Return of the Butterfly

by Sharon Heath

  2. Eight snap-front, soft-as-cashmere coveralls in a riot of rainbow-hued colors, my favorite of which bore the motto, “Schrödinger’s Diaper: isn’t full until you check it.”

  3. An equal number of shirt-and-pant sets appended with enough lambs, calves, and kids to convince any sensible child she’d been born on a farm.

  4. Six pairs of the kind of footless Martian pajamas once worn by the babies Father had rescued from the devil abortionists, purveyed to him in bulk by wholesaler Leland DuRay (whose shady dealings had contributed to Father’s unceremonious ouster from the Senate and the subsequent­—but regrettably temporary—loss of his far-too-rigid mind).

  5. Six pairs of socks so small that I was convinced, despite Mother’s frequent assurances, couldn’t possibly accommodate an actual human foot.

  6. Two large hooded towels with floppy bunny ears, whose silliness never failed to make Adam and me spill into each other’s arms with unalloyed joy.

  7. Eight tie-dyed short-sleeved onesies purchased at an undoubtedly ridiculous cost by Sammie at her favorite Venice craft shop.

  8. One precious wool sweater knitted by Nana for me, which I’d worn but once thanks to the itchy rash it induced—I swore to Callay I’d brush it against her little hand first to make sure she’d suffer no such reaction.

  9. More cream-colored burp cloths than I’d cared to count, which Mother kept adding to, convincing me I’d been the pukiest child on the planet.

  10. Ten receiving blankets, one ordered by Amir from India that bore a vivid scene of a dancing Lord Hanuman balancing the world on his fingertip; speaking of whom, I really did need to call Jane Goodall to see how she’d weathered her recent bout with the flu.

  11. Several sweet swimsuits from Mother with unusually wide-brimmed, matching sun hats that came along with her solemn declaration that her grandchild would never have to deal with as many (thankfully basal cell) skin cancers as she had. Which, needless to say, took me as predictably as a slide in Chutes in Ladders to my anxiety about the dangerous world Callay was coming into.

  I, who’d persevered past frustration, self-doubt, and the tremendous enmity of my father and his Cacklers, Big Oil, Congress, and Rupert Murdoch, couldn’t decide whether to house the short-sleeved onesies in the top or middle shelf of what had once been my own antique baby dresser.

  As luck would have it, Makeda arrived home early to save me from my insanity. I nearly laughed when she appeared in the doorway. If she’d intended to look coolly businesslike in her tailored gray jacket, buttoned just so over her Gap business casual black sheath dress, she’d failed miserably. Her spirit was too buoyant, her curves too generous, her eyes too alive to strike the tone she thought she needed to cultivate in her new world.

  But at this moment, as she lingered at the threshold to the baby’s room, I had to confess she looked rather woebegone. Muttering something about being a fool to think she could fit in, she began to turn away. Without stopping to ask what was wrong, I rushed in with an ill-conceived attempt to cheer her, complimenting her on her outfit, then proceeding to comment that, whether she showed up at work in a Hillary-esque pantsuit or a brilliantly embroidered, traditional Ethiopian habesha, her intelligence, experience, and charm would guarantee her success. “Let’s face it, you’re a natural to realize the American Dream. Oh, I know there are glass ceilings right and left in ‘post-feminist America,’ and most of us still hate our bodies for being too female, but you can actually be a leader on that front. Besides, the fact that your thesis is on pharaonic circumcision makes you a shoo-in.”

  Turning to face me with a frown, she asked, “Why?” If I’d taken the time I would have paid more attention to the fact that her coppery face had shifted a bit to the incarnadine end of the spectrum.

  “Because I read recently that female genital mutilation is on the rise among African immigrants in the U.S., and somebody’s got to do something about it.”

  Makeda favored me with an impatient stare. “And you think it should be me?” Her eyes flashed. “That’s all that I am good for? Forget that I might have dreams beyond my own early circumstances? I can see it now: Makeda Geteye, poster girl for the inferiority of African cultures. See how gracefully she copes with her own deformity.”

  I clapped my right hand over my left wrist. Flapping was not going to help. I sought out Adam’s ancient mantra. Use your words, Fleur. Let her know what you really mean. (And if you think that’s awfully nursery school-ish for a pregnant woman of 27, then you climb inside this body of mine and see what its staticky nervous system does to your perfect aplomb.)

  “No, please. Wait. You’re confusing what I said.” Her sharp intake of breath told me I was still on the wrong track. “No, I’m the one who’s not being clear.” I let Siri Sajan into my current team of inner advisors. I know I’m breathing in, I know I’m breathing out. “Look, I wouldn’t dream of you being a poster child for anything. I hate it when they used to write about me as the greatest Aspie since Bill Gates—forget that neither of us has trouble with social interactions. Well, not much. Speaking for myself. I have no idea about him.”

  Was that the faintest hint of a grin playing at her pursed lips?

  “Here’s the thing. When I was little, the worse thing I could imagine—and I imagined it all the time—was the void. I saw all creatures’ behavior as attempts to distract them from a voracious, yawning nothingness. Birds constantly flitting from branch to branch, weeds fighting their way up through cracks in the sidewalk, just about every single thing we humans think and do.”

  She cocked her head but clearly wasn’t inclined to give an inch. I remembered my first visit to Tikil Dingay, how she’d been when I’d confided that Assefa had nearly raped me, stopped only by the intervention of Stanley H. Fiske. Her disbelief. Her rage. And how I’d made it so much worse by telling her that the man she’d pined for was actually her half-brother, her mother having secretly slept with her husband’s best friend Achamyalesh (which made a kind of sense to me at the time, since his name translated as You Are Everything).

  What an idiot I’d been, and definitely not a savant-y one. And if my stupidity hadn’t yet occurred to me, her response had made it abundantly clear. It was Newton who’d set the foundation for what would become classical mechanics with his characterization of the inevitable consequences of the exertion of force of one body upon another: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” I could still recall the burning sensation—and the shock!—of Makeda’s hand slapping me sharply across my face. Her fury had left its imprint on my conscience far longer than had the red brand on my skin, reminding me that using one’s words is also a choice. Sometimes it’s best to say nothing at all.

  More nervous than ever now, I reached around to give myself a comforting pinch on the bulge above my bra line, pulling my dress even more tautly against my balloon of a belly.

  But no hand scored my face this time. My current instance of idiocy was rewarded instead by Makeda falling into a broad-hipped squat against the door, her skirt hitching itself above her knees in a way that surely threatened the integrity of its seams.

  She buried her head in her hands, issuing guttural gasps of words. “On top of everything, I’m going out of my mind not knowing if Father Wendimu is alive or dead.” Tears sprung to my own eyes. Rumor had it that the orphanage had been decimated by Al Shabaab just weeks after she’d fled, and—with no means of contacting anyone in Tikil Dingay—we all worried that, like the captain of a ship, Father Wendimu had gone down with the refuge he’d created. “I shouldn’t be troubling you with my own worries. You’re about to have a baby, for God’s sake.”

  I summoned the sanity to ask her if there were more reasons why she was in such distress. Shuffling to her side, I assayed a clumsy kneel in order to put my arms around her, but was soon persuaded of my folly. Instead, I brushed what I hoped was a consoling hand across her head until the resemblance of its pleasantly scratchy texture to Assefa’s tight coils made me pull bac
k as if it were fire.

  “I know it sounds petty, but the students were marching—actually marching! with placards!—because the university has decided that sororities and fraternities be subjected to the same drug and alcohol regulations as on-campus housing. I know I should not apply the values of my native land to my new one, but I can’t help but feel that this is nothing. Nothing!” Her eyes raked me with a momentary contempt, and then she succumbed again to her tears. “How can I be here when children at home are being kidnapped, tortured, forced into warfare or into so-called marriages with their abductors? To cook for them? To spread their legs night after night and give birth to those monsters’ children?”

  What could I say to this, I who was about to bring forth a child conceived in such tenderness?

  Wordlessly, I signaled to Makeda to sit beside me on Callay’s quilted bed. Together, we hobbled toward it like an awkward four-legged beast and landed on its luxurious loft with a resounding synchronized plop. This time, with Nana’s Mack truck grip as my guide and my poof of a belly notwithstanding, I managed to at least partially encircle my friend with my arms until her sobs began to subside.

  “You’ll do it, you know,” I whispered, wiping the wetness from her face with my pale fingertips. “You’ll use all that suffering to great good, just as you did back at the orphanage. You’ll help even more children because you’ll impact the powers that hold them at their mercy. And you and your own beautiful family will thrive. Sofiya and Melesse will have a good life, and you will, too. You matter, too.”

  I held my breath. Had I screwed it up again? Makeda shook her head, and her face betrayed a sense of wonder. “How did it happen?”

  “What?”

  “How is it possible that you and I have become sisters?”

  I laughed. “Pretty crazy, isn’t it? Who’d a thunk it?”

  She looked at me as if I were a moron, then, realizing it must be a colloquialism, announced that she had to pee, which made me aware I had had to, as well. We met again in the hallway, and I proposed a bracing walk at the nearby Huntington Gardens.

  “Bracing?” she laughed, mischief in her eyes.

  “Well, you’ll walk, and I’ll waddle.”

  “Only if you promise me we’ll turn back if it becomes too much for you.”

  “Cross my heart.” She shot me a confused look. “Oh, never mind. I promise.”

  What I couldn’t have promised, because I couldn’t have predicted, was whom we’d bump into at the Huntington’s Chinese-themed Garden of Flowing Fragrance. Just as Makeda and I were exiting the Pavilion of the Three Friends, a scallop-roofed architectural wonder, I spied Assefa, hand in hand with Lemlem, with Abeba in unhurried pursuit a few paces behind.

  It was hardly a casual encounter of friends. Things were civil enough between Abeba and me—she was the current go-between for Mother with Cesar, the hyperactive adoptee Mother had taken under her wing after Nana had died. But Makeda and Assefa? They hadn’t seen each other since Assefa’s return to his homeland six years ago to ostensibly search for his missing father, but in truth to reclaim the woman who’d been his first love. He’d broken off our engagement by phone from that faraway land, only to be rebuffed by her in the end.

  I’d wondered more than a few times whether, now that they shared a country again, Makeda would be fearful—or eager—to see Assefa, her inseparable childhood friend, her first love, her half-brother? I wanted to turn to look at her, but I couldn’t. Instead, my eyes had fastened themselves on Assefa. I saw his expression shift from a relaxed grin to confusion, then shock.

  Meeting up with Makeda and me had to be a regular twofer: the women he’d once simultaneously loved, who’d condemned him to the fate of the Hanging Man, suspended between two countries, two women, two Assefas. At least that’s how he’d described it to me shortly after he’d tried to hang himself, riddled with confusion, rage, and shame.

  But this current life of his was truly a new incarnation. He’d come into his own as a cardiologist, come to terms with his father’s indiscretion before that man had died, and found the woman who would sew his heart together again. It occurred to me that, in keeping with his newfound authority, he was just the tiniest bit heavier these days, his high cheekbones even more charming with a bit of flesh on them. He’d shaved off his goatee, the one that used to tickle my inner thighs as he sucked my tweeter till I had my mini-explosions. For a moment, I was overcome with dizziness, and I wondered if I was going into labor, but just as quickly the sensation passed.

  It was Lemlem who broke the ice. Or at least induced a melty drip or two. Sensing the tension, she smiled her gap-toothed smile and stepped forward to warmly greet me and introduce herself to Makeda. I knew the two were sizing each other up, despite their generous smiles, their hands that continued to stay clasped during their ritualized series of questions.

  “And how are your children?” Lemlem asked. “I hear they are adorable.”

  “They are, they are, thanks be to God.”

  “How old are they?

  “Sofiya is the older one. She is five years. Or will be in a short time. Her birthday is coming very soon.”

  “Ah. She must be a joy to you. And how lucky that she has a sister with whom to share this new life.” I sensed in her a repressed sigh. “And how about the other one? How old?”

  “Melesse. She is Melesse, and she is nearly four. Just a month away.”

  Lemlem’s eyes twinkled. “I remember when my own sister turned five. Such a party I heard she had.”

  “You were not there?”

  Lemlem pointed to her gapped front teeth. “I am Mingi. Considered bad luck, so not allowed to come. But I heard, I heard. The dancing was very good. And the food, of course.”

  Neither woman spoke of the injustice of it, but it was in their eyes.

  “I will give Sofiya a party,” Makeda pronounced suddenly. She flicked a quick glance at me. “If it does not inconvenience Fleur and Adam, of course.” I shook my head obediently. “I hope you will come.”

  Oh no! I saw that Assefa and Abeba looked as uncomfortable as I felt. With any luck, Callay would actually arrive earlier than Penny Diana Hunter, and the presence of a newborn in the home might serve to change Makeda’s mind.

  Not that I didn’t want to celebrate Sofiya—of Makeda’s two girls, she was the more easily engaged, ready with a running hug, a silly joke, an exuberant, if slightly out-of-tune song. Melesse was shyer, coping with all the trauma she’d endured as an AIDS orphan by burying her nose in books, tracing her fingers over the pictures and sounding out simple words with her endearing lisp whenever she wasn’t playing with her older sibling. I knew it was going to take time to persuade her that I was constant enough to be allowed into her heart. I also wondered whether Melesse hadn’t yet figured out how to emerge from under Sofiya’s broad shadow. Adam and I had secretly nicknamed the older sister, “the Sparkler,” and I imagined her taking great delight in a party thrown on her behalf, possibly with piñatas and party favors and games to play with all her preschool friends.

  But now, Lemlem was politely handing Makeda off to Abeba, who deposited a trio of kisses on Makeda’s cheeks while managing to completely avoid her eyes. Abeba’s upper lip was stretched as thin as Cook’s had been in the old days, like a worm fried in the sun on its arduous journey between lawn and parkway.

  As for Makeda, well, her voice had deepened so profoundly that if I hadn’t been looking at her I’d have thought she was a man. (And believe me, you would never mistake Makeda for a man.)

  Gruffly, she offered, “I was so sorry to learn of Achamyalesh’s passing.” Unsaid were the words, He was my father. How could all of you who knew that hide it from me?

  “Thank you. We were given a long life together.” During which he betrayed me with your mother.

  “We must be grateful for our blessings. The two of you raised a most accomplished son.” Who is my half-brother; it breaks my heart still.

  Now it was Makeda’s turn, in a
n awkward do-se-do, to face Assefa, who’d actually backed away and was huddling by a tall bush like a radiation tech stepping behind a lead shield. He stepped forward, betraying barely a sign of the shame he surely felt, holding out a hand.

  But Makeda, defying the difficult pleasantries, proffered her cheek for the traditional trio of kisses, and somehow her courage broke the ice, because soon enough we were all laughing at the irony of this Ethiopian reunion in a Chinese Garden on the grounds of a man who’d made his fortune building SoCal’s rail system by ruthlessly exploiting Mexican labor.

  I knew their humor would flag if I mentioned that the very same magnate, Henry E. Huntington, had shocked San Francisco society when he married Arabella Huntington, the widow of his uncle Collis P. Huntington, whose own code of conduct was said to have been epitomized by the saying, “Whatever is not nailed down is mine. What I can pry loose is not nailed down.”

  Makeda and I said little once the Berhanus and Lemlem departed. Our walk back to the parking lot required a deft navigation through clusters of mostly silver-haired women arrayed like fading hydrangeas around invisible beds of very visible David Austin roses, posing and preening under so many attentive, if somewhat rheumy, eyes. I knew what I was thinking: mostly variations on the theme of Well, that was awkward. But I couldn’t begin to imagine where it had sent Makeda. And to be honest, I was too self-involved to inquire. We separated into our bedrooms as soon as we returned. But I didn’t know what to do with myself.

  I removed my clothes, took a drought-defying, long shower—baths were out now for Belly Woman—and stood afterward, all pruney-fingered, in front of my full-length vanity mirror. It wasn’t a pretty picture—hardly the body Assefa had licked from head to toe and back again, with such glorious pit stops in between. It was one of those odd ironies of life that, despite my utter adoration of Adam, every once in a while I couldn’t resist picking at the scab of Assefa, dwelling self-pityingly on my hurt that he hadn’t unreservedly returned my love.