Breaking Butterflies

by M. Anjelais

  Then the blade was lifted, and his hand let go of my hair, and agony ripped its way across my face, as though it had been brought on by the release of his grip. As though it all would have remained painless if he had only held on a little longer, if he had only kept looking at me. You’re mine, Sphinx, his voice said again in my head.

  And then all I know is that I was screaming and screaming, and the blood was dripping down my face and onto my hands, while he stood, still stony, still with the knife in his hand. Our mothers’ footsteps pounded on the stairs. They flung open the door to his bedroom and I saw them briefly framed in the doorway, their blurred faces white; my mother came forward and picked me up, and I felt the fabric of her shirt underneath my fingers. When I clung to her, blood smeared over her shirt and I couldn’t believe that it was coming from me. I felt sick. My heart was pounding so fast that it felt like it was going to rip itself from my chest. I know because if I think about this part too long, my heart still does that.

  Leigh grabbed Cadence’s arm and he dropped the knife on the floor, struggling in her grip, pulling his arm this way and that.

  “You’re hurting my arm, Mommy!” he shrieked, his voice high with pained innocence.

  “What did you do?” she screamed hoarsely, and shook him back and forth. “Cadence, what did you do?” Tears sprang to her eyes and streamed down her face like rivers.

  “You’re going to be fine, Sphinxie.” My mother’s voice shook as she pressed her hand over my cheek, which was covered in warm, wet crimson. “You’re going to be fine, okay? It’s fine. You’ll be all better soon.” Her voice sounded far away to me, like an echo.

  I stared over her shoulder at Cadence jerking back and forth with Leigh’s frenzied shakes, as though she could somehow pull him back in time and undo what he’d done to me. His eyes locked onto mine, and I thought desperately, He’s not sorry. My slashed cheek was throbbing.

  And I saw the butterfly smashed into nothing in his hand, and I couldn’t believe I’d ever thought that was bad. I couldn’t believe I’d never known that people could slice open other people’s skin like this, I couldn’t believe how much my face could hurt. I couldn’t believe how tightly he had held on to me, and how he had looked at me like I was the only person on the face of the earth. And I heard the switchblade opening and closing, over and over again.

  Click. Click. Click.

  I needed stitches — fifteen of them — in my upper cheek, just under my eye. I was supposed to be thankful that Cadence hadn’t aimed a little higher, because then I wouldn’t have had an eye, but I wasn’t. How was I supposed to be thankful when my face felt like it was splitting apart? The doctor said it was a deep cut; there would be a scar, and there was nothing that could be done about it. And even when the bleeding had stopped and the stitches were done, the cut was a brutal streak of red-hot pain, searing its way across my cheek. And that wasn’t all.

  There was something else, too, a feeling blooming in my chest that I didn’t understand. I knew that I had been hurt, that I should be angry at Cadence for what he had done. And I suppose I was, but underneath that thin layer of typical emotion, there was a terrible twisted excitement for the fact that I would always have the scar. He’d said I was his, and now there would be a mark on me forever to prove it. A mark right smack across my face, to remind everyone of what had happened to me — and to remind me that I was linked to Cadence, that he’d practically signed his name on me like I was one of his drawings. I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time. I was still young, after all.

  When we came home from the emergency room that day, my mother looked so old. She had aged somehow between the whiteness of the examination room and our doorstep. She kissed my forehead and apologized, over and over, for what had happened to me. Her tears dripped into my hair.

  “I should have known better, Sphinxie,” she sobbed, clutching me to her chest. “Your daddy was always right, your daddy knows better than me.”

  My father had hugged me for a long time when we came home from the emergency room, but he didn’t seem able to look at my face. He left the house, slamming the door behind him, a once-in-a-lifetime event. I’d never seen him act that way before, and I never have since. My father is not the type of man given to storming off.

  “It’s not your fault, Mom,” I told her faintly after the headlights of my father’s car receded down the driveway and into the darkness. “Cadence is so good.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked me.

  “He’s just so good,” I said. “You can’t tell …” I trailed off, unable to articulate what I wanted to say.

  My mother put me to bed, read me my favorite storybook three times over, even though I should have outgrown my love for it by then, even though earlier that year I’d decided I was too old to be read to at bedtime. It was something about a princess, something corny with lots of pink in the illustrations. After that night, it ceased to be my favorite and we never read it again, although it remained on my bookshelf for a few years afterward until one day I boxed up and donated a bunch of things I thought I was too old for, storybooks included.

  When my mother finished reading, she asked me if I wanted her to sleep with me, if I was still feeling scared. I politely refused her offer and told her that I wasn’t scared. And I wasn’t really, not at first. I was just stunned. I still didn’t quite know what had happened to me, or what was happening inside my head.

  “Is Dad mad at me?” I blurted when my mother reached the doorway of my room.

  “No, sweetie, never! What made you think of that?” she asked, stepping a little way back into my room in concern.

  “He left when he saw me,” I pointed out.

  “That’s not because he’s angry at you,” my mother explained. “He’s just angry that something happened to the little girl he loves so much and he couldn’t do anything to stop it. When your father’s angry, he likes to go off by himself to cool down. He’ll be back soon.” She came back into the room and kissed me again. “Are you sure you don’t need me to stay with you?”

  “Yeah,” I said. Her need to comfort me had begun to scare me, because it meant that something truly horrifying had happened. “Good night, Mom. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” she said, and she left.

  If I could go back in time and hold my little-girl self, I would, because I know now that I really did need someone to stay in my room with me. But by then I was scared. Needing to be held is scary sometimes.

  So there I was. I just lay in bed alone with my eyes open and stared at my ceiling. I listened to the sounds of my mother moving around downstairs. She opened and closed the fridge. She washed the dishes. I heard her crying again. Then the phone rang, just as she blew her nose. She answered it, and I heard her voice faintly.

  “Leigh,” she said, her voice muffled by distance and the walls of the house. I sat up in bed. I wanted so badly to know what she would say to Leigh. Would she be angry with her? Would they yell? And what had happened to Cadence? Was he being punished for what he did to me?

  On a show I had watched on television, a girl had eavesdropped on her teenage sister’s phone conversations by picking up the other line and listening, staying so quiet that her sister didn’t even know she was there. I got out of bed, and crept down the hall. There was a phone in my parents’ bedroom, on their nightstand. Slowly, I picked it up and pressed the receiver to my ear.

  It was the first time I had ever purposely done something that I knew I shouldn’t. Whenever I got in trouble when I was younger, it was for things like accidentally talking back to my mother because I was overtired or hungry. I was never the type of kid to willfully do so-called naughty things. I’m still not. But that night, everything was off-kilter, and I eavesdropped in spite of the feelings of guilt that began to creep into my stomach the moment that my little fingers reached for the phone.

  “I’m so sorry, Sarah,” Leigh was sobbing into the phone. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. I should have kn
own. I should have taken him to a doctor or something … oh God! Is Sphinxie okay?”

  “She’ll have a scar,” my mother said.

  “Oh God!” Leigh’s sobs intensified. They were both crying now, and I half expected water to drip from the receiver onto my shoulder.

  “How did I not know?” Leigh asked, and her voice was pulled taut across the phone line. “How did I not see this coming?” For a moment, the line was silent, save for a few echoing sniffles on both sides. Then Leigh said tearfully, “Sarah, please, tell me what I did wrong. What did I do wrong?”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong,” my mother said as steadily as she could manage. “Some things aren’t anyone’s fault.” I could almost hear her biting her lip, to keep herself from saying that my father had seen it years ago. My father had seen it when the butterfly died.

  “But it has to be me, Sarah!” Leigh went on, almost wailing now. “When a kid is messed up, it’s the mother’s fault … it’s the mother’s fault for not raising him right … it’s my fault …” Her voice caught raggedly in her throat. “What the hell did I do? Tell me what I did, Sarah, you have to know … you know so much better. You did everything right with Sphinxie, she’s such a good kid. But I messed up, Sarah … I messed up.”

  “No, okay? Just no,” my mother said. She’d stopped crying now. “Listen to me: You might feel like it’s your fault, but it’s not, okay? You did everything right, okay? Now you have to help him, Leigh. You can do it.”

  I could hear Leigh breathing, in and out, hoarse, sounding like wind blowing rough against rough. “I love you,” my mother said.

  “You can’t mean that,” Leigh said. “You’re angry, Sarah, you have to be angry.”

  “Angry? All right, a little. Angry at myself, though, for not watching my kid.”

  That was confusing, because suddenly I wasn’t sure who was truly responsible for what had happened. Previously, it had been easy: Cadence was the one with the knife. But wasn’t my mother supposed to protect me? Wasn’t that what parents were for? If she had been watching us, I wouldn’t have needed to be saved in the first place, would I? There was a cold lump in my throat now.

  Leigh laughed, that sort of little, weak, spindly laugh that people let out when everything is at its least humorous. “I messed up, Sarah,” she whispered. “I messed up the plan.” She laughed again.

  “Oh, Leigh,” my mother said, and her voice was so soft.

  I hung up the phone. My cheek seemed tight and stretched with the stitches in it, and my mind felt the same way, full to bursting with all of these things that I didn’t understand. The cut on my face, the scar I would always have, the boy who had given it to me, the way that he’d looked at me when he’d opened me up. I walked back into my room and climbed back into bed. My chest was starting to feel heavy with guilt for listening in on my mother’s phone conversation. What I had heard was so private, so raw. I knew that she would never have wanted me to hear them talking how they were, crying and frightened and small.

  A few minutes later, my mother came upstairs. She came into my room to check on me, and of course, I was still awake, my eyes wide. And I was both glad that she was there and entirely unsure of myself. When I looked at her, I didn’t know what to think. She loved me and I loved her, but she had chosen to be friends with Leigh in the first place, she was the one who had left me alone with Cadence. And now here I was, with fresh stitches crisscrossing my face, burdened with so many conflicting feelings that I couldn’t work out what had happened to me. Feelings that were going back and forth between terror and something like exhilaration as I slowly lifted a hand to my face and touched the cut lightly with my fingertip, checking to make sure that it was all real and not some kind of dream. I had never been more confused.

  “Are you having trouble sleeping, sweetie?” asked my mother, sitting down on the edge of my bed.

  “Mom,” I said, my voice quivering. “I did something I shouldn’t have.” I had to confess, of course. I couldn’t let the night go on getting any stranger. Things had to be set right.

  “What?”

  “I listened to you and Leigh on the phone,” I whispered, feeling shrunken with shame. My mother closed her eyes. She rubbed her temples with her fingers.

  “It’s okay, sweetie,” she said finally. “Just don’t do that again. It’s rude.”

  “I know,” I said. My chest was sour on the inside. I licked my dry lips. “Mom,” I said, in such a tiny, tiny voice. “How did she mess up the plan? Cadence and I are still here, you still have your jobs, just like you said. How did she mess it up?”

  “Oh, Sphinxie,” my mother said, her eyes welling up for what seemed the thousandth time that day. “It’s just silly. Don’t think about it. It’s just silly.” Years later, she would end up telling me that we were supposed to be married, but at that moment she only bit her lip.

  A week later, after we’d recovered somewhat from the initial shock, my mother and I ventured outside to meet one of my other friends at a playground. She hung upside down from the jungle gym and pointed at my cheek. “What happened?” she asked me, swinging back and forth by her knees.

  “Got cut,” I mumbled, looking away from her and hoping she wouldn’t ask any more questions. I didn’t feel capable of explaining how I’d been cut. I didn’t want her to know.

  “Oh,” she said. “Did it hurt?”

  “A lot,” I said, feeling a lump come into my throat. My friend pulled herself up to sit on top of the jungle gym. And life went on.

  My stitches came out. The cut transformed into a thin scar, a sleek white line on my upper cheek that was smooth to the touch. Leigh sold her US house and moved permanently to the one in England. She was broken by the sight of me, of my mother, of my father. She didn’t want to lose contact with us, but she couldn’t bear to be around us. I was the reminder of what she considered her failure in raising Cadence to be a decent human being.

  She remained a faithful best friend, even from a distance. She called my mother on the phone at least twice a week, and emailed her every day. After a while, my mother asked her if it would be all right to send pictures of me dressed as a stereotypical Native American girl for my school’s Thanksgiving play. Leigh agreed. She sent a picture of her own, one of Cadence sitting on a swing in the England house’s backyard. We were twelve by then. He was going to a private school at that point, and seeing a therapist on the weekends. I didn’t mind seeing pictures of him. He still shone brightly, despite what he’d done to me. By then he had become something of a legend to me, this boy whom I had at one time called my best friend, this boy who had used me and left his mark on me forever. There was a period of time when I used to look in the mirror and trace my scar with my fingertip, wondering if the golden-haired boy in the pictures that Leigh sent to us had really done it. The good-looking boy who seemed so normal, painting at the easel he’d wanted so much, wearing the stiff uniform of the private school he went to. Was he real? Was Leigh even real, my mother’s elegant best friend who had messed up her son, messed up the plan? I hadn’t seen them since I was ten. It all seemed more like a scene out of a movie than like something that had actually happened.

  And even though time often seems to stop after traumatic incidents, it was still unfolding, and I was growing. I became a teenager. I had my first crush. I went to the bathroom one day and found a red stain almost in the shape of a heart in my underpants. And the boy in the photos that came to us like clockwork grew too, tall and slender and perfect as always.

  When I was thirteen, at Christmastime, Leigh and my mother exchanged photos of us as usual. A picture of me flew out over the ocean toward England, and in an envelope with a holly stamp came a picture of him wearing a red button-down shirt and skinny jeans, his feet bare, the blurred greenness of a Christmas tree splotched with smears of colored light behind him. For a long moment after my mother had pulled the photo out of the envelope, I was frozen, staring at it. The soft waves of blond hair framing his face were blu
rred slightly, illuminated from behind like a halo. And his head was held high, his thin eyebrows arched, his face dominated by those cold blue eyes.

  His eyes were one of the only things I could always remember clearly, those icy eyes that were filled with fire at the same time. Still, Leigh said that she had framed my picture, and so we framed Cadence’s. When my friends came over for a Christmas party, they asked me who he was.

  “He’s cuuuute,” my then–best friend Kaitlyn trilled, picking up the picture for a closer look.

  “He’s my mom’s best friend’s son,” I said awkwardly.

  “What’s his name?” she asked, still holding the picture.

  “Cadence,” I told her.

  “Caaadence,” she drawled. “What a cool name! He’s really cute, Sphinx. Do you ever hang out with him?”

  “No, he lives in England,” I said. “He did this to me,” I added, pointing to my scar. “He’s in therapy.”

  She put the picture down like it had burned her. And I wanted to cover my mouth and take back my words.

  It was the first time that I’d ever told a friend what had happened to me. The girls whom I hung out with had seen my scar, obviously, but no one ever asked about it. They probably all just assumed I’d been in an accident of some kind as a little kid and could do without having to explain it to people. And I was thankful for that. Aside from the fact that what had happened was a deeply personal thing, I also viewed it as too shocking for anyone to understand properly. I thought people would view it like something out of a crime drama, something fake. And I didn’t want anyone interpreting it that way, didn’t want anyone seeing Cadence as a one-dimensional shock story. That wasn’t what he was to me, and I couldn’t make anyone understand that. No one would ever be able to grasp it, no one would ever see the way that he’d looked at me when he’d cut me.

  Kaitlyn’s eyes were impossibly wide. “Are you serious?” she said, in a half-whisper. “He … he really cut you?”