The Truth About Butterflies: A Memoir

by Nancy Stephan

  As we walked back to the church, I asked, “Why’d you have to do two tires?”

  “Because,” she smirked, “I’m sure she only has one spare.”

  After service, Leila and I stood in front of the church and watched the drama unfold. The deacons tried to locate a portable air pump and the several extension cords they’d need to make it reach. Sister Henderson stood on the sidewalk waving her arms in desperation, “Some ungodly heathen has done this, and God is gonna get him!”

  The following Sunday, Sister Henderson stood up during testimony service and, in true dramatic fashion, said, “The Holy Ghost has revealed to me the person that done this evil thing, but I’m gonna hold my peace and let the Lord fight my battle.” Leila cut her eyes at me, and I looked away to keep from laughing. Afterwards, I asked Leila, “Do you think she knows?”

  “Who cares! I hope when the Holy Ghost was talking, He told her to mind her own business.” After that day, it was never mentioned again.

  Erma Lee made an appointment for me and when I arrived, I was surprised that the doctor was so young… and handsome. He spoke with an accent, and I asked him where he was from. “Turkey. You know Turkey?”

  “I know where it is on a map.”

  “Good girl.”

  He said that he’d talked with Aunt Betty. “She very much loves you.”

  “Did she sound mad?” I asked.

  When Erma Lee told me to call and break the news to Aunt Betty, I had dreaded it. I hadn’t wanted to tell Erma Lee because I thought she would be angry. I didn’t want to tell Aunt Betty because I knew she would be disappointed. When I called and told Aunt Betty, she gasped; “Nancy, please tell me that’s not true!” I cried and told her I was sorry. She assured me that everything would be okay and that she wasn’t angry, but I wasn’t sure. When I asked the doctor if she was angry, he said absolutely not, “She just wants for you the best.” He then called Erma Lee into the room and told her that I was healthy and would have a new baby just in time for Christmas.

  Of course, everyone at church knew. As with any gossip-worthy information, it spread like wild fire. When I went to church, the church mothers would make their way to me and remind me that, “God still loves you, baby; you just keep your hand in the winding chain.” They had a way of speaking symbolically and even though I had no clue what a winding chain was, I agreed to keep my hand firmly affixed to it.

  One Sunday morning late in my pregnancy, I sat in Sunday afternoon service very much ready to go home. Sitting on the hard pews for the lengthy services had become quite uncomfortable. Although it wasn’t a special service, we had lots of guests and the small church was packed.

  At the end of the service, just before the pastor gave the benediction, he said that backsliders were God’s lost sheep and as saints of God, we had a Christian duty to welcome these lost sheep back into the fold. “Just such a sheep is amongst us this afternoon,” he said. I hadn’t heard any whisperings of a lost sheep returning to the fold, so I waited to see what backslider would make his or her way to the altar. Then the pastor called my name.

  I sat frozen thinking surely he’d gotten me confused with someone else. I was sitting near the front, and Mother Taliefero, who was at the piano, beckoned with her hand for me to come up. The church was completely quiet, and I was so terrified that I thought my legs would give out. I walked up front, and the pastor told me to turn around and face the congregation. Besides the visitors, even the members looked like strangers.

  As the pastor had told me to turn around and face the people, I thought he would also tell me what to say or perhaps he’d say it for me, make some kind of speech about me, but there was silence. I had no idea what I was supposed to do or say; I hadn’t even known I was a lost sheep. Yet there I stood with my pumpkin belly staring out at the blank faces. Not knowing what to say, I started crying. Mother Taliefero turned around on her piano bench and whispered, “Ask the church to forgive you.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said; “please forgive me.” Then as quickly as I could move, I went back to my seat. The benediction immediately followed, and before I knew it, Erma Lee had grabbed me by the arm and was leading me out the door. I could almost feel the fury radiating from her. Paw-paw always stayed after to make sure the books were done and that everything was locked up properly, but when he made it home, things got worse. “Did you know about this?” She demanded.

  “No, but it’s over now, so just let it go.”

  “I ain’t lettin’ nothing go; somebody gon’ give me some answers.”

  This went on back and forth between the two of them. “They ain’t never had nobody else’s chile get up there,” Erma Lee said. “And why wait til she big and stuck out? And why on a Sunday mornin’?” Paw-paw’s only answer was, “Let it go.” But she refused to let it rest, and she threatened to go back to the church and “mop the floor up with every last one of ‘em!” And Paw-paw warned that she’d better ask God for forgiveness for making such a threat.

  Going into the kitchen to fix dinner, Erma Lee took the black, cast iron skillet she used for cornbread and slammed it on the stove so hard, I thought surely the stove had cracked completely in two. She came back into the living room where I was sitting and said, “Til the baby come, you’ll just keep yourself right here at home.” I was okay with it, but Paw-paw didn’t think it was a good idea. “Let that little girl go to church,” he said.

  “Ain’t gon’ do it! They shamed her once; they ain’t gon’ get a second chance.” So I spent the remainder of my time at home, and it was at home on a Sunday around 11 a.m. when my contractions began.

  Earlier that day, I’d decided to fry the chicken that Erma Lee had taken out for dinner. The side dishes were always cooked Saturday: a pot of greens or cabbage, macaroni and cheese, yams. The meat and cornbread were fixed Sunday after church. Erma Lee would come in, take off her Sunday clothes, and head into the kitchen wearing only her slip. If she happened to have on a half slip, she’d pull it up until it met with her bra; she was as good as dressed.

  As I began preparing the chicken, I discovered I didn’t know how to cut it up. After studying it, I cut off the wings and legs, which left the torso. Not knowing what to do with it, I seasoned and floured it and then fried the whole thing, rolling it in the skillet until it was brown on all sides.

  When everyone made it back from church, Erma Lee looked at the serving dish where I’d placed the golden brown torso flanked by its severed limbs and said, “What in God’s name!” It was my first and last attempt at cutting up a chicken.

  Erma Lee and I didn’t fit well together in the kitchen mostly because she wouldn’t let me measure anything. She’d hold the tip of her thumb and index finger together, “That’s a pinch right there,” she’d say. Then she’d run her thumb down to the first joint on her finger; “That’s a teaspoon.” The second joint was a tablespoon and the whole finger was half a cup.

  “Why can’t I just measure it?” I’d ask.

  But there was no measuring in Erma Lee’s kitchen. “Just eye it,” she’d say, but my need for exactness hindered my ability to learn the art of eyeing, so I was restricted to rinsing, peeling, and chopping. Because of this, whenever I could do something that I thought would impress her, I went for it. It usually turned out poorly. I imagine that poor chicken arrived in chicken heaven to the taunts and jeers of its perfectly-butchered friends.

  I decided not to tell her about the contractions even though I had begun writing down the times of each. At 10 p.m. when I showed her the list, the contractions were roughly 30 minutes apart. “What’s this?” She asked.

  “My contractions.”

  As I suspected, she immediately phoned the on-call nurse, who told her to wait until the contractions were five minutes apart before taking me to the hospital. The nurse said I should take a long, hot bubble bath and try to relax. “No way!” Erma Lee protested. “What if her water break and that baby come out while she in the tub?” The nurse told her that the chances of
that happening were very small. Erma Lee didn’t care. Soaking in the tub was out of the question. As it turned out, getting any sleep at all that night was also out of the question as she woke me every hour or so to see if I was okay.

  By morning, the contractions were 10 minutes apart, and I was much more uncomfortable. Erma Lee called the doctor, and he said to bring me in. After examining me, he said, “You’re going to have baby today,” and I started crying. “Why you are crying?”

  “I’ve changed my mind; I don’t want to have a baby.”

  “Oh now,” he said as he rubbed my back, “you go to hospital and very soon you have beautiful baby, okay?” Trying to soothe me further, he asked, “Boy or girl?”

  “Girl.”

  “Positive?”

  “Yes.”

  “How you are so sure?”

  “I just know.”

  I had been stock piling baby clothes and had encouraged those buying gifts to buy for a girl. Erma Lee had said I was being foolish, “You gon’ look right silly that chile come here a boy.”

  Erma Lee and I left the doctor’s office and went straight to the hospital, arriving around 10 a.m. By two that afternoon, I was in so much pain that I pleaded with the nurses to “just do a surgery and take it out!”

  “We can’t, honey. Just hang in there; it’ll be over soon.”

  That’s what they kept saying, “It’ll be over soon,” but hour after hour it just got worse. By 5 p.m., the doctor arrived, and I thought sure he’d put a stop to the madness when he saw the pain I was in. I heard the nurse tell him that my water still hadn’t broken. After some whispering, the nurse said, “Honey, we’re gonna break your water, and then things will speed up.” The doctor whom I thought had come to save me instead walked toward me with what looked like a long knitting needle and told me to open my legs. The gush of fluids was so full that I thought the baby had come out as well. “No,” the nurse assured me. “You’ll know when the baby comes.” It would be another two hours before what felt like a 10 pound bowling ball would finally force its way through my pelvis.

  As they wheeled me into the delivery room, the nurse insisted that I stop pushing. I wasn’t aware that I was pushing. Then she gripped my chin and said, “Stop clinching your teeth and breathe!” My body was acting of its own accord; I wasn’t intentionally doing any of these things. I could see the doctor across the room at the sink scrubbed up to his elbows singing, Oh, What a Lovely Day. There was so much activity, and bright light, and pain…, but I began pushing, and the pressure and heaviness lifted the moment the baby slipped from my body. The doctor looked up at me smiling and said, “You guessed right; he’s a girl.” The nurse laughed and said, “And a big girl, too.” Later they would tell me that she was 8 pounds, 11 ounces and 21 inches long. Thirty-two hours after it started, it was over… or, as I would learn, just beginning.

  The next morning, the nurse said I could get up and walk around, so I decided to take a shower. As I stood under the hot running water, I felt something large and warm slide from between my legs and plop onto the shower floor. There at my feet was a large dark mass that could only have been one thing. I jumped out of the shower and began screaming for help. For some reason, probably nothing more than panic, I couldn’t open the bathroom door, but I could hear people on the other side telling me to let go of the door knob. When the two nursing assistants rushed in, they were dumbfounded when I told them what had happened.

  They called for the nurse and when she came, one of the assistants pointed to the shower and said, “She thinks her kidney fell out.” The nurse looked at the mass and then at my terror-stricken face. She helped me back to bed where she explained that what I thought was a kidney was simply a large blood clot, but I wasn’t buying it. With the pain and trauma I had endured the day before, it was very likely that some of my organs had somehow gotten disconnected.

  Finally, she left and came back with a chart of the human body and stopping short of a full anatomy lecture, promised me that it was physically impossible for my kidney, or any of my other organs, to fall out through my vagina.

  Chapter 14

  Christmas morning Nicole and I came home from the hospital. The nurse had come with a large red Christmas stocking in her arms. “I’ve got a surprise for you,” she said. Santa Claus had already come to see me the night before, so I couldn’t imagine what the nurse was bringing me. But as she passed me the stocking, I could see the top of Nicole’s head. “Usually we can hide the babies in the stockings really well,” she said, “but she’s a very long girl.”

  Although Erma Lee had gotten on my case about buying girl’s clothes, my error had been in buying newborn sizes. Nothing fit; even the romper I brought her home in was too small. I had to bend her knees to get her feet in, and even then I could only snap the outfit down to her waist.

  Nicole was a very content baby. When she did cry, it was hardly audible. “What’s that hummin’ noise?” Erma Lee would ask. Realizing it was Nicole, she’d say, “Lawd have mercy! Why come she can’t open her mouth and holler like a normal baby?”

  Nicole also slept all night, which Erma Lee said wasn’t normal. But when we took her for her six-week check up, Dr. Tanrik said, “If she sleeps, let her sleep; she’ll wake up if she’s hungry.” Erma Lee, however, insisted that the baby was malnourished, and when folks from the church would drop by to see how the new mother was getting along, she’d tell them I wasn’t feeding the baby enough.

  “Well, Sister Erma,” they’d say, “seems like the baby would cry if she was hungry.”

  “She ain’t got the good sense to cry. You oughtta hear her; sound like she got a mouthful of cotton.”

  I would remind Erma Lee of what Dr. Tanrik had said, and she’d say, “Those White doctors don’t know nothin’ bout feedin’ no Black babies,” and thus began her remedy for my poor, undernourished Nicole.

  By the time she was two months old, her diet, on top of the Enfamil with Iron, consisted of cornbread and pot liquor. The infant cereal, according to Erma Lee, wasn’t fit for a gnat. “That stuff disappear in her throat ‘fore it ever hit her gullet.” In spite of everything, Nicole was a healthy, happy baby.

  Having a baby at 15 was, in my opinion, the most significant thing that had happened to me, and I had plans. I would finish high school and college and then settle down and be the best mother I could be. But within weeks, my caseworker paid a visit, and the old ghosts that I thought had been laid to rest were resurrected.

  Because I was a ward of the court, she said, Nicole was automatically a ward of the court and was eligible to be adopted out. I didn’t understand it or believe it. That I could carry a baby for nine months, give birth, name her and bring her home, and she not be legally mine was ridiculous. But the caseworker’s visit was followed by a certified letter, and whether I understood it or not, the document made Child Service’s intentions very clear:

  Filed on January 27, 1981, in the Superior Court Juvenile Division

  That said child (Nicole) is a child in need of services as defined in I.C. 1971, 31-6-4-3:

  1. Her physical or mental condition is seriously endangered as a result of the inability of her parent to supply the child with necessary food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, and supervision, to wit:

  a. Nicole Stephan was born to Nancy Stephan who is a minor and a ward of this agency.

  b. The infant was born 12-22-80 at the afore mentioned hospital and returned with her mother to her foster home.

  c. The mother is a minor and has no means with which to support her child.

  WHEREFORE, your petitioner prays that summons is issued to said child, Nancy Stephan, requiring her to appear before the Superior Court, Juvenile Division, or the Judge thereof, and show why said child should not be dealt with according to the laws of the state.

  I’ll take my baby and run away. Silly as it was, that was my first thought. I had refused adoption because I wanted to remain my mother’s daughter, but I would have to choose
adoption if I wanted to be my daughter’s mother. It was an awful trick to make me choose, but the choice had to be made, and absolutely no one was going to take Nicole from me.

  Once I was adopted, Nicole and I became permanent residents of the foster home. Nicole was safe, but as I was beginning to learn, nothing ever had a simple fix, and the consequences of my adoption led to months of grief for Erma Lee.

  As foster parents, the Daniels were licensed to care for a limited number of children at any one time. Now that Nicole was permanent, the number of children in the home exceeded the number allowed by their license. Another child would need to be removed.

  Michael was a biracial child of about two years with big eyes and a heavy mound of black, curly hair. Even though the caseworker denied it, Erma Lee believed he had been born to an addicted mother because he would cry—shrill, ear-piercing screams—all the time, for no apparent reason. Erma Lee had grown quite fond of him, but the caseworker called and said to have his things ready the following afternoon.

  The next day, his caseworker came, put his things in her car, thanked Erma Lee for caring for him, and pulled away with Mikey screaming in the window. Erma Lee stood on the porch wringing her hands as they drove away. Even though she never would’ve allowed Nicole to be taken, it didn’t make it any easier for her to give up Mikey.

  Life would be difficult for the next month, most of which time Erma Lee toggled between anger and sadness. She knew that adopting Mikey was out of the question because she’d already adopted another baby, Ruxnell, against all odds. Child Services had fought against that adoption because Erma Lee was already 55 years old.

  Ruxnell was born to a teenage mother, and her parents forbade her from keeping him. He was brought to the Daniels straight from the hospital. Like most of the children that were brought, he came with nothing; he was just a newborn in a blanket. Like I’ve not seen with any other child that she fostered, Erma Lee loved him immediately and profoundly.