The Knife and the Butterfly

by Ashley Hope Pérez

  “Screw you,” I say, but I stop kicking and throw my arms out through the bars. “You do observation today?” I ask.

  “Four hours of staring at my cousin. Boring as hell.”

  “They put me in watching some female. Don’t even know her.”

  “Fuckin’ hell, man,” Tiger says. “She got tits and a pussy?”

  “Yeah, well, tits.” I shoot him a look. “Pussy? How would I know? They didn’t let me do an inspection.”

  Tiger laughs. “What you complaining about? I got to look at my ugly-ass cousin while you got you a chick.”

  “Bitch doesn’t do a damn thing. They left me in there watching her sleep, man, like some old perv.”

  “Better than the cell. Better than nothing,” Tigs says.

  “I hear you,” I say.

  We go quiet for a while. “Hey, Tigs?” I ask. “You think your cousin is a snitch?”

  “Nah, I’m the one who knows shit about him.”

  “You going to talk?”

  “Nope, just do my time. They can’t hold us here forever.” Tigs slaps his hand sideways across the bars of his cell.

  “You ever feel like somebody’s playing a game with you, messing with your head? Like you know things and then you don’t?”

  Tiger nods. “Whole place stinks of fuck-up, man,” he says.

  Later, before lights out, I push my blanket over the side of the cot. With my hand underneath it, I slide my black book out from under the mattress. I get under the blanket and make a tent with my knees so that I can look at my drawings without anybody seeing. I flip back to a drawing I did of Becca right after we first started talking. It’s her in these short shorts climbing up the stem of a rose like it was a mountain. Her long brown hair curves over her back, and she’s turned just a little so you can see her tits in profile. Damn.

  I close my eyes and imagine Becca sitting on top of me, teasing me with her hips like she likes to. I imagine grabbing onto the bottoms of her feet and rubbing the soft center part with my thumbs. She’s got these little Cinderella feet that look super sexy in shoes with big-ass heels and even sexier right there in your hands. I imagine her hair falling over my face, tickling my nose. I imagine her whispering, “You go straight for me, Azz?”

  I feel my gun down in my pants standing up hard, like it wants to answer her question. Fact: she’s not here. I take care of it myself, but it ain’t no fun like with Becca.

  CHAPTER 9: THEN

  I was at a quinceañera for Pelón’s cousin Tina when I saw Becca for the first time. Pelón was supposed to be making sure nobody stole the beer, but like usual he was off getting high. Promised me a joint for covering for him. So I was standing by the coolers when this girl in a black sequined top and real tight jeans walked into the backyard. First thing I thought was, she’s got class. You could see that right off because her nalgas wasn’t hanging out of some skirt even though she was fine enough to get away with it. Her tits screamed my name, and I had to tear my eyes upward to see what kind of face went with all that sexy. She had these big sad eyes done up real pretty, and her skin looked so soft I could almost feel my thumb sliding down her cheek to her lips. She glanced my way and then walked off real fast toward a group of girls hanging out by the DJ.

  The second Pelón dragged his stoned ass back to the coolers, I grabbed a Coke and headed toward her.

  “Brought you a drink, pretty lady,” I said.

  Her cheeks turned red, but she took it from me. “Thanks.”

  “You got a guy?” I asked.

  “Maybe,” she said, but I could tell she didn’t.

  I knew a couple of the girls around her, but nobody stepped up to introduce us. Tina was ragging on the DJ, calling the song he was playing crap. Since it was her party, he switched to reggaetón. She went crazy, and all the girls start dancing together like I wasn’t even there, but I didn’t let it faze me none.

  “I’ll be back,” I shouted over the music.

  I came around later with Coronas, and Tina finally introduced me around. “This here’s Brenda; she’s my girl from the southeast side. These fat hos are Ana, Linda, and Jen. And I know you been looking at Becca all night long.” Tina punched me in the gut, but I tensed up first. I got a laugh in while she stood there shaking out her hurt fingers.

  When Tina told them my name, she turned to Becca and said, “Listen, girl, don’t let the long eyelashes and sweet smile fool you. Azael is trouble.”

  “Don’t worry,” Becca said, her voice soft and husky, “I can handle trouble.”

  And she could. She handled me all night long, dancing sexy and close when the DJ played bachata. By the time we went behind the garage and started our own kind of slow dance, I wanted her so bad. Wanted to strip those jeans off of her and get down to business. But Pelón came running after me, saying shit was going down on Bellfort and we had to go.

  I put him off long enough to give Becca a real deep kiss to remember me by. She gave me her phone number. “See you soon, sad eyes,” I told her.

  CHAPTER 10: NOW

  I’ve been in observation for what seems like hours, but there’s nothing to see but Lexi sleeping. Mainly it pisses me off that I can’t have my black book while I’m in here. But I don’t want Pakmin to bust me.

  I’m dozing off when a guard unlocks Lexi’s cell door and tells her she has a visitor. I figure that visits here will be like at Youth Village, everybody together in a big room that smells like ass with this thick piece of dirty glass separating you from your people, no way to hug them or anything. So I’m already gearing up for another session of bored-off-my-ass while she’s gone for her visit. Then I hear voices crackling through the speakers on the other end of the observation room, where the windows that usually show me Lexi and Janet are. Looks like Lexi is something special because she gets private visitation. White-girl privileges.

  By the time I get over to the other observation window, Lexi is sitting across from an old lady with permed gray hair and a body that droops under her purple track suit. She’s not crying right now, but her eyes are red, and her leathery tan skin looks damp in places, like she barely wiped off her face before coming in.

  “Hi, Meemaw,” Lexi says. I guess the old lady is her grandma.

  “Hi, honey.” She reaches across the table to touch Lexi’s hand, but the guard in the corner steps forward and reminds her of the no-contact rule. She pulls her hand back like she got slapped, and I feel a little sorry for her, this Meemaw.

  “You okay, baby? You eating? You sleeping right?” she asks.

  “Yeah, just bored,” Lexi says. “Why hasn’t Shauna been here?”

  “We’ve been talking to the lawyers a bunch. They think it’s better for your mom to wait a while before coming to see you since, since—well, you know how it is between you two.” She forces a smile.

  “I’m gonna be out soon, right? They gotta let me out.” Lexi watches her grandma’s expression.

  The old lady gives her a weak smile but doesn’t say anything.

  “It’s real good to see you,” Lexi says, but she can’t seem to look at her grandma straight on. I wonder if maybe now she wishes she could go back to her cell and pick her scabs and write stupid shit in her notebook so she wouldn’t have to see the hurt in her grandmother’s eyes.

  “I brought you some Danishes and chocolate chip cookies, but they wouldn’t let me bring them in.” The grandma stares at her empty hands.

  “Too bad,” Lexi says. “I bet they’d make me a lot sweeter, huh?”

  “Don’t you worry about that. And I brought you a Bible. They’re supposed to give it to you sometime after the visit. I wrote you something in the back, so be sure to look for it. I’m going to try mailing the yumyums, okay? I know how you love your goodies.”

  “I’m sorry, Meemaw. I really messed up.” Lexi looks down. Maybe she’s thinking how she’d like to run around that table and climb into her grandma’s lap. Or maybe she’s not thinking anything at all.

  After a lon
g pause, the grandma catches Lexi’s eye. “Baby? Would you let me pray for you?”

  Lexi doesn’t even look like she’s heard, but she nods.

  “Okay, then.” The grandma closes her eyes and folds her hands. “Dear Lord Jesus, you love us just like we are no matter what things we’ve done. You came right down into this dirty world to save us, and you ain’t a bit afraid of our sins because you already cleaned us of them. We can go from being black like coal to being white as snow if we will let ourselves be washed in your blood.”

  When she says blood, my heart skips a beat. My mind cuts back to the fight at the park. I remember the dream with Eddie, and I feel sick. Hands slippery with red. I want to believe it’s paint. Somebody just stuck their hand in a bag after huffing. But not even my favorite Red Devil Chinese Red has that thickness to it.

  So whose hands? Whose blood?

  “Lord Jesus, Lexi here loves you in her heart, and I know she can change.” The grandma’s voice goes all whispery. “Father God, you know that she is a good girl deep down inside. She’s got hard times ahead. Take care of her. Please take care of her. In Jesus’ name, amen.”

  She opens her eyes and looks at Lexi. It’s a begging look. Then it seems like she looks right at me and shakes her head, only I know she’s just catching sight of herself in the mirrored side of the glass. Then the guard tells them they’ve got two minutes left.

  “I love you, Meemaw.” Lexi says it fast.

  “Love you, too, baby. See you next week.” The tears are back in the grandma’s eyes, but she leaves before they can fall.

  CHAPTER 11: THEN

  We went through these huge wooden doors that stretched about a mile up. Right after we stepped onto the carpet, Mami would stick her fingers in the holy water and use it to trace the shape of a cross on our foreheads. The church was like a huge boat, only turned upside down so that when you looked up, you were looking into the bottom guts of the ship. There was a smoky smell that wrapped right up around your nose so you couldn’t not smell it.

  The colors of all the stained glass windows made my head spin. I wanted to see my favorite, the one with the red heart like a sticker stuck onto the outside of Jesus’ body. But Mami was already walking into a pew and pulling us along behind her. Eddie pinched me, and I started to cry. Mami pulled him over to her other side and hushed us both. For a while everything was still. Just the smokiness and the heat of Mami’s arm where I had my cheek pressed against it. She smelled like dryer lint and soap, and then I remembered that we were going to have a sister. That was why her stomach was so fat.

  Sometimes Papi came, too. Me and Eddie didn’t know it yet, but Mami and Papi were both praying for a miracle.

  CHAPTER 12: NOW

  I’ve got me a kind of routine. Breakfast, talk with Tiger, rec outside, lunch, observation, dinner, flip through my black book, sleep. Sometimes the order is a little different, like today Pakmin comes for me right after breakfast. But it don’t matter. Because as much as I would like to drop-kick Lexi into the next county, I gotta agree with Tiger that something to watch is better than nothing. My expectations are low—a good day is getting to see something besides her just lying on her bed. Sometimes she stays there all day.

  But a different window in the observation room is lit up this time. It’s about halfway between the one for Lexi’s cell and the one for the meeting room. When I walk over, I see Lexi sitting in a circle with maybe twelve other girls. A couple of them are dog-ugly, but most of them are easy enough on the eyes. I think about whipping out my gun when I see this one girl who looks like she could be Becca’s older sister, but then I think of Pakmin watching from the set of windows behind me. That kills the mood.

  It’s the usual group therapy setup, same as what I got put through at the Youth Village. Blackboard screwed to the wall, chairs all in a circle, some hippie fool running the show. This guy’s somewhere in his thirties. He has combed brown hair and a face so bland that you forget it every time you stop looking at him. He’s spouting the usual counselor crap. Right now he’s talking about how everyone has an equal voice in the group. Like just saying that makes it true.

  He looks all mellow until Lexi cuts in with, “Then how come you get to make the rules? Or does that mean we can bust up this circle and sit like we want?”

  “We’re glad to have you with us today, Alexis,” is all he says.

  Some of the girls roll their eyes, but most of them just sit there.

  He pulls a stuffed dolphin out of his briefcase and reminds the girls that they can discuss anything except events related to their cases. But if life lands you in lockup, doesn’t that mean everything is related? And besides, how am I supposed to figure out what they think I should know about Lexi if she never even says why she’s in here?

  But the leader didn’t really mean “anything,” because two seconds later he writes the word “disappointment” up on the chalkboard and asks the girls to go around and say what the word makes them think of. “How about starting, Maritza?” he says and passes the stuffed dolphin to the black girl to his left.

  Her hair is bleached a coppery color and done up in cornrows. She squeezes the dolphin in her fist like she wants to see its cotton guts dripping out.

  “Yeah, sure. It really kills me when there’s no OJ at breakfast,” Maritza says and tosses it real fast at the next girl without even turning to look at her.

  “Bitch,” the next girl says catching the dolphin just before it hits her in the face.

  “Janela,” the leader says in a warning voice that makes me think of kindergarten.

  “Pass,” Janela says, staring at him.

  The girl next to her has her hair cut short, and her tits are smashed flat as a board. She stares daggers at the leader. “Your ugly face disappoints me.”

  When the dolphin gets to this Vietnamese chick, she pops her gum and shrugs. “How I suppose know what word means?”

  A tall, skinny Hispanic girl with her hair combed halfway in front of her face takes the dolphin and slams it down onto the floor. “I hate it when my boyfriend cums and I don’t!” She busts out laughing, and a couple of other girls join in.

  The leader kind of scrambles to the middle of the circle to pick up the dolphin. “That’s enough,” he says. “Let’s pause here. Remember, group is what you make it.”

  One girl calls out, “Then let’s make it a party and get us some shit to smoke in here.”

  “I think you know what I mean, Taneesha,” he says. “Let’s keep going, but focus on experiences that may help us understand ourselves better. Let me give you an example. My dad used to say, ‘I’m going to take you fishing.’ I’d get all excited and think, it’ll be this weekend for sure. I’d get my rod ready and wait. But whenever I asked about it, he’d make up an excuse. The weather, or his back, or he can’t borrow the boat, always something. It got to where I knew it wasn’t going to happen, but I kept on hoping. And he kept on letting me down. That’s what ‘disappointment’ makes me think of.”

  He could be a shrink on a talk show; I don’t believe that crap about fishing with his dad for a second. Sounds like made-up junk he cribbed from some counselor book. He probably knows as good as everybody else that he’s full of bullshit. When he smiles, I see that he’s got teeth so bad that I know his mom must’ve thought DISAPPOINTMENT big time when she saw them coming in all crooked.

  “Candezz?” he asks, tossing the dolphin across the room to the girl next to Taneesha.

  “My mom ain’t showed up even once for a court date. She act like I’m dead instead of her daughter.”

  “Thank you, Candezz.” He nods, and she hands the dolphin over to the next girl. She just stares at a spot on the floor, moving the dolphin from one hand to the other.

  Finally she speaks up. “I don’t get to see my baby but twice a year. There, you happy? Now I feel like shit.”

  It goes on like that until they’ve been around the circle twice. Whenever the dolphin comes to Lexi, all she does is uncross he
r arms and pass it on.

  CHAPTER 13: NOW

  I don’t know why, but it seems like Lexi hasn’t been out of her cell in a couple of days. Just lies there all day long with her notebook, which means that the White Girl Channel has been boring as hell.

  Finally today the door to her cell opens and Janet walks in. She sits down in the chair by Lexi’s desk.

  “You okay?” Janet asks.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Lexi doesn’t even sit up; she just stays stretched out on her bed.

  “Sad news, about the girl in C-block.”

  “Didn’t know her.”

  “What do you think about people dying young?” Janet says it easy, like it’s a normal thing to wonder.

  “Don’t matter. You got a game or something for us to do?”

  Janet opens her bag and tosses Lexi a container of Play-Doh.

  “Bad ass, I haven’t played with this since I was like seven,” Lexi says. She peels back the lid and drops a green lump into her lap.

  Lexi sits there fiddling with the Play-Doh, rolling pieces into long ropes, crisscrossing them, mashing it all back together. Janet pulls out some papers and starts filling out forms on the desk. After a while, she looks at Lexi and asks, “You religious?”

  “Hell no. Why?”

  Janet points at Lexi’s lap. She has the Play-Doh laid out in a crooked cross.

  Lexi rolls her eyes, then balls the cross up and squeezes the Play-Doh in her fist. “Better?” she asks.

  Janet doesn’t say anything, and after a while, Lexi goes back to messing with the Play-Doh. She’s making something that looks like devil horns to me, or maybe a moon, but with spikes on the side. Then she mashes that up, too.

  “Your lawyer told me about Theo,” Janet says finally.

  “Yeah, well, Theo didn’t do a damn thing.”

  “But it hurt you to lose him.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.”

  “You think you’re to blame?” Janet asks.