Butterfly Arising

by Landis Lain

  “She might understand.”

  “I don’t know,” said Sasha, shaking her head. “If I call and she disses me, I’ll be crushed.”

  “You can take the risk when you’re ready.”

  “Yeah,” said Sasha, nodding. “But Gabby is away at school.”

  “You’ve got plenty of technology,” said Dr. Michelle.

  “I’m a coward,” Sasha admitted.

  “You said it, not me,” said Dr. Michelle, and then pointed her pen at Sasha. “You can have more than one BFF, you know.”

  “I can?”

  “Of course,” said Dr. Michelle. “There is no limit on how many people can love you or how many you love back. What about this young man you talk about, Suleiman?”

  “What if…” Sasha stopped; then started again. She couldn’t talk about Suleiman. She’d given him the diary on Thursday night. It was now Saturday. He hadn’t called, texted, nothing.

  “I’ve got so many problems,” she snapped. “Can’t you just solve them for me?”

  “I don’t have answers to your problems,” retorted Dr. Michelle. “I didn’t create the problems. I don’t live with the problems. Only you can get to the answers. First, you must identify the problems. Then you gotta deal with them.” She pointed with her pen for emphasis.

  “What do we pay you for, then?” Sasha rolled her eyes.

  “To keep me in fly shoes,” quipped Dr. Michelle. “While I slog around in your mess trying to help lead you to grabbing that perfect moment.”

  Sasha burst out laughing. “Awesome one!”

  She leaned down and reached into her purse. She waved a plastic package at the doctor.

  “What’s that?”

  “I brought my own cheese,” said Sasha. “To go with the whine.”

  Dr. Michelle chuckled appreciatively. “Now that was good.”

  “Dr. Michelle,” said Sasha, smiling. “I really like you!”

  “I like you, too, honey.”

  RECONCILED

  May 3

  When I first brought Ricky home from the hospital, I couldn’t stand the sight of him. He was my shame in a screaming, demanding wet bundle. Damon was awesome. He loved Ricky so much. I thought that I was safe. He didn’t ask questions. I could forget about it. I wouldn’t even have to deal with the baby much. Even Mama had softened a little bit and would hold the baby. I only held him if he was wet or needed to eat. I hated him for messing up my life even worse than it was already messed up. Ricky’s such a good baby. He hardly ever cried. I would drop him off at Damon’s and go back home and lay down in the bed. Then Mama sued Damon for child support and I was lost again. I used to look and look at Ricky’s face when he was with me, trying to see who he resembled. But he looked just like a baby version of me, right down to the curly brown hair and pouty lips. He even had my toes.

  “Who did you think the baby was going to look like?” asked Dr. Michelle.

  “Craig,” whispered Sasha. “I thought he was going to look like D Dog. He was who I’d been with before.”

  “I see.”

  “No,” said Sasha. “You don’t.”

  “Explain it to me,” said Dr. Michelle.

  When Sasha finished, Dr. Michelle had tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry that happened to you. You’ve been carrying a heavy burden.”

  “I felt like I was outside my body, watching myself go through the motions for a long time,” said Sasha. “I felt filthy. I couldn’t remember it and that made it worse because it was like something, some monster was crawling inside me, crawling, crawling and I couldn’t wash it away. I couldn’t get it out of me. By the time that I figured out that I was pregnant, I was already five months gone. It was too late to stop it. I didn’t have any choices. I felt stupid because I had been pregnant before, right? I should have known. But I didn’t.”

  DISCOVERED

  May 9,

  It’s taken me months to admit this. I chose Damon to be the father of my baby because I wasn’t sure who the father was, and I figured that he was the best of a bad bunch. That sounds like bananas or something, but there it is. All I can say is that it seemed like a good idea at the time. I’m ashamed of myself. Shame is a terrible place to be. People always tell you what they would have done in your situation because they don’t know. Even when you tell them, they don’t know…

  “Why did you lie?” asked Dr. Michelle.

  I wanted a father for my baby,” answered Sasha. “I wanted Ricky to be made from love.”

  “Did the lie help you cope?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” said Sasha. “I knew the truth, even when no one else did.”

  “What was the truth?”

  “Damon didn’t love me,” said Sasha. “Not one of the death lords cared about the monster they had created.”

  “Monster?”

  “When Ricky was born, I felt like the monster was a part of him. I didn’t want to touch him.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “I hated my own baby,” said Sasha. “Who does that?”

  “Do you still hate him?”

  Sasha shook her head.

  “No. He’s just a little boy. But I can’t get back to myself.”

  “Okay.”

  “And the killing part was, what happened was mostly my fault.”

  “How?”

  “I went to the party,” said Sasha. “Even though I knew what ratchet creeps Dragon Dog’s boys were. Mama told me to stay away. I went anyway. It was safe. I saw them in school every day and…”

  She stopped and took a deep breath. “I was almost glad that Craig threatened to kill me if I told the police what happened.”

  “Why?”

  “Then I didn’t have to tell,” said Sasha, her face bunching. She blinked back tears.

  “Tell what?”

  “I can’t name my baby’s father,” Sasha said. “Because I still don’t know which one of the Death Lords he is.”

  DISASSOCIATED

  May 12,

  My mind has felt disconnected from my body. I look at my reflection and wonder, “Who is that girl?” “Why is she sitting there thinking those thoughts?” I pretend to be happy, so no one asks me how I really feel. I feel sad. I feel angry. Why? Isn’t sad just as legitimate as happy? Why can’t I get over this? Why is it more important to others to pretend to be happy rather than to be happy? Questions to ponder in this life because the next life might be worse….

  “It’s called disassociation,” said Dr. Michelle.

  “What is?” Sasha asked.

  “That feeling that you are standing outside watching yourself go through life,” said Dr. Michelle. “It is a defense mechanism and it helps you cope when things are overwhelming.”

  Sasha nodded her head and looked over at Dr. Michelle.

  “Overwhelmed,” she said. “Yeah.”

  Sasha sat up, wrapped her arms around her waist and started rocking. She murmured.

  “What did you say?” asked Dr. Michelle.

  “I want everything to go away like it never happened,” said Sasha.

  “If it goes away, then what?”

  “Happiness,” said Sasha. “I want to pick a happy moment and stay there.”

  “Do you have a moment in mind?”

  “Yes,” said Sasha. “I was about nine or ten. It was September and just starting to get a little chilly at night. I was lying in bed with Daddy and he had me wrapped up in this Princess and the

  Frog blanket. He used to call me his little chocolate princess. We made popcorn in Daddy’s old popcorn popper. We were going to watch a movie, but it was pre-empted or something. We talked and made believe about what our possible world was about.”

  “What’s a possible world?”

  “Like if things were perfect,” said Sasha. “Daddy was going to win the lotto and we would take a wonderful vacation to Disney to see Tiana and eat all the caramel apples we could.”

  “Didn�
�t you go?” asked Dr. Michelle. “To Disney?”

  “We did,” said Sasha. “But by then he was dating Althea, so I slept on the sleeper sofa. Teddy slept on the rollaway bed.”

  “How did you feel about that?”

  Sasha hesitated.

  “Disney was fun but…”

  “But?”

  “I felt cheated,” said Sasha. “I mean, I got to see Tiana and eat a couple of caramel apples, but I wanted Daddy all to myself.”

  “I see,” said Dr. Michelle.

  Sasha glanced at her and then looked down at her hands, which were clenched into fists on her lap.

  “I’m so angry,” said Sasha, voice low and hard.

  “What about?” asked Dr. Michelle.

  “I want to be that girl…”

  “What girl?”

  The words poured from Sasha’s mouth, faster and faster, from someplace so deep inside of her that she hadn’t known it existed.

  “I want to go back and sleep in the bed with my daddy and he can cuddle me and call me his princess. Althea would just disappear. I want to go back to the beginning when I hit Teddy in the nose. When I was invincible and could fight and I want to hit him again and again and again, so he wouldn’t dare touch me or convince me it was okay to touch him. I want Craig and his stupid gang of freaks to vanish from the face of the earth. NO! I want to put my hands on them and just tear them into tiny little pieces until they are nothing but dust. I want Damon to pay for just wanting sex. I want to stop paying over and over and over again for being a girl.”

  She buried her hands in her face.

  “I hate being a girl,” she mumbled.

  “Why?”

  She dropped her hands.

  “Because you can’t win if you’re a girl,” said Sasha. “The rules are made up by men, for men and we can’t… It’s like that song I heard in a movie once, ‘I can’t get out of the game I can’t win, I can’t get even.”

  Dr. Michelle nodded. “Life can seem unfair.”

  Sasha snorted.

  Dr. Michelle asked, “Why is it so important to win? And what are you trying to win?”

  “My life,” said Sasha. “Life is winning. There is always some contest. You gotta be prettier, stronger, smarter, but then you gotta pretend that you’re all humble so people can like you. Mama is always quoting scripture to me about how God is going to help me, about being pure and meek and good so I can inherit the earth, but I don’t want to wait until I die to get what’s coming to me.”

  “What do you think you are entitled to?”

  Sasha shrugged. “A friend? A life where people like me?”

  “Who does not like you?”

  “Mama, Daddy, Althea, Craig, Damon, even the shelter sent me away,” said Sasha. “I don’t even like me. I don’t think God likes me. I’m pitiful.”

  “Since you bring up God, do you think Jesus cared if people liked Him?” asked Dr. Michelle.

  Sasha rolled her eyes.

  “Why would he care? Jesus was walking on water and raising the dead,” scoffed Sasha. “He was the original super hero!”

  Dr. Michelle laughed.

  “Okay, I’ll grant you that.”

  “Plus, Jesus was a man!”

  “True.”

  “And He had God ready to rain down trials and tribulations if He asked for it,” said Sasha. “Jesus had omniscient back up.

  “That one is so good, I might steal it,” said Dr. Michelle. “Let’s look at it another way.”

  “I’m all by myself.”

  ALONE! Her chest tightened.

  “What other way?” asked Sasha.

  “I’m here for you.”

  “You get paid to be here,” scoffed Sasha. “The judge ordered it.”

  “That does not negate the fact that I care about you,” said Dr. Michelle.

  “Oh.”

  “You have to stop mixing up why people come to you with the reasons why they remain with you.”

  “What?”

  Dr. Michelle shifted in her seat. “The judge ordered counseling. I am your counselor. But rest assured, if I didn’t think that I was helping you I wouldn’t keep you as a client.”

  “Oh.”

  “I also like you as a person.”

  “You do?”

  “Of course.”

  “I like you, too.”

  “That’s good because I’m expecting a lot from you,” said Dr. Michelle. “You made it this far. You have a lot of strength.”

  “I don’t feel strong.”

  “There were some strong women in history and in the Bible,” said Dr. Michelle. “We talked about Tamar.”

  “Who else?” asked Sasha, suspicious. She was still leery of anything that had to do with religion. Mama never talked about any strong women in the Bible.

  “Like Mary Magdalene,” said Dr. Michelle.

  “She was a prostitute,” scoffed Sasha.

  “No ma’am,” said Dr. Michelle, shaking her head. “It doesn’t say that anyplace in the Bible. Read it. She was a woman of substance. She was a woman that Jesus cured and cared for. She became one of his closest confidantes. She was called the Apostle to the Apostles.”

  “So why aren’t there thirteen apostles?” asked Sasha, interested.

  “That’s a question for a biblical scholar,” said Dr. Michelle.

  She checked her watch. “Our time is almost up. But I want to leave you with some things to think about.”

  Sasha nodded.

  “Let’s consider Mary Magdalene. How awesome must she have been if she was the first person Jesus appeared to? He was on His way to heaven. Why stop and kick it with a babe? Maybe Mary was so fabulous she didn’t need the title ‘apostle’.”

  “That’s deep.”

  “Even if she had been a prostitute, Jesus healed her and forgave her past. To even be a prostitute, they, the men, I mean, had to be doing the same stuff she was, right?”

  “Yeah,” said Sasha. “You are right.”

  “So even if her truth was that she was a former prostitute,” said Dr. Michelle. “When Jesus healed her, she got a new truth.”

  “Woooow!”

  “Or the other Mary, Mother of the savior of the world?” Dr. Michelle smiled at her sweetly. “She was a boss in her own right, don’t you think?”

  “I never thought about it like that,” said Sasha.

  “Wasn’t Mary a single mother?” asked Dr. Michelle “Nobody knew who the father of her baby was at first, did they?”

  “Well, no, but that’s different,” said Sasha. “Jesus’s Daddy was God. My baby’s father is more likely the devil.”

  “Didn’t change who Mary was, did it?” asked Dr. Michelle. “Weren’t the two Mary’s standing at the cross when Jesus was crucified? Weren’t the apostles hiding out someplace? You remember that you are not defined by who likes you or who your friends are. You are also not defined by what was done to you or what you’ve done in the past. Forgive yourself for being young and naïve.”

  “I was stupid!”

  “Then forgive yourself for being stupid!”

  Sasha opened her mouth. Dr. Michelle held up a hand.

  “You have to believe in yourself, first,” said Dr. Michelle, standing up. “You are not alone. You have a mother who loves you. You have friends who will love you if you let them. You have me. You make your own truth.”

  “Dr. Michelle,” said Sasha in a tiny voice. She stood up.

  “Yes, Sasha?”

  “Can I give you a hug?”

  “Sure,” said Dr. Michelle and opened her arms. Sasha dove forward. She laid her head on the shorter woman’s shoulder and felt warmth enfold her.

  RESOLVED

  May 17,

  Sadness is a violent bully. It controls every thought and kicks me down until I feel I can’t get back up. I want to be done with bullies. They suck.

  “I’d like my life back,” replied Sasha. “I want to be light and cheery.”

  “Sounds like you wan
t to be happy,” said Dr. Michelle. “How are you going to get that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There was another Tamar in the Bible, you know,” said Dr. Michelle.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “She was raped by her half-brother, Amnon. Amnon pretended to be sick and when she brought him food, he attacked her.”

  Sasha gasped.

  “Then he hated her and tried to banish her. Even after she was molested, she pled with Amnon for justice and proper order. She told him not to send her away because in those days if a man violated a virgin he had to marry her.”

  “Ewww!” said Sasha. “You’d have to marry the person who hurt you? So they could do that again and again? That’s messed up!”

  “It doesn’t seem quite fair, does it?”

  “No, it’s monstrous!”

  “It would make you feel humiliated and ashamed?”

  “That’s how I already feel,” said Sasha.

  “Tamar told her brother, Absalom and he took her in. Tamar became desolate.”

  “Yes,” said Sasha. “I resemble desolate sometimes.”

  “King David, their father, did nothing.”

  “Kind of like my daddy didn’t stand up for me with Althea. He sent me away.”

  “They kept quiet about it for a couple of years. Then, Absalom had Amnon killed for raping Tamar,” said Dr. Michelle.

  “I kept quiet, too,” said Sasha.

  “Yes.”

  “The Bible is way harsh!” said Sasha, clapping her hands. “Suleiman said he wanted to kill them, too. But I told him no. Stuff like that is against the law now! What would be the point of him going to jail? I’m already hurt. The damage is done. I don’t think I could kill anybody, anyway.”

  “What can you do?” said Dr. Michelle. “Can you seek justice and order for your life?”

  I don’t know.”

  “What do you deserve, Sasha?”

  “To get rid of the monsters,” said Sasha.

  “What monsters?”

  Sasha sat up straight. “The one’s that haunt my life and won’t leave me alone.”

  “Are you ready for that?”

  “I don’t know the future,” said Sasha truthfully. “But I don’t want to stay in this nightmare anymore. I want to be free.”