Bite of the Butterfly

“What would you do . . . if I told you I hate you?

“What would you do . . . if I cut you into little pieces?”

Principal Magnussen stopped, peering over the ragged edge of a pink piece of writing paper he held in his hand. He began drumming his left hand fingers on his worn walnut desk. Behind him hovered a wall full of degrees, accolades, and shelves crammed with books. A large banner hung above the room’s only window: Garfield Elementary—A 2007 New Mexico Distinguished School. Magnussen wore a damp, white shirt, his suit jacket hung over the back of his chair, the knot of his tie having slipped a little. He regarded Mr. and Mrs. Brown with cool, blue eyes as they sat before him in his utilitarian guest chairs. Mrs. Brown shuffled her hands in the folds of her yellow sundress while staring at his fingers. She had her hair pulled back into a bun this morning. Her puffy cheeks were the only distinguishing features on an otherwise plain countenance that people instantly forget once she left a room. Mr. Brown’s temple twitched with internal tension as he flexed his, corded, hairy arms over his chest. He had a slightly receding hairline that he tried to disguise with long, dark hair strategically combed across the trouble spots. He wore a plaid work shirt, double-stitched jeans and steel-toed Dickey work boots.

Magnussen said, “In light of the incident last week, I felt it imperative that I bring the contents of your daughter’s disturbing poem to your attention.”

Mr. Brown chewed the inside of his cheek. The light, innocent patter of children playing outside could be heard from beyond Magnussen’s window.

“Shall I read more?” Magnussen asked.

Mrs. Brown said, “No, no need to read more. Georgia’s . . . well, she’s artistic and you know how those types can be. She’s just kind of her own person being an only child and all. I’m sure she’ll grow out of this; it’s just a phase. We’ll talk to her.”

Magnussen noticed that she peered over to Mr. Brown as she spoke, gauging his reaction. “I’d like your permission to have a psychologist who works with the school from time to time interview Georgia,” Magnussen said.

Mr. Brown jumped in. “No. You can’t subject my little girl to a shrink. She’s just acting out like kids do. She’s only ten for crissakes. She won’t understand. She’ll freak out.” He leaned forward, palms planted on knees, elbows jutted out—a coiled spring.

“I have the right to suspend her from school if I think she needs treatment and isn’t getting it. For the safety of the other children, you understand,” Magnussen said.

“There’s no way I’m going to let you and your cronies screw with my little girl’s head. You can’t force her to see a doctor against my will. It’s just a damn poem. Has she threatened anyone?—No. Has she hurt anyone?—No,” Mr. Brown said.

Magnussen scooted forward as much as he could, meeting the threat of Mr. Brown head-on. “There’s the matter of the boy who alleges that Georgia burned his shoes.”

“You got proof?” Mr. Brown asked.

Magnussen frowned. He didn’t, the burned shoe remains had disappeared. But he clearly remembered the queer look on Georgia’s face and her flat voice when he had confronted her about the burning of the shoes. She never denied doing it; never admitted it either. He recalled that even though she looked innocuous in a white blouse and jeans with pink butterflies sewn onto the pockets, she had held her ground as stubbornly as any army general. Georgia had drilled her accuser with crisp, green eyes that blazed intently from between lengths of straight black hair that had fallen across her face. The boy had balled his fists at his side as he told his side of it but she never blinked or exhibited fear even though he stood half a head taller than and had wide shoulders.

Magnussen said, “No, I do not have physical evidence. Nevertheless, I do have several witnesses. I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist this time. You can make an appointment with your own doctor if you wish, and have him write a note indicating she’s cleared to be in class with other children. Otherwise I’ll have no choice but to continue her suspension until I feel it’s safe to let her back in the classroom.”

“This is a crock! I think I’ll contact someone from the district,” Mr. Brown said, shoving his mass upward from his chair.

Mrs. Brown tugged on his arm. “Now, Ron, don’t get all worked up and make a scene. We can call Dr. Gullstein. You know the psychologist my sister saw when she had that little break? It’ll be O.K., Dr. Gullstein knows us.”

Mr. Brown cocked his head toward her. “Only way I’ll agree to this is if I’m there too. I’m not leaving my little girl alone with any of these head doctors. They’ll twist her words and make her say things, make her sound like a monster.”

“Fine, dear. I’m sure Georgia will feel comforted having her daddy there with her.”

Mr. Brown lowered himself back into the chair, never taking his intense eyes off Magnussen.

Georgia sat on the peach-colored carpet of her bedroom, surrounded by butterfly-patterned wallpaper that absorbed the soft afternoon sunlight shining in through her window. She was studying an illustration she had stolen from a biology book at school and looked up when she heard the faint sound of keys rattling in the front door downstairs. Georgia frowned; she hated it when her parents were home, the house felt different with them in it. They had left her with their batty old neighbor, Mrs. Crabtree, who always sat on her big old butt watching TV shows and only got up pretending to do things when she saw the blue Corolla pull up. It was easy to sneak past fat-assed Crabtree. Heck, she could walk through the living room banging pots and pans and that old hag wouldn’t notice as long as Georgia didn’t interrupt whichever soap opera or talk show was on the TV at the time. Georgia had no trouble getting what she needed from the kitchen this afternoon while Mrs. Crabtree watched As the World Turns.

She heard her momma sending the Mrs. Crabtree home with money and a pie—likely the blueberry pie Georgia had seen on the cooling rack in the kitchen when she had been rummaging around in the drawers. Georgia got ready to deal with what would come next and thought about that stiff, Magnussen. He had no right kicking her out of school because of her poem; he would really pee himself if he read her other poems—they all would. She kept the others hidden in the fake bottom in the dresser of drawers her parents had bought at an estate sale on the north side of Albuquerque a month ago. She had discovered the hiding place when she noticed something white sticking out of a crack in the wood in a place where nothing should have been. She had pulled out the bottom drawer and pried up the plank of wood under it with a butter knife. Inside were dusty old black and white photos of women dressed in weird underwear, some not dressed at all; the corner of one of the photos had been sticking out of the gap.

Georgia placed the stolen biology illustration in the hiding place along with the other special things she had stolen earlier—all on top of the black-and-white women, as she called them. She had left the photos in the hiding place, deciding to keep the prior owner’s secrets. She wondered about the person who had put those photos there. She felt it was a man, probably an older man who had secret desires for the women in those photos. Maybe he was ugly, like the hunchback, and had to stay in his room, and the closest he could get to beautiful women were those photos. Maybe his evil stepmother wouldn’t let him enjoy his life. She probably kept him locked away in an attic bedroom. Maybe he had got the photos one day by escaping through a window, climbing off the roof, hitching a ride into town then buying the photos from some man on a corner in a part of town her momma would never drive through.

Her momma startled her when she called through the closed bedroom door. “Georgia, honey, you awake?”

What a stupid question. Georgia never took naps when people were around. Her momma always blurted out such ridiculous and silly things as if she thought she always had to say something but her mind was too cow-like to come up with anything important. Georgia’s friends all loved their mommas but Georgia thought her momma was like the stepmother who kept the hunchback hidden away. Except her momma wasn’t mean—just stupid and ditzy. All her momma cared about was pleasing everyone else so no one would put too many demands on her. Her momma had secrets too—secrets hidden in the laundry cabinets, secrets hidden in the garage, and Georgia knew about the secret bottle her momma kept suspended in the toilet tank of the upstairs bathroo, where she would often disappear for an hour at a time. No one spends that much time in the bathroom unless they’re doing something they shouldn’t.

“I’m up, come in,” George replied.

Her momma peeked her head in, smiled, then slid all the way in fluttering her hands through the air. She sat lightly on the edge of the bed, smoothing out her dress, then reaching over and rubbing Georgia’s calf, which Georgia pulled it away. Her momma said, “I’m sorry, honey, but you have to go to see Dr. Gullstein before you can go back to school. We’re very lucky he had a cancellation and could squeeze you in. Now, dear, you really need to be on your best behavior. He decides when you can go back to school.”

Georgia could tell her momma had made a quick visit to the upstairs bathroom before coming to her bedroom. She could smell it faintly on her breath. Georgia sighed—this would be easy enough though, she could deal with Dr. Gullstein. And from now on she wouldn’t let anyone see her poems. No one could be trusted, not even her only friend, Janice, who was the one she had given her poem to. Janice must have given it to Mrs. Sampson or the witch had seen it. Either way, Janice was responsible and would have to be punished.

Georgia smiled, putting on her sweetest face. “O.K., Momma. I’ll be good.”

“You really shouldn’t write such awful things, honey—people won’t understand. I, umm, don’t understand. Why can’t you write about flowers, or dolls, or about your hamster, Bear? That’d be nice, don’t you think?”

Her momma really didn’t want her to write about Bear. She would have to describe how Bear had died in a fight with their cat, Jonesy. Georgia had kept Jonesy’s food bowl empty for three days and had kept Jonesy locked up inside the house until she got so hungry she started licking the litterbox. At the end of the third day Georgia put Jonesy on the back deck near where she had tied one of Bear’s legs to a redwood post. She had wanted to see true fear; to see the terror in Bear’s eyes when he knew he was about to die. Georgia had watched in fascination as Jonesy stalked Bear; she could even tell the moment when Bear realized he would die: he went rigid and peed himself. Jonesy pounced, bit into his neck, and flipped him into the air. Bear jerked on the end of the little piece of twine and smacked back onto the deck with a thud.

“Hon?” her momma said, her voice jerking Georgia from her thoughts. “Can we count on, umm, nicer poetry from you in the future?”

Georgia reluctantly let the memory fade. “Yes, Momma. I’ll write about something nice.”

“Oh good! I’m so very glad to hear that. Your father can’t afford to take off work to go to more school meetings. He’s taking time off as it is to go with you to see Dr. Gullstein.”

Of course her daddy would come, she knew he would. She was sure it wasn’t his idea to send her to talk to a psychologist. Not him. He watched over her and doted on her and always told her she was his special little butterfly. He said that butterflies underwent a marvelous awakening from dull and squirmy bugs that no one cared about into graceful and beautiful creatures that everyone regarded with fascination and love. Her daddy protected her from everyone. His little butterfly.

“Your father is very worried about you, hon. He’s beside himself over these school episodes. And so am I. Why must you always be stirring up trouble? Girls shouldn’t cause of trouble,” her momma said.

Georgia bowed her head like she had seen other kids do when they were apologizing for something. “Sorry, Momma. It won’t happen again. Promise.” And it wouldn’t. Georgia came to an important realization: don’t let anyone know how you really feel—that only led to questions she didn’t want to answer. That’s why she was working on other personalities, especially “Good Georgia.” She would start using them at school and around adults. And she would make up more. The only person she couldn’t fool was her daddy because he knew her so intimately. He’d smile at her attempts to hide her mind from him. He would be like Jonesy playing with Bear—no contest for him. He controlled everything, even how much and what she ate for breakfast and dinner. One of the reasons she loved school was that she got to choose her lunch. She had learned how to keep things from him though; he couldn’t be everywhere or see into her head. He didn’t know about her special things. Everyone kept secrets and Georgia had some doozies.

That night at dinner no mention was made of her suspension and her father barely acknowledged her. It was, “pass the corn,” and, “my tomatoes are nearly ready for picking,” and, “we have to stop using Mrs. Crabtree for babysitting—she’s a klepto, every time she’s here something goes missing,” and, “I’ll bet she’s the one that’s been in my tools,” and, “Has anyone seen Jonesy? He’s been gone three days now.”

The next day her momma took Georgia to the dentist for her teeth cleaning. Dr. Sullivan, a happy, fat man with a red bow tie and a walrus mustache, came in and checked her teeth. “Looking mighty fine there, young lady. We’ll get that plaque all scraped off and your smile will be white and beautiful. Shayla will be here in a moment to take care of you.”

Shayla bounded in on cue, all smiles under artificially straightened hair and in a bright white uniform that complimented her smooth, mocha skin. Dr. Sullivan left and Shayla inserted a long silver dental tool into her mouth and scraped a back tooth, “ouwch!” Georgia said, jerking her mouth to one side.

“What’s the matter, darling? Did I stick you?” Shayla asked, surprised.

“My gums hurt, can you use that numbing stuff?”

“Sure.” Shayla unlocked a drawer and extracted a little purple spray bottle of numbing solution. She sprayed Georgia’s gums then placed the bottle on the counter behind her.

Georgia let Shayla finish her top row of teeth before putting a hand on Shayla’s. “Thwat numbing stuff made me thwirsty, can I have owange juice?” Georgia knew they kept it in a little fridge by the bathrooms up front, plus Shayla would take an extra minute to chat with her friend Daniela while there.

Shayla patted her hand. “You hold on tight, I’ll be right back.” She disappeared around the corner.

Georgia hopped out of the dentist chair, unfortunately just as Dr. Sullivan strutted by and spotted her. “Do you have to go to the bathroom, Georgia?”

“Nope, dropped my comb.” She held up her comb as proof after quickly pulling it from her back pocket.

“You’ll need to get back in the chair now, Georgia,” Dr. Sullivan said, waiting to make sure she did.

She hopped in and waved at him over her shoulder but he didn’t leave. She had nearly lost hope when he finally strolled away. She bolted from the chair, reached for the little bottle of numbing fluid, but had to withdraw her hand quickly as Shayla returned with a little rectangular box of OJ in her hand.

Shayla finished cleaning her teeth then led Georgia to the front.

“Wait,” Georgia said, “I left my comb.”

“I’ll fetch it for you, honey,” Shayla said,

But Georgia was already running back to the little room. She darted in, grabbed the numbing fluid, and raced back out, waving her comb in the air for Shayla to see when she got back up front.

Later that afternoon at Dr. Gullstein’s, her daddy hovered and interrupted the doctor constantly: “she doesn’t have to answer that,” and “is that question necessary?” and “will this take much longer?”

Dr. Gullstein had slicked-back, pure white hair and wore a blue jacket and silver-rimmed glasses. He looked like George Clooney’s older, less handsome brother. He sat near Georgia, typing into a laptop. After half an hour of her daddy’s interruptions, Dr. Gullstein lost his temper. “Mr. Brown, there are questions I have to ask if you want me to clear Georgia to go back to school. If you interrupt me further I’m afraid I’ll have to declare her unfit for the classroom and she’ll need to come back for more sessions.”

Georgia noticed that spot in her daddy’s temple throbbing, and wow, she had never seen it pulse like that before. He really should stop fussing; she wasn’t going to say anything he needed to worry about. Nope. Not a word.

When Dr. Gullstein had regained his concentration he got back to work on her. “Georgia, you wrote about hating someone. Tell me about that,” Dr. Gullstein said.

Georgia put on her cute-little-girl face that had just that little bit of angst in the set of her mouth. She’d practiced it this morning in the bathroom mirror. “It’s about my teddy bear, Mogely. He used to be smooth and cuddly but he’s got all these stickers on him from the yard and now he’s all scratchy. I tried to pick out the stickers but some are really stuck and one hurt my finger, so I hate him.” Georgia held up a finger with a red pinprick in it, the pinprick she had put there with a safety pin.

Dr. Gullstein glanced up then back to his laptop. “You wrote about cutting someone into pieces. Can you tell me what made you write that?”

“I didn’t mean it like I wanted to do it. I was just writing what I saw on CSI. It’s a detective show. They found parts of a person in an oil barrel. My parents didn’t know I was awake and watching from the stairs.”

Dr. Gullstein didn’t look up this time. “Did you burn a boy’s shoes at school?”

He slipped that in quick and slick but Georgia had practiced an answer to that too. She decided to use her fake-anger face but first she glanced at her father. He was leaning back now, watching her—his temple had stopped throbbing. He had figured out her plan.

“Jake burned his own shoes and I saw him do it. When I said I’d tell on him he ran off and said I did it. I would have told first but boys are faster than girls and adults always believe who tells first.”

“Why would a boy burn his own shoes?” Dr. Gullstein asked, lowering his glasses as if they were interfering with his ability to understand her.

“He wanted to show off to his friends but I came around the corner and caught him at it.

“Where’d he get matches to burn his shoes?”

“It was a yellow lighter that he snuck into school.” This part was true. Except it was her who had stolen the lighter from the janitor everyone called Bart. Bart smoked on school grounds even though he wasn’t supposed to. It was easy to sneak up behind his cart and filch one of his lighters while he emptied a garbage can. She figured using these details would be more convincing and might fool Dr. Gullstein. Her daddy, on the other hand, was rubbing his whiskers, something he did when he was relaxed and confident.

“The boy, Jake, said you took his shoes out of the gym and lit them on fire in a corner of the playground. Three boys said the same thing, and this is all confirmed by your principal, who interviewed them.”

“Those boys are all friends and they stick up for each other,” Georgia said. She had burned Jake’s shoes because of the way he had twice looked at her during lunch. She knew that look, it was the look a boy got before asking a girl to sit by them, or to kiss behind the storage buildings out back where sixth graders sometimes experimented. She had wanted to send him a strong message to back off.

“Georgia, I want you to draw me a picture.” Dr. Gullstein got up and pulled a box of crayons and paper off a shelf. “Draw your family. You can draw them any way you like.” He placed the items on a small table and motioned for her to come sit. Her daddy leaned forward from his chair, watching intently. His phone beeped twice but he ignored it.

Georgia fought the urge to draw it all—but that would ruin everything. She picked out a red crayon.

When she finished, Dr. Gullstein scrutinized her work. “You drew your mother and yourself in red and your father in blue. Why the different color for him?”

She cast furtive eyes at her daddy, who raised an eyebrow. “Boys like blue,” she said.

“But so do some girls. Why red for you and your mother?” Dr. Gullstein asked.

“My momma and I are hot like red and my daddy is a cool like blue. Boys like blue, and I like red,” she said.

Dr. Gullstein peered at the drawing for a long minute, nodded and seemed to accept this explanation.

“Do you ever think about hurting people?” Dr. Gullstein asked.

“I don’t want to hurt people, I just wanna write poems.” She used her innocent face on him, straining with the effort. It was a good thing these kinds of doctors never touched you, because her palms were sweating and it was hard to breathe. If he touched her, he would know something was up, and she couldn’t let that happen. Dr. Gullstein searched her face for a moment then typed on his laptop. He hit a key and a printer whirred to life in the corner. He went to the printer, took off the paper, signed it and handed it to her daddy. Her daddy read it and then shook Dr. Gullstein’s hand.

That night, at the usual time, her momma came into Georgia’s bedroom to say good night. Her momma’s routine rarely waivered: dinner at 6:30, an hour of TV—usually CSI, at 8 along with a few drinks then take two sleeping pills and finish off her third or sixth vodka and be snoring somewhere in the house by 9:30.

After her momma left, Georgia lay in bed reflecting. She had been watching her daddy for clues at dinner—would it be tonight? She could spot the signs by how he acted at dinner: was he quiet or talkative? Did he look her way often? He hadn’t winked though—he always winked. Still, she felt confident about tonight so she had about fifteen minutes to wait after momma left.

It took seventeen minutes. A knuckly, hairy hand opened her door and in stepped her daddy, smiling as he shut the door behind him. He adjusted the light-dimmer switch, changing the room from cheery to dreary. He had a brown beer with a green label in one hand and Dinosaur Tales in the other. “I brought your favorite tonight.”

That book hadn’t been her favorite for years—she preferred Harry Potter. Her daddy winked as he set his beer on her nightstand. There it was, the final clue. He crawled in beside her and opened the book then read in his husky voice. “One sunny morning in Fern Meadow, Stephen Stegosaurus woke to a big yellow sun and went to play in the nearby pond with his friends, Arnold Ankylosaurus and Timmy Triceratops . . . ”

It took her daddy thirteen minutes to read the whole story, finishing his beer in the process. He closed the book and placed it on the table. Then he leaned over her. “Now it’s time for our special kisses.” She closed her eyes and when his cool lips and rough hands met her warm skin her body grew cold and went limp—a lifeless thing, receiving but not giving. She travelled to her inner world, joining Harry Potter in a rowdy game of quidditch. After the game, which she tied with Harry, they cast spells on the losers with their wands, turning them into squirmy little bugs. As the losers crawled away she ate forbidden cupcakes that had little sprinkles on them, all while laughing with Harry.

When she felt her skin grow warm she left Hogwarts and opened her eyes. Her daddy had left. The only sign he had been there was the empty bottle on her nightstand and a raw pain down there. She padded over to her door on bare feet and listened. She heard water running from down the hall—as expected. She got her special things from the hiding place and stuffed them in a plastic Walgreens shopping bag. She waited for another fifteen minutes, counting down the minutes on her alarm clock, mouthing each one: “Fourteen. Thirteen. Twelve . . . “

At 10:43 she crept down the hall in the dark with her bag of special things. The dark enveloped her, making her feel safe. Her daddy always said monsters hid in the dark but she knew the real monsters were all out in plain sight. She tiptoed to the line of light under the bathroom door, cracked it open and peered in. Her daddy lay in a cast-iron tub with giant claw-feet, another purchase from the estate sale. He had a new beer in his fist, the bottom of the bottle resting on the white-tiled floor, which was intersected with black grout looking like tic-tac-toe grids. His chest rose and fell in time with light snores. His wet hair hung down like thin, limp snakes over his forehead and ears.

She slipped in, gently closing the door and latching it. She stepped forward and stopped halfway to the tub, feeling that her heart might leap out of her chest and run back to the bedroom without her. What if he heard her and woke up? She couldn’t wait another day, not even another hour. She caught her face in the mirror across the room—her nose still had a few freckles and a little bit of her ears poked out between strands of tousled hair. She was still small and only her head and neck showed above the bottom rim of the mirror. She thought of the new poem she was going to write and calmed. She crept the rest of the way to the tub where she smelled his soapy aroma. Coconut. She worried for a moment that the water would be too high. She peered in—it only came up to his armpits. She took the bottle of numbing fluid from her bag and placed it between her legs, wobbling it around to warm it faster. She tested a little on her index finger. Perfect. She sprayed under his jaw with gentle wisps. He snuffed his nose, startling her, but he didn’t wake. She sprayed his neck more then squatted on her knees, knocking the beer bottle out of his hand. It clacked and clanked on the tile and rolled a little ways off, spilling some of the amber fluid. She studied his eyes, which stayed closed. She let out a tight breath.

She took the stolen illustration out of her bag and taped it to the edge of the tub with a little strip of scotch tape. The picture displayed the blood vessels of the human head and neck: arteries in red, veins in blue. Her fifth-grade teacher, Mrs. Sampson, had explained that the red vessels carried life-blood to the cells, the blue ones sent old blood back to the heart to get more life. Georgia studied the picture even though she knew it well. She leaned into the tub and placed her little index fingertip on her daddy’s neck, moving to the left and to the right until she felt a solid thump-thump, thump-thump . She held her finger there and used a marker to put a red dot on her daddy’s neck. Next she pulled out a razor that she had taken from of one of her daddy’s utility knives. She had seen him replace a rusty, chipped blade on that tool once and knew there were shiny new blades inside the handle. She licked it; it felt cool on her tongue, tasting like oil and something else that made saliva in her mouth. She held it between her lips until it warmed. She placed the edge on the little red dot and pressed—a little butterfly bite. She hoped the dentist stuff worked. This was her moment. She craved it like Jonesy had craved Bear. Tonight it was her turn to have a special moment with her daddy—he’d had so many with her.

She pressed the warm steel into his damp neck and felt the skin give way to the blade. A trickle of blood flowed, mixing with beads of water on his neck and chest then running into the tub, creating red fingers in the grey water. She removed the razor and watched the blood flow but too soon it stopped. She sprayed more numbing stuff on his neck, making sure some went into the cut. She pressed the razor again, slicing deeper into her daddy with her tiny fingers pinching and pressing the razor. Blood flowed again, slowly at first; she kept pressing deeper until the warm blood gushed over her fingers in hot stickyness. She stood, mesmerized, as the blood arced out of her daddy’s neck, spraying a pretty rainbow into the water and onto the white tile where it flowed into the grout grooves, creating, hollow red squares.

When the blood slowed she violently shook her daddy. His eyes opened a little then fully as he stared in horror at the blood in the tub. She watched his face as he raised his arms to his neck but he couldn’t stop the blood. She relished the control she had over him now. Forever. With most of his blood drained, so too had his strength. He pleaded with a mouth that could no longer form words—his lips moving in slow motion like a tired goldfish. His face grew white, his eyes dimmed into a fixed stare. He slipped away from amongst the living. He died her way.

She stood there, thinking of how she would react in the morning when her momma told her the news. She thought that a blank, uncomprehending stare would be the best approach. Maybe it would be best to cry if the police asked her any questions. She smiled and touched her daddy’s hand as he lay there still and quiet in the red water. She sang to him in a sweet voice. “What would you do . . . if I told you I hate you? She giggled, low and soft. “Come on, Daddy, sing with me. I wrote it just for you.”

She took the last item from her bag: her momma’s sharp, heavy, meat clever. “I know you remember how it ends.”

By Karl Van Lear