Paper Butterflies

by Lisa Heathfield

  “Thank you,” she will say to the man who supports her.

  Watching her through the glass will be her son. He’s twenty-six years old. Mickey is leaving him, and the pain almost blinds her.

  “I’m OK,” she will say, nice and slow, so that he can hear her words.

  Mickey will lie down without being told.

  They will tie her into the straps, across her stomach and her chest, and they will pull the buckles in hard.

  “Do you have anything you wish to say?” the man by her side will ask.

  “I want them to know that I’m sorry,” Mickey will say, her voice husky in the tense air.

  And then they will drip the liquid in. And with every drip she will go further away.

  Further and further, until she’s gone.

  •••

  “I wanted to see you last week,” Blister says. “But they wouldn’t let me.”

  “I wasn’t allowed visitors.” My voice sounds cold but I don’t want it to.

  “What did you do?” he asks, his voice coming through the coil toward me.

  “I was angry and trashed my room,” I say. He’s looking down at where the phone connects to the wall. “They killed Mickey.”

  Blister winces as I say it, as though he’s physically hurt.

  “Her case was different than yours, June.”

  “She’s not a case. She’s a person.”

  “I know.” He drops his head down and runs a hand through his hair. I haven’t seen him cry for so long and I can’t even hold him.

  I can’t do this to him anymore.

  Breathe, girl, I’m with you.

  “Blister, I don’t want you to come here for a while.”

  “You can’t stop me from coming to see you.” His eyes meet mine and I can see hurt settled so deep in him.

  “I can.” I have to look down. I need to have the strength to say these words, and I know that if I look at him I won’t be able to set him free. “I’ll stay in my cell. I won’t come here to you.”

  “They’ll make you.” His voice sounds desperate. I know he wants me to look at him.

  “No, they won’t.”

  “Why won’t you see me?” The words crack apart and Blister barely whispers them.

  “You know why,” I say quietly. “It’s what I want, Blister.”

  “Look at me, June,” he says. And I have to. I have to see Blister’s face, every line, every trace of him. “You really want me to stop coming here?” His forehead is creased with years of pain.

  “Yes,” I say, my eyes looking into his.

  Slowly, he nods.

  “And I need you to concentrate on your studies, to get me free,” I smile. I want his life to keep moving, even though mine has stopped.

  Blister rests his head on the telephone.

  I look at his forehead, his eyes, his neck. I need to remember it all. His shoulders, his arms. The hands that held mine. His lips that kissed me.

  I hold my hand up to the glass. Blister raises his hand and presses it against mine. I imagine that I can feel his skin.

  We look at each other, our fingers touching.

  “Don’t cry,” I whisper.

  “I’m sorry.”

  But I’m crying too. He tips his forehead onto the glass and I do the same.

  My Blister.

  He moves his head back.

  “I’m sorry,” he says again, quietly.

  “No. I want you to be free.”

  He takes his hand away from mine. Through the glass, I can see that he’s shaking.

  He looks at me, so carefully, at every part of my face.

  “I love you, June,” he says.

  “I love you too, Blister.”

  He puts the phone handset back in its place. Slowly he pushes his chair back and gets up.

  He turns away. It’s a few steps across the room.

  The officer opens the door for him. Blister is about to go through, when he looks back.

  Through my tears, I see my beautiful Blister standing there. He’s crying so much that he has to hold the wall to steady himself.

  “June,” I’m sure he says.

  And he’s gone.

  After

  two days later

  It’s best not to think. It’s best not to remember.

  If I just look at the window of sky and watch it change, then the world can become only this and nothing can hurt.

  When things from my past appear in my mind, I paint them with the gray of the walls. I take a brush and wipe them clean away, before they burrow deep and can’t find a way out.

  The vent is silent.

  Maybe I’ll pretend it never gave me any words.

  I’ll just wake. Eat. Stare at the wall, as I wait for the next meal. And the next. I’ll taste each mouthful.

  And maybe be happy when I walk outside on my own in the fragile air.

  I’ll do as they say. Go out when they tell me, get shut back up inside when they want.

  I’ll read.

  And maybe fold a paper shape where Blister’s hands have never been.

  And I’ll try really hard to forget.

  •••

  “June,” Reverend Shaw says, “don’t give up hope.”

  He holds my hands in his.

  “Have faith, June. I’m with you.”

  But I’m adrift and I can’t find him.

  “This is just another kind of death,” I say.

  “No. You’re alive, June. And while you have breath you must keep fighting. You must have hope.”

  Hope.

  The word has become too difficult to catch.

  “It’s gone.”

  After

  twenty-four years old

  She is looking down at her lap when I walk into the visitor booth. Megan. Instantly, I’m a child again and flooded with fear. She must know that I’m here, on this side of the glass, because she looks up.

  “June,” she mouths to me.

  I don’t want to sit down.

  She’s a young woman now, she must be twenty-three. But she’s Kathleen sitting there. The years disappear and my palms begin to sweat. Inside, I feel myself curling into a ball, small enough so they can’t hurt me.

  Megan picks up the phone. On her hand, the skin is twisted and scarred. Guilt slams into me. I feel sick. She must see me shaking.

  “June,” she says into the cold, white mouthpiece.

  I don’t want to hear a voice that carries with it so many memories.

  “Please,” she clearly mouths.

  I step forward, closer to her, and sit down on the chair. I don’t take my eyes from her.

  Her hair is darker than Kathleen’s. Now that I’m this close, I can see thick make-up covering a scar melted onto her cheek and neck.

  She starts to cry. She holds the phone tight to her ear and covers her eyes with her other hand.

  I pick up the handset on this side. The sound of her tears fills the tiny room that I’m in. It’s a sound that scorches my stomach. I keep my eyes wide open, because I know that if I close them I’ll be dragged back to a darkness I don’t know if I can escape.

  “Megan, please,” I say. She looks up, straight into my eyes. She’s so slim still, her shoulders jutting out too sharply from her pink sweater.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers. She holds tight to the telephone with both of her hands.

  “I’m sorry, too,” I say.

  Megan takes a carefully folded tissue from her sleeve. I watch her, as though I’ve never seen her before. This strange, birdlike creature. I want to trace the outline of her on the glass. I think she’s real, but she seems so different.

  “I forgive you,” I say. The words rush in and catch me by surprise.

  “I forgive you too,” she says, looking into my eyes.

  I hesitate. “But your mother died because of me,” I say.

  “Yes,” Megan answers. She stops crying and sits straighter in her chair and holds her shoulders back. “And you tried to
kill me.”

  “No,” I say instantly. “I never wanted to kill you.” Never, never. That wasn’t what I wanted to do.

  “You lit a fire when we were asleep. You wanted us to die.” Megan is crying again, but she doesn’t look away from me. I can see every second of pain she has stored inside her.

  “I didn’t want you to die,” I tell her.

  “Then why didn’t you wake me up? Why didn’t you get us out in time?”

  “I tried, but I was scared. I was just burning Kathleen’s things. Your pictures.” I think the shame and guilt might sweep me away. “It was a small fire and I thought it would go out. It was so quick.”

  Megan stares at me as I cry. The ugly scarring on her hand grips tight to the telephone.

  “I wanted you all to get out,” I say.

  “My mom never woke up.” She stares at me. “They say you lit the fire and sat on the lawn and watched.”

  “That’s not true.” I shake my head.

  “That you hid the window keys out of reach. It took me so long to find the key, June,” she cries. “I nearly didn’t get out.”

  “It was Kathleen. She kept them above the curtain rails.”

  Megan nods and looks down at the table.

  “She treated you badly,” she says.

  “But I didn’t want her to die.”

  “I treated you badly.” Megan pulls gently on the silver cord of the telephone.

  “Yes,” I say. “I was scared. All the time, I was scared.”

  Megan nods slowly.

  “I was scared too,” she says quietly.

  I think any child living under Kathleen’s roof would, at times, have been terrified, Reverend Shaw had told me.

  “Is that why you did it?” I ask. “Why you hurt me too?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Were you scared she’d do it to you?” I ask. I watch as Megan folds in on herself.

  “Sometimes she did.”

  “Sometimes she did what?” I ask, but Megan doesn’t reply. “Did Kathleen hurt you?” I go cold.

  She nods.

  “When?” I ask quietly, although I don’t want to hear.

  “When no one was looking,” Megan says.

  “I didn’t know.” I didn’t see.

  “No one knew.”

  “You didn’t tell anyone?”

  “I tried to tell you,” she says. My heart stops. “But I didn’t know how. And you were so scared of me that I couldn’t come close.”

  My words feel tangled in mud and wire, and I can’t find even one to speak.

  “She built a wall between us,” Megan says, so quietly. “And neither of us could get through.”

  I look at her on the other side of the glass. We’re separated still, but I can see her clearly. And all I want to do is reach out for the little girl who was brought into my life. I want to change her ending and help her to fly.

  “I didn’t know that your dad was mine, too,” she suddenly says. There’s a strength in her eyes.

  “Did you never suspect he was?”

  “No. I promise.” She doesn’t look away from me as she shakes her head. “I believed Mom’s story about my dad. He left me and didn’t look back.”

  “But none of it was true.”

  “I always thought I wasn’t good enough for him to stay,” Megan says. “Mom said he didn’t want me.”

  Years of lies and pain stack up bit by bit around us.

  “And, all the time, our dad let me believe that,” she says. “He knew how much it hurt me and he didn’t say a thing.”

  “Maybe he thought you were too young to understand.”

  “No. I don’t think he ever would have told me.”

  “He would.” I want to believe it. “He just couldn’t find the right words, at the right time.”

  “He was a coward.” I feel her drifting away from me, into her own thoughts, and I want her to stay.

  “Megan,” I say, “if we have the same dad, it means that you’re my real sister.” I smile. She nods and I think she wants to speak, but she’s crying too much. “And that wall that Kathleen built? I think we should knock it down.”

  After

  one month later

  They came this morning to remove everything from my cell. I’m officially on Death Watch. I’ve got seven days left.

  When I step back inside, I don’t know where I am. My room is naked and it’s not my own. They’ve taken everything. Every book I’d stacked neatly on the floor. Blister’s photograph in its cardboard frame. And every letter that he wrote to me. Hundreds of his words, folded into envelopes. They’ve taken them all away.

  I sit on the bed. I don’t want to look at the door, but I do. It’s empty of Blister’s paper shapes. All fifty-seven of them are gone. The bars are bare. Every last bit of thread has been swept away.

  They want it to be like I never existed.

  An officer sits on the other side of the door. They will watch me, twenty-four hours a day. They will write down everything I do. I smile at him and he nods and smiles back.

  His notes on me will be all that’s left.

  I turn on the faucet and bend down to wash my face. I feel into the plughole. My compass is wedged there. Gently, I pry it out.

  I leave the water running. It sounds like a river. Over on the bed I lie down and press my damp face into the pillow.

  Left or right, Blister?

  •••

  I’m taken away from my cell into another small room. I stand with my arms high as they measure me and lower them when they need to do the length of my arms.

  They don’t tell me what it’s for, but I know. They like the execution suit to fit properly, so that nothing can go wrong.

  They sit me at a table and ask me what I want done with my body after I’m gone.

  I will burn, just as my dad did.

  They bring me back to my cell.

  I can’t eat the food they give me. I know that I should, because hunger only makes me feel worse, but today I can’t. Today, I just stare at my blank door, where Blister’s shapes should be.

  And I look out the high-up window and hope to see a bird. Hope for it to swoop down and peck peck peck at the glass until there’s a hole big enough for me to squeeze through. And I’ll hold onto his wings and he’ll take me away.

  He’ll take me to the gate by our trailers. I’ll climb over, scraping my legs slightly on the rough wood. I’ll walk down our path, with grass and aster flowers on either side. Blister will be there. He’s older, but he looks up and he smiles and moves to make room for me on the step beside him. And together we sit, our faces looking to the sun.

  •••

  I have one more day and one more night in this cell before they move me to the Death House. It’s a name I don’t like and I won’t use it again. I’m there for twenty-four hours. Until the end.

  It’s a forty-five-mile drive to get there. We will pass by trees and fields that I won’t be able to see. I will hear other cars go by, but I won’t know where they’re going. I will never see the people inside them. They’ll have no idea about me.

  It’s a beautiful day. The sunshine climbs through my window and settles on the bed. It’s amazing how warm it can be, even through such a small piece of glass. It wants to get in, so it will.

  I have to breathe slowly and count to ten, but it doesn’t slow my heart down. It’s beating so fast. It knows that it has such a short time left.

  •••

  It’s strange being in a van. It’s strange knowing that the outside world is just there. On the other side of this thin sheet of steel, there’s freedom. But I can’t get to it. Whatever I do, however hard I try, it’s beyond my reach.

  I recognize the sensation of the road running away from under us. The gentle rocking that makes me want to sleep.

  Time is so strange. Some people think that it doesn’t exist at all.

  The years I’ve spent in my cell have been endless and yet so short. I don’t know ho
w I’ve filled my days. I don’t know how the nights come around each time, but they always do.

  Until tomorrow. Tomorrow, I won’t go to bed and close my eyes. I will not dream. I will not turn over in my sleep to face the other wall. The night won’t come around again.

  The van stops. They open the back door. I’m groggy as I step down. The sky is gray and the morning is still cold.

  The ground is hard underneath my shoes. I can feel Blister’s compass pressing into the sole of my foot.

  They don’t let me choose which way to go. They lead me straight ahead.

  The air is thick with death. It’s heavy on my skin. It’s in the eyes of the officers. It’s on their breath.

  It’s very quiet here. The corridor is empty, but for us. The sound of the keys grates inside me.

  The door closes loudly.

  The cell is too big. There’s no window.

  I wonder about the people who have been here before me. There’s no sign of them anywhere.

  I lie on the bed and stare at the blank ceiling until I see butterflies. Hundreds of paper butterflies flying silently together. The patterns in their wings have been carefully cut. I think they would break if I touched them.

  •••

  I’m woken by the sound of the cell door opening. It’s early morning.

  The last day.

  I can’t stop myself from shaking.

  The officer brings in my breakfast. He waits outside the door and watches me as I eat.

  He watches me, as Kathleen used to, so that I finish every mouthful.

  The officer takes away my empty plate. The chaplain walks in. I’m crushed that’s it not my reverend, even though I knew that they wouldn’t let him be with me at the end. Because he needs to live after today.

  “I’m Reverend Miller.” He is so young, too young to have to do this. I want to greet him, but the words don’t come out. “Can I sit down?” he asks. I nod and he sits next to me on the bed. “Reverend Shaw told me you like him to read to you.”

  Reverend Shaw.

  “Would you like me to?” the chaplain asks.

  I nod.

  He opens the thin pages of the Bible. And as he reads, I look at my hands. At my fingers grown older. I move my wrist, see the bones and rivers of veins underneath. Everything works. Nothing went wrong. My body didn’t fail me and it wants to live.