The Knife and the Butterfly

by Ashley Hope Pérez

  “I’m in here; how the hell can it be my fault?” she says. But I don’t believe her. Because when Lexi says this, she looks at the drain by the toilet. I swear she’s wishing she could disappear down it and out of her cell, away from that question.

  I’m watching for what will happen next and wondering who this Theo is to Lexi, but Pakmin comes and gets me before I can find out.

  During rec, me and Baby Tigs chill together, talking shit and doing pushups until our knuckles are bloody with gravel.

  “That’s killer,” Tigs says. He jumps up and wipes his fingers across his county issues, then drops back against the fence and slides down until he’s sitting on top of some ratty-ass weeds grown up through the chain links.

  “I’m getting nowhere with this ho they got me watching,” I say.

  “Man, don’t start up on that again. Nobody gets nowhere with their obs, far as I can tell.”

  “What gets me is how they act like we should be figuring shit out. What the hell, you know?” I say, but I can tell Tiger isn’t listening. He’s got this far-off look on his face.

  “Tigs?” I ask.

  He looks at me funny. “What?”

  “Where’d you go, man? You tripping on something you’re not sharing?”

  He shakes his head. “Just trying to remember. Always trying to remember.”

  About thirty minutes after he brings lunch, Gabe walks back my way. I shove my black book under the mattress before his footsteps get too close.

  I’m already waiting by the bars when he comes up and unlocks my cell.

  “What’s up?” I ask him.

  “You wanted to see your file again,” he says.

  “That’s tight, man, thanks.”

  I stare at the perfect white of his uniform as I go out of the cell. I can’t find a single speck of dust or nothing on it. Shit, when I wear white, every not-white thing in the world flies at me and gets on my clothes. I wonder if maybe Gabe’s got a wrinkle-faced old wife to help him keep his things so nice.

  Gabe takes me back to the conference room where I talked to Pakmin, then we pass through into the giant reading room. He sits me down at a table and pulls out a few rolled-up sheets of paper and a pencil from his pants pocket. He sets everything in front of me and says, “Wait.”

  A minute later he comes back with the same folder Pakmin gave me last time.

  “I don’t know how long I can give you, son,” he says. “But when I come back, you have to leave. No extra time.”

  I shrug and reach for the file. “I’m cool.”

  I try to read faster than before, but I hear myself saying the words out loud like I’m some little kid in second grade instead of 15. Even if there ain’t nobody around to hear me, it’s still embarrassing as hell.

  I go through the rest of my school files real fast. I skim counselor referrals from fifth grade, shitty test scores, and truancy write-ups from middle school.

  Then there are police reports from the times I got picked up for questioning, then the stuff about the auto theft trial that landed me in juvie. I know it’s stupid when I’ve got this whole big-ass file to read, but I start thinking about Pájaro. Everything that happened, it’s not in here because I didn’t get caught. But I ain’t forgot it.

  I don’t even know what happened to Pájaro’s girl, Trippy. She lived with her mom and a little brother, and one night they just disappeared. Se borraron. Probably gone back to El Salvador, some people said. I didn’t even know until Becca told me on the phone while I was in juvie. I was going to do like Trippy asked, find that Mexican and make him pay for what he done to Pájaro. I even bought a piece off of a guy to do the job. Then the next day they picked me up for grand auto, for something I did almost a year before me and Pájaro stole that damn stereo. After I got out of juvie, I found out that other homies took care of things, sent a real strong message. But I wasn’t there. Becca said that was a blessing in disguise because otherwise I might’ve got killed. The thing with Pájaro still weighs me down real bad, though.

  Gabe is probably coming back any second, so I grab the last few pages from my file and sandwich them between the pieces of paper he gave me for notes. I roll it all up again like it was when he handed it to me. I barely have time to stick the pencil in the waistband of my pants before he comes back through the door.

  Gabe doesn’t search me when he takes me back to my cell, doesn’t say a thing about the missing pencil. In the Youth Village they had every sharp numbered; no way of getting out of the GED room with a “weapon” like a pencil. Maybe old Gabe forgot, or maybe he gets that a person needs something to do with the long hours on the inside.

  First thing I think about is looking at the papers I took from the file. But then I decide I got to make my reading material last at least a little. I flatten the pages out and hide them under the mattress. The pencil goes there, too. Then I lie down, liking the fact that there’s secrets I can keep even in lockup, secrets hid right under my toes.

  CHAPTER 14: THEN

  I pressed my face against the driver’s side window. One glance and I knew this kind of stereo was good, none of that anti-theft crap on it. I stepped back and nodded to Pájaro. He smashed the window with a pipe and opened the door on the driver’s side.

  “Now yank that shit out,” he said.

  I pulled the stereo box forward, and Pájaro slashed the wires. He reached over the seat and grabbed a stack of CDs from the back and shoved a handful of change from the cup holder into his pocket. Two seconds later we were flying down the street in Pájaro’s mom’s Sentra, laughing like hell. It was maybe three months after I got clicked into MS-13, and everything seemed hilarious and badass at the same time.

  Pájaro parked in an alley maybe half a mile away, and we took a look at the shit we’d jacked. Six stereos that we could unload easy. But when we started checking out the music from the truck, we had to laugh. “This music is shit, man,” Pájaro said. He shoved open his door and got out. I grabbed my bag and followed him, and a second later we were walking down the alley, snapping CDs and stomping the cases as we went.

  “Fuckin’ Tejano? That cabrón was asking to get his stereo jacked,” I said. I snapped the last CD, then pulled out a baggie with the pills I scored last night from a homegirl at the Bel-Lindo.

  “You brought me candy, huh?” Pájaro asked, grinning. “What kind?” He was already working up a spit so he could swallow them easy.

  “Hell if I know. Uppers, so who cares?”

  We tossed back the pills, then I pulled out a can and started tagging the wall behind us. Thirty seconds later, “MS-13” popped out in these 3-D block letters I’d been practicing. I zipped AZZ into the curve of the three.

  “Not bad, carnalito,” Pájaro said. He walked over to the wall and sniffed the still-wet paint. I tossed him the whole can, and he sprayed some into the cap and held it up to his nose. “I love smellin’ these blue roses!” he said. He started laughing.

  I kicked a few of the CD cases. “There was some decent rims on that truck, man. We’ve got the wrenches. How come we didn’t take ’em?”

  Pájaro’s eyes were already shiny. “’Cause you’re a pinche moron, culero.” He punched my shoulder. “And you’re going to hell for being so greedy.”

  “A huevo, loco, I’m serious as shit,” I said. “I’m going back. Ain’t been but five minutes.”

  “Five minutes is long enough for a pissed-off Tejanolover to come out and see his truck in pinche pedazos,” Pájaro said.

  “Nah, let’s go,” I said. I started air-boxing to show him just how down I was, how I was doing right by my crew.

  “Fuckin’ Azael,” he said. But when I headed for the Sentra, Pájaro tossed me the keys and followed me.

  We rolled back down the same street with the headlights off, real slow. I parked the Sentra half a block from the truck, and then we walked the rest of the way. As far as we could tell, nobody had even noticed that the window was busted in. There wasn’t no lights on or anybody ar
ound outside.

  “You were right, man; this is cake,” Pájaro said when we got back to the truck. He was crouching down, looking at the rims. “The lug nuts ain’t even the locking kind.” He handed me one of the wrenches. “You get ’em loose. I’m gonna jack up the other side.”

  I was working on the second wheel when I heard something over my shoulder. I looked back, and there was this big Mexican dude standing behind a tree.

  I hit the ground a second before he fired.

  “Run!” I shouted to Pájaro. I scrambled up and darted into the street. Pájaro was right behind me when the dude fired again. A bullet whizzed past my face. Then another. He kept firing.

  And I heard Pájaro fall.

  “Just go,” he shouted at me when I turned around. “Get your ass down the street!” There was blood oozing down his leg, and he was dragging it bad when another bullet hit him in the side.

  I ran until I got to a gas station and called 911. And then I ran again. My insides were different from seeing what I saw. My insides were different because I was the one who’d wanted to go back.

  When I took the car back to Pájaro’s house, his girl, Trippy, was there. She ran toward me, crying. “They shooted him so much you can’t even tell how he was, how he looked like.”

  She should have been mad at me, but she wasn’t. I should have told her that the bullets that got him were meant for me, but I didn’t.

  “You get him, okay, Azael? Quémalo porque he took my Pájarito from me.” Her face was red and puffy, and mascara was running down her cheeks.

  “I got love for my homie, Trippy, you know that.” I hugged her tight. “I’m sorry, Tripps, I’m so sorry.”

  She grabbed my arms and locked eyes with me. “Promise you’ll get the one who did this.”

  CHAPTER 15: NOW

  When Pakmin drops me off in the observation room, I walk over to the one lit window. Lexi and Janet are in the meeting room. They’ve already been talking for a while; I can tell by how fast Lexi’s foot jiggles. The longer she’s been sitting still, the faster it moves.

  Janet has her doing something with numbers, and Lexi’s doing her best to look bored.

  “Any number, one through 27,” Janet says.

  “27,” Lexi answers right off.

  “Why?”

  “Because that’s the biggest you’d let me pick.”

  “So what would you want 27 of?” Janet asks.

  “I don’t know. Shit, anything.”

  “27 knocks upside your head?” Janet plays this straight.

  Lexi rolls her eyes. “Don’t be stupid. Fine, 27 thousand dollars.”

  “Okay,” Janet says, “how about a number between 500 and 799?”

  “603.”

  “Because?” she asks. People in her line of work always want a because.

  “That’s Meemaw’s address. More my home than any place Shauna ever moved us to.”

  “You want to talk about that?” Janet asks.

  “Nothing to talk about. Shauna’s a stupid bitch who can’t even keep herself out of trouble. Meemaw’s always there for me. She gets me.”

  “Don’t you think that it might be a little unfair to—”

  Lexi cuts her off. “You got a piece of gum?” She plays with her hair and stares at Janet.

  Janet’s jaw tightens for a microsecond before her face relaxes again. That’s serious self-control. She pulls out a pack of Trident and tosses Lexi a piece.

  “Thanks,” she says. She unwraps the gum and sets it in the center of her tongue. “How about we go back to the number game?”

  “Sure.” Janet flips the pages at the edge of her notepad and then fans through them a second time. “Pick a number from 16 to 73.”

  “18.”

  “Really?”

  “Hell, yeah. You can buy smokes and lotto cards and shit.”

  “You ever think about what it would mean if you were already eighteen? Now?”

  Lexi snorts. “I’d have slept through a birthday.”

  Janet gives her a kind of tight-lipped smile, but she doesn’t press. “Anything from zero to four.”

  Lexi stays quiet for a long time with this one, and then she says, “Zero. That’s how many memories of my dad I wish I had.”

  This is a genuine, no-bullshit answer. I almost clap like a pendejo; it’s that rare for her to give Janet a break. But I can’t really judge. I’d probably give my counselor a ball-busting, too. If I had one.

  Then all of a sudden Lexi starts talking. “Richard, my dad, he’s a real weirdo. He’s like almost sixty now, but he met Shauna when she was only twenty-two and still living up in Oklahoma.” Lexi pauses for a second, and I wonder why she’s trusting Janet so much. But when Lexi bites her lip, uncrosses her arms, and leans forward, I realize that it’s not that she trusts Janet. She’s just crazy lonely.

  “So Richard was in Tulsa on business and liked the way Shauna sang at the blues club where she worked, and wham, bam, a few nights together and she was knocked up with me.”

  “I bet that was hard for her,” Janet says, bland as stale bread because that’s how she’s supposed to be to get Lexi to talk more.

  “He acted like he was going to do right by Shauna, and he moved her and Meemaw down to Texas, over to Baytown. He could afford to do it because he’s this big-shot oil guy. He put them up in a little house and came to visit every week. Meemaw says she smelled a rat from the beginning, but it took Shauna almost three years to find him out. I mean, she knew he had a wife and kids, but what she didn’t know is that he had two other women set up like her in other parts of Houston.” Lexi pulls a piece of hair into her mouth and chews on it for a second before she catches herself. “Shauna says it’s impossible because I was too little, but I swear I can remember the last big fight they had. Shauna’s eyes got bulgy and her face turned red and she started throwing plates at him, pulling them right out of the cabinet in the kitchen he set up for her. She called him a fucking collector and told him to keep his pussy-hopping dick to himself.”

  Janet nods, and a tiny smile plays on her lips. “Maybe it’s not exactly your own memory, but it’s a good story. Was that when you and Shauna started moving?”

  “Yeah, except for the two years we lived with Kevin. He was the one boyfriend I really liked. He took us out to the suburbs. That was when I was in second and third grade.”

  “You say you wish you’d never met your father. Why is that?”

  “Hello, he was a disgusting freak,” Lexi says, but Janet and I both know that there’s more.

  “Did you ever see him after the fight?”

  “A couple of times,” she says. “When I was little, every time Shauna made me mad I’d tell her that she was going to get in trouble with my dad. That he would rescue me from her, that kind of shit. So she finally let me go to McDonald’s with him just to shut me up.”

  “And?”

  Lexi fidgets. “And that’s it. He was a jerk, is all. That was one thing Shauna got straight.”

  A silence breaks out between them. Finally Lexi adds, “The way he was about kids, something wasn’t right.”

  Janet nods and waits for her to say more, but Lexi’s arms are folded again. She’s done talking for today. I’m pretty sure she’s not done remembering, though, because she has this look in her eyes like she’s gone somewhere else.

  CHAPTER 16: THEN

  The last time I saw my moms was at the hospital the day Regina was born. I was six years old. Eddie was almost eight. Papi had to hold the baby up because Mami’s arms weren’t strong enough. The blanket on the bed was yellow and covered with fuzz that came off when you pulled at it. Eddie kept grabbing my hand away, but I liked the fuzz so much I didn’t care if he called me stupid. I played with the blanket, and Mami started singing real soft, Duérmete niñito, no llores chiquito. She was singing for the baby, but I liked it all the same. Then the nurse took Regina away in a little cart, and Mami called me and Eddie to come up closer to her. I had all the blanket fu
zz balled up in my hand, but it didn’t matter because she just reached out to brush my hair back out of my eyes. Her hand was so light touching my forehead it made me think of a little bird, this gray one with a tiny curved beak we used to see pecking around for bugs in the dirt of the Bel-Lindo parking lot.

  “You need un corte de pelo,” she said real soft, trailing her fingers through my hair. “You, too,” she told Eddie.

  He was biting his lip to keep from crying, but he swallowed hard and said, “I’ll get Mrs. Guzman to cut it, Mami. Por seguro.”

  Papi came over, and he cried, too. He put his hands on the back of our heads and pulled us in close. It felt strange to be pressed against Papi’s body because it was always Mami who hugged us. I wanted to pull away and wipe my nose, but I didn’t want to make him mad. I also didn’t want my fuzz ball to get wet.

  And then we were going back down the long hall with Papi. Nobody talked about what was happening because Mami already told us how the doctors said something else was growing inside her, something bad, but that they couldn’t fix it without hurting the baby. What she didn’t tell us then was that now that Regina was here, it was too late to fix it. Nobody told us that.

  Mami lasted two more days. She passed while me and Eddie were at Mrs. Guzman’s watching cartoons. Papi was at the hospital when it happened. Mrs. Guzman answered the phone, and after she told us and hugged us for a long time, I asked Eddie if the birds in her hands were what carried her up to heaven when she died, but he just kept staring at the TV like the stupid happy music blasting out was all that mattered.

  CHAPTER 17: NOW

  I’m headed to observation for the second time today. I got to see Lexi in group this morning, and now I’m watching her and Janet play some game called Scrabble, where you use these little wooden tiles to make words on a playing board. After a while, Lexi dumps her letters back into the bag.

  “I suck at this.”

  Janet checks her watch. “We still have some time,” she says.

  “I’ve got a headache,” Lexi says and pushes the game board away.