The Butterfly Garden

by Dot Hutchison

  “Good evening,” I said sourly, rearranging myself more comfortably on the rock. All of my clothing was either in my room or waiting to be laundered, so there wasn’t much point in shrieking and trying to find something to cover myself with. “Come to take in the view?”

  “Rather more of a view than I expected.”

  “I thought I was alone.”

  “Alone?” he repeated, meeting my eyes and very carefully not looking any lower. “In an entire garden full of other girls?”

  “Who are all either sleeping or occupying themselves in their rooms,” I retorted.

  “Ah.”

  That was the last thing said for some time. It sure as hell wasn’t my job to supply conversation, so I turned on the stone and looked out into the Garden, watching the surface of the pond ripple and sway where water emptied from the stream. Eventually I heard his footsteps on the stone and then something dark hovered in front of me. When I reached out to touch it, it dropped into my lap.

  His sweater.

  The color was hard to determine in the moonlight, maybe a burgundy of some sort, with a school crest sewn onto one breast. It smelled like soap and aftershave and cedar, something warm and masculine and mostly unfamiliar in the Garden. I twisted my wet hair into a messy knot atop my head and pulled on the sweater, and when everything was covered, he sat next to me on the rock.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said quietly.

  “So you came out here.”

  “I just can’t make sense of this place.”

  “Given that it doesn’t make sense, that’s understandable.”

  “So you’re not here by choice.”

  I sighed and rolled my eyes. “Stop looking for information you have no intention of actually using.”

  “How do you know I won’t use it?”

  “Because you want him to be proud of you,” I said sharply. “And you know if you tell anyone about all this, he won’t be. Given that, what does it matter whether we’re here by choice or not?”

  “You . . . you must think I’m a despicable excuse for a human being.”

  “I think you have the potential to be.” I looked at his sad, earnest face and decided to take a risk for pretty much the first time since coming to the Garden. “I also think you have the potential to be better.”

  He was silent for a long time. Such a tiny step, a minuscule nudge, but already it seemed too big. How could a parent have so much control over a child, that paternal pride meant more than what was right? “Our choices make us who we are,” he said eventually.

  It wasn’t what I’d call a substantive response.

  “What choices are you making, Desmond?”

  “I don’t think I’m making any choices right now.”

  “Then you’re automatically making the wrong ones.” He straightened, mouth open to protest, but I held up my hand. “Not making a choice is a choice. Neutrality is a concept, not a fact. No one actually gets to live their lives that way.”

  “Seemed to work for Switzerland.”

  “As a nation, maybe. How do you think individuals felt, when they learned the truth of what their neutrality allowed to transpire? When they learned of the camps, and the gas chambers, and the experimentation, do you think they were pleased with their neutrality then?”

  “Then why don’t you just leave?” he demanded. “Rather than judge my father for giving you food and clothing and comfortable shelter, why don’t you just go back out there?”

  “You don’t really think we have codes, do you?”

  He deflated, the indignation fading as quickly as it flared. “He keeps you locked in?”

  “Collectors don’t let butterflies fly free. It defeats the purpose.”

  “You could ask.”

  “It isn’t easy to ask him for anything,” I said, parroting his words from a week or so ago.

  He flinched.

  He was blind, but he wasn’t stupid. That he chose to be ignorant really pissed me off. I shrugged out of the sweater and dropped it in his lap, sliding off the rock. “Thank you for the conversation,” I muttered, walking quickly down the path that sloped to the main level from the far end of the cliff. I could hear him tripping and fumbling after me.

  “Maya, wait. Wait!” His hand closed around my wrist and tugged back, nearly pulling me off my feet. “I’m sorry.”

  “You’re between me and food. Apologize for that, if you like, and get out of my way.”

  He let go of my wrist but kept following me across the Garden. He hopped first across the small stream and reached out to steady me from the other side, something I found both bizarre and charming. The main lights in the dining room—and the attached open kitchen—were dark, but a dim light shone from above the stove for anyone seeking a late-night snack. The sight of the larger, locked fridge momentarily distracted him.

  I yanked open the door to the smaller one and studied what was inside. I was genuinely hungry, but as being around vomiting people doesn’t do much for the appetite, nothing seemed appealing.

  “What is that on your back?”

  I slammed the door shut, blocking out the light, but it was too late.

  He stepped closer behind me, walking us both over to the oven, and in the dim glow of the stove light he studied the wings in all their exquisite, excruciating detail. Under normal circumstances, I could have mostly forgotten what they looked like. He’d give us mirrors if we asked for them; I never had. Bliss, though, made a point of showing everyone their wings on a regular basis.

  So we couldn’t forget what we were.

  Butterflies are short-lived creatures, and that too was part of her reminder.

  His fingertips brushed against the darker veins of brown against the fawn-colored upper wings, stretching as the lines splayed outward into the delicate chevrons. I stood perfectly still despite the goose bumps that crawled down my spine at his tentative exploration. He hadn’t asked, but then, he was his father’s son, I supposed. My eyes closed, my hands curling into fists at my sides, as his fingers moved lower into the bottom wings of roses and purples. He didn’t follow the lines down, but in, toward my spine, until he could run a thumb up the entire length of black ink that ran down the center of my back.

  “That’s gorgeous,” he whispered. “Why a butterfly?”

  “Ask your father.”

  Suddenly his hand was trembling against my skin, against the mark of his father’s ownership. He didn’t move it away, though. “He did this to you?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “How badly did it hurt?”

  What hurt most was lying there letting him do it, but I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that it hurt so fucking badly to see those first lines appear on each new girl’s back, didn’t say that the skin had been so raw I hadn’t slept on my back for weeks, didn’t say that I still couldn’t sleep on my stomach because it made me remember that first rape on the tattoo bench, when he drove himself into me and gave me a new name.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Does he . . . does he do this to all of you?” he asked shakily.

  I nodded.

  “Oh, God.”

  Run, I screamed silently. Run and tell the police, or open the doors and let us tell the police ourselves. Just do something—anything—other than stand there!

  But he didn’t. He stayed behind me, his hand against the map of ink and scars, until the silence became a living, gasping thing between us. So I was the one to move away, to open the fridge again and pretend there was anything normal about this moment. I pulled out an orange, swung the door closed with my hip, and leaned against the part of the counter that ran perpendicular to the rest. It wasn’t quite an island, but it created a waist-high separation between the kitchen and the dining room.

  Desmond tried to join me there but his legs gave out, and he slid to the floor next to my feet, his back against the cabinets. His shoulder brushed against my knee as I methodically peeled the orange. I always tried to get it off in one piece,
a perfect spiral. So far I never had. It always broke partway through.

  “Why does he do it?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “Shit.” He brought his knees up and hunched over them, his arms crossed against the back of his head.

  I freed the first wedge and sucked it dry, setting the seeds on the peel as I found them.

  And the silence grew.

  When all the juice was gone from the wedge, I popped the whole thing in my mouth and chewed. Hope used to tease me about how I ate oranges, saying I made boys very uncomfortable. I’d stuck my tongue out at her and told her boys didn’t have to watch. Desmond certainly wasn’t watching, anyway. I moved on to the second wedge, then the third and the fourth.

  “Still awake, Maya?” came the Gardener’s light voice from the doorway. “Are you feeling well?”

  Desmond looked up, his face pale and stricken, but he didn’t stand or say anything to announce his presence. Sitting on the floor against the cabinets, he wouldn’t be seen unless the Gardener came all the way to the counter and looked straight down. The Gardener never came into the kitchen itself.

  “I’m feeling fine,” I answered. “I just decided to get a snack after rinsing off in the falls.”

  “And didn’t want to be bothered with clothing?” He laughed and entered the dining room, sitting down in the large, padded chair that was reserved for him. So far as I knew, he’d never seen the rough crown Bliss had scratched into the back. It was vaguely throne-like, I’d given her that, with a deep cushion of dark red velvet and nearly black polished wood rising into ornate scrolls above his head. He pushed it back, one elbow resting on the edge of the table because the chair had no arms.

  I shrugged, picking another wedge from the orange. “It seemed a little silly to worry.”

  He looked strangely casual, sitting in the shadows wearing nothing but a pair of silky pajama pants. His plain gold wedding band gleamed with fractures of light from the stove. I couldn’t tell if he’d been sleeping in his suite or if he’d been with one of the other girls, though he didn’t generally sleep in our rooms. Unless his wife was out of town, he usually spent at least part of each night in the house I’d never seen, couldn’t see, even from the tallest tree in the Garden. “Come sit with me.”

  At my feet, Desmond pressed his fist against his mouth with a pained look.

  Leaving the rest of the orange on the counter with the peel and seeds, I obediently came around the counter and crossed into the shadows to join him at his table. I started to lower myself onto the nearest bench, but he pulled me into his lap. One hand stroked along my back and hip, something he did without thinking, while the other clasped one of my hands against my thigh.

  “How are the girls reacting to Desmond being here?”

  If he’d had any idea how here Desmond was, I doubted we’d be having this conversation.

  “They’re . . . wary,” I answered finally. “I think we’re all waiting to see if he’s more like you or Avery.”

  “And hoping for?” I slanted him a sideways look and he actually laughed, pressing a kiss against my collarbone. “They’re not afraid of him, surely? Desmond would never hurt anyone.”

  “I’m sure they’ll all adjust to his being here.”

  “And you, Maya? What do you think of my younger son?”

  I almost looked toward the kitchen, but if he didn’t want his father to know he was there, I wouldn’t give him away. “I think he’s confused. He doesn’t really know what to make of all this.” I took a deep breath, gave myself a moment to convince myself that the next question was for Desmond’s sake, to give him another view into the reality of the Garden. “Why the displays?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “After keeping us, why do you keep us?”

  He didn’t answer for a time, his fingers tracing nonsense symbols on my skin. “My father collected butterflies,” he said eventually. “He went hunting for them, and if he couldn’t capture them in good condition he paid others for them, and he pinned them into their display cases while they were still alive. Every one of them had a black velvet background, a little bronze plaque giving its common and proper names, creating a veritable museum of shadowboxes on his office walls. Sometimes he’d hang my mother’s embroidery between the cases. Sometimes they were single butterflies, sometimes entire bouquets, picked out in beautiful colors on the cloth.”

  His hand left my thigh and traveled up my back, tracing the wings. He didn’t even have to look at them to know their shapes. “He was happiest in that room, and once he retired he spent almost every day in there. But there was a small electrical fire in that section of the house, and all the butterflies were ruined. Every single one, the collection he’d spent decades acquiring and working on. He was never quite the same after that, and died not long after. I suppose he felt as though his entire life had been burned away in that fire.

  “The day after his funeral, Mother and I had to attend an Independence Day fair in town. They were presenting Mother with an award for her charity work and she didn’t want to disappoint anyone by not attending. I left her in the company of sympathetic friends and wandered through the small fair, and then I saw her: a girl, wearing a butterfly mask made of feathers and passing out little feather and silk rose petal butterflies to the children who came through the silk maze. She was so vibrant and bright, so very alive, it was hard to believe that butterflies could ever die.

  “When I smiled at her and went into the maze, she followed me in. It wasn’t hard to get her home from there. I kept her in the basement at first, until I could build the garden to be a proper home. I was in school and I’d just taken over my father’s business, and before too long I was married, so I think she was very lonely, even once I moved her into the garden, so I brought in Lorraine for her, and others, to be her friends.” He was lost in memory, but for him it wasn’t painful. For him, it only made sense, was only right. Rather than bringing his Eve to a garden, he’d built one around her, and served as the angel with the flaming sword to keep her in. He rearranged me on his lap, tugging me against his chest until he could lay my head between his neck and shoulder. “Her death was heartbreaking, and I couldn’t bear to think that brief existence was all she would ever have. I didn’t want to forget her. As long as I could remember her, a part of her would still live. I built the cases, researched ways to preserve her against decay.”

  “The resin,” I whispered, and he nodded.

  “But first the embalming. My company keeps formaldehyde and formaldehyde resins on hand in the manufacturing division, for clothing if you can believe it. It’s easy to order more than they need and bring the rest here. Replacing the blood with the formaldehyde retards decay, enough for the resin to preserve everything else. Even when you’re gone, Maya, you will not be forgotten.”

  The sick thing was, he genuinely meant it to be comforting. Unless an accident happened or I pissed him off, in three and a half years he would run formaldehyde through my veins. I knew just enough to know that he would stay with me the entire time, maybe even brushing my hair and pinning it into its final arrangement, and when all my blood was gone, he’d place me in a glass case and pump it full of clear resin to give me a second life no mere electrical fire could end. He would touch the glass and whisper my name every time he passed, and he would remember me.

  And sitting in his lap left no illusions as to how he felt about all of that.

  He gently pushed me off his lap, spreading his legs to make me kneel between them, one hand tangling in my hair. “Show me that you won’t forget me, Maya.” He pulled my head closer, his other hand busy at the drawstring of his pants. “Not even then.”

  Not even when I was long dead and gone, and the sight of me would still be enough to make him hard.

  And I obeyed because I always obeyed, because I still wanted those three and a half years even if it meant this man telling me he loved me. I obeyed when he damn near choked me, and I obeyed when he yanked me back ont
o his lap, obeyed when he told me to promise I wouldn’t ever forget him.

  And this time, instead of writing someone else’s poems and stories against the inside of my skull, I wondered about the boy on the other side of the kitchen counter, listening to it all.

  The thing that convinced me my long-ago next-door neighbor was a pedophile was more than the looks he gave me. It was the looks the foster children gave each other, the bruised, sick knowledge they shared between them. All of them knew what was happening, not just to themselves but to each other. None of them would say a word. I saw those bruised looks and I knew it would only be a matter of time before he put his hand up my dress, before he took my hand and put it in his lap and whispered about a present for me.

  The Gardener kissed me when he was done and told me to make sure I got some rest. He was still pulling his pants back in place as he walked out of the dining room. I walked back to the other side of the counter, picked up the rest of my orange, and sat down next to Desmond, whose face was wet and shiny with tears. He stared at me with dull eyes.

  Bruised eyes.

  I ate the rest of the orange in the time it took him to find something to say, and then he didn’t say anything at all, just handed me his sweater. I put it on and when he reached for my hand, I let him take it.

  He was never going to go to the police.

  We both knew it.

  All that the past half hour had changed was that now he hated himself a little for it.

  “You haven’t asked who survived.”

  “You’re not going to let me go see them until I’ve told you everything you want to know.”

  “True.”

  “So I’ll find out when we’re done, when I can actually spend time with them. My being there now can’t change anything anyway.”

  “Suddenly I can believe you haven’t cried since you were six.”

  A faint smile flickers across her face. “Fucking carousel,” she agrees pleasantly.