Return of the Butterfly

by Sharon Heath

  Unfortunately, given our narrow window of congressional approval and the fact that global warming was proceeding at a dangerous pace, we didn’t have the luxury of working our way slowly up the food chain. Moving a much larger animal from one place to another by synchronizing its C-Voids was the logical next step before attempting to apply our work to humans.

  And even if we managed that huge (and most would say, impossible) task, we faced ethical considerations. We were all adherents of the Precautionary Principle and were committed to investigating any imaginable negative outcomes lest we inadvertently cause all hell to break loose. So far, gene and cell therapies and medical nanotechnologies had risen or fallen on their viability, with nary a one creating a Frankenstein among us. That was heartening, despite my moment of doubt following giving birth that Dreamization might create a singularity equaling what some techies were predicting as a wedding of man to machine.

  But the question of which species to choose for our next set of experiments presented a dilemma. There was definitely some risk involved. Adam and I—and Stanley, too—were pretty cat crazy, Amir was mad about chimps, Bob was a fish and bird guy, and Katrina and Tom were dog people who’d lost two of their own in an unlucky couple of months. Only Gunther was personally untouched, having been raised on a Swedish farm and being well used to sacrificing other creatures for human benefit.

  We certainly couldn’t start with humans, as much as Gunther swore he’d be happy to volunteer. Given Gunther’s habit of depression, none of us fancied our experiment being characterized as assisted suicide. Tom and Katrina had soul searched and finally allowed us to settle on a dog. It would be dreadful to lose one, but, alas, the process of scientific research can be as cruel as nature herself. Tom had his eyes on several candidates at UCLA’s Semel Institute. His reasoning was that if we lost a dog that was already being subjected to studies on narcolepsy, it might actually be a blessing for that creature. And if we were successful, we could offer him a new life fit for a canine king.

  Today, I was going to miss out on the group’s actual selection of that animal and a spare. I drove home feeling sorry for myself, but needless to say when I set my eyes on my little girl, that particular pity party broke up.

  “How’s she doing?” I asked Mother, unhooking my nursing bra. Mother being keen on organization, the nursery was so sparkling clean that I’d hesitated for a second at laying my coat on the bed. But my body had its own agenda. I loosened one of my milk-engorged breasts.

  “I’m so relieved. She finished a bottle just an hour ago.”

  “Fine for her,” I laughed, “but my boobs are bursting.” I gently prodded my daughter’s delicate lips with a leaking nipple, thanking God that she seemed willing to cooperate.

  Mother was already throwing a shawl over her shoulders and reaching for her Hermès bag.

  “What? Going so soon?” I cried. “I thought we might order in a pizza from Il Fornaio.”

  “Since when do they deliver?”

  “Not them. Post Mates.”

  Mother responded dryly, “Families with babies are probably keeping them in business.”

  “I really don’t have the energy to cook.” I realized how whiny my voice sounded.

  “Darling, I wasn’t criticizing. Remember, I’m the woman who kept Robert Mondavi in business while Cook and Dhani kept that ridiculous household fed.”

  But The Whine was unvanquished. “Why don’t you stay? Adam probably won’t be back for hours. They’re picking out the dogs.”

  Mother raised her eyebrows. “You must hate not being a part of it.”

  In response, I gestured with my chin toward Callay, who’d fallen asleep in my arms with a dot of milk between her half-closed lips bubbling with each tiny snore.

  Mother smiled. “I wish I could stay, but I’ve actually promised to meet Cesar for dinner.”

  “What!”

  “I didn’t tell you?”

  “That he was in touch? No, you didn’t,” I replied with some asperity.

  “Honestly, I didn’t want to distress you. After what he said about you—”

  “Mother. That doesn’t matter at all.” Was that true? “I know how much you’ve been worrying about him.”

  “He contacted me after that awful shooting. He’d actually been at that club the week before.” She flushed. “He’d evidently gone off to visit a friend in Florida after we—”

  “I thought he didn’t have any friends,” I interrupted with some bitterness.

  “Darling, I know he hurt you.”

  “I think he was an equal opportunity hurter.”

  “Yes, well. He’s back in town. Staying with Fidel, actually. And I really think he’s trying to make peace. He asked how you and the baby are.”

  I considered my own selfishness. Here I was, Odd Duck Extraordinaire with this gorgeous family and a world constantly singing my praises. Well, minus the flat-earthers and Big Oil and Cacklers and climate change deniers. And there was Cesar, struggling to express his own individuality in a world that would be nearly unanimous in treating him like a freak.

  “Tell him I wish him the best.”

  Mother nodded her approval and gave me a couple of bisous. “I will, darling, I certainly will.”

  I learned later that Cesar hadn’t shown up at their designated meeting place. Mother had driven over to Fidel’s, who’d confessed he hadn’t seen Cesar for several days. (They’d evidently shared their concern over a cup of coffee and what Mother described as the most heavenly flan she’d ever tasted, and Fidel had revealed to her that he’d left a wife and two daughters behind in Cuba that he’d ceased contact with ages ago, which made me feel unaccountably sad.)

  Nor had the team found the right dogs. The ones that were about to be retired were just too weak for us to attempt such a significant trial with them. We were all getting nervous. Would we be allowed to continue our work in the coming year? Our climate scientist pals kept sending out the alarm, citing deadly floods in southern Louisiana, wildfires scorching California forests and towns with equal and unprecedented ferocity, melting permafrost releasing anthrax in Siberia, thermometers hitting a record 129 degrees in Kuwait, not to mention forest die-offs on multiple continents. The Republican presidential candidate calling climate change a Chinese hoax didn’t exactly augur well for our project if he won. And he seemed to be gaining traction, despite increasing alarm across the globe.

  I knew I wasn’t the only one to feel sickened by our ailing body politic. With Gwennie, the response was predictable, but even Makeda was nearly half mad at the anti-female sentiment displayed during this electoral season.

  “I do not understand it,” she cried at the tail end of a dinner so delicious that Adam I were too busy mopping up the last bits of our spicy tibs with handfuls of injera to respond. “Here you have a woman with more credentials than God who is willing to take on the most difficult job in the world, and they want to lock her up? I could understand this in my own country. We are still very backward when it comes to violence against women and any real equality. But here? Do these people feel no shame?”

  It troubled me that she still thought of Ethiopia as home. It took me back to Assefa’s descriptions of his own struggle with homesickness, played out in his conflicted attraction to both Makeda and me in a mental state he’d called “the Hanging Man.” I didn’t want to even consider that my dear friend, nearly as close as Sammie to being a real sister, might be dangling in the limbo of being an eternal outsider. “It’s hardly all of us, you know,” I finally replied.

  Adam shot me a look, as if to say, Here, let me help. “It must feel awful to have come here and all of sudden you’re exposed to all this racism and sexism and xenophobia. Like it’s not safe for you. Or the girls.”

  Makeda lifted her dark eyes to his and nodded. “Yes. I am worried. Particularly for them.”

  “How could you not be? I am, too.” He rose to gather our plates, streaked like abstract paintings with red remnants of tibs gravy. I
stifled the impulse to grab them from him and lick them clean.

  Instead, like the student I’d once been, I took the hint from the man who’d once been my tutor. “It’s very frightening. And given what you and the girls have already suffered, it’s got to be hitting a raw nerve.” I put a hand on her wrist as she was rising to help Adam. “We would never allow you to be deported, you know.” I paused and offered with no little embarrassment, “It’s one perk of being a Nobelist. I’ve got a little clout.”

  “Yes, but who says I would want to stay if things got too terrible?”

  It felt like a slap in the face, but I instinctively knew she was right. Why would she stay if the US ceased to be a beacon of light for the world? For her and her daughters?

  For the very first time, I considered what our team would do if the man Gwennie liked to call Voldemort actually won. Would I be able to bear it if he cut off our funding just as we were on the verge of averting climate catastrophe?

  Until now, it had never dawned on me that we could shift our project to another country. I began mentally running through the possibilities. The EU countries would be our team’s best bet, but the one nation that spoke our language had just voted to exit. Would England even maintain its commitment to the Paris climate accord?

  But just as soon as I began considering worst-case scenario options, I was swept with such a strong surge of grief it was physical. My hand flew to my heart.

  To leave this house, Caltech, Mother, Sammie and Aadita, Dhani and her family, the Huntington Gardens, the Pacific Ocean? I might have to leave Buster behind, too. There could always be visits, but still. I’d never been very attached to Manhattan when we’d lived there, and I’d lost all feeling for the Main Line when Father chopped down Grandfather’s and my tree. But leaving SoCal? Its ridiculously fine weather and ubiquitous bougainvillea bushes and palm trees, its cacophonous crows and wild parrots, Korean barbecue and Vietnamese pho, the casual air of acceptance and neighborliness, Spanish speakers and the rich influence of Mexican culture and architecture? SoCal was my known, where I could feel comfortable in my own skin.

  Suddenly what Makeda and her girls and Assefa and Abeba and Achamyalesh and Lemlem and Dhani and Ignacio and Sammie and Aadita had gone through was no longer a concept. To lose one’s roots was like losing a mother. Which didn’t bear thinking about.

  I was overcome with new respect for all those who’d endured the kinds of suffering that led to the void of voluntary exile. And for the first time, I felt an active hatred for anyone who’d casually consign such sojourners to deportation. As if what they’d already endured wasn’t enough.

  I said as much to Adam that night, throwing an arm over his chest in our bed, his shoulder my pillow. I sucked in silent breathfuls of his Campbell’s chicken soup B.O.

  “You know what they say,” he responded, nuzzling my ear. “The political is personal.” (The moment felt too sweet to point out that he’d gotten the old feminist slogan the wrong way around.) He heaved a great sigh. “We’ve known that all along with climate change.”

  I looked up at him and felt oddly comforted. I wasn’t alone. He’d been worrying about the prospects of Callay’s future on this planet, too.

  Chapter Nine

  I’D FIRST HEARD about West Hollywood’s yearly Gay Pride parade somewhere in my teens, but this particular march was a new phenomenon. The LGBTQ community had organized it on the heels of the election. The organizers were calling it the Gay Survival Parade. And with Mike Pence topping off the toxic gingerbread house with his attempts to divert HIV/AIDS funding to conversion treatment—i.e. electroconvulsive shock therapy—survival might actually be at stake for some of the participants.

  I’d promised Sammie I’d go with her. She’d been Skyping daily with Amira and told me she’d feel like a hypocrite if she didn’t go. “I don’t know what it means to be a lesbian besides loving a woman, but I think I’d better find out.”

  It felt odd to me when she put it like that. What did it mean not to be a lesbian besides loving men? But I’d promised I’d join her the next day.

  When I shared both my question and our plan, Adam burst out, “I don’t think you should go.” To my raised eyebrow, he responded, “What it means to be a lesbian right now is that you’re a sitting duck for psychos, right alongside Muslims, Hispanics, blacks, and Jews. You saw that photo in the LA Times of the sign near the LA art museum: ‘No Niggers.’ What about people on the Metro Rail tearing off women’s hijabs? Swastikas painted on school walls? There was an article just a few days ago in the New York Times about nearly a thousand acts of verbal and physical harassment of gays and lesbians since the election.”

  I replied with equal heat, “Well then Sammie and I will be in good company at this parade.”

  “Endangered company.”

  “You mean like Makeda and the girls? Dhani? Ignacio? Sammie on two counts—don’t forget her dad was Jewish.”

  Adam ran a hand through his hair, a sure sign of frustration. “Fleur, this parade isn’t like Gay Pride. It’s political.”

  “Weren’t you the one who told me the political is personal?”

  “Yes, and I’m also the father of your daughter.”

  “So people who have children shouldn’t take a public stand?”

  “Not expressly to be provocative. No.”

  “So the fact that I’ve had tomatoes thrown at me at press conferences by Father’s Cacklers and been insulted by social media stalkers and had our livelihood threatened innumerable times by Congress doesn’t suggest that our work is constantly exposing us to crazies? What about that guy who kept sending me letters that I’d soon be roasting in hell?”

  “He was locked up in prison.”

  “For stalking another scientist with a gun in his backpack,” I shot back. “Did we stop our research after that?”

  Adam took a step away and heaved a great sigh. “You’re right. I’m an asshole.”

  “Ha! I thought that was my job.” I came up to him and took hold of his hand. “What is it, love? This isn’t like you.”

  “I’m fucking scared, is what. Scared that I can’t protect you or the little Monkey. It’s bad enough that a lunatic’s going to be running this country now. But you at personal risk? Man, I can’t stand it.”

  “I know,” I said. And I did. No one I knew had yet found a way to tolerate the election results. I wasn’t the only one who’d complained of feeling gut punched. Engineering the movement of human beings from one place to another through Dreamization sounded like a piece of cake compared to the challenge of weathering four years listening to a man captive to a particularly toxic void. I knew from firsthand experience that a human can tolerate only a certain degree of emptiness before erupting.

  There was even a citizen’s initiative for our state to secede. People were bandying about the phrase, “The United State of California,” despite it having about as much of a chance as the proverbial snowball in hell.

  The organizers had changed the title from parade to march to emphasize the seriousness of the situation. They’d suggested that people forgo the gaudy costumes associated with the Pride Parade, along with the disco and trance music, and had urged everyone to exchange any hint of nudity for mourning attire. I’d actually dragged out the black Sacha Drake dress that I’d worn to Nana’s funeral, though I could barely pull it over my milk-engorged breasts and still pooched out belly. I knew that vanity should be the last thing I should be thinking about right now, but I hated how I looked in it. Shakespeare may never have actually penned the truism, “Vanity, thy name is woman”—Hamlet’s lament actually referring to “frailty”—but it tended to be true, nonetheless. Which was why I was at least partly relieved when Sammie called at 10 p.m. to say she doubted she’d be well enough to get out of bed the next day. “It’s either the stomach flu or food poisoning. It’s amazing I got far enough from the loo to find my cell to call you.”

  “Sweetie, I’m so sorry. Sounds pretty bad.”

&nbs
p; “Can’t keep a thing down. And it burns! I actually had prawn vindaloo for lunch. Terrible timing.”

  I could only imagine how that was going down. Or coming up. Ear to cell phone, I’d just entered the kitchen for a late night snack. My appetite vanished.

  “Can I do anything?”

  “Just kill me.”

  “Not likely,” I replied. “Is Aadita coming over?”

  “Already here,” she said, then screamed, “Mum!” and hung up abruptly, presumably to hasten to the toilet.

  Thank God for mothers, I thought, turning to head back upstairs to tell Adam I wouldn’t be going after all. Talk about relief—I knew he’d be thrilled. And truth be told, I relished the thought of a lazy day with him and Callay.

  But my cell phone was ringing again. I checked Caller ID. It was Stanley. I tried heading him off at the pass. “Don’t worry, I’m not going.”

  He laughed a little weakly. “Gwennie said I was wrong to try to stop you. She said somebody’s got to stand up for our rights. Obviously hinting that it should be yours truly.”

  I hated getting in the middle of their brother-sister spats. “Give her my love, will you? I’ll try to make a quick run to your place tomorrow, maybe late afternoon? Dhani baked Gwen the most amazing cinnamon buns.”

  “She’ll kill you. Says she’s gone straight from being chemo-induced anorexic to obese.”

  “Well, that’s a lie.”

  “I know,” Stanley replied with a happy chuckle. As much as I adored Gwen, I was well aware that for Stanley she was the sun and the moon, though he’d never tell her that himself. I knew how thrilled he was that she seemed to be beating her disease. We were all incredibly grateful. As if in agreement, my milk came down with an insistent, ballooning warmth.