Return of the Butterfly

by Sharon Heath

  That old familiar place sucked me in and hugged me close to it, as if it had been longing for me ever since, waiting for the right moment. It claimed me now.

  I could not watch the internment of Mother’s casket directly, but registered it hazily through lowered lashes, much as I registered my baby’s presence in Makeda’s arms. I could not look at Callay. Nothing in me wanted to. My eyes were Medusa’s. I dare not direct them at my child.

  Instead, I headed downward into an inner landscape, assaying the upside-down tree that presented itself, inviting me into what lay below. I navigated painfully between gritty, bistre roots that grabbed my toes and scratched my soles. Jagged branches tore out patches of my hair. I didn’t care that the way down was murky and long. It was, after all, the only direction available to me. This tree must be ancient, like the sequoia I’d once seen on a visit to Tulare’s Giant Forest with Sammie and Jacob, one side of its impossibly broad trunk seared to blackness by a voracious wildfire. Circling it, we’d found a plaque proclaiming it to be the oldest known living thing in North America.

  This particular tree wasn’t anything like that, nor like the bulbous baobabs I’d spied on the road from Addis Ababa to Gondar. It bore no resemblance to the mythic Hindu Ashvattha or the Kabbalistic tree rooted in the stars. No, this one had a trunk that was rooted in nothing. I wasn’t even sure that it was alive. No bark crab spiders on it, nor green lacewings, nor carpenter ants, nor tree cattle spreading their luminous webs.

  I worked myself down without a thought for where I was heading, at times slithering and sliding against an oozy moss that emitted a smell that was vaguely familiar, not unlike the cave scent that clung to Nana’s ancient, tattered bathrobe back in the old days. My descent concluded gracelessly, as the tree came to a cabbagy end a few feet from what passed for ground. I landed with a kind of bounce, rump first, brushing my butt as I rose to look around.

  I seemed to be surrounded by an impenetrable fog, and I struggled to descry details, close or far, to no avail. I knew there were others down here, sensed shapes nearly touching me as I wandered blindly, but for the life of me I could not make them out. Until, that is, a familiar hand took mine in his. I loosened free and traced the old familiar whorls and callouses with my fingers. “Grandfather!” I cried. Again, his hand. Even here, wherever here was, he was mute. I dared not allow my hands to seek his wrists, elbows, shoulders, and face. I feared that he existed here only as a pair of hands.

  And speaking of hands, the next thing I experienced was a familiar Mack truck grip, but when I felt around me there was nothing to touch. Nana here—at least in energy—too? What was this place?

  But then I managed to make out a rickety sign, set at an angle into the sponginess underfoot. I dropped to my knees and crawled toward it. It was so withered and its recessed lettering so tiny that the letters looked as if they’d been carved by the tip of a skewer. I forced my way through the thick soup that passed for air and eventually came close enough that I could squint out the words: “Here sits the King of the Crying Babies.”

  Sure enough, my ears picked up sounds so faint they might have been the birth mews of kittens. The mist began to part a bit, only in patches, but enough to reveal a man seated upon a gilded throne whose base seemed to rest on thin air. He wore a crown that bled onto his forehead from its jeweled tips, and with a tightly set jaw he surveyed what to me was still a vast grayness, his beady eyes looking haunted and lost. And eerily unblinking. I wanted to flee. If only I could again find the tree that I’d managed to climb down. The last person I ever wanted to see again was Father.

  I turned back, but there was no tree, no hints of fallen twigs or shriveled leaves in sight. There was nothing for it but to approach the king of this Hades. But the closer I got, the younger he became, until a mere infant lay naked on that high throne. He was squealing and looked utterly bereft and helpless.

  What could I do but leap with all my might to grab hold of one of the legs of that throne and assay it arduously, hauling myself up to finally gain purchase on that vast seat, managing to settle my butt onto it and hold the baby in my arms? I looked into his eyes. They were dark and luminous and conveyed a literally wide-eyed hope and promise.

  Everything in me melted. “What happened to you?” I whispered, stroking his smooth forehead. His skin was so soft! But in the next moment, it was a baby girl I held, her skin a deep olive and her round eyes Hector Hernandez’s, which also failed to blink. It didn’t take a quantum physicist to conclude that this was Baby X, the fetus I’d aborted, the soul whose adventure I’d cut short in order to have my own. What happens to us all? I asked. Was life nothing but a nearly interminable dance of dashed innocence?

  I caught the sweet odor of faded petals and looked around. Wafting close to my hand, rootless, was Mother’s Anne Boleyn rose bush that had succumbed half a lifetime ago to root rot. And then I felt something sleek and familiar caress my ankle; my breath caught in my throat as I looked down to see Jillily’s question mark tail. I reached the unavoidable conclusion that I’d fallen into the hole in my heart. But someone was missing. My pulse quickened, and the atmosphere became one of increasing impatience. There was movement all around me.

  By the time Mother arrived, I’d been mysteriously persuaded to sit with the others, now fully visible, around a campfire that managed to give off no heat at all. If this was hell, it was one that had frozen over. I was shivering like crazy and felt worried for Mother. She arrived naked, her breasts no longer sagging and her eyes open wide.

  “No!” I cried without sound. “I don’t want you here! Go up! Go back up! I need you there!”

  She gave me a look of infinite compassion. “You can do this. You are strong.”

  “No! I thought we’d settled it. I need you up there worrying about me!”

  “I can’t go back. It’s against the rules.” She looked over at Grandfather, as if for verification. He nodded, a slow tear descending a cheek that I noted was plumper than when I’d last seen him. How was it that he’d grown hardier after death, while Anne Boleyn was again thriving? Could there be healing on the other side?

  I crossed my arms in grim defiance. “I won’t leave here. I’m staying.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not possible. You can’t cut short your destiny. It will be yours, my darling. You will have earned it. As I’ve earned mine.” And there she was, a naked infant now, falling into her father’s arms. She radiated a kind of ecstasy, as did he.

  How could I deprive them of that?

  My eyes strayed over to my own father, now standing nearby. He was a grown man again. He took a hesitant step toward me. Could I even allow it? He seemed to want something from me. I sensed he would suffer forever, in a kind of limbo, unless I responded in some way.

  I looked again at Grandfather, cradling his baby daughter. I felt ashamed. I didn’t want any of this, but it seemed to be my new reality. Who was I to judge reality, even in this purgatory?

  I allowed myself to stand and directly face my father. Our eyes locked for what felt like an eternity, mine blinking from time to time, his not. Something in his expression conveyed gratitude, as if it were a rarity for him to be seen. And then, of all things, he winked. It wasn’t a complicit wink or a suggestive one, but the kind a magician might give when he was about to perform one of his more baffling tricks. And sure enough, he bent his knees and jumped. High. Very high. In point of fact, he jumped so far he took flight. But he was Father no more. Instead, he’d transformed into a beautiful black butterfly with bright yellow spots, its hind wings bearing the black swallow tail’s signature large orange circles with black spots inside.

  It swept in graceful arcs before me in a series of interesting patterns. So interesting that I couldn’t help but follow as it flew off, leaving behind Grandfather and Anne Boleyn and Baby X and Nana and even Mother. With each step, my foot was greeted by a stepping stone made of some sort of shimmery, springy sponge. The pathway I followed formed a roundabout design of its own un
til I stood at the entrance to a cave. I could have sworn that I’d seen the butterfly disappear inside, and yet as I stepped forward to follow it, I heard a voice warning, “Don’t come any closer.” It wasn’t Father’s voice. If I hadn’t disabused myself of religious belief decades ago, I might have guessed it was the voice of God. It had the energetic force of an invisible giant hand barring access to the cave. And then the butterfly emerged, faltering, its wings becoming increasingly wavery. I’d seen that in butterflies before when they were about to fall to the ground, their wings flattened together in dying as if in prayer. Every time, I’d had to turn away. But this butterfly, this Father-butterfly, dissolved in midair with a bright and startling spark. In the next instant—defying logic—it reappeared off in the distance, winging strongly again. I thought I heard laughter as it flew away. I felt there was a message here, but I had no idea what it might be.

  I turned back, but the stepping stones had disappeared, and in their place, rooted this time and right side up, was a tree—but not just any tree. It was the sycamore that Grandfather and I had named, “Our Tree.” Well, to be truthful, it was I who’d named it that, as Grandfather had been mute as long as I knew him. The tree now offered me a low hanging branch, actually bent it toward me, and I hopped on like one of the inevitable birds whose patterns I used to observe. Noting that each branch disappeared as I reached above it, I climbed.

  My sojourn in the hole in my heart hadn’t resolved my grief. If anything, it brought it back up with me in liquid form. Dissolved in tears, I sat in a collapsed posture in the folding chair that had been provided me at the gravesite. Most of the rest of the assembled mourners were moving on to their cars, but I brushed Adam away when he came to collect me. I needed more time here, facing the physical evidence of that earthen-housed casket. I could think no thoughts but what Mother would not be able to do now that she had died. Here were but a few of the things she would not do:

  1. She would not see me introduce my daughter to the Austins.

  2. She would not read to her I Can’t, Said the Ant; Go, Dog, Go; or Goodnight Moon.

  3. She would not spoon into Callay’s little mouth her first bite of applesauce.

  4. She would not watch her pedal her first tricycle and bicycle.

  5. She would not run to bring a Band-Aid when she fell off and skinned her knee.

  Mother had done none of those things for me. But it was all going to be redeemed, made much better when I watched her do them with my little girl.

  That’s how it was supposed to be. But now she would not discuss with me the progress of my child’s potty training, suggest seasonings for pureed food, thrill with me over her first steps, nor comfort me on Monkey’s first day of school. She would not babysit when Adam and I were desperate for a night out, would not give me advice when he and I quarreled, would not despair with me over my daughter’s choices in clothes. She would not sit at our table for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Would not bend over me and plant a kiss on the top of my head, sweetening the air with her Chanel No. 5. She would not show me what it was like to grow old with grace or even do so with constant complaint. Would not give me a chance to ferry her around in a wheelchair, or spoon feed her when it came time for pureed food.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that the crowd heading back toward their cars had stopped, making an interesting, Anthemium-like pattern on the gravestone-dotted lawn. No one had seemed to notice that I’d ascended back to ground level. Or had descended before then, for that matter. What all seemed to see right now, since it was so unusual in Los Angeles, was a murmuration of starlings above Forest Lawn Memorial Park. The birds swept as one organism, making intricate patterns beneath the clouds in a dazzling rush of whirring wings.

  I knew something about starlings. Adam’s education of me had been thorough in more ways than one. I knew that they maintain their glorious cohesion by each keeping its eyes on seven of its flock. I asked myself now, "Who are your seven?" Did they change from situation to situation, phase of life to phase of life? And is our human number seven, or seventeen, or even more? Mother had most certainly been one of mine. Even in our worst days, her whereabouts served as a kind of fulcrum for my own movements in time. Was that why I felt certain now that nothing would ever again hold meaning—no sense of a magical harmony of the universe, of the soul of the earth and her sky?

  As if on cue, I saw one shape break away from the people on the faraway lawn who continued to stand still as statues, staring up at the sky, starling-struck. As he approached me, I wanted to cover myself, let myself be sucked back again into the Stygian murk below. But instead, I watched Assefa navigate gracefully between the headstones until he stood right in front of me. I had to shield my eyes from the brilliance of the sun to look up to him. He wasn’t a tall man, but I was seated. Fallen. The fact was, he did seem larger. Just days ago, I’d learned from someone, probably Mother herself, that Lemlem was three months pregnant. Already, Assefa had the posture of a man whose seed had made its mark.

  But his whispered voice caused me to straighten myself, too, in order to hear him. “Dukula.” It came to me as if from an ancient tunnel.

  I sucked in my breath. “Why are you here?”

  “To pay my respects.”

  I barked, “Respects? Who do you respect?”

  “Your mother.” He paused, then his voice turned painfully tender. “You.”

  “Me?” I gestured vaguely toward my chest. I knew I was a total mess. I’d barely brushed my hair or teeth before Adam had tugged me out the door.

  “Yes, you.”

  Old feelings stirred within my void, anger leading the charge. “You didn’t exactly treat me with respect back ... then.”

  He took a step away from me, as if struck, clearly struggling with the impulse to defend himself. What an asshole I was.

  “I may not have treated you with the respect you deserved, but that was not about you. It was about me. You were the purest being I ever knew.”

  At that, I started to laugh. I laughed and laughed until I realized I was on the verge of hysteria. My anger whipped me back into shape. “If you respected me, then ... did you love me? Was anything that happened between us real?”

  His chest heaved visibly. “No. I didn’t love you. It is not past tense. I do love you. Will love you.”

  “Even with Lemlem pregnant with your baby?”

  “You know as well as I do that the heart has room for many loves.”

  “I suppose I do.” I looked up. The birds were gone. “I wanted to have your baby.”

  He said nothing for a moment, but his eye tic gave him away. Finally, “Yes, that child would have been extraordinary. But you have your own little girl.”

  He lost me then. What he said felt like a concept. I couldn’t go near Callay. If I went near her, I would want my mother with us, and that could never be. I no longer felt like a mother. Had no desire for my child. I knew I never would.

  Of course, our seven never really disappear from view, though we may blind ourselves to them from time to time. Ultimately, my lostness would be relieved by a woman with a powerful inner compass. Someone who knew that “bébés” were, in the final analysis, the ones who truly mattered.

  But that time had not yet come. When we returned home, Adam deposited me on the living room sofa and went upstairs with Makeda and Melky, presumably to tend to Callay. The house felt too quiet, but for the grandfather clock in the den that marked its seconds way too loudly. Nothing was as before. Buster padded over from his bed beside the fireplace and leapt onto my lap, kneading my thighs with racketing purrs, but I felt none of the glow that usually spread across my body at the sound of him, the smell of him, his touch. My mind wandered back to that Hades where I’d encountered Grandfather, Father, Nana, Jillily, Anne Boleyn, Baby X. And Mother. I pushed Buster off me and he landed with an offended grunt. I lay down on my side, counting his rhythmic lickings of his backside, until I heard the ker-klonk ker-klonk of Adam descending the staircase.
His bad leg must be hurting; the variance in sound between the two feet was more marked than usual.

  He brushed my hair away from my face and tucked it behind my ear. His breath on my cheek made me feel ticklish, but I couldn’t be bothered to wipe away the sensation.

  “Fleur, love. I’m sorry, I know this is hard, but Gwen is heartbroken that she doesn’t feel strong enough to come over. We really should get over there. It would be such a kindness to her, if you possibly can.”

  I stared at him blankly, then allowed myself a weary nod.

  “Good.” He patted my thigh. “I’ll just take a tick to have a shower. Callay had a runny poop and I feel like I still smell of it.” I labored up the stairs behind him, oddly determined to fetch my purse. I saw him watch expectantly as we passed our child’s bedroom, but I didn’t stop to look in on her. My purse in my lap, I sat on our bed, registering without emotion the sounds coming from the bathroom, Adam’s ugly sobs competing with jets of water hitting the shower floor. After he’d emerged, fully dressed and face flushed, I allowed myself to be pulled along, like a rag doll, out to the car.

  I felt a flicker of anxiety when Gwen and Stanley stood at their gaping front door. Gwennie looked way too pale for someone who’d supposedly beat cancer. But her grip on my arm was strong, nearly as intense as Nana’s back in the day. “Oh, darling Fleur, it should have been me. It was supposed to be me.” I knew she was wrong. There are no such trades in this life, not when the Fates are out for blood.

  Adam and I sat on two chairs facing her and Stanley on the sofa. She’d pulled her legs under her, and a decidedly distracted-looking Stanley tucked a blanket around her shoulders.