Return of the Butterfly

by Sharon Heath

  Stanley nodded in acknowledgment, but didn’t allow himself to get distracted. “I do remember,” he said, sitting forward now. “Bempton Cliffs. You nearly fell off that wooden pier in your enthusiasm. I had to grab you before you went down.”

  “That’s right!” she exclaimed. “How could I have forgotten? It was at that moment that I decided you were the best brother ever. And you have been.”

  Stanley flushed, muttering, “I don’t know about that.” He sighed. “It’s not all gloom and doom, you know. Our Fleur is going to turn things around. I don’t know if it’ll save the puffins, but it should make a hell of a difference for a lot of species. Definitely our own.”

  Gwen turned her reddened child eyes towards me. No pressure, I thought. But that voice in my head seemed to take great delight in piggybacking on Stanley’s sentiments.

  Hurry, hurry, hurry.

  Sanctus

  The children of the world didn’t even know what was hitting them. Tender of heart and organ, immune system and skin, they were the most vulnerable of their species to diseases made worse by toxins in the air, water, and soil. The little ones were increasingly suffering from allergies and asthma, mosquito-borne illnesses, extreme heat stress, poor nutrition, dehydration, childhood cancers, autism, hyperactivity, social anxiety and isolation. They were the least able to weather the impact of more and more wars, persecution, and conflict emanating from scarcity of resources and weather disasters.

  Their parents, teachers, doctors, and governments claimed to love them more than themselves, but how many of those adults were actually demonstrating that love in ways that would make a difference? Would the children have a viable future? For how long? Would they live long enough to give birth to their own babies, to nourish their bodies and brains and hearts and make them safe to continue on?

  The ennui of this world was impacting them powerfully. Resorting to the seductions of disembodied technologies; sarcasm; cynicism; and precocious, impersonal sex. Distracting themselves in screens and hyperactivity; avoiding emotional intimacy; cutting themselves; bullying and shooting each other; slamming their nervous systems with music full of hard rhythms and harsher lyrics; resorting to opiates and marijuana, alcohol and vapes; dulling themselves—as their grownups did—in dread of what was to come.

  The World Soul cried out like the Mama Lion she was to whoever would actually listen: Hurry up now! You really must hurry! For the sake of the children, there’s so little time!

  Chapter Twenty-one

  LITTLE DID I know that my sense of pressure was going to increase exponentially in the coming months, but not in the way I might have imagined. Talk about good things coming of seeming bad via the butterfly effect, I marked it all down to porn—or at least the way that grappling with it turned my love with Adam into a fire-tried stone.

  The timing was crazy. Dreamization had reached the all-hands-on-deck stage.

  Richard Feynman had emphasized that the central mystery of quantum mechanics was that everything in the universe had the nature of both a particle and a wave. Or, as philosophers have put it since Parmenides, life was made up of both being and becoming. The formidable task of Dreamization was to subject a particle to disappearance into a wave and reappearance from it, not just in the same place, but somewhere else via a wave activation mechanism we were working on and what I’d come to call the fractalized activation of C-Voids by spraying a light but potent mist made up of dead butterfly enzymes into a living creature’s nose.

  The process, as might have been anticipated, had taken much longer than we’d wished. As we prepared for our first test with a live mammal, we kept butting up against Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which summarized the impossibility of simultaneously knowing the exact position and speed of an object, precisely because of Feynman’s Central Mystery. Since waves are disturbances in space, how could we assign a wavelength’s specific position? But we were closing in on our goal. Thanks to the mathematical brilliance of both Tom and Amir, we’d worked out some provisional formulas using what we’d been able to observe with our tardigrades, but it was quite possible that the dog we’d selected for our first trial, and even the one we’d chosen for its follow up, would be sacrificed on the altar of science. I didn’t like to think about it and had, in fact, spent many a sleepless night over it, but I knew I had to be prepared. There was a ruthlessness to science that mimicked that of Mother Nature herself.

  It didn’t help that the dogs were hopelessly adorable. Dog number one was a three-year-old beagle we’d obtained from UCLA’s Semel Institute after they’d finished their narcolepsy studies on him. Given what humans had already put him through, he was a surprisingly resilient and happy guy, wagging his tail at the approach of anyone willing to scratch his ears or give him a full out hug. Katrina conjectured that he was so delighted to be able to stay awake, he’d developed a degree of gratitude unusual even for a canine. We nicknamed him Good Time Charlie, as he kept breaking out of his confines and roaming our lab rooms until we’d find him blissed out beside a trash can, Krispy Kreme wrappers at his feet. The wrappers themselves looked half-eaten, as if the sugar buzz was so good, he’d be happy to chow down on wax paper if it afforded yet another taste of glazed cruller crumbs. I knew the feeling well.

  Number two was initially a bit more reserved, but ultimately a very enthusiastic, red-haired terrier with the most plaintive eyes on the planet. He’d take awhile to warm up to you, but once he did, his rump would get going with a zeal that rivaled Miley Cyrus at the VMA Awards. It was Tom’s idea to call him Hot Sauce.

  Two things helped me in summoning my resolve.

  The first was a conversation I had with Gwen in her backyard about her intention to attend an upcoming demonstration by local members of C the Big Picture against plans to build the West Coast’s largest oil refinery in Carson. I think we were all amazed by the strength and determination Gwennie had regained since her illness, but it worried me awfully that she’d be trampled if counter-demonstrating Cacklers created trouble, especially since she’d recently suffered a serious bout of arthritis, perhaps as a belated side effect from her treatment, and would have to march with a cane.

  “Oh, pish. These marches are pretty mellow. It’s not like the old days when the LAPD just loved to bash demonstrators on the head. Even white ones,” she added, presumably for emphasis.

  I felt annoyed. “Yes, but it can’t be good for you. How long is the walk?”

  “Stop fussing. It’s really not that far, and all I’ve got is a little garden variety arthritis. Frankly, my dear, I’d much rather creak than croak.”

  I had a hunch that it was important to her to prove to herself her hardiness after this latest physical insult, but I found myself saying anyway, “Why not let the young people do the demonstrating?”

  “Listen, love. I learned something when I thought my death was imminent. I know it sounds counterintuitive, but I think the threat of climate extinction is actually worse in a way for the old. It shouldn’t be. We’re not the ones who’ll suffer the worst of it. Not by a long shot. But our awareness of our own mortality makes the possible loss of all this simply intolerable.” She swept the hand not leaning on her cane past the espaliered pomegranate hedge at our side, its orange-red blossoms posing sensuously in the light of the midday sun. “When your time is up, you need to know that this miracle will continue on. To think of our fellow humans never again experiencing the sheer lushness of life, the wild inventiveness of nature? There’s no way to bear it. So this creaky old lady has no choice. I’m marching. Or at least hobbling.”

  Marching wasn’t exactly what I was doing when I entered CVS a few days later, hesitantly sidling like a shamed teenager toward the bottommost shelf along the “Feminine Products” aisle. I hadn’t said a thing to anyone and had barely been able to admit it to myself, but my period was late. I’d tried convincing myself that it was the stress over our upcoming Dreamization trial, but after multiple sleepless nights I knew I had to put my won
dering to rest.

  That night, I felt a pang while putting Callay to bed. She was only twenty-three-months-old and was already having to suffer the irritabilities and absences of a working mother with a passion for something else besides her adorable little girl.

  When I came out of her room, I could hear Adam and Makeda and Melky and Sally laughing uproariously downstairs. My heart beat quickly as I descended the staircase, the chandelier overhead casting spooky shadows before me with each step. Arriving at the kitchen, I saw Makeda standing at the counter, a glass of imported Mirinda orange soda in her hand. Now that she’d succeeded in getting pregnant, she was going by the book; I knew she’d be devastated if she lost this baby. The rest of the crew was drinking Cabernet Sauvignon; I could tell what it was by the purplish stain on Adam’s lips, which only that one particular wine seemed to leave. He broke into a broad grin when he saw me and stood up. “Let me pour you a glass, hon.”

  Without thinking, I put up a hand. “No, I can’t!”

  “Why not?”

  I sensed everyone staring at me. This wasn’t going at all how I’d planned it. And still, they all stared. Sensing that any attempt at obfuscation would be doomed, I blurted out like a kindergartner, “Because I’ve got a bun in the oven.”

  Makeda and Melky looked confused, presumably unfamiliar with the idiom.

  But Sally knew it quite well. She squealed with delight and rose to wrap her arms around me. “Congratulations!” She translated for our Ethiopian contingent, “Callay’s going to have a baby brother or sister!”

  Makeda clapped her hands together with glee. “Oh goody!” She turned to Melky. “Our baby already has his first best friend.”

  Adam, needless to say, was speechless. I was mortified.

  Somehow we managed to get through the next half hour without a major argument. But as soon as we closed the bedroom door behind us, Adam spat through thinned lips, “How could you?”

  “I didn’t get pregnant on purpose.”

  He brushed my words aside. “Of course, you didn’t. But that’s no way to tell a man he’s going to have a child.”

  I burst into tears.

  But Adam didn’t budge. “That won’t do, Fleur. I need to know: what were you thinking?”

  I shrugged haplessly. “I obviously wasn’t. Thinking, I mean. I really don’t know ... oh, Adam, I’m so sorry. Everyone was looking at me, and I’d just found out, and the timing is wretched, and I feel so irresponsible. We’d never even discussed whether we wanted more children. And I couldn’t possibly have another abortion. But how will we ever manage? And what if there’s no viable planet for any child, let alone ours?” I paused, flushing. “It must have been that night. Remember? I was right in the middle of changing from Yasmin to Junel.”

  Despite his anger, a slight grin teased at the corners of Adam’s lips. We’d had many a laugh over the years at the nutty names that pharmaceutical companies gave their drugs, including the newer class of contraceptive pills. But he clearly wasn’t going to let me off the hook so easily. “Look, you hardly created this kid by yourself, but I still can’t believe you didn’t take the trouble to tell me in private.”

  I came across to him, unbearably humbled. “I can’t either, my love. I won’t blame it on my hormones. I’m an asshole.”

  He grabbed me then and pulled me to him, muttering into my ear. “Yes, you are. But my God, this has to be the best news ever.”

  I looked up at him through wet eyes. “It is?” Then, like an idiot, “Do you really mean it?”

  “I do,” he said, his chin bonking into my head as he spoke. He pulled me onto the bed with him and faced me, looking sweetly comical with his wine lipstick. “Our family is growing, Fleur. The fact that Callay won’t be alone in the world when we’re gone makes me happier than you can imagine.” The thought of us being gone wasn’t exactly what I wanted to be thinking about, but of course he was right.

  It was a great relief that Adam slid so easily into the upending of our lives, since the baby was going to come much sooner than he might have expected. I’d been in such denial that we ended up at our OB’s office the following week for our first ultrasound.

  Thank God, everything looked good so far. The baby—and I was well aware that some people I knew would still choose to call it a fetus—was a tiny thing. Dr. Abalooni intoned, as if it had never occurred to him before, “I’ve never quite gotten over the fact that the smallest cell in a human body manages to create life with the largest cell in another one.” Adam and I stared at him. He actually flushed. “The sperm and the egg.”

  “Ah,” replied Adam kindly. “I don’t think I knew that.”

  As Dr. Abalooni gently pressed his magic wand, AKA transducer, across my gelled-up belly, Adam exclaimed in awe, as if he’d never been through this ritual before, “Imagine. That little Sweet Pea already has fully developed fingers and toes. And ears where they should be.”

  I threw him a smile from my exposed position. “Sweet Pea. What a wonderful nickname. I like it.”

  Adam asked the doctor when we could determine our baby’s gender. Told it might be as soon as four weeks from now, he murmured, “What if this kiddo turns out to be a Popeye, rather than a Sweet Pea?” I felt a frisson of anxiety and couldn’t wait for the doctor to leave the room.

  I let Adam help me up down from the examining table, and I accepted my bra and panties from him. Hooking up the bra strap beneath my somewhat saggy breasts, I frowned. “Do you have a preference? I know some men really want a son. But it could be another girl, you know.”

  He paused and seemed to consider my question seriously. “I’m not that guy, Fleur. I can see pluses either way, especially for Callay; having a little sister would allow her to share”—he laughed—“or fight over, her girly stuff. Whereas a little brother could be a real treat to boss around. Can’t you just see our feisty little Monkey glorying over that?” I had to admit that I could. “I would have loved to have a sister to look up to. But I’d imagine that same-sex siblings experience a completely different level of bonding. What about you? Do you secretly hanker for a boy? Or another girl?”

  I realized at that moment that I didn’t care if this budding little human would be athletic or brainy, ugly or beautiful, tall or short, fair-haired or dark, male or female. It was the soul of our child I was already listening for and imagining. The rest was incidental. I just wanted our child to be healthy enough to have a good life and a thriving planet to flourish on.

  We never know how—or if— we will ever resolve our internal conflicts. Sometimes we end up resigned to living with them until, as Nana used to say, the cows came home. But sometimes something out of the blue flicks the cows’ tangled tails in just the right way to make the seemingly immovable bovines budge. I stifled the temptation to phone Cesar right there and then to offer him an apology. Who cared if he liked sliding from male to female and back again?

  Instead, as soon as Adam and I arrived home from the ultrasound, we called out to whoever might be home to come and see the first shiny photo of our Sweet Pea, with the little darling’s proportionally outsized head resembling nearly every movie alien and its diminutive feet flung upward as if on a swing. As it happens, all but Makeda and Callay were out, though Makeda did a pretty good imitation of a crowd when she came running, Callay in tow, marveling at our baby’s ultrasound image with a hand on her own slightly pooched belly. We all settled in the kitchen, where she oohed and ahhed and Callay fiddled on the floor with a nursery rhyme puzzle that actually played the appropriate songs when you pulled the illustrated pieces off the wooden board. Adam stood at the counter composing a list for a Whole Foods run. We tried showing our Monkey the admittedly blurry photo of our family’s new baby, but she seemed unable to get the concept, commenting briefly on her new sibling’s contours, “That what Caycay wear for Hoween?”

  While Adam did his duty at the market, Makeda and I took Monkey outside to play on her swing. We spoke a bit about the three-bedroom townhouse t
hat she and Melky had found less than a mile away on Los Robles Avenue. I think we both felt that the invisible umbilicus between us didn’t want to stretch too far. I was truly excited for them, but couldn’t deny my sadness that we wouldn’t have many more easy moments like this one; they would have to be planned.

  I said as much to her. “I know,” she replied, putting a hand on my shoulder and pulling me closer to her on the Lutyens bench where we sat. We both heard a rustling in the jasmine hedge behind us and turned as one. I was half expecting to see a bobcat emerge, but that wild friend would never make such a mistake in the light of day.

  “I hope it wasn’t a possum,” Makeda said.

  “Or a rat!” I shivered.

  Instead, we saw a twitch of gray ears, and Bobby the Bunny emerged, hopping tentatively toward us. The rabbit, possibly an escapee from some family’s home after one of those impulsively dumb acts of Easter gift giving, had been appearing here for about a month, undoubtedly drawn by the baby carrots and parsley that Sister F. insisted on leaving out for him, along with a small stainless steel bowl of water. Bobby had fattened over that period to the point when I didn’t panic for him when Callay ran towards him, which of course she liked to do. Makeda rose up to fetch some parsley from the house and handed the bunch to my girl. Callay set it down on the dymondia, and Bobby hastened toward it, stopping to make sure the coast was clear, then grabbed some in his mouth and ran toward the bush. Callay clapped her hands. “He yikes it, Moomah!”

  “He certainly does, my love. If he is a he. We don’t actually know if Bobby is a boy or a girl.” She looked puzzled, but for once didn’t favor us with one of her eternal “whys.” Instead, she stood, arms akimbo, and watched, fascinated, as he chomped away at his parsley.

  Makeda laughed. “Perhaps little Bobby is actually Babette!” Callay did respond to that one. “Babbit the Wabbit.” We chuckled. Shel Silverstein would be proud.