The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir

by Nancy Stephan

  The old lady had a small, white terrier, and the two of them would sit out in the front yard on a daily basis. Her yard was a good size and was enclosed with a chain-link fence. She positioned her lawn chair in the center of the yard facing the road and tied the dog’s leash to the arm of the chair. She had never spoken to me before, so I was surprised when she beckoned with her finger for me to come. As soon as I approached the fence, the dog started barking. “C’mon and take my doggy in the house for me.”

  “Does he bite?”

  “No, he ain’t gonna bite ya.”

  I was six years old, and she was a grown up. She said he wouldn’t bite me, and I believed her. She pulled the long leash until the dog was close to her. She grabbed him at the collar with one hand, and with the other she untied the leash from the chair. I was still standing outside the fence. “Well c’mon! What are you waiting for?” I opened the gate and went into the yard. “Take him up yonder, and turn him loose in the kitchen.” I looked at the long, narrow flight of stairs that ran up the side of the house. The dog, even though the woman was holding him by the collar, was snarling and trying to pull free. “Hold out your hand,” she said. I stuck out my arm, and she placed the loop over my hand and wrapped the remainder of the leash around my wrist. She motioned with her hand, “Up the stairs… and don’t you hurt my doggy!” Then she let him go.

  Immediately, the dog bit into my leg. I was wearing shorts. So there was no barrier between his teeth and my skin. Frantic and screaming, I began kicking at the dog while trying to unwind the leash from my wrist. The old lady yelled, “You better not let him go!” What followed was a frenzy of screaming and kicking, biting and yelping with the old lady in the background, “Don’t you hurt my doggy!”

  Finally, I took off up the stairs dragging the yelping dog behind me, his small body thudding on each step. After I got the dog in the house, I ran down the stairs, past the lady, and out of the gate. She yelled, “You get back here and close my gate,” which I did.

  By the time I made it into the house, I was caught up in a breathless cry so that I couldn’t tell my mother what had happened. She had been getting ready for work and was fully dressed in her nursing uniform. When I caught my breath, I yelled, “She made me take her dog in the house.”

  “Who?”

  I pointed, “The old lady.”

  My mother immediately picked up the phone and called the hospital to tell them she’d either be late or wasn’t coming. Then she called the doctor’s office and told them she needed to bring me in right away.

  When I heard my mother making the appointment, the incident with the dog no longer seemed relevant. I knew a trip to the doctor after a dog bite meant 50 rabies shots in the stomach, and if I didn’t get the shots in time, I’d start foaming at the mouth. How I’d arrived at that scenario is beyond me, but it sounds very much like something my cousin Kenny would’ve told me.

  Pleading with my mother that I was okay and that it really didn’t hurt anymore was useless. When we stepped outside, the old lady was still sitting in her yard. I got in the car and watched as my mother stood motionless staring at the old lady; the old lady stared at my mother; the two stared at each other for what seemed like an eternity.

  My mother was right. I didn’t need 50 shots in the stomach, but having my wounds cleaned was nearly as bad. After all was said and done, there was only one bite; the rest were claw marks and abrasions.

  When we left the doctor’s office, my mother dropped me at Aunt Katie’s and went on to work. Aunt Katie was a very good friend of my mother’s, and as a youngster I probably spent eighty percent of my time with Katie and her family. Katie and her husband Rosco were quite a bit older than my mother, and it was one of my aunts who explained how the friendship between my mother and Katie had come to be.

  We owned a small corner grocery store and Katie and her family lived next door. Your mother was a rebel, and when Mama wouldn’t let her have her way, she would run to Katie’s house. Mama would tell Katie, “When Sue comes running to your house, you need to send her back home.” But Katie never would.

  Mama always felt Katie was filling your mother’s head with nonsense. Katie had a Black housekeeper, and as an adult your mother spent lots of time talking with her as well. It was a strained relationship between ours and Katie’s family, but until the day she died, your mother remained close friends with them.

  Aunt Katie and Uncle Rosco had three older sons who were my mother’s age and then three daughters, the youngest of whom was four years older than I. Everyday when my mother went to work, I went to Aunt Katie’s, so after the incident with the dog, going to Aunt Katie’s was almost as comforting as being with my mother.

  By early evening, Uncle Rosco had come in from work. Their sons would always stop by when they got off work before heading to their own homes, and one by one they drilled me about the dog. They looked at my legs; they wanted to know what the old lady was doing while the dog was attacking me, if she got up to help or tried to call the dog off. I told them that the old lady just kept saying, “You better not hurt my doggy.”

  My mom worked the afternoon shift, so around midnight she came by to pick me up; we went home, and the next day was like any other day. But a few days later, the old lady’s dog turned up dead. Its small, white body was lying in her yard stiff as a board, its leash still around its neck. Whether my mother and Katie’s boys had anything to do with it, I’ll never know. What I do know is that when provoked, my mother and the boys didn’t play nicely with others. Up until that time, the neighbors had called my mother a nigger lover. After the dog was found dead, they started calling her a witch.

  All of these things, my mother had said, were done not because I was Black, which was never even mentioned, but because people were jealous of me. Of course, I believed her. It made perfect sense that my brilliance and beauty would drive people mad. However, I wouldn’t say that my mother’s explanation was purposeless. Because of what she told me, I wholeheartedly believed I was just a bit prettier and smarter than everyone else. This belief was further nurtured by Aunt Betty’s insistence to my three cousins, “You boys should do better in school, like Nancy.” So when I arrived in foster care, I had a very strong, if not over-inflated, self-image.

  Other than issues with racial identity, I was a rock-solid eight-year-old girl. I had no concept of racial barriers as I had no concept of race. I’d never been taught, like many Black children were, that I could be whatever I wanted, that I could go to any college I wanted, that I could hold the sun in my right hand while shaping the moon with my left. For me, these things went without saying. That the world was my oyster was simply a given. Had I suffered with self-esteem issues, my transition into foster care, as well as into a new culture, would likely have had a very different outcome.

  After what seemed like an eternal afternoon with Erma Lee, the other foster children arrived home from school. Around five o’clock, her husband came in from work. When he came in the front door, the other kids rushed to greet him, calling him Paw-paw!

  “Hello! Hello! Hello!” He patted them on their heads. Then he turned to me, “Hello, little girl.”

  “Hi.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Nancy.”

  “Nassy?”

  “NANCY.”

  And he repeated it under his breath a few times, “Nassy, Nassy, Nassy…” I was annoyed that he wasn’t pronouncing it correctly, but my annoyance gave way to fascination; I’d never heard of anyone being called Paw-paw.

  In the course of an otherwise uneventful October afternoon, I had moved in with a Black family, was told that my womanish behavior was unacceptable, and was informed, contrary to my own unanimous opinion, that I myself am Black.

  Though it didn’t take long for me to come to terms with being Black, I had a very faulty understanding of Black-White relations. Because it’s not something we learned in school, like The Boston Tea Party, I had made assumptions about the country’s racial
state of affairs. As a 4th grader, if I had to write an essay on slavery in America, it would’ve read like this:

  A long time ago, the Blacks and Whites in America got into a war, and the Whites won. Therefore, the Blacks had to become their slaves.

  Then after many generations, the government realized that slavery was wrong and outlawed it, but the Whites wanted to keep their slaves, so they did horrible things to Black people.

  The government still refused to bring back slavery, and that’s why Whites hate Blacks to this day. The End.

  But in 1977, when I was 11 years old, all of my perceptions changed when the miniseries Roots[3] came on television. I was astonished to learn that Blacks had not always lived in America. “Paw-paw, did Black people come from Africa?”

  “Yeah, where’d you think we came from?”

  “I thought we were just always here. So we were kidnapped?”

  “Kidnapped and sold into slavery.”

  “So where were the police?”

  Paw-paw is a high-school graduate, he’s traveled the world with the military, and is very well read, yet he struggled to answer, what seemed to me, a perfectly simple question. “Just watch the movie, little girl.” So every episode, I sat perched in front of the TV like most everyone else in our town. Soon, rioting broke out at the high schools. We middle schoolers had become wary of walking to and from school, fearing that we’d get caught up in the fray.

  In the hallways of our own school, Black and White students had begun polarizing. Groups huddled at lockers to talk about Roots, the watching of which, for most of us, was our first introduction to the what and why of race relations in America.

  Though it had taken a toll on the students, it wasn’t addressed by the school administrators. However, Mr. Stancil, our art teacher, who himself was a Black man, was the only teacher who brought it up in class and asked us what we thought about the movie and the fighting at the high schools.

  Instantly, the class was in full debate. “My dad said it was your own fault that you were slaves because other Africans are the ones who sold you to the Whites,” one of the White kids said. “If your own people hadn’t sold you, you never would’ve been slaves.”

  Mr. Stancil said, “That’s not altogether true. There were indeed some Africans that helped the Whites, but the Whites would’ve kidnapped Africans with or without their help.”

  I raised my hand. Perhaps Mr. Stancil could explain why the police had allowed this grand-scale kidnapping. As I sat with my arm in the air, one of the Black boys said, “What do you know about it, and what are you anyway, some kind of Puerto Rican?” A White girl with whom I walked to school and who knew a bit about my background, quickly replied, “No, her mom is White.”

  “Oh, so you’re one of them!” The boy said as he pointed to a group of White students. I said the first logical thing that came to mind, which after I said it didn’t seem logical at all. “My mom would never own slaves!” The entire classroom was quiet, and then the boy waved me off and muttered, “Man, shut up!” And just that quickly, the attention was off me and once again on the debate.

  As we walked home from school, I asked Bernie why she’d said that about my mother. “Because,” she said, “that kid called you a Puerto Rican; I didn’t want people thinking you were a Spic.”

  We were 11 years old, and though Roots opened us up to some of our history, we were still clueless, innocent children attempting to put together a puzzle of a million razor-edged pieces. When everything was said and done, the Black kids held onto the one, solid thing that they understood. They wanted retribution for Kunta’s foot.

  After Roots I thought a lot more about my own family. When I thought about White people, I hadn’t made the leap of considering my family among them, but I wondered how much Aunt Betty knew about slavery or if my cousins knew about it. I wondered if they had known all along that I was Black. I wondered if they themselves didn’t like Blacks. I wondered if my being Black was the reason I had to leave home.

  Chapter 10

  After just a few months with Erma Lee, I had grown weary of my new life. I missed my mother and the spontaneity of our lives, how we’d squeeze a trip to the museum and to the zoo into the same day, how we’d go swimming in the old quarry, even though the posting clearly warned, “No Swimming!” I missed zooming about town in our maroon Corvair convertible wearing matching head scarves and sunglasses. I missed eating on the go, Red Rooster for breakfast and Burch’s on Ridge Road for lunch. “That’s no way to raise a child,” Aunt Betty would say. But regardless of her free spirit, my mother had the makings of a good homemaker hidden somewhere inside of her, and she had books upon books of S&H Green Stamps to prove it.

  I missed Sundays at Aunt Katie’s, steaks grilled in the fireplace, foil-wrapped potatoes baking in the open coals, salad with homemade buttermilk dressing, and two plates—one at each end of the table—filled with green onions, cucumbers, tomatoes, and radishes. I missed Uncle Rosco’s workshop and the smell of leather and freshly shaven wood, varnish and warm glue, and the sounds of his power saw and nail gun. I missed roasting marshmallows over a bonfire in the backyard on chilly fall nights. I missed the Back Road.

  At Erma Lee’s, life was redundant: “Change outta your school clothes. Help me peel these potatoes. Run down stairs and get the roaster from ‘neath the stairs. Go to Chris’ and get me a can of Clabber Girl and a bag of meal. Hurry back so you can get your lesson[4]. Hurry up and eat so we can get to church.” And every quiet moment in between was filled with the sound of her voice drilling me about life, how I had to be strong and make something of myself. “The Whites don’t want you, and the Blacks won’t accept you. You always gon’ be caught in the middle, too much of one or not enough of the other.” I had to be somebody, she would say. “Make your own way so you don’t have to depend on nobody for nothing.” She would say these things, and her words would rest in my bosom like lead.

  I wanted to cover my ears because none of what she said made any sense to me. It made my throat ache, and I would tear up even though I tried not to. “I ain’t fussin’ at you,” she’d say. “I’m tryin’ to prepare you to make it in this world.” For a Black woman born in Arkansas in 1925, armed only with a third-grade education, preparation was, perhaps, the only way she knew to save a little girl caught in three lines of crossfire.

  More than anything, though, I wanted to go home; I missed the structure Aunt Betty provided: breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, TV time and play time, bath time and bedtime. I wanted to sit at her dinner table where the madness and laughter would often sneak in and tickle us silly.

  At Erma Lee’s, the children wouldn’t dare attempt a full on discussion with the adults… at the dinner table or anywhere else. Such a thing was disgraceful. I had already been chastised on several occasions, “Get on out of here… done told you ‘bout sittin’ up under grown folks!” But I had come from a home where children and adults communicated and mingled with ease; we’d sit at the table and gab, argue and laugh until we were empty.

  During one such dinner at Aunt Betty’s, I’d sat down at the table with an extremely loose front tooth. Earlier that day, Kenny and I had tried every conceivable way to pull the stubborn tooth. By the time we were done, it was hanging by a single chunk of gum tissue. Over dinner, as Kenny explained everything he’d tried to get the tooth out, Stevey yelled, “Shut up already with the tooth!” As I chewed, the tooth finally snapped off. I felt with the tip of my tongue, and sure enough it was gone. Then I flashed Stevey, who was sitting directly across from me, a bloody, toothless grin. Pandemonium ensued.

  Aunt Betty told me to go and spit out the food, but I couldn’t because my tooth was in it somewhere, and I needed it for the tooth fairy, which was the whole reason we were trying to get the tooth out in the first place. So she had me spit the food out in her hand, and she dug through it with her finger until she found the little ivory money-maker.

  Meanwhile, Stevey was leaning over the back of his chair re
tching, Kenny and Bobby were in stitches, and her husband Ed was grinning as if he were watching something on TV. I can guarantee with all certainty that this never would’ve happened at Erma Lee’s dinner table… but I desperately needed it to.

  I had gathered the nerve to tell Erma Lee that I didn’t want to live with her anymore. “I just want to go back home.”

  “Baby, if they wanted you at home, they never would’ve brought you to me.”

  “But I don’t like it here.”

  “I know you don’t, but do you think you can break and run every time you don’t like where you are?” As she talked, I could feel the heaviness settling over me, my throat tightening, my eyes filling with tears. “Life don’t work that way. Sometime it’s gon’ get so tough, oooh-weee! But you gotta make do until you can do better. You gon’ have to learn to like it here. I ain’t gon’ misuse you and ain’t gon’ let nobody else misuse you.” And after filling my head with yet another life lesson, she dismissed the entire situation.

  Her life lessons were burdensome. I didn’t want to hear about this future life that was lying in wait with its fists balled. I didn’t want to know about fighting and surviving. Instead, I wanted to go sledding and Christmas shopping; I wanted to wrap presents, bake cookies, and build a snowman in Aunt Katie’s backyard; I wanted to hang my wet mittens over her fireplace and thaw my frozen, pink toes by the fire.

  Unwilling to concede, I called my cousin Kenny and told him I wanted to come home. We agreed that there was only one solution: he had to come rescue me. At his direction, I counted the windows, marked the locations of the front and back doors; I described the façade of the house and the location of the driveway.