The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir

by Nancy Stephan

  That aside, Nicole was sick when we moved in, and every room in the house held traces of illness and misery.

  “Will you stay in the area?” Marlo asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Will you just rent somewhere else?”

  “I think I’ll buy.”

  In the meantime, I had begun packing and thought it was best to get Nicole’s room out of the way. After a week or so, nothing in her room was packed. I’d go in her closet and slide the clothes from one end of the rack to the other. The next day, I’d slide them all back again.

  Nicole had converted three of her six dresser drawers in an effort to organize her supplies. The top drawer was full of medications. The middle drawer contained her “Get Right” supplies. “Get Right” was what she called her insulin. The bottom drawer held oxygen tubing, blood pressure cuff and stethoscope, TED hose, gauze and bandages, and whatever odds-and-ends medical equipment she had accumulated. It would seem that her medicine would be the first and easiest thing for me to get rid of, but it was one of the hardest, and eventually someone else had to do it for me. I decided it would be best to leave Nicole’s room for last.

  The attic was the next space I decided to tackle. I pulled down the folding stairs and climbed just high enough to get a good panoramic view: Nicole’s sewing machine, several bolts of fabric, a set of bed frames, Christmas decorations, and boxes of books were closest to the opening. Although I have no problem climbing up things, I dread climbing down, so when we moved in I had handed the boxes up to Nicole and avoided going up there at all.

  I reached for the box nearest to me and carried it down the stairs. It was an unusual box in that, unlike the others, it had a separate lid and was sealed with several rounds of tape. It was not a box that I had packed. I sat on the floor, cut through the tape with a box cutter, and lifted the lid. Inside were two smaller boxes and underneath them several folders. I removed one of the boxes and pulled up the lid. My eyes filled with tears as I discovered the contents. It was late evening, and I didn’t budge from that spot until early the next morning. Spread out before me was one of the greatest gifts Nicole ever could’ve left me.

  Part 2

  1973—2008

  Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

  ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Chapter 8

  After Nicole died, I received a package in the mail from Aunt Betty. The enclosed letter said, “I’ve been holding on to these things, and I probably should’ve given them to you long before now.” I opened the thick, yellow envelope and gently removed the contents: photographs of my mother as a girl, photos of my two aunts, Betty and Jean, my mother’s black and gold tassel from her Purdue University mortar board, and the guest registry from her funeral.

  I opened the registry and read through the list of names. Aunt Betty’s and her husband Ed’s names were together on the first line, and Della Kay Elms, RN, a nurse with whom my mom worked, was on the last. There were 96 signatures in between.

  As I read through the names, my eyes fell upon my own writing. Then, in a flood of memories, I recalled at the funeral having asked Aunt Betty if I could write my mom a note. She’d said, “Yes,” and I’d begun writing the note in the registry. Aunt Betty stopped me and gave me a piece of paper to write on instead, saying that the book was not for notes, but for “people who loved mama” to sign their names. At that, I had scribbled over what I’d written and, in my best cursive, simply signed Love Nancy. My signature is the 14th and nestled between Bobby’s above and Stevey’s below. Now, 35 years later, as I ran my fingers across that child-like signature, it was as if I’d signed it yesterday.

  Also among the things in the envelope was a neatly folded letter encased in a clear plastic sleeve. I unfolded the six yellowing pages, holding them by the corners afraid that if I handled them the ink might disappear beneath my fingers. It was a letter Aunt Betty had written to my mother when my mother was in the hospital. It was addressed “My Sweet Sue.” Though my mother’s name was Emma, she was known to everyone by her middle name.

  The first page catches my mother up on what had been going on: School would start earlier than expected, so she and Ed would take the boys camping that weekend. She mentioned how busy she’d been at work, on her feet for hours so that the veins in her legs were beginning to break. But as I continued reading, Aunt Betty’s tone grew desperate.

  “Sue, please pray for help. I know you think, well, if God knows how I suffer then why doesn’t he help me? And you know when you first got sick you questioned that there even was a God. Honey, you can’t do that. Sometimes when I’m driving by myself, I say, ‘Thank you God for what we have,’ or ‘Please help me to do what’s right.’ Try it, Sue. Just say, ‘Please give me the strength to face each day and each treatment as it comes.’ When you’re crying your heart out, God listens as no one else can.” Reading this, I thought about the times I’d actually seen my mother cry. I vividly remember two occasions.

  My mother had been engaged to marry a man named Blair. My memories of him are vague, but I do have several faded black & white Polaroids of us together. In one, I am sitting on his lap at Aunt Katie’s gray Formica dining table blowing out the candles on Becca’s birthday cake. It was tradition that after the birthday person blew out his or her candles, the adults would relight them so that I could make wishes as well. In the photo, I was four; there were 10 candles on the cake.

  Blair had been away working on a construction site but was traveling to the area to visit my mother and me. My mother had grown anxious because long after he was due to arrive, he still hadn’t shown. She received the news that Blair had been killed in a crane accident. I thought she’d never get out of bed again. Of course, Aunt Betty was at her side. “Honey, please don’t cry; it’ll be okay,” she promised. Among my possessions, I still have Blair’s personalized Figaro bracelet that my mother had given him as a gift, the back of which is inscribed “From the Best to the Greatest.”

  On the second occasion, my mother and I had gone to the local hamburger stand. It was a place close to the house, and we had gone there many times before. But the memory of this particular night overshadows any good memories I might’ve had of that place.

  I looked forward to the hamburger drive-in. It was a thrill having our food brought out on a tray and hooked over the window. That evening, as before, the hop came out to take our order. After my mother ordered, I leaned over and told the hop, “Make sure you put cheese on it,” as I had once gotten a cheeseburger and they’d forgotten the cheese. But when the hop saw me, she stopped writing, went inside, and never brought us our food.

  There were customers inside and once or twice, everyone would look out at us at the same time as if they were waiting for something. We could see them clearly as the brightly lit building stood out in the darkness. I knew something was wrong because my mother had become visibly upset. Finally, she leaned out of the car window and yelled, “Kiss my ass!”

  She put the car in reverse and punched the gas. In her attempt to make a scene as she pulled out of the lot, she accidentally bumped a motorcycle that was parked in the space behind us. As a man with a long beard stood up inside the restaurant, my mother tore out of the parking lot. By the time we made it to the main road, we could hear the motorcycle.

  The hamburger stand was a short distance from our house, and when we arrived at our street, which was a dead end, my mother passed our house, turned off the headlights, and coasted to the end of the road. After skidding to a stop, she grabbed me tightly by the wrist, and we ran to the neighbor’s backyard. By then we could hear the motorcycle coming down the road.

  We ran through each yard until we reached ours. From the backyards, I didn’t recognize any of the houses. It wasn’t until we reached our back porch that I realized where I was. My mother fumbled in the dark for the key. At one point, I thought she would break the door down as she threw her full weight against it several times.

  When
she finally found the key, we ran into the front room and lay on the floor under the big picture window. I was on my right side with my back against the wall, and my mother was on her side facing me so that I was tightly sandwiched between her and the wall. The glare from the single headlight crawled across the ceiling as the man cruised up and down the road. Finally, he stopped, and after sitting idle for a while, turned off the motor. Even though I was quiet, my mother instinctively clasped her hand over my mouth. I don’t know how long we lay there, but eventually the man started his bike and slowly rode away.

  As the roar of the motorcycle faded in the distance, I could feel the tension in my mother’s body release; she began sobbing. She immediately took me and put me in her bed, and we curled up there together, never undressing. Hungry, and not fully understanding the situation, I asked if we could go back and get our food now that the man was gone. Every time I awoke through the night, my mother was crying.

  This is what I thought about as I read the words, “When you’re crying your heart out, God listens.” Aunt Betty told my mother, “It isn’t necessary to be in church. When you awake and are afraid, just start talking as if someone was right there.” She encouraged my mother to get well soon, “so you can come home to Nancy.” My mother did come home to me but only for a short time. She would die within months of this letter.

  Though major, it would be misleading to say that her death alone set off the chain of events that would shape my life. There were other events, and people, and words spoken in hush-hush tones. I have no memory of my father, who left when I was two. The only thing I know for certain is that in the mid-60s, my mother, a White, all-American girl, and my father, a Black jazz musician, found their way into each other’s arms. Beyond this, I have only disjointed stories told to me by this one and that one, and the well-intentioned advice of my aunt, “Honey, it was so long ago, leave it be and get on with your life.” Within weeks of my mother’s death, my journey would take its first hairpin turn, and everything I thought I knew about me and my life would quickly come undone.

  September 18, 1973, is the day my mother died. October 9, I arrived at my new foster home. That morning as I’d sat watching television, a woman knocked on the door. Aunt Betty, neatly dressed as always, her blond hair pinned up in a giant bun, came from the back of the house and opened the door. Her eyes were wet and red. There wasn’t much said before me and my things were loaded into the caseworker’s car. Aunt Betty told the caseworker that she’d bring my bedroom furniture to the foster home later, and then she stood like a helpless kitten as we pulled out of the driveway.

  I can only imagine the torment that follows having made such a decision. I, however, had no idea what was happening, but as we rode along quietly in the car, the caseworker asked, “Do you know any Black people?”

  “I know Mrs. Peters. She’s a nurse that works with my mom.”

  “Well, you’re gonna go live with a nice Black family.”

  “But I live with Aunt Betty.”

  “You’ll still see your aunt Betty; you just won’t live with her.”

  For the rest of the ride, I anticipated this “nice Black family,” and wondered why I couldn’t just live with Aunt Betty.

  As we pulled into the driveway, a short, heavy-hipped woman came out of the house and down the porch steps to the car. She had golden-brown skin and dark, shoulder-length hair. Her large, almond-shaped eyes led me to believe she was Japanese even though the casework had said she was Black.

  I had become obsessed with all things Japanese ever since I’d come across a book of photographs at Mrs. Peters’ house. Whenever my mother and I visited, I would go straight to the book of pictures. Like a yearbook, every page was filled with black and white photos of Japanese children. Sitting poised for the camera like little porcelain dolls, they had wonderful names, like Junichiro, that rolled off the tongue and floated in the air like bits of rice paper. Looking at the photos, I made the youthful decision that I myself would become Japanese. I’d have pin-straight hair black as pitch and resemble everyone else around me.

  Years later in casual conversation with one of my college professors, I mentioned the book. He said, snapping his fingers, “Oh yes, that was probably one of those adoption catalogs of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki orphans. Many Americans adopted those children, you know.” I found it sadly ironic that I had wanted to be one of them.

  It was obvious from their interaction that the lady and the caseworker knew each other. They talked a bit amongst themselves, and then the caseworker introduced us, “You’re gonna live with Mrs. Daniels now, and she has other kids just like you.” The two women gathered my things from the car and carried them into the house. “Her aunt will bring her bedroom furniture later,” the caseworker told Mrs. Daniels. Then, without much else, she returned to her car and drove away.

  Mrs. Daniels sat down on the sofa and ordered me to stand up straight and tall so she could get a good look at me. “Where are your kids?” I asked.

  “At school, but they’ll be home directly.”

  “Do you have any girls?”

  “Just boys, now. I had Vanessa, but she went back to her mother. Matter of fact, today’s Vanessa’s 10th birthday.”

  “Why did you have someone else’s girl?”

  “That’s what I do, baby. I takes care of chilluns that don’t have nowhere to go.”

  “But you said she had a mother, so why didn’t her mother keep her in the first place?”

  Mrs. Daniel’s smooth countenance quickly changed into one of displeasure. Aunt Betty, in her letter to my mother, had concluded by admonishing: “Nancy is so smart and quick. She needs to be treated as your child, though, and not as your equal. Lately, she has been acting as though she were 21 rather than seven.” Apparently, Mrs. Daniels thought so as well. When I’d asked why Vanessa’s mother hadn’t kept her in the first place, Mrs. Daniels scolded, “You’s too womanish, chile!” I would come to learn that two things Mrs. Daniels disliked were a woman who acted childish and a child who acted womanish, and it was the latter of these two that would keep me in hot water.

  It would take a while for me to learn that being womanish had little to do with what I said and more to do with how, when, and to whom I said it. But I had something even more important to learn, and Mrs. Daniels didn’t waste any time teaching it. In her opinion, I was already behind schedule, and the sooner I learned it, understood it, and made peace with it, the sooner I could get on with the task of living.

  Chapter 9

  This second lesson came immediately on the heels of the first. It wasn’t a lesson as much as a fact of life, and I didn’t learn it as much as stumble into it. After looking me over, Mrs. Daniels picked up the phone to make a call. “This is Erma Lee,” she announced. “They done brought her to me. She chubby and curly-headed, cute little girl, but she done been here b’fo.” Having been here before is another phrase to which I would quickly grow accustomed. “You know,” she continued, “her family give her up ‘cause she Black.” Hearing her say I was Black was like being hit in the face with a snowball. “I’m not Black!” I protested. I was shocked that she would say such a thing, and she was shocked that I was shocked. She said to the person on the phone, “I’ll call you later.” She hung up the phone and folded her hands in her lap. “What you mean, ‘You ain’t Black?’”

  “I’m not.”

  “What are you?”

  “I’m White.”

  “And who told you, you were White?”

  “My mom said I’m just like she is, and she’s White.”

  “Do your skin look like your mama’s?”

  I’d never given any thought to my skin. But I knew what Black people looked like, and I knew that no one in my family was Black.

  Not wasting any more time on that question, Erma Lee swiftly moved on to the next. “Do your hair look like your mama’s?” My hair had been the bane of my existence. No one in my family had hair like mine. Aunt Betty and her three boys, Aunt Jean an
d her three children, and my mother herself all had silky hair. Mine was the hair no one wanted to comb. I couldn’t sling it over my shoulder, or run my fingers through it, or sweep it from my eyes like they did. Out of desperation, I had, on many occasions, draped a bath towel over my head while watching Sonny & Cher. I would sling it left and right every time they sang, “Babe (sling, sling), I got you, babe (sling, sling)… My screaming and writhing every time my mother combed my hair had taken its toll on both of us. She eventually had it cut off leaving me with a short, curly afro, which she adorned on one side with a bow.

  I didn’t answer Erma Lee when she asked if my hair was like my mother’s. But it didn’t matter; she summed it all up for me in three and a half words: “You’s Black, baby.” I was crushed. Even at eight years old, I knew that being Black meant not being liked.

  Though I had refused to believe that I was Black, I was well acquainted with the word nigger because I’d heard it frequently. I knew that word had something to do with Black people and although I wasn’t quite sure what, I knew it was bad. I had once asked my mother if I was a nigger as the neighbors insisted, and she became enraged, saying there was no such thing as niggers, and I was to never use that word again.

  My mother had always said people were mean to me because they were jealous of how smart and pretty I was, but Erma Lee’s explanation of why people had been so mean was much more plausible. My being Black was the reason so many bad things happened, and for my mom and me there had never been a shortage of bad things happening.

  Too often, my mother had to call the police because of trouble with the neighbors. The police would tell her if she wanted to keep me safe, she should keep me in the house. Keeping me imprisoned in the house, however, was not an option for my mother. As such, there were consequences, the most violent of which came from a little old lady who lived across the street from us.