Butterfly

by Sonya Hartnett

  “Oooh, invitations!” A smear of chocolate spreads immediately from Caroline’s fingers to the paper.

  Dash pulls out the folded card and reads the words inside; then looks critically at the jiving silhouettes pictured on the cover. “Do we have to dance at this party?”

  “You don’t have to. There’ll be music, but we can just listen.” Dash’s foxy face remains suspicious, so Plum adds, “I don’t like dancing either.”

  “Aria!” Samantha is shocked. “How can you hate dancing? The only people who hate dancing are people who are hopeless at it.”

  “Well, I don’t hate it —”

  “You said you did!”

  Plum fumbles, feeling she’s slipping down a ladder. Already the day is too hot and long. “I don’t like dancing in front of good dancers, I meant. It’s better just to watch them —”

  “Watch them? You better not sit around watching me. That’s creepy, Aria.”

  Caroline has been counting on her fingers. “The party is three weeks away!”

  Plum turns, agitated. “Two and a half weeks. That’s all right, isn’t it?”

  “No! Two and a half weeks? I can’t wait that long!”

  The sweetness of this makes Plum blink, doused by a desire to hug this scrawny simpleton of a girl. A far-off idea occurs to her, to steal Caroline away from these others, to make it just the two of them. Such a life would be, Plum knows, undemanding. But the friends would never surrender Caroline, and Plum, in the next instant, isn’t convinced she wants her. Life would become pointless so quickly.

  Victoria swats at a fly with her card. “What about your brothers? Will they be there?”

  “They said they will.” Plum hesitates, then takes the risk. “They said they were looking forward to it.”

  Rachael frowns. “Why would they look forward to it?”

  “That’s creepy too,” says Samantha.

  “Ugh,” Plum gags. “No, that’s not what they said.” Why, why, why must everything be a battle? “They said they’d be glad to see you again.”

  This is so wily that Plum is thunderstruck. Rachael actually colors around her collar. Samantha says caustically, “They would have meant all of us, not just you, Rachael. Not everybody you meet falls in love with you, you know.”

  “I don’t think that,” Rachael snarls; “Yes you do!” Samantha howls.

  The two glare at each other; in the silence that falls, Plum races away with her advantage. “And guess what? I’ve decided to get my ears pierced.”

  It is something she’s been thinking about all night, and she’s resolved that it’s the thing for her. But Caroline cringes: “It hurts, Plummy! I cried.”

  “You did cry! I remember.”

  “Yeah, I bawled. I almost peed my pants.”

  Plum shrugs, full of cardboard courage. “I have to save up the money first. I’m getting paid to babysit the kid next door. When I’ve saved enough, we can go to the chemist and get it done.”

  “You’d look good with gold studs, Plum.”

  “Do you think? I was thinking silver sleepers —”

  “No,” says Samantha, “Victoria’s right. Studs would look better. Sleepers look best on skinny girls. Not saying you’re fat, but you’re not skinny-skinny, you know? And sleepers only suit skinny-skinny girls.”

  The bell rings, peeling out importantly from speakers around the grounds; Plum realizes with surprise that she’s forgotten to eat her biscuits. The friends pick themselves out of the grass, dust off their dresses, hitch up their socks. As they stroll toward the buildings, Rachael has an idea. “We could pierce your ears, Aria. Then it wouldn’t cost you anything.”

  Instantly they’re eager. “Yeah! Yeah! We should!”

  Plum slows, eyes rolling horsily. “Do it — how?”

  “Easy! We numb your ear, then jab the needle through. Exactly like they do at the chemist.”

  “But the chemist uses that machine, it only takes one second —”

  “Shut up, Caz. This is the same. Only a zillion times cheaper, so Aria won’t have to babysit some screaming brat . . .”

  Plum pauses in the doorway of the building, completely barren of words. Her friends gaze at her hopefully — only Samantha, that giantess, is taller than she is, and Plum feels stretched and unstable, as if hoisted on a wire. Then Sophie says, “We could do it at my house on Saturday. My parents are going to a wedding,” and Plum’s confusion drops away; she sees.

  “Say yes, Aria!”

  “It will be fun!”

  Inside Plum there’s a sonar whine of fear, but she’s thinking, now, of the benefits — happiness, power. The pain will pass, but the benefits will remain; and the chance might never come again. “OK.” Her voice is mossy. “Saturday. It will be fun.”

  “I’ll bring the needle,” says Samantha.

  They push through the doors into the leadenness of the building, into chatter and banging metal, dropped books and chanting and shoes scuffing stone. Girls are singing, reciting, bouncing balls, bickering. The second bell starts to ring, warning students to look sharp. Lockers slam, stories end, panics are flown into. Plum, already terrified, madly thinks happiness, feveredly clings to power.

  The glass lamb doesn’t have an interesting story. It is not, for instance, something that Princess Anastasia Romanov kept on a shelf in her onion-domed bedroom alongside a clutch of Fabergé eggs. Rather, it was bought by a country girl on a rare jaunt to the fancy shops of the city. The girl and her mother had caught the train all the way from their property on the flat sheep plains. Journeying, the girl had counted her money. She did not know what she would buy — maybe a bangle or a hatpin. But when she saw the lamb in a jeweler’s window, she knew what she couldn’t live without. The girl grew up, married, had children; became, in time, a grandmother. The lamb remained with her throughout those years. No one was allowed to touch it, only to admire from afar. Then one day, in a fit of generosity regretted ever since, the grandmother gave the lamb to her favorite granddaughter, and has never laid eyes on it since.

  The jade pendant is not the prettiest thing. It is a cheap souvenir from Hawaii. Like many souvenirs, it had seemed a good idea at the time. In the shop, surrounded by chips of lava and carvings of splay-faced deities, the pendant had stood out as comparatively beautiful. And while it does indeed have some grace, the hard green stone curving sinuously from the silver clasp and leather string, it is impossible to avoid noticing the rust on the silver, the scragginess of the string. It is nothing but a trinket for a tourist lacking taste. But it was her first and only holiday overseas, and she’d worn the necklace throughout the trip — swam with it, sunbaked with it, hiked a volcano while wearing it, so it slithered across her sternum slick with sweat — and it has value beyond its worth, because of these memories.

  The yo-yo came from the Royal Show. Every year she waits patiently for the ten-day spectacular that is the Show. She studies the showbag guide as if somewhere within the roll-call of goodies is secreted the meaning of life. Each year she takes a day off school to arrive at the showgrounds as the gates open. The first hours are a rush, riding the Zipper before the great crowds arrive, visiting the exhibition halls to see which handmade quilt took out the prize. Only the last hour is devoted to showbags. She’s decided in advance which are the best value. At home she spills the haul across her bed, burying her face in a sugar mountain. . . . The year she was eleven, the mountain was slightly smaller than usual. Passing a toy stand, she’d made a mature decision. She would eat the lollipops over the course of many days, but eventually they would be gone. If she bought a yo-yo — and although she’s not skilled in the toy’s use, she envies those who are — she would have something to keep. She chose the orange one advertising Fanta, which is her favorite drink.

  The old coin is not as old as, for instance, a coin of Nero’s or Henry VIII’s. It is only a penny of the sort recollectable by anyone’s parent. Yet it looks ancient — thick and stained and very brown, as if the years spent lyi
ng in the dry dust beneath a house rendered it as parched as a mummy. Circling its edge are words printed in perfect letters, and on one side there’s a fast-flying kangaroo. The man in the coin shop said it has no value whatsoever; but it is worth something to her. It was found by her uncle on the day she was born — she doesn’t know what he was doing under the house, but when his kneecap detected something inflexible and, investigating, he excavated a penny which, by coincidence, had been minted exactly fifty years earlier, it seemed as good a gift as any to present to his new niece. History in the shape of a disc. The first time she’d pressed it to her lips, she discovered the old metal was warm.

  The Abba badge is, by comparison, youthful, and several times the size of the coin. She is not a musical girl nor, intrinsically, a joyful girl; but the music of the four Swedes shook something awake inside her, and when she heard it she felt airborne and strong. When she saw the handsome foursome on television she knew the longing of one reared among a foreign species encountering, for the first time, others in the image of itself. Every night, around the ages of nine and ten, she lay in bed pretending Frida was about to knock at the front door. They would all fly home to Sweden, where she would live in a luxurious log cabin. While waiting for this to occur, she painstakingly saved enough money to buy the badge, which she wore every weekend for months. Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Benny and Björn stood valiantly over her heart. It was the sort of love affair one grows out of, but she never threw the badge away. Even now, so much later, she occasionally thinks of Frida’s knuckles on the door.

  The watch has a tiny face barely larger than a fingernail. The face is encased in silver; the strap is a thin line of black leather, and the buckle is also silver. It was once a pretty accessory, given to the mother when the mother was eighteen, passed to the daughter when the daughter turned twelve. That had been a mistake. A stumble in the schoolyard resulted in a broken wrist and a broken wrist-strap as well. In the pain and mayhem, the watch lay on the bitumen, trampled to the point of being unfixable. The glass is crumpled, the silver scarred, the little hands are jammed. It’s still a lovely thing, however, and receives grave nursing when she dares to touch it. Everyone thinks it disappeared forever in the broken-wrist chaos: but she still has it, and she’s never shown it to anyone, because it and its injuries belong to her.

  Plum can’t explain exactly what all these treasures are meant to achieve, but together they work to give her something she can’t achieve on her own. Happiness, safety, power, place — none of these words is precisely correct, but none is absolutely wrong either. In owning the objects, she isn’t helpless; she could be, she fancies, almost lethal. She could be like Sissy Spacek in Carrie. Yet sometimes — often — the objects’ influence weakens, leaving Plum to flounder. When it happens, Plum is teased and ignored. Perhaps she should intensify her time with the talismans — wear the badge, carry the coin, fling the yo-yo around. Sleep with them cuddled against her stomach. Maybe she should . . . eat them.

  . . . No.

  She kneels above the opened briefcase, radiating energy through her hands and into the objects; simultaneously she sucks up their energy, in a paranormal transference that would impress Doctor Who. “Make room,” she tells the collection, her eyelids fluttering druggedly. “Prepare for the expanding of your supremacy. Prepare, prepare.” And she does in fact feel a tingling in her palms, which could well be a manifestation of something that has nothing to do with the real world.

  What’s left of the week passes quickly, as if Saturday is a whirlpool sucking down the days. Plum is excited, and afraid. She wakes each morning with her heart running fast; at night she has stressful dreams. Even sitting in the dark beside Justin watching Wednesday’s late movie, Logan’s Run, doesn’t distract her as it normally would; nor even does Michael York. Fortunately, her nervousness makes it easier to throw away her lunch. Plum has more important things to think about than her mother’s wasted time.

  Sitting cross-legged over her homework each night, licking ice cream from the back of a spoon, she listens for the sound of her neighbor’s door stretching out its hinges. She knows that Maureen walks in the garden most evenings because of her love for the warm dusk air. But the Datsun Skyline arrives in the driveway some time during Wednesday night, and when Maureen appears in the garden on Thursday she is in the company of Mr. Wilks. The two of them sit on the lawn with glasses and red wine, and Maureen laughs loudly, warning Plum she’s not alone. And it’s true that Plum shies sulkily from the idea of sharing her friend, even with this unchallenging man. Her friendship with Maureen is like a white unicorn in a forest, or maybe a ruby in a cloud. It is very unusual and shiny and delicate. She would rather not speak to Maureen at all, than have someone overhear what she’d say.

  Thankfully, on Friday evening Maureen is in the garden with David. Fit to burst, Plum runs down the stairs, across the lawn and up the neighboring driveway, her arms crashing at her sides. Maureen laughs to see her hot red face, her vibrant ready smile. She pats the grass, and Plum flops down. The girl is desperate to tell everything — every musing and emotion that has passed through her in fourteen years — and most particularly she wants to talk about what’s planned for the following day. But Plum senses Maureen will not approve of the domestic ear-piercing — she will say it’s a dangerous, unhealthy idea. If Plum explained that she is offering her ears to the administrations of her friends because it will make them happy and thus make Plum happier, Maureen would probably understand; but she would say Plum was being absurd. And it’s impossible to tell even someone like Maureen about the treasures in the briefcase, which are giving her strength but which need to be stronger. So, “Hi, Davy,” she chirrups. “Is that your new truck?”

  The boy, in the sandpit, glances at the yellow dump truck. “I got it for my birthday.”

  “It’s my birthday soon —”

  “I know,” the child drawls. “Mum told me.”

  “How is everything?” Maureen asks. “Tell me what you’ve been doing.”

  Plum slumps on her elbows, the grass tickly on her skin. “Nothing’s been happening. Everything’s the same. I watched Logan’s Run. It’s a science-fiction movie where everyone has to die when they turn thirty. But thirty is pretty old, so I don’t know why they complain.”

  “It’s not so old,” says Maureen.

  “It’s not old.” Plum hurries to make amends. She doesn’t know exactly how old Maureen is, but she must be fairly old to be married with a house and a son. “It’s just — old enough. People shouldn’t try to cling on to everything —”

  “Even to life? To pleasure?”

  This is not what Plum wishes to talk about; her fondness for Logan’s Run is diminishing. “I haven’t been eating my lunch,” she says instead. “I’m used to it now, I hardly even get hungry. I gave out my party invitations, and everyone can come. . . . My friends want my brothers to be at the party. I think they want Cydar and Justin there more than they want me.”

  “I doubt that’s true, Aria.”

  “They said they wouldn’t come unless Justin and Cydar were going.”

  “Well, that’s just girls being silly.”

  Plum nods wonkily, startled by the dismissive truth of it: what seems imperiling is really just girls being silly. It is miraculous, how easily Maureen makes dire things laughable. “My friends are mean to me sometimes,” she says. “I don’t know what to do.”

  Maureen is running her fingers down the length of her arm. She doesn’t say it’s better to have no friends than to have horrible friends. She says, “Use their nastiness to make yourself stronger.”

  Plum feels a strange eeriness. The objects seem to call out like a choir from the briefcase. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. You have a whole life to get through, Aria. A lot longer than thirty years, probably. Don’t waste it being weak and easily hurt.”

  Plum’s breath hitches: Maureen would understand about the ear-piercing and the briefcase. There are no limits to w
hat Maureen will understand. She opens her mouth to explain, but the words simply won’t budge. The risk is too great: Plum could not bear it if Maureen lost her liking for her. She swallows the surge of confessional honesty, her damp gaze careering. In the window of her bedroom are reflected the branches of the melaleuca where the little owl lives — Plum has listened and listened futilely for its hoots. Further along is Justin’s window, closed tight, blind down. The roof of the house is scaled with lichen; the sky beyond is purple, as if it’s suffered a horizon’s-worth of blows. There are no birds, but there are midges bouncing on the air, and underground a cricket is tuning its saws and pins. She looks back to Maureen and asks, “Will you come to my party? Even for a little while?”

  Maureen smiles. “Aria. Of course I will.”

  And Plum grins bashfully, hugs her knees to her chest. Warmth fills her stomach when she imagines the scene: her elegant neighbor making her friends feel ugly, her admirable brothers reducing them to giggling fools. Yes, she will say to Rachael and Samantha and Dash. This is my actual life. This is ordinary for me.