in my face and sat down next to me.

  “What’s wrong, baby?”

  “I wanna drive you to work and I want you to do something for me too.”

  “What?”

  “On October fourteenth you got a patient at the Temple emergency room. It was a boy named Gregory. I don’t know his last name. I need to find out where he lives.”

  “What for?”

  “He knew one’a them girls got killed.”

  “Why don’t you just tell Quinten Naylor about it? He could find out himself.”

  “Maybe, but if I could come up with a name and an address then I would know for sure that Quinten could find him. You know the police make so much noise when they doin’ anything and this Gregory might have a friend at Temple.”

  “But I need my car,” Regina said.

  “I’ll pick you up at five, I swear I will.”

  “Well… I guess,” she said finally. “But we gotta hurry if you wanna go. You know I got a timetable to keep.”

  TEMPLE HOSPITAL is a big gray building at the top of a hill on Temple Street. Edna was born there on a rainy January night. Regina was in a lot of pain during labor and the nurses were so nice that she decided to become a nurse’s aide herself. She never worried about a profession before then. But you couldn’t pry her away from that job with gold or honey.

  I took a left turn before we came to the main entrance.

  “What you doin’?” Regina asked.

  “Parking. I thought we could get some coffee like we used to.”

  “I gotta get to work.”

  “It’s only eight-thirty. You don’t have to be on shift until nine-fifteen.”

  Regina shook her head. “I don’t have the time this mornin’,” she said.

  I made a turn in the middle of the street and pulled into a loading zone in front of the main entrance.

  Regina said, “You been off in yo’ own thing all this time, baby. You know I got girlfriends in there who expect me to sit wit’ them.”

  “But I’m your husband.”

  She patted my cheek, then kissed it. “I’ll find out what I can about your emergency boy, honey. I’ll call you ’roun
d ten, okay?”

  “I guess.”

  She kissed me on the lips and opened the door. I felt so bad to be alone that I almost called out to her. I watched her walk away. The moment she was out of the car her mind was fully on the job she had to do. She didn’t look back. I waited until the large door she went through had closed.

  BY THE TIME I was back home that razor-backed viper was boring at my skull. Gabby Lee and Edna were playing in the living room.

  Jesus was packing his lunch in the kitchen.

  “How you doin’?” I asked him.

  Jesus looked up at me and smiled.

  “Let me see your hands.”

  He flashed his palms at me quickly and then reached for his lunch bag. But I reached out to touch his shoulder.

  “Let’s have a good look now,” I said.

  He’d been eating something sticky in the last twenty-four hours. Mottled dirt ran down the seams between his fingers.

  “You gotta wash your hands every night, Jesus Rawlins. If you go to bed like that you could attract ants, maybe even a rat.”

  Jesus glanced fearfully down at the floor.

  “Go on now, wash up and get on down to school.”

  He ran to the bathroom.

  I went back to bed counting heartbeats and breathing as slowly as I could.

  WHEN GABBY LEE started making loud cooing noises with Edna in the other room I shouted, “Cut out that noise! Cut it out!”

  Edna began to cry. I wanted to go out there and hold my hand over her little mouth, but I knew it was the hangover. I knew it was all the guilt I felt over the whore and me. Me, the whore-man, the fool.

  “Now you made that baby cry,” Gabby Lee said from the bedroom door.

  She had a hard stare for me but when I looked up into her eye she backed down. She backed all the way out of the room. I pulled myself from bed and cursed Quinten Naylor. I hated that man. If it wasn’t for him I’d be fine. I actually believed that. Way past thirty and I was still a fool.

  I went into Jesus’s room with a denim bag and gathered up my clothes. Then I went to the bedroom to get the sheets.

  Gabby Lee watched me silently as I went from room to room.

  I made coffee and toast. I drank the brew but the toast went uneaten. I washed and shaved and then washed again. I said good morning to my baby girl when I was halfway human. She laughed and played with my fingers. It’s a shame the way children will forgive parents their sins.

  I didn’t say another word to Gabby Lee. She went around the house sullenly hating me like she hated all men. But I couldn’t blame her that morning. It seemed like I was on the warpath against women and that all the men I knew, and those I didn’t know, were too. I treated Marla like a piece of meat. I wasn’t honest with my wife and I yelled at my baby. Somebody was going around killing women and the police hardly cared until a white girl got it. I wasn’t even sure that they cared about her.

  THE PHONE RINGING nearly tore my head off. Gabby Lee didn’t answer it. She wasn’t going to be my secretary. The bell reminded me of machine-gun bursts. When I finally staggered up to it I had to restrain myself from throwing the goddam thing out of the window.

  “Yeah,” I whispered.

  “Easy?” said Regina. “Is that you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “His last name is Jewel and he lives at one sixty-eight Harpo. They said somebody really worked him over. All kinds of broken bones. Um. He got a young wife came and got him the next day.”

  “Thanks, babe,” I said. I’d written down the address and name on the tabletop in the dining room. Gabby Lee stared daggers at me but she didn’t say a word.

  “Easy?” Regina asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you like doin’ this?”

  “Doin’ what?”

  “This. This workin’ with the cops an’ lookin’ for people like this boy.”

  “Uh-uh, no, baby. I just wanna be home with you. That’s what I like.”

  There was a neighborhood tomcat stalking across the front lawn. I was watching him through the front window when all of a sudden he froze and stared at me from a half-crouch. His eyes were Regina’s, staring through my lies.

  “But you do it ’cause you have to?”

  “What?”

  “I had to have me a baby. I had to. I like this job and I like a lotta things but I had to have Edna. I’d die without her.”

  “I’d die without you, honey,” I said.

  “I gotta go now, Easy. You be here at five?”

  “Yeah. I’ll be there.”

  When I went out the front door L.A. was waiting for me. You could see as far as the mountains would let you. I didn’t deserve it, but it was mine just the same.

  — 13 —

  GREGORY JEWEL LIVED in a California-style tenement. The project was a deep lot with a row of white-and-green bungalows facing each other. At the end of the aisle of sixteen dwellings was a solitary bungalow. That was Gregory Jewel’s house. A little bronze tab over the door buzzer said “assistant manager.”

  A young woman opened the door. She had light brown skin with dark brown freckles around her broad nose. She had spaces between her teeth that enhanced her smile and you could see that she always smiled. Even when she was sad she smiled. Her eyes were wet and there were creases in her young face, the creases of days of crying. Her solemn, creased face told of how she’d look when she became an older woman—Gregory would be a lucky man if he held on to her that long.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “Gregory Jewel,” I said in a gruff tone. The hangover was talking for me.

  “No, sir. No Gregory Jewel here.”

  “Com’on, honey. I know this is his house. An’ I know Greg ain’t goin’ nowhere ’cause he’s all beat up. So tell’im that Easy Rawlins is here an’ unless he wants the police on’im he better talk wit’ me now.”

  She listened to my speech patiently and when I finished she said, “Sorry, mistah, but they ain’t no Gregory Jewel in this house.”

  “Ella!” came a shout from the house.

  “What?”

  “Who is that?”

  “Just some man lookin’ fo’a Gregory Jewel. I told’im that they wasn’t any here.”

  “Come on back here,” the voice shouted.

  Ella closed the door in my face. I took it. I felt like pushing past her and dragging Gregory from wherever he was hiding but I kept the anger caged. I was saving it for a stronger foe.

  When the door opened again Ella’s smile was gone.

  “Com’on,” she said.

  The rooms in the bungalow were like a ship’s cabin. There was hardly enough space to turn around. The furniture was mismatched and the linoleum on the floor was rotted around the corners. There was a professional photograph of Ella in the arms of a skinny, buck-toothed man tacked to the wall. There was a hot plate and a stack of dishes next to the front door.

  Through that room was an even tinier bedroom. There was probably a toilet in a closet off from there. I never found out though, because the buck-toothed man was laid up in the small bed.

  Gregory’s left arm went straight out to the side and was wrapped, up past the shoulder, in a thick white cast. His right hand was bandaged and both of his feet were in casts. The casts were all scuffed and frayed. There was a bandage around Gregory’s head and there was blood in both of his eyes.

  “What you want?” he asked.

  There was only enough room for a squat upholstered chair with their bed. I sat in it and Ella slumped against the door.

  “You Gregory Jewel?”

  My official tone made him nervous.

  “How come?” he asked.

  I looked at him for a few seconds. I didn’t feel sorry for the man, because he called this misery on himself. But I felt kindred to his misery. It seemed to me that my whole life had been spent walking into shabby little houses with poor people bleeding or hacking or just dying quietly under the weight of our “liberation.” I was born in a h
ouse no larger than that one. I lived there with two half sisters and one stepbrother. I watched my mother die of pneumonia on a bed like Gregory’s.

  All of a sudden my hangover was gone. I took a deep breath of sour air and said, “I gotta know ’bout how you was beaten, man.”

  “How come? You a cop?”

  “The cops will be here ’less you tell me sumpin’.”

  “How I know that?”

  “Listen, I ain’t gonna mess around wit’you. If you want the cops here I’ll send’em. I need t’know ’bout how you got messed up. They do too.”

  The young couple looked at each other, then Gregory asked, “What’s up?”

  “This is deep, Greg. Real deep. You don’t want yo’ name nowhere around it. You could take that from me. I ain’t gonna tell ya nuthin’, but it’s better fo’you that way. Now this is the last time I’m gonna ask it. After this I’m gone an’ ev’rybody gonna know yo’ name.”

  Gregory tried to laugh. “Wasn’t nuthin’. Ain’t nuthin’ t’tell. I run inta him at a bar an’ he said sumpin’ I didn’t like.”

  “What about Juliette LeRoi? I heard that the fight was over her.”

  Ella opened the door and went out.

  “What you wanna go an’ do that fo’, man?” Gregory squealed. “That ain’t right.”

  “What about Juliette LeRoi?” I asked again. I took a twenty-dollar bill from my pocket and put it on the cast.

  Only great concentration kept Gregory from snatching that bill with the two available fingers of his bandaged hand. “What you wanna know?”

  “What happened with you that night you got beat up?”

  Gregory looked away from me at the small window near the top of the low ceiling. He brought to mind a chick that had fallen from the nest.

  “I know’er. That’s all. I went with’er down to Aretha’s t’get some drinks. We did that sometimes and then maybe I’d get some, you know what I mean?

  “So there was this dude with a beard there an’ he said that he wanted her t’come wit’ him. I stood up an’ he pushed me across the room. Then he goes out the door pullin’ on Julie. I got a bad temper so I runs on out an’ goes after’em. But he grabs me an’ th’ows me in the alley.” Tears came to Gregory’s face. “First he broke my arm, man. Then he stomped my feet. Doctor said I might not even be able to walk right, an’ you know we get our rent free if I look after things here an’ they gonna throw us out if I don’t get back to it soon.”