Butterfly Bitch!

by Wahida Clark

  Butterfly never had to accept money in exchange for sex. She had been kicked out of her father’s house when she was seventeen years old, because her uppity father couldn’t accept the fact that Butterfly was a pre-op transgender who was going to have the operation to make Butterfly fully a woman once she turned eighteen. Her father lived under a pretense, being that he had a political career to uphold. He started off as a county commissioner in neighboring Hyattsville, Maryland, where he was eventually elected a seat in the state’s legislation. All the annual banquets, monthly outings, balls, galas, and his fraternity conventions, and he never ever once brought Butterfly along—not once! She was always shuffled off neatly to her uncle Kevin, who had been molesting her ever since she was seven. And that’s why she always associated the unfortunate sequence of words: Kevin-seven-heaven. Yes, Uncle Kevin was the pastor of one of the biggest Protestant churches in Maryland.

  When Butterfly’s father kicked her out, she was forced to live with her uncle, Kevin, who doled out money and lavish presents on Butterfly in exchange that she remain quiet about their daily sexual rendezvous. Uncle Kevin was sick to say the least, and insanely in love with Butterfly. He attributed his overzealous love to some farcical explanation of her being the “son” he never had—or couldn’t have because his wife was infertile.

  Butterfly could have told her father, but she knew 100% that her father would have killed Kevin, who was her mother Sandra’s younger brother. So Butterfly always kept the fact that her uncle molested her a secret, and for the most part she kept the fact that she was a man a secret. Secrets . . . Secrets . . . Secrets.

  Butterfly knew she had to leave her uncle’s house. He was becoming so increasingly in love with Butterfly that he became blatant with his affections toward her in front of his wife, Debra. He even kissed Butterfly on the lips once in front of Debra and would stay up in the furnished attic with Butterfly until the wee hours of the night.

  Debra had been the owner of the franchise of women’s clothing that she sold out of several different warehouses across the country called Debra’s. She taught Butterfly the ins-and-outs of running a multi-million dollar franchise, but most importantly she taught Butterfly how to do payroll. It wasn’t too long after that, that Butterfly used common sense to figure out how to counterfeit checks. And when she met her ex, Clayton, he had all the connection she’d ever need to obtain fake identification. At first, it was for the express purpose of identifying her as a woman, and secondly to cash checks!

  “Why you haven’t said anything? Did I offend you?” Sosa brought Butterfly out of her brief reverie. She had been crushed by the legal system, her family and friends, and depressed for as long as she could remember. So Sosa’s smiling face was the least offending.

  “No, I’m not offended,” she said innocently.

  “Then I send you money. I scared, ‘cus you being morena.”

  “Morena?” Butterfly asked quizzically.

  “Yeah.” He laughed, not believing himself for going against all odds because he wanted to fuck Butterfly so much it hurt. “Morena means Black in Spanish. We also say Negra or Negro, but we don’t say it because we think it will offend you.”

  “I’m not offended.”

  “I know, ‘cus I not call you Negra. I say Morena. Morena deliciosa.” They laughed. “See, I know you gonna cause mucho problema,” Sosa said with charming and squinted eyes. It was a threatening foreboding prophecy that Butterfly couldn’t exactly place, and it only exemplified what she had already feared.

  “Why you say that?”

  “You’re gonna see, morena deliciosa. When those guys get one look at you, they’re gonna get so hungry, they’ll do anything to get some of you. I’d be able to smell you from the other side of that big compound. You smell so sweet I wanna fuck you right here.”

  They laughed again. Sosa couldn’t be older than forty-five years old, but he still had a lot of youth.

  “You’re playing.” She was hoping that was not the case, because she was non-confrontational. She wouldn’t stand a chance if otherwise.

  He laughed. “I no lie. I tell you this; those morenos from DC marry each other.”

  “Marry?”

  He excitedly shook his head. “Once you get married, you married wherever you go.”

  Married! Good grief! Butterfly thought. She didn’t know that it was a binding non-legal process equivalent to slaves hopping the broom. If she got married, wherever she would go, she’d be “whoever’s” Mrs.

  “I can protect you, morena deliciosa.” Sosa’s youthful and charming face was replaced by stern eyes that read: stone-cold killer. And his expression said the same. But no matter what he said in his last statement, there was only one thing Butterfly heard.

  “I’ma need protection?” Butterfly asked, now visibly shaken as the sun finally cracked the horizon outside of the bus.

  This time all the charisma and charm was all the way gone as Sosa looked over at her and nodded yes.

  Chapter Two

  The Arrival

  Send them in!” a man from the gun tower yelled. He hung out of the gun tower holding an automatic weapon.

  The bus pulled into an enclosure of gates, so the prison COs, who were in the shack at the entrance, could inspect the bus to make sure that no contraband was in or under the bus. COs entered the bus and counted the fresh bloods who had newly arrived. “Protection from what?” Butterfly asked as her anxiety mounted.

  “You see soon enough mi morena deliciosa. You see very soon.”

  Sosa said, and they sat quiet. Butterfly didn’t belong to this scene. Just the sight of her soft and delicate being amongst the ruffians who sat around her was awkward.

  What a sight Butterfly was amongst the ruffians who sat around her. As the bus was being inspected, Butterfly looked over at Sosa, who looked as if he was preparing himself for whatever awaited his arrival. As Butterfly observed the other passengers on the bus, everybody’s expression was the same. All the looks had anticipation, readiness and anxiety in them. All it did was confirm Butterfly’s worse fears. Contradictory to how she felt within herself, her soft features against her light complexion gave off a sort of awkwardness that even made the COs feel uneasy. Her soft and fluffy lips cast against her features could only be described as very beautiful yet exotic, and it could not fit with the rough necks around her.

  Once outside the bus, a team of COs removed the handcuffs, belly chains, and ankle braces as the inmates descended the bus. They were marched inside the R&D (Receiving and Discharge), and they sat for what seemed like endless hours waiting to be processed inside of the system.

  There, Butterfly felt how humiliating and humbling the whole ordeal of Intake and Screening was upon entry to the institution. It was a timely task of being strip-searched, dressed with unwashed and smelly garbs that almost made her puke. She held the disgusting underwear away from her body because they had shit stains in the part where the ass crack was supposed to go. She opted to wear the jailhouse khaki pants without underwear.

  She then was shoved into having to take a mug-shot, and that was the first time she noticed how terrible her hair looked. The perm was completely worn out, replaced by what appeared to be the making of a natural. The sight made her feel how she truly felt: nasty, dirty, and disgusting.

  Butterfly went to the health department where she was asked very personal questions by a tall, white male nurse who had a shit-eating grin on his face the whole time she was interviewed.

  “When was the last time you had sex?” the nurse asked with a hinting smile.

  “Let’s see: none of your business,” Butterfly answered. There was nothing about the nurse that made her afraid.

  The nurse, whose badge read: RN Eddings, enjoyed the exchange. “When was the last time you had an HIV test?”

  “DC jail, when I almost bled to death.”

  “Let me see . . . Oh yeah, you’re negative. Let’s hope it stays that way.” Nurse Eddings held the paper in his hand out t
o Butterfly. The paper was an authorization that she had been medically cleared to go to the compound.

  Butterfly was ushered into Case Manager Attenberger’s office. He would assign her to a unit, and he would have the final say-so as to if she would go to the compound. Or not.

  “Are you going to be a problem?” Attenberger asked, and it can't be said that the question wasn't asked rudely.

  “Excuse me?” Butterfly asked, and not without an attitude.

  “You heard me. Are you going to be a problem?”

  “Why would I be a problem?”

  Attenberger smirked. “Let's just say you're obviously gay, and you don't look like a man at all. I'm impressed myself. But do you know what's out there?”

  “Men.” Butterfly smiled wanly.

  “You know what. You're going to the SHU till the Captain signs off on you,” Attenberger said sullenly.

  “The SHU? What's that?” Butterfly said, as if the fear in her voice could keep her from going.

  “Oh, you are all woman,” Attenberger added, referring to what was written in her pre-sentence investigation report, which was prepared by the probation officer. The report was a far intrusive history file about Butterfly’s life, and all Butterfly could remember from the interview was she hated it!

  Attenberger continued. “The SHU stands for Special Housing Unit, or the hole, or a disciplinary confinement.”

  “But I didn't do nothing.”

  “You can't go to the compound anyways, not today. There are no available cells. But in case you do go, if you're so much as found kissing or obscenely touching anybody, I promise you we'll ship you to that underground joint in Colorado. Have you heard of ADX?”

  “No.”

  “I didn't think so. That's where we send our incorrigible inmates. Let's just say, you wouldn't last five minutes.”

  There was no doubt in Butterfly's mind that she couldn’t last two minutes, let alone five. “I'm not going to do nothing.”

  “You better not. Now get out of my office,” Attenberger said. But before she left, he had almost forgotten to ask some key questions. “One last thing: do you have any separatees at this joint?”

  He might as well had been speaking a foreign language because Butterfly didn't know what he was talking about. “What's that?”

  “Boy, you are green. This has to be your first time in jail. What are you in for?” Attenberger asked. He didn't want to waste time fingering through her file in his hands.

  “Bank fraud and identity theft,” Butterfly answered sheepishly.

  “Did you testify against anybody? Or did anybody testify against you?”

  “No,” Butterfly lied. Well, she didn’t technically “testify,” but she did cooperate.

  “Are you in a gang?”

  “No.” Butterfly snickered.

  “I had to ask. This is what determines if you'll go to the compound or not. You can leave now.”

  As Butterfly walked through the door to leave, Attenberger yelled for the next candidate to enter. Butterfly went to a holding tank that was crammed to the max, and everybody made a way for her as if she had a disease. Many didn't want to be seen with a homosexual or gay or fag or gump or sissy. To be seen with one, most guys thought, would cast a sweet-spell around them, so the best thing was to stay as far away as possible.

  At least that’s what Butterfly thought. And remembering her awful experience at the DC jail, she knew that homophobia was something that all gay guys had to face while in prison. From Butterfly’s point of view, it usually left them to deal with loneliness and isolation. And she knew that if one wasn’t strong, he’d lose his sense of balance; because as Butterfly had read in an article, nine out of every ten gay men in prison took psych meds to help them cope with the loneliness and open hostility coming from inmates and Correctional Officers.

  The COs put lunch bags through the trap in the door of the holding tank. It was a wet bag of low-quality lunch meat, a rotten apple, molded bread, and milk so spoiled that it had lumps in it.

  Butterfly held the lunch bag away from her body to offer it to anybody because she couldn't stomach, let alone bear the awful, foul-smelling meat. But it seemed that nobody would take anything from a gay's hand, at least not in public. But moments later, a big, dark-skinned guy arrived, and he was the biggest, by far, in the holding tank. Once he saw Butterfly, he headed straight for her, and his voice was strong, aggressive and inconsiderate. “You're not going to eat that?” he asked her.

  “No, you can have it,” Butterfly said as she scooted over so he wouldn’t sit on her.

  “Where you from?”

  “DC,” Butterfly answered, thinking that where Sosa’s presence was warm and welcoming, this guy’s was coarse and unsettling.

  “I'm from Northeast, and when I seen you, shorty, I kind of figured you were from DC,” he said, because the majority of pre-op transgender in this area were from DC.

  “What part you from?” he asked.

  “Southeast,” Butterfly answered, still unsure of who the guy was or what he really wanted. He seemed as if he had an ulterior motive.

  “My name is Black, and I've already been to this joint for three years. I had to go back to court on a state case. “Now, it's a rack of homies here, so you ain’t gonna have no problems. But if you do, come and holler at me.” His eyes glimmered until their conversation was cut short when the COs opened the door and yelled out the inmate's names.

  Once the inmates exited the door, they were given bedrolls, which consisted of a comb, toothbrush, toothpaste, shampoo and soap that were stuffed inside a plastic cup. All the contents was wrapped inside two bed sheets and a cover. And some were off to the compound, while others were off to the deserted SHU, which was not deserted at all, but only seemed that way. The more Butterfly was shoveled through this crazy and unnerving process, the more she understood what it felt like to be an animal in a slaughter house.

  Butterfly was ushered to her cell in handcuffs with two COs by her side. They took her through the small maze of halls to a cell, which from the rectangular window in the door, looked dirty, cold, and empty.

  They closed the door behind Butterfly and took her handcuffs off through the trap in the door. She looked around at the cell and there was a toilet off to the side with an attached sink, a table, a shower, and a bunk bed.

  Butterfly was so exhausted from the four-hour bus ride, and depressed from how her life had turned into a nightmare, that she collapsed on the bed without making it up. She wrapped herself in the covers, discarding the toiletries that were inside the bedroll.

  She had fallen asleep for what seemed to be two minutes when the COs opened the trap to the door and told her to cuff-up. When Butterfly went to the door, she heard somebody who seemed outrageous and obnoxious.

  “You bet not put me in the cell with just anybody! I don't play that shit, and I ain’t scared of you crackas,” said a gay guy. He didn't have any feminine features like Butterfly. But he was a ball of fire, sassy and pretentious, as any diva would be.

  “Adams, shut the hell up. It's one of your kind in there. You should be happy,” one of the white COs said, who didn't give a fuck about being politically correct.

  “What do you mean 'one of my kind'? You bet not be talking about because I'm Black?”

  “Not ‘cause you're black—because you're gay,” the same CO added as the other handcuffed Butterfly through the trap.

  “Okay. I'm all right with that.” He smacked his lips as he looked at Butterfly through the window.

  “By the way, you're kind of cute.”

  “Not a chance in a lifetime, Adams,” the CO responded, realizing the inmate, Adams, was speaking to him.

  The COs waited impatiently for the control center, which was a command center that opened the automatic cell doors. They controlled the SHU through the surveillance cameras, and when the COs in front of Butterfly's cell waved at the camera, they opened the door. And to the COs statement, the inmate said, “I don't blame
you ‘cause if you seen how I'm packing, you'd probably doubt your sexuality.”

  “Get your ass in there!” the CO said brusquely. “Shut cell #118,” he said into his walkie-talkie.

  The COs took the handcuffs off both Butterfly and the other inmate and left. Once they were gone, the new inmate didn't even introduce himself.

  “Gurl, how can you lay down on that nasty bed without cleaning it first?”

  “Clean it for what?” Butterfly sat back down on the bed.

  “So you won't get staph infection, scabies, crabs, or you can take your pick.”

  “I don't care.”

  Butterfly's new cellie looked at her with understanding eyes. “What is it? Heart broken? The judge gave you too much time, or your first time being locked up?”

  “All of the above.”

  “How much time did they give you?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  Butterfly's cellmate laughed in her face. “Are you crazy? That's nothing! I know it may seem like the end of the world, but it's nothing. You probably did twelve months at DC jail and should already be ready to go home. Gurl, you can't be no older than nineteen.”

  “I'm twenty.”

  “Did you cooperate?” The new cellie knew the question had to be asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Duh! Did you snitch on anybody—hello?”

  Butterfly’s eyes became as big as an owl’s, and knowing that snitching was bad she didn’t want to answer.

  “Bitch, don’t get all weird on me all of a sudden, because the fool that didn’t tell wish he had, let me tell you. But make sure you keep whatever you did on the down low because they’d love to fuck you around with that.”

  “Am I in danger?”

  “You don't have nothing at all to worry about. Gurl, please. Nuh-uh, we're in heaven. There's a lot of guys perpetrating like they ain’t going, but when they with you by themselves, it's completely different . . . trust.

  “My name is Buffy Da Body, and if you ain’t already got a nickname, they'll give you one.”

  “My name's Mariposa. It means butterfly in Spanish.” That was the only thing Butterfly could think to say. She didn’t know why, but she liked the sound of the Spanish version rolling off Sosa’s lips.